Bernard O'Donnell was a true crime essay writer whose work appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world in the middle of the 20th century. I recognized his name when I found this tattered old 1950s paperback collection of his essays.
What fantastic cover art! The artist is identified as Lou Marchetti.
I found this gem at John King Books in Detroit, which is a reliable source of true crime wonders. The book is The world's worst women (Pyramid Books 1956).
I haven't found out much more about O'Donnell yet. He was born in 1885. I have now read and liked two books he wrote, the other was The Old Bailey and its Trials, so I am looking for the rest -- Crimes that made news, Cavalcade of Justice, Should women hang, The world's strangest murders, and a chapter of The black murders.
All I can add right now is that I think he's a fantastic writer, and his essays are fairly reliable, although he never cites his sources. I get the impression he was American but spent a lot of time in Europe, based on his language and subject selection. But I'm guessing.
In this book, he offers us essays on a bevy of deadly beauties, some obscure and therefore doubly interesting to me. Included are the stories of Martha Wise, the housewife from Hardscrabble, Ohio, who poisoned seventeen; Ilse Koch, the Red Witch of Buchenwald and her evil twin Irma Grese of Belsen; Katherine and Philomene Schmidt and their attorney Sarret of France; they were Bavarian sisters living in Marseilles. They are credited here with the invention of the acid bath method.
Other, familiar female fiends include Jeanne Weber (Ogress of Paris), Grete Beier, Belle Gunness, Antoinette Scieri (a poison nurse), Dr. Zeo Zoe Wilkins, swindler Editha Loleta Jackson, Countess Marie Tarnowska, Marie Becker (Belgium's answer to Anna Hahn), and my favorite, Vera Renczi of Yugoslavia, who hoarded corpses. Thirty-five of them. They were her lovers. She embalmed them alive with arsenic.
I'm ready to let go of this book, which I have worn to tatters, and put it back into circulation, and I will be happy to send it to the first person to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope. Email me at schotzzie at gmail dot com!
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