The New Murrey and Blue blog

I came upon this article 10 Forgotten Serial Killers From The Middle Ages – Listverse (there are many such lists to be found) and was rather intrigued that not one of the ten appears to have come from the British Isles. I also noticed that the infamous Gilles de Rais doesn’t make it to the list, but then i suppose he’s hardly forgotten.

One name I did know was Peter Stumpp (also Stumpf or Stubbe) of Bedburg in Germany (read more here https://www.historicmysteries.com/history/peter-stumpp/37197/) who considered himself to be a werewolf and set about doing what werewolves are supposed to do. His is a pretty gory story. Not for the faint-hearted.

Of the other names in the list, there is one woman. “….Called ‘La Quintrala’ due to her flaming red hair, Rios y Lisperguer was a Chilean aristocrat and landowner who carried out roughly 40 murders while maintaining an oppressive iron rule over her indigenous workers….” She sounds charming. I couldn’t find any contemporary images of her, only rather lurid book covers and film shots, so have to be content with an extract from her will:

Apart from her— and one from Iceland—the entire list is European. England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales must have been filled with law-abiding, God-fearing citizens who did everything according to the Ten Commandments. I find that rather hard to believe. We’re certainly not all goody goodies and there certainly have been serial killers, just not in the medieval period. Or so it seems.

Unless you know better. Is anyone out there aware of a medieval serial killer who inhabited the British Isles? And I won’t count kings and commanders who deliberately ordered unwise army moves knowing the results would be disastrous. I name no names.

Well, of course there were murders aplenty, but not serial murders. Someone might commit murder, but not choose it as a permanent career move. If you go to this site Medieval Murder Maps (cam.ac.uk) from which the top image has been taken, you’ll find “….a project mapping medieval England’s known murder cases has now added Oxford and York to its street plan of London’s 14th century slayings….”

So goody goodies we were not!