Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Maria Tremarki and together

we're exploring the margins of history and specifically at the intersection

of history and true crime.

Our first season of the show is all about lady poisoners.

And history has not been kind to ladies.

Women have been marginalized, they've been vilified, they're falsely accused, and often just plain misunderstood time

and time again. But sometimes women take power for themselves and they make their voices heard,

and sometimes they do it through murder.

So poison's often been called a woman's weapon.

And that's despite the fact that roughly two-thirds of the poisonings committed throughout history have been the work of men.

So Maria and I wanted to get our hands dirty and dig in and start looking at these women accused of using poison for nefarious means,

and try to figure out their motivations and see what patterns develop.

So we're going to cover everything from Caligula's sister Agrippina.

Was she a killer? or was she just ambitious enough to seem

automatically suspicious? To a law made in 19th century England making it illegal for women to buy

arsenic which was just rat poison.

Even though it was men doing most of the killing through poison at the time.

To a 1920 Chicago case where Tilly Klim Clinic was given a much harsher

sentence than prettier women with similar rap sheets.

So the takeaway is if you're going to commit crime be cute about it.

Yes.

Some of these women absolutely were guilty,

...