Traditionally, grandmothers throughout history have enjoyed whipping up lavish meals and baking up scrumpteous treats for their loved ones.
But this group of toxic tea ladies used their sweet treats and hearty meals to kill their family members for financial gain or revenge.
CAROLINE GRILLS
Affectionately known as “Aunt Thally”, Grills laced teas, cakes and biscuits with the rat poison thallium to kill her well-off family members in the late 1940s.
Through her culinary killing spree, Grills inherited her father’s Gladesville home in Sydney and a holiday home in the Blue Mountains.
She murdered her stepmother Christine Mickelson, her sister-in-law Mary Anne Mickelson and relatives by marriage Angelina Thomas and John Lundberg.
In October 1953, Grills was sentenced to death for the four murders and three attempted murders, of John’s wife Eveline, their daughter Christina, and Christina’s husband John.
Her conviction was later commuted to a life sentence in Sydney’s Long Bay Prison after a failed appeal.
Crown Prosecutor at the time, Mick Rooney QC, alleged Grills, who died in prison leaving behind four children and her husband, didn’t just kill for financial gain.
“Caroline was a killer who poisoned for sport, for fun, for the kicks she got out of it, for the hell of it, for the thrill that she and she alone in the world knew the cause of the victims’ suffering.”
MARTHA NEEDLE
Adelaide-born Needle’s life crumbled after she relocated to Richmond, Melbourne, in 1885 with her husband Henry and three children, Mabel, Elsie and May.
Known for her good looks, Needle began to cheat on Henry, who in return beat her in a jealous rage.
Needle began poisoning meals with arsenic.
First her daughter Mabel died from a “short illness”, then she killed Henry, Elsie and May, and her lover Otto Juncken’s brother Louis, in a bid to collect insurance payouts.
After attempting to murder a sixth victim, Herman Juncken, Needle was arrested and found guilty in a three-day trial and was sentenced to death.
Before her execution, she penned a letter to Otto, asking for forgiveness, while he hoped she would be labelled as insane and not responsible for her crimes.
“I must now say goodbye to you for a time. When you receive this you can think of me as being in a happy home with my loved ones, waiting and watching for you,” the letter read.
Needle was hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol in October 1894, aged 31.
YVONNE FLETCHER
Mother-of-two Fletcher, based in Newtown, Sydney, used thallium to murder her first husband Desmond Butler in 1948, as well as her abusive second husband Bertram Fletcher in 1952.
Noting that the mens’ deaths were similar, her friends raised the alarm and a police investigation was launched.
After being convicted for the two murders in November 1952 and initially being handed a death sentence, it was later commuted to life imprisonment.
She later walked free, in 1964, after serving 12 years in jail.
Once released, she married for the third time, to Leonard Wailes in 1967, but he passed away under no suspicious circumstances six years later, aged 54.
Fletcher passed away in 2009 at the age of 87.
LOUISA COLLINS
Remembered as the first woman hanged in Sydney, and the last woman executed in NSW, Collins was found guilty of using arsenic to kill her second husband Michael Collins after four trials.
Born and raised in the Upper Hunter region of NSW, Collins married her first husband, Charles Andrews, in Merriwa in August 1865.
After tying the knot, the couple had nine children, two of which died young, but fi nancial troubles led them to relocate to Sydney and start taking in boarders.
Reportedly fond of a drink or two, Collins developed a “great intimacy” with one boarder in particular, Michael Collins, to the frustration of Charles, who proceeded to kick her and the boarders out.
Six weeks after a confrontation with Collins and Michael, Charles became gravely ill and died in February 1887, and his widow spared no time informing the bank and insurance company of his death.
In April that same year, Collins and Michael married in a small ceremony.
With her constant drinking and his patchy work history, the couple lived in poverty, with her adult son commenting his siblings were “dirty and uncared for”.
Soon after, Michael became unexpectedly sick and passed away in July 1887, triggering an investigation that would see Collins on trial four times for the murders of her husbands.
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