She Poisoned “Makeup” To Kill Over 600 Husbands
Giulia Tofana’s friendly side hustle of being a husband killer.
Giulia Tofana was a successful serial killer who killed hundreds of men without any power or wealth.
The lady turned her makeup business into a poison factory, qualifying as one of the most deadly female serial killers in history.
Tofana’s life story is fascinating, for she murdered hundreds of men over fifty years, and that too without being caught until her downfall was caused by something just as weird as her business. So let’s dig into the colorful story of the deadly serial killer of the 17th century.
Who was Giulia Tofana? A Widow Herself
Born in Palermo, Giulia Tofana was an Italian professional poisoner. Interestingly, when Giulia initiated her business, she was the widow herself. Many described her as a beautiful young widow who would spend time with apothecaries, learning their potion-making skills.
However, no one truly knows that watching apothecaries helped her make the potion “Aqua Tofana”, or the secret traveled to her through her other inspirations.
History doesn’t hold much of Giulia’s past life record, which gives rise to never-ending talks like she might have tried the new potion on her husband before kick-starting her cosmetic business with it! But why did she started the business in the first place?
Giulia Tofana’s mission and inspiration
Her mission was simple — to help aspiring windows gain freedom from their husbands. This was an accurate tale of the renaissance when the only way out of marriage was death.
Figuring a way out of an unhappy marriage, Tofana came up with her poisonous services of selling “Aqua Tofana”.
The market for Giulia’s poison was unhappy wives. Acting as an early Italian divorce, Giulia’s poison offered women the power of becoming widows.
Back then, families would force their daughters into marriages without giving them any say, where then a husband would mistreat his wife, often beating them up, making them feel powerless. Women then sought rebellion through Tofana’s alternative.
Giulia’s simple solution was poisoning men with arsenic. She considered her actions justified, as after all, for her, she was helping.
Now, where did Giulia got inspiration from? It is believed that positioning men were pretty common for centuries.
In the late 1400s, Pope Alexander VI’s daughter Lucrezia got married thrice by 22 years of age. Rumors exist of Lucrezia having poisoned her previous husband.
Interestingly, she wore a ring filled with poison which she would open over a victim’s drink. She would then serve a wine mixed with arsenic.
Comparatively, Guilia’s career was more successful, as she racked up 600 deaths in her career, unlike Lucrezia, whom she might have idealized. But, interestingly, Giulia’s direct inspiration was her mother — Yes, Giulia Tofana’s mother was also a poisoner.
Like mother like daughter, seemed to be the family business. Tofana was the daughter of Thofania d’Adamo, a lady who was executed in Sicily on the charge of murdering her husband in 1633.
The chain continued. Sadly, Giulia’s daughter, Girolama Spera, was also the business and crime partner who earned the same reward of execution in 1659, alongside her mother.
Giulia Tofana’s deadly Italian cosmetics business
Gulia had a cosmetic business established in Southern Italy. Her deadly recipe of Aqua Tofana contained arsenic which could quickly kill a person and that too without leaving traces. Why arsenic?
Well, it is the king of poisons since the time of ancient Rome. The reaction after consuming such an ingredient is a pretty common one — like vomiting and diarrhea.
The horrific side of such poison lies in its simple side effects, which can easily be mistaken as symptoms of other common diseases.
Arsenic being a versatile ingredient, was readily available in shops back then, as a cosmetic for skin whitening, making it easier for the woman to argue that they used nothing illegal.
Additionally, Belladonna was another critical ingredient in Giulia’s poison which translates to the meaning of “a beautiful lady”. The plant, however, is the contrary — most toxic in the world.
In the renaissance, women extracted liquid from belladonna to drop into each eye. It would dilate their pupils but at the same time caused increased heart rate and blurred vision, but the woman still used it back then because the beauty was worth it. What Giulia knew was not known to many — upon getting mixed with arsenic, it kills.
Poison’s perfect disguise & effectiveness
Now, how this recipe offered such a clean murder? Well, the concoction got sold in two different forms. Disguising Aqua Tofana as powdered makeup was a no-brainer for Giulia.
Owning the form of powdered makeup meant it could be placed on the dressing table along the side of lotions and perfumes without any suspicion.
The second form was ingenious as it was hidden in small vials with the image of Saint Nicholas of bari. The catch here was its nature of getting disguised as a woman’s typical cosmetic — it looked more like a holy healing oil.
The vial claimed to be a special healing ointment that looked nothing but more like a holy object. It was due to the disguises that Tofana was able to run such a successful business for decades. The only way a husband could suspect his wife was after death!
Hinting towards the effectiveness of the poison, then only four drops of the Aqua Tofana were sufficient to kill a person. The poisonous effect meted out over a week to avoid suspicion.
Interestingly the famous recipe was carefully formulated, where it could easily get mixed with any food — owing to being odorless, colorless, and tasteless.
A bowl of soup exposed her business
It is so hard to keep such a business secret, and Tofana managed to fool authorities and sold potent concoctions for years. Then what out of ordinary happened after years? How was Tofana exposed to authorities?
It was one of her clients who blurted out Tofana’s secrets. Why so? Well, she turned cold feet. Before her husband could drink a toxic soup that she prepared for him, the woman got guilt-ridden.
Gripped with regret, she stopped her husband from drinking the soup which had Aqua Tofana mixed. The man fell into suspicion, forcing his wife to reveal the actual matter, upon which she pointed fingers to Giulia Tofana, labeling her as the culprit of selling poison.
Papal authorities in Rome warned Tofana of her arrest, upon which she fled to the church for sanctuary. Luckily she was granted the shelter but then rumor spread across Rome of Giulia having poisoned the whole water line. The angered church, without any question, handed over Tofana to the authorities, where her torture began.
Giulia Tofana confessed and got executed
After getting tortured by the papal authorities, the woman confessed to poisoning over 600 men, and that too between the years 1633 and 1651.
Finally, in 1659, Giulia was executed in Rome’s Campo de Fiori, a popular execution location, with her daughter and three other employees.
Some of her clients also received a punishment — like being thrown into the prison cells and ultimately getting executed. The others who played it smart, by feigning ignorance and claiming Aqua Tofana to be just a cosmetic, escaped.
Interestingly, the recipe of Aqua Tofana remained famous even after hundred years of her death. In 1791, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a renowned composer, accused Giulia Tofana’s invention, claiming he got poisoned. He fell seriously ill. On his deathbed, he claimed about the recipe being used to kill him at the precise time.
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