Olga’s life started uneventfully enough. The daughter of a bank clerk father and dentist mother, there was nothing of note to set Olga apart from any of the other little girls living in Prague. Sure, she was a bit quiet, and didn’t mix well with others. Her parents assumed she was just reserved and didn’t really give her apparent social awkwardness much attention. Well, until she attempted suicide by swallowing a ton of medication at the age of 13.

Sometimes there are days where you feel like nothing is going right. The roast gets burnt, a sudden downpour soaks the washing just as it was ready to be brought in off the line, it can be any little thing. And it can be that one little thing that makes a woman snap and throw the peg basket, just out of sheer frustration.

The most important thing in a relationship or marriage is fidelity. Vera Renczi believed this, and throughout her life she came to see this belief as something more precious than life itself. The men who crossed her path also became well aware of how she felt about this. Although by the time it was brought to their attention the first grains of arsenic had already begun to dissolve.

Sharon Carr had a dream, just like every other 12-year-old does. But Sharon didn’t want to be an Olympic ice skater or a doctor or lawyer, nothing like that. Because that would be boring. No, Sharon’s dream was to become one of the youngest killers in Britain. Which she did, at the age of twelve.

Waltraud Wagner became a nurse because she wanted to help people, to make them comfortable and ease their pain and suffering. She chose to work at Lainz General Hospital’s Pavilion 5, where many of the hospital’s elderly and infirm resided. A lot of the patients in this particular Pavilion were suffering from terminal illnesses. Consequently, it was a relatively high, but not entirely unexpected, death rate.