ould you or anyone think that such a cute little granny could kill a bee, let alone 150 people? She was arrested twice, escaping most of the charges without evidence. She had been active for half a century, and it is believed that she had killed over 150 people. The most feared assassin in Europe was a grandmother from Serbia known as Baba Anujka.

People from distant lands resorted to Grandma Anujka for medicine. She liked to brag that her treatments never failed and that even aristocrats were looking for her to cure small daily inconveniences. What is imperative to mention is that she also offered a very special service. For a sufficient sum, Grandmother Anujka also prepared the cure to “remove” a person who had become uncomfortable. Its victims were always men who left this world somehow unnoticed several days after the administration of the poison.

Every serial killer has a reason

Baba Anujka, named Ana Draxin, was born in Romania sometime in 1837 as the daughter of a cattle dealer, but since childhood, her family had lived in Petrovasâla, in the Serbian Banat. At the age of 20, she contracted syphilis from an Austrian soldier, leading her to live in solitary confinement for some time, where she studied traditional medicine. At the insistence of her father, she married a 20-year-old landowner, with whom she gave birth to 11 children (10 of whom did not live to adulthood). After her husband’s death, she set up a laboratory and began preparing her potions.

Grandma Anujka’s best-known cure was a combination of arsenic, mercury, and ethnobotanical seeds, which she said solved all the client’s worries — material or marital. She always asked her patients how serious the problem that needed to be solved was: by this, she referred to the weight of the one to be assassinated so that the witch could adjust the dose of the ingredients.

Curing men for good

She promised customers that their “worries” would be removed in a maximum of 8 days and demanded 5,000 dinars for a bottle of the miracle cure. Sometimes she offered diluted treatment, which would only make those who wanted to escape military service ill.

It is not known exactly how many people grandma Anujka killed. Many times the families who called for her help refused the autopsy so that the evidence of the poisoning could not be dug up. She managed to get off scot-free the first time she was arrested in 1914 but did not have the same luck 14 years later when, for the first time, authorities could prove her involvement in the death of a man. The mistake was that, in that particular case, the drink was not made by Grandma Anujka herself but by a nurse. As the cure was not as strong, the victim was able to consult a doctor before death.

“I have never seen poison in my life. I only prepared medicines, but those were completely harmless, “Baba Anujka told the court.

A woman who admitted to paying 5,000 dinars for the killer bottle testified before the court. Baba Anujka, at the age of 92 years old, got up and slapped the witness, at which point the judge threatened to remove her in chains from the courtroom. A great commotion was created around the process, with newspapers from Europe and the United States waiting for all the details. Baba Anujka was sentenced to 15 years in prison but did not serve her full sentence, being pardoned in 1936 at the age of 100.