The woman who killed men with poisonous makeup

 Giulia Tofana: The serial poisoner.

Giulia Tofana is one of the most successful serial killers of all time. She killed over 600 men with her poisonous makeup. Yet she isn't talked about enough.

The case took place in the 1600's in Italy. Now, Giulia still to this day remains a mystery. There aren't much information about her. Although she was possibly the daughter of Thofania d'Adamo who was executed for the murder of her husband. Some say that Giulia learned how to make poison from her mother, and that her mother passed the recipe on to her. Some others believe that it was her own recipe. Giulia did spend a lot of time with apothecaries.

She loved working with medicines and drugs and she was good at it too. She loved making her own potions. That is how she made her infamous poison 'Aqua Tofana'. People said a few drops of it was, "Sufficient to destroy a man". 

As deadly the poison was, it didn't appear to be. It rather looked very normal. Like women's cosmetics or oil. 

So she, including her daughter, began to sell it to other women. At first she disguised it as powdered makeup. Then she sold it in small vials. 

The motive here was that, Giulia wanted to help women who were stuck in difficult and abusive marriages. So she would sell Aqua Tofana to women and they would poison their husbands with it. Apparently it was their only way out. Although, sometimes she sold it to men too. 

 Now people loved Aqua Tofana. Mostly because it was a slow action poison. So the deaths looked very natural and gave them time to write their wives a will.  Also it was colorless, tasteless and was in a liquid form. 

For almost 50 years Giulia sold her poison. But no one raised a finger at her because her clients were very protective and secretive of her. To everyone else she was just a woman who sold cosmetics. 

Many women were trained on how to act while poisoning. They were suggested to mix a small drop of the potion in their husbands food each day. When the husband would fall ill they were suggested to act very stressed and upset. And no one suspected them. Giulia even taught them how to act after the murder. She told them to act depressed and distressed. She even told them to demand a post-mortem. That way no one would suspect them. 

Giulia and her daughter sold Aqua Tofana for decades in Italy. Afterwards, they went to Naples and then Rome. They even changed up their game a little bit by putting labels on the bottles. This made the product even more convincing that it was, in fact, a beauty product. 

Giulia didn't just hand out her product randomly. She always made sure to do her research and do a background check on these women. But even after so much caution, things went downhill for her in 1650.

So, one day a woman went to Giulia and asked her for some aqua Tofana. Giulia did all her formalities and gave her the poison. Later the lady added a few drops to her husband's soup. But when he started eating it, she got cold feet. 

She yelled and begged him to not eat the soup. So he beat her up and asked her what's in the soup. So she confessed. He then took her to the authorities of Rome. They hooked her to a torture device and made her confess. 

After Giulia heard about it, she went to a church and asked for sanctuary. While she was there, rumors started spreading that she had poisoned the main water supply of Rome and people were furious. They went to the church and demanded the authorities to hand her over or they were burning the church down. 

After they got Giulia, they tortured her till she confessed. According to her confession, she killed over 600 men from 1633-1651. They even made her name some of her clients. 

In 1659, Giulia, along with her daughter and 3 employees was executed in Campo de'Fiori, Rome. Giulia's body was even thrown over the wall of the same church that offered her sanctuary. Even some of her clients were also punished. 

Many believed that the numbers of the victims were exaggerated by Giulia to make the tortures stop and somewhat satisfy the authorities. Many even believe that she was completely innocent and that they were blaming innocent women for everything at that time. 

Still to this day the story of Giulia Tofana and her infamous poison remains a mystery.