1961: Marie Fikacková, Beast of Sušice
April 13th, 2012 Headsman
On this date in 1961, Czechoslovakian maternity ward nurse Marie Fikackova was hanged at Prague’s Pankrac Prison for murdering newborns in her care.
Fickakova, nee Schmidlova, was a well-liked 24-year-old with a failed marriage already at her back when she was arrested in February 1960 after two infants died of brain injuries the same night during her shift at the Sušice hospital.
Under lengthy interrogation, Fikackova finally confessed to having developed the habit of relieving the agitation of her menses (her story, not mine!) by permanently silencing newborns who bawled too much. We all have our personality quirks, but if hers was “homicidally enraged by crying babies” then it’s safe to say she was in the wrong line of work.
“When I was pressing little Prosserová’s head, I could feel my fingers sinking into it,” she described. “I did not feel any skull cracking at that time. I was just pressing the little head and my fingers got deeper and deeper. My anger faded away after a while and I could continue working.”
Fikackova proceeded to cop to ten-plus additional therapeutic attacks on children, but police had a very difficult time substantiating them relative to documented injuries and the nurses’ shift calendar. In the end, the courts hung her with the original two.
We have seen, in these pages, better-balanced subjects issue more outlandish auto-denunciations under less police pressure, so while we’re in no position to assert anything with certainty, we’re inclined to take the absence of corroborating evidence from an institution that ought to have plenty of it for the asking to suggest the strong possibility that Fikackova’s confessions tended to the fantastical.
Nevertheless, the public has been inclined to take the woman at her claim of double-digit homicides, and magnified Fikackova into a legendary mass murderer and the authoress of every neonatal abnormality in town. Even now she’s sometimes mentioned as Czechoslovakia’s most prolific serial killer, or blamed for the infirmities of any and all folks born in late-Fifties Sušice. (Both links in this paragraph are in Czech.)
For this staged demonstration of her baby-slaying technique, authorities even let Marie Fikackova put on the nurse outfit. (Source of the images)
On this day..
- 1560: Giambatista Cardano, "crowning misfortune" - 2020
- 2011: Mao Ran, young drug lord - 2019
- 1725: William Dickson, collared - 2018
- 1979: Major Bijan Yahyahi, prison torturer - 2017
- 1546: Alice Glaston, age 11 - 2016
- 1805: Mary Morgan, anomalously - 2015
- 1923: Paul Hadley - 2014
- 1942: Four Jews from Bedzin and Sosnowiec - 2013
- 1942: Anton Schmid - 2011
- 1816: John Allen and John Penny, poachers - 2010
- 1961: John A. Bennett, the last American military execution (so far) - 2009
- 1794: Lucile Duplessis and Marie Hebert, friends at the end - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Abortion and Infanticide,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Czechoslovakia,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,History,Murder,Serial Killers,Women
Tags: 1960s, 1961, april 13, marie fikackova, pankrac prison, susice
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The thought of getting angry, inflicting injury or even death to an innocent living being (yes, even little animals) is unfathomable. Just because your stupid ovaries are hurting. They should have fairly executed her by steamroller… to her head. That would have made her menstrual pains stop. And a more fitting end. Wait, we can still have her relatives dig her up once a year, each one press her head down (like she did to unsuspecting infants), so no one ever forgets what she did. That’s fair.