Mar 12, 20235 min read

Vera Renczi: Women Serial Killer, Killed 30+ Men With Arsenic Poison

“Love is a poison. A sweet Poison, yes, but it’ll kill you all the same.” One serial killer named Vera Renczi seemed to have turned this Game of Thrones quote into her life’s motto. She weaponized her beauty and the love she received from men, leaving a slew of corpses in the aftermath.

It’s said that she, like a Black Widow, plunges her partners to their deaths after mating with them. Thus a fitting name for a woman who brutally butchered at least thirty-five men, including her husband and her son. She truly donned the name of Ariana grande’s dangerous woman. Yikes!

Who was Vera Renczi?

It is claimed that Vera Renczi was born in Bucharest in 1903. But in light of her crimes, a late nineteenth-century date seems appropriate. At age thirteen, after losing her mother, she and her father, moved to Serbia, Zrenjanin, to start a new life. Being the widower of an early teen girl, her father sent young Vera Renczi to a boarding school.

By the tender age of fifteen, Vera Renczi was entangled in various forbidden romances and even tried running away from home with boys usually older than her age. Acquaintances of Vera Renczi suppose that she always had a brimming desire for male company. She would even act out of jealousy and suspicion of infidelity.

Who was Vera Renczi’s First Victim?

Even before Vera Renczi reached twenty, she married an Austrian banker named Karl Schick. He was unbelievably rich and was more advanced in years than the young Vera Renczi. Soon, a young son was in Vera Renczi’s arms. Adhering to the ideals of the time, Karl went to work and usually stayed late working shifts. This made Vera Renczi suspicious of infidelity. Overflowing with this jealousy-inflamed rage, Vera Renczi laced her husband’s wine with Arsenic. Thus successfully poisoning him to death.

After the murder, Vera Renczi spread the rumors that her filthy rich husband abandoned her and her young son. She followed a year of mourning according to the customs and then moved on. She married a man much closer to her age and continued living a comfortable life with her son.

What were Vera Renczi’s recurrent murders?

Not long after her second marriage, Vera Renczi was plagued by the fear that her now younger husband was engaging in extramarital affairs. Within months of her new marriage, the young man went missing.

Vera Renczi reiterated the story of him abandoning them and running away. To put matters to rest, she even claimed that she had received a letter from her husband saying he was leaving them forever. However, the truth was that Vera Renczi had once again struck him down with poison. This was Vera Renczi’s last marriage.

After murdering two husbands and being entangled with their families, she chose to have fiery affairs with men instead of being open to marriage. In all Black Widow fashion, she had messy affairs with them and then disposed of them by poisoning them with Arsenic which was her chosen weapon of destruction. Vera Renzi’s reign of terror amounted to at least thirty-five of her lovers from all levels of the social milieu being dead.

Was Vera Renczi surrounded by her dead lovers?

Vera Renczi cunningly, in a horrific fashion, stored the dead bodies of her lovers in the basement. The last of her victims, a bank officer named Milorad, was reported missing, and the police ignored the wife. But his wife was adamant and started to ask the right questions about her husband and even her missing son. The police soon had to restart their investigation.

The police soon stumbled upon the horrific scene of her basement. With a search warrant, they opened up her underground cellar and discovered the coffins of thirty-five men being stored in zinc-lined coffins. The cellar also contained an auburn armchair, a candlestick, and an empty bottle of champagne. Soon Vera Renczi confessed to all the murders saying that she liked to sit in the armchair, surrounded by the remains of her dead lovers.

What was Vera Renczi’s motive to murder?

Vera Renczi confessed guilty to all thirty-five murders and alluded to the narrative that she only poisoned these men with arsenic because they were unfaithful. She further claimed that she could sometimes feel their love and passion fading from the men. That was the reason she felt entitled to murder them. She was soon convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. All the murders occurred in Yugoslavia, and their women were not being executed yet, so she was imprisoned for life instead.

A murderer or a mystery?

It was the mid-1900s. Thus, technology was not far ahead as it is now. Thus it is hard to dig up evidence of whether or not a person named Vera Renczi truly existed or not in reality. There was an article in a local newspaper, Danville Bee, in May 1925. This article is by a man named O. B. Tolischus, who wrote the following headline the article, “Woman Held for Killing 35 Persons”. The article detailing thirty-five men's deaths doesn’t mention Vera Renczi.

Another interesting factor to consider is that the timeline of her murders is said to be 1925. If we consider her birth date of 1903, Vera Renczi would have had an early start because the trail of bodies that followed her amounted to thirty-five. So it could be said that the first murder took place when she was in her late teens or early twenties. But murdering these numbers of men in such a short amount of time and then hiding their bodies would be almost impossible for a lone woman. But Vera Renczi seems to have achieved this task.

A deadly damsel?

If the article was true and Vera Renczi managed to leave the corpses of thirty-five men behind in her wake. Those of which included both her husband and her soon. Vera Renczi claimed she had to poison her son because he had forgotten her secrets. To not risk her secret getting out, she emotionlessly killed her son. Whether this story is fact or fiction, concocted from groundless suspicions, it still makes Vera Renczi a deadly damsel who broke the stereotype of being called a “Damsel of Distress”. Even managed to earn nicknames like the “Black Widow,” “Mrs. Poison,” or “Chatelaine of Berkerekul.”

In conclusion

The story of Vera Renczi inspired a documentary that appeared on the discovery channel. This three-part series, “Deadly Women,” recounted the story of Vera Renczi. The documentary tried to chalk her story up by saying the murders resulted from her search for love. Vera Renczi appeared in the first part of the episode “Obsession.”

The fact that continues to fascinate true crime followers is that a woman named Vera Renczi managed to kill thirty-five men and even continued to evade the eyes of authority for such a long time.

Then there should be more information regarding her crimes, trials, and conviction because all the crimes of Vera Renczi led to just a fistful of newspaper articles seemingly identical reporting about the murder of thirty-five men, that too in an American newspaper.

In conclusion, it is hard to say whether the story of Vera Renczi was a thrilling murder mystery or a mystery in itself. No matter what, Vera Renczi continues to be one of the most deadly serial killers, with the blood of thirty-five men on her hands.