This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

It seems too soon to kill off a second one.

And Geronima answered,

One is about the same as two, and barely a week later, husband number two was dead.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the co-host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right.

And throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world.

On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported

on notorious true crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad,

and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

We don't talk a lot on this show about female killers, but author Craig Monson has brought me

a fascinating story right out of a Hollywood film. His book, The Black Widows of the Eternal

City, centers on a web of women poisoners in 17th century

Rome and their male victims. I was really interested in your book because I've dabbled a little

bit in research about Roman poisoners, and I looked at what has been purported to be the first serial killer in the

world, Lecusta de Gaulle, who was essentially hired by several different emperors to poison

very famous people, to get people out of the way. And, you know, I learned that they used enslaved

people as food testers because everyone important

was being poisoned. So when your book came up about something much more contemporary, 17th century

...