Christa loved a good funeral. They brought family and friends together, the food was always delicious and plentiful, and best of all, black was such a slimming color. It was a nice feeling, too, when the guest of honour at such an event wasn’t someone Christa had particularly cared much for.

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.

Bernadette Protti’s home life was just fine, by all accounts. She was born into a devout catholic family, the youngest of six children. Her father Raymond was a retired public works officer, who taught Christianity in his spare time. Mother Elaine was a homemaker, who read her bible with a stop watch. But just fine wasn’t good enough for Bernadette.

Sanna Sillanpää was an intelligent lady. By the time she reached the age of 30, Sanna had achieved a Masters Degree in Computer Science and was working as an IT expert in Helsinki, Finland. She lived alone in a suburb of Helsinki, keeping to herself and never causing any trouble. On a wintry Sunday, Sanna decided to practice her marksmanship down at the Helsinki Shooting Club.

Judging from the money she made from all her marriages, Millie was a very merry widow indeed.