Poisonous: A Grab Bag of Vintage Bad Bitches

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For at least the past 200 years or so, there’s been a lot of debate about women and the role we’re supposed to play in society. Historically, we’ve been expected to be the nurturers, the caregivers—the gentler sex, as we used to be called. We cook the food, we nurse the sick, we mind the children. Some of us are perfectly content in that role. But all throughout history, there have also been women who’ve chafed against these expectations. Some of them rebelled in a healthy, heroic way—fighting for women’s right to vote, to manage our own money, to pursue careers. And some have rebelled in a darker, more toxic way, using the very tools of stereotypical womanhood—food and drink—to commit the deadliest crimes. Today we’ll tell you about two of those women. Case 1: Tillie Klimek. Case 2: The Marquise de Brinvilliers.

Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets are on sale now: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE

Sources:
Lady Killers by Tori Telfer
Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite-dAubray-marquise-de-Brinvilliers
Bounjour Paris: https://bonjourparis.com/history/mystery-and-murder-in-paris-the-infamous-madame-de-brinvilliers/
PBS: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/mann-act-full-text
Medium, Heather Monroe: https://heathermonroe.medium.com/the-strange-murders-of-tillie-klimek-effa70912b5b

Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: [email protected]
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire.
0:04.8	We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true
0:09.4	story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime
0:14.2	campfire.
0:19.6	For at least the past 200 years or so, there's been a lot of debate about women in the role we're supposed to play in society.
0:27.8	Historically, we've been expected to be the nurturers, the caregivers, the gentler sex, as we used to be called.
0:35.5	We cook the food, we nurse the sick, we mind the children.
0:39.1	Some of us are perfectly content in that role, but all throughout history, there have also
0:44.4	been women who've chafed against these expectations. Some of them rebelled in a healthy,
0:50.2	heroic way, fighting for a women's right to vote, to manage our own money, to pursue careers.
0:56.3	And some have rebelled in a darker, more toxic way, using the very tools of stereotypical womanhood,
1:03.2	food and drink, to commit the deadliest crimes. Today, we'll tell you about two of those women.
1:10.1	This is poisonous, a grab bag of vintage bad bitches. Case 1. Miss Fortune Teller, the story of Tilly Climack. So campers, we're starting this one on a train
1:33.1	from Milwaukee to Chicago in 1914. Passengers sat on thin seats of dark wood as the train clacked
1:40.5	along, the rough smell of coal smoke drifting back from the steam engine at the front of the
1:45.1	train. Two of those passengers were a pair of not-so-young lovers, Tilly Varek and her boyfriend,
1:52.0	Joseph Gaskowski. Tilly was pissed. She'd sprung for a romantic trip to Milwaukee in the hopes of
1:58.8	getting a marriage proposal out of Joseph, but despite
2:01.5	endless brought worst and cheese curds and schlitz that flowed like water, the question remained
2:06.6	frustratingly unpopped. Showing Joseph a good time hadn't worked, so Tilly decided to try and
2:12.4	scare a proposal out of him instead. She leaned forward, fixing Joseph with her steely eyes. In Polish, she basically said,
2:21.6	You should try to stay on my good side. My first two husbands, they didn't stay on my good side. They
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from True Crime Campfire, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of True Crime Campfire and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.