From about 15 years on and up, a great deal of my thoughts were basically uncharable. We are all evil, in some form or anything. Yes, I am. Not 100 percent, but I am new.
My mother was a sick, angry, hungry, and very sad woman. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. This is Serial Killing, a podcast. Hello again and welcome to Serial Killing, a podcast.
My name is Alyssa Carroll, and I am the host and the creator of At Serial Underscore Killing on Instagram, where we go through the life stories of serial killers to see if we might catch a glimpse of why they displayed their famous, vile, and disturbing behaviors. Special thanks to some of my patrons, as always. Florence, Teresa, Sarah, Sophie, Nanette, Emily, Wannabe, Saluth, Gabrielle, Galen, Cassandra, Robert, Emma, Bree, David, Judy, and John. You guys are so appreciated, thank you so much.
Now, this podcast is going to be on Baba Anoika. This one will be a little bit shorter because of the age of the case, and the information was kind of scarce, but it's still really interesting. Not to mention, she really was requested. Anna Draskin was born in either 1836 or 1838 in Wallachia, Romania, though the exact date is not known, so let's look at some history for around that time.
Now, just before she was born, the Regula Mental Organic, a quasi-constitutional organic law, was enforced in Wallachia and Moldavia, and the first legislative assembly in Wallachia was established. In 1836, Davy Crockett arrived in Texas just before the Texas Revolution began with the Battle of the Alamo. Samuel Colt received a U.S. patent for the Colt Revolver, which was the first revolving barrel multi-shot firearm.
Charles Darwin, on board of the HMS Beagle, reached Sydney, Australia. Near the end of this year, Darwin returned to England after leaving South America with the data he used to develop his theory of evolution. The settlement in Adelaide, South Australia, was also founded this year, and in Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the Harvest Synagogue began. And also this year, Spain officially recognized Mexico's independence.
In 1838, we see that the first known report about the lowest temperature on Earth is made, indicating negative 76 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 60 degrees Celsius in Russia. A fire destroyed Lloyd's Coffee House, as well as the Royal Exchange in London, England. A combination of rain and melting snow caused the Danube River to overflow its banks, washing away villages in Western Hungary and inundating the Twin Cities that would become Budapest. European nations came to Hungary's aid to prevent the spread of famine and disease.
Nicaragua declared its independence from the Federal Republic of Central America, and this is also the year that the Cherokee nation was forced from its homelands to relocate, which is now called the Trail of Tears. So this kind of gives you an idea of the atmosphere that she was born into. It is said that she was born into a wealthy family of cattle breeders. By 1849, when she was around 13 years old, her family moved from Romania to a rather large estate in Vladimirovac, in the Bennett Military Frontier Province, which is now Serbia.
Not much is known about her very early life, other than she was privileged. In fact, she attended a private school with other children from wealthy families and received a great education for the times and the area. After she had completed her education, she continued to live in her father's home, which was customary. And guys, this is really all that I have about her childhood.
It's not much, but I didn't find any instance where she was abused or neglected or had any family history of mental illness, or she herself had any mental illnesses, and that's not to say that it didn't happen or that it wasn't there, just that there was no mention of it. So we are left to assume that she had the average discipline, grew up in relative comfort, and was given a fine education. We do know that she knew and could speak five languages, so that shows a great intelligence. As the story goes, when Anna was 20 years old, she began a whirlwind romance with an Austrian military officer who, she said, seduced her, gave her syphilis, and then abandoned her.
And now, guys, syphilis is no joke. It is, of course, a sexually transmitted infection of bacteria. There are four stages, primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary. So, if you were to experience this with her, the primary stage shows up as a small, firm, but painless sore that itches.
Secondary is when it turns into a rash, most usually on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Sometimes, there are also sources that show up in the person's mouth and on their genitals. The latent stage, which can last for years, there are not as many symptoms. And then we get to the tertiary state, where there can be non-cancerous growths and can even develop into neurological and heart problems, such as aortic aneurysm and inflammation of the small and medium arteries of the central nervous system.
It's not a joke. Now, of course, it's curable today with antibiotics, but back in her day, there were no antibiotics. So, the usual treatment was some mixture that usually always involved mercury, which we also know is toxic. One source, Index International, stated that she was able to recover from the syphilis infection, but regardless, she was completely heartbroken and became a bit of a recluse and threw herself into studying medicine, both conventional and folk medicine, as well as chemistry.
And Anna lived this life for several years while still living in her parents' home. Her father, wanting her to open up and get married and start a family of her own, set her up to marry a man who was apparently quite a bit older than her, her being in her late 20s at this point. He wasn't rich, but he had enough that he could take care of her. Whether or not she was happy about this arranged marriage is not known, some say I was happy, others don't, but my gut instincts tell me she just did what was expected of her.
For the rest of her younger adult life, she gave birth to 11 children, 11. And only one of them, a son, survived past early childhood into adulthood, which is so heartbreaking. And then her husband died. They had been together for about 20 years.
Whether or not she mourned his loss, she wasted no time continuing with her studies of herbs and chemistry. Anna, now in her late 40s, created a crude lab of sorts in a room of her house not long after the death of her husband. In her lab, she began to experiment with herbal remedies. Word got around, as word often does, and she quickly developed a reputation for being an herbalist, a medicine woman, and a healer.
The local women loved her and her remedies and sought her out for help with their own health issues. They also came to her for her, quote, magic water or miracle potions that would supposedly help people with marriage problems, money issues, and so on. This in turn brought in some much needed income, and it was enough for her to live pretty comfortably. And as her reputation expanded, people would also come to her to help them with their family members to get out of mandatory military service.
She would put together an elixir that would make the men just sick enough that they would be passed over. But you see, it wasn't just saves and cold remedies and whatnot. Anna would politely, quietly ask some of the women who came to her with marital problems, quote, unquote, just how heavy their burden was. By this, she meant that she wanted to know roughly how big and heavy the husband was, so that she could calculate how much poison she needed to mix into her elixir to create a love potion that would be effective.
Her magic water was a mixture of arsenic and plant toxins which, back in that day and time, would be quite difficult to trace. She would sell this to the wives and tell them that, on the eighth day, their problem would be solved. And in most all of the cases, she was correct in her prediction. This in turn attracted others to come to her to tell them their future, and this brought with it some rich and very powerful people.
With this, Anna was called the Benet Witch and a black widow. She dressed in black, head to toe, and even hired a maid who helped her advertise her services, as it were, which then brought people in from fairly disem villages, including religious leaders, all asking her to help them with a wide variety of things. Now sometimes, when she knew that they had money, she would tell them that she couldn't perform the miracle or predict the future or put together a remedy for them and that they'd have to come back on another day. She knew full well that they would not want to leave because traveling back then was kind of difficult.
So Anna would then charge them for an overnight stay in meals and so on. Then she began to be known as Baba Anoika, which means grandmother Annie. It is estimated that, during that time, she had been partied to the poisoning and death of somewhere between 50 to 150 people. But in 1914, at the beginning of World War I, and when she was in her late 70s, she was finally arrested and charged with murder by poisoning, but there really just wasn't enough evidence, and she wasn't convicted, she was actually released.
Anna then settled right back into the life as harmless old lady mixing love potions and herbal remedies, unquote. She sent her maid or what you could call outside sales agent out again to eavesdrop in on women gossiping together. Again, the women would be told that Baba Anoika could help them with their problems. And again, people traveled from all over, including Yugoslavia, to buy her magic water.
She priced her elixirs based on the person's income level. She would charge anywhere between 2000 to 10,000 dinars, which is the equivalent of 30 to 140 US dollars then, which is now around 790 to 2500 dollars for her services and mixes. So in 1924, Anna sold one of her magic water elixir to a woman named Stana, who was apparently a repeat customer, but usually just for herbal medicines and whatnot. Stana gave the elixir to her husband, who predictably became quite ill and died just a few days later.
Stana pretty quickly wound up marrying another man from her same village, fast enough that it raised some eyebrows. And then a few months after getting remarried, her husband's rich uncle died under mysterious circumstances and exactly the same manner as her first husband had. So, the police paid a visit to Stana and began to question her about these deaths and she quickly pointed the finger at Anna. But again, there really just wasn't any evidence and no action was taken against Anna for two more years.
In December of 1926, the now 90-year-old Baba Anoika sold her magic water to another couple who wanted to kill the husband's father due to a quote, family quarrel. The couple explained that the father was a violent and abusive alcoholic, directing his rage at his children and grandchildren. So Anna gave them the elixir. Then they gave it to their 16-year-old daughter and instructed her to make sure her grandfather drank it.
She was successful and he died a rather slow and painful death, 15 days later. After some time, Anna was arrested again, along with a woman who held her cell her potions as well as the couple, their daughter, and Stana, the first wife who poisoned her husband and the uncle. The court ordered the bodies of two of the men be exhumed and examined, to which the results showed that they had in fact been poisoned. The doctor that testified at the trial said he found traces of arsenic in both of the remains.
They then tested some of the potions and random things that were in her house and they too came up positive for arsenic. Now, while Anna was being questioned, it is said that she pretended not to hear specifically tough questions and denied murdering anyone. The prosecution apparently sought out the death penalty for everyone involved except for the granddaughter who was a minor. The other people testified that they had not known the magic water was poison and believed the men who have died due to Anna having supernatural powers.
Anna testified that she never sold any so-called magic water of any sort and pushed the blame on her associate, if you will. In the end, everyone served time other than the granddaughter. Anna was given 15 years in prison for being an accomplice in the murders, and remember, at this point, she's already 90 years old. She served eight years of her sentence and was released due to her advanced age at 98, if you can believe that.
She then died in her home in 1938 at the age of about 100 years old from dementia. Though no one knows for sure, it cannot be ruled out that she didn't keep making her potions once released. There are stories that she did, but the validity of them is up in the air. In her time and area, she was the most influential woman of all time.
Now, guys, she is far from the first or the last woman to, let's say, provide a service to people who felt they needed to get rid of someone. While the two specific instances where Anna's services were requested to get rid of people that we went over are different, one must remember that most of her customers were women with marriage problems. Back then, and really during most of the entire history of the human race until recently, women for the most part didn't really have many rights, and if they were stuck in a violently abusive marriage where her life or the lives of her children were at stake, there really wasn't much a woman could do, but find a way to deal with it. That's not to say I'm condoning murder, I'm just saying.
And without proof, Anna didn't really murder anyone. Yes, she offered products that she created using things that were quite toxic, but she didn't force them on anyone. People saw her out to buy these things and then administered the substances themselves. Under certain circumstances, I could sell anyone a knife or a gun, and if they kill someone with it, that's not my fault.
However, it is most definitely a fine line to walk when the seller knows what the customer intends to do with their product as in harm. Kind of a short one this time, guys, but still super interesting. Let me know what you think. Leave me a comment down below on the video or you can DM me on Instagram at serial underscore killing and as always.
Thank you so much for listening because I know you could be listening to anyone else, but you chose me, and I really appreciate that. Have a great day.