# Serial Killers of Medieval England

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 26 Sep 2026, 1 h 07 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116438/serial_killers_of_medieval_england_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Step into the darker side of medieval England and explore the disturbing stories of individuals accused of repeated murder, poisoning, and deadly violence. This episode examines the surviving evidence behind notorious medieval crimes while placing these cases within the legal, social, and political world of medieval English society. Discover how repeated murders were investigated in a world without modern forensic science, criminal databases, or contemporary psychology. Explore the roles of local officials, sheriffs, coroners, witnesses, neighbors, physicians, clergy, and courts, and learn how medieval authorities attempted to uncover the truth when evidence was often limited and unreliable. Beyond the individual cases, this episode explores medieval England's approach to crime and punishment. Discover how concepts of justice, reputation, religion, social status, and royal authority influenced criminal investigations. Explore medieval courts, prisons, executions, accusations of poisoning, and the severe penalties imposed on those convicted of serious crimes. The episode also examines the difficulty of identifying genuine serial killers in the medieval record. Some cases survive only through brief chronicles or later retellings, while others are supported by legal documents and contemporary records. Discover how historians distinguish documented crimes from rumors, political accusations, folklore, and stories that became increasingly sensational over time. Drawing on medieval chronicles, court rolls, coroner's records, legal documents, biographies, contemporary accounts, and modern historical scholarship, this immersive journey separates historical evidence from legend and speculation. Rather than simply repeating the most shocking stories, the episode asks what can actually be established about the people accused of repeated murder and the societies in which they lived. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this episode is perfect for history enthusiasts, medieval history lovers, true crime listeners, documentary fans, and anyone fascinated by the darker side of the past. Explore the evidence, investigations, accusations, and unanswered questions surrounding some of medieval England's most notorious murder cases.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: The Middle Ages, for all of its knights and its castles,
[0:06] Speaker 1: might seem an unlikely backdrop for the story of a
[0:09] Speaker 1: serial killer. Yet medieval England certainly harboured its own dark
[0:14] Speaker 1: tales of murderers. True, the very term serial killer is
[0:21] Speaker 1: quite modern. Medieval people had no such a concept. But
[0:26] Speaker 1: as we will see, there were certainly individuals who committed
[0:30] Speaker 1: repeated murders in those times, and that certainly falls under
[0:35] Speaker 1: the definition. Their crimes, their motives, and the way society
[0:41] Speaker 1: understood them form a chilling but fascinating part of our history.
[0:48] Speaker 1: And so today, we're going to talk about the very
[0:52] Speaker 1: real cases of serial homicide. as far as the records allow,
[0:58] Speaker 1: in medieval England. We'll look at how the crimes were viewed,
[1:02] Speaker 1: how they were dealt with. And there's a few pretty
[1:06] Speaker 1: fascinating little tales, too. They all come together to bring
[1:10] Speaker 1: this shadowy topic to life. Well, first, before we get
[1:16] Speaker 1: into it, I want to welcome you to the channel.
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[2:01] Speaker 1: welcome all done out of the way let's begin well
[2:09] Speaker 1: of course we have mentioned in the introduction that medieval
[2:13] Speaker 1: people didn't really have a concept of what a serial
[2:16] Speaker 1: killer was so we have to consider these definitions what
[2:20] Speaker 1: exactly is a serial killer And would the people of
[2:24] Speaker 1: the Middle Ages recognize the idea? Well, let's look at
[2:29] Speaker 1: it in modern criminology terms. Typically, a serial killer is
[2:33] Speaker 1: defined as someone who murders at least two or three
[2:36] Speaker 1: people in separate events over a span of time, driven
[2:40] Speaker 1: often by personal compulsion or a psychological motive, rather than
[2:45] Speaker 1: politics or combat. In medieval England, however, Murder was generally
[2:52] Speaker 1: understood in simpler terms. The unlawful killing of one person
[2:58] Speaker 1: by another. And motives were usually presumed to be pretty tangible.
[3:04] Speaker 1: Think of revenge, anger, greed, these kinds of things. Rather
[3:10] Speaker 1: than the pathological impulses that we associate with later serial killers.
[3:16] Speaker 1: Medieval chroniclers and court records do not use a distinct
[3:20] Speaker 1: label for someone who kills repeatedly. There was no medieval
[3:23] Speaker 1: word that neatly corresponds to our term of serial murderer.
[3:29] Speaker 1: And it is important to recognise this difference in mindset,
[3:32] Speaker 1: because it's kind of the foundation that we build this off.
[3:36] Speaker 1: A person who killed multiple victims in medieval England would
[3:40] Speaker 1: not have been seen as a special category of predator. Rather,
[3:45] Speaker 1: each killing would be judged as its own crime. Unless,
[3:49] Speaker 1: of course, if it was part of a known feud
[3:53] Speaker 1: or a career of banditry, something like this. But this
[3:58] Speaker 1: does not mean such repeat killers did not exist. Oh,
[4:02] Speaker 1: they certainly did. It's just that contemporaries might explain their
[4:07] Speaker 1: actions in other terms, such as revenge, villainy, or Even
[4:11] Speaker 1: supernatural evil, like witchcraft or demonic influence, we'll get to
[4:16] Speaker 1: a bit of that later. The concept of the psychopathic
[4:20] Speaker 1: killer roaming from victim to victim was largely outside medieval
[4:24] Speaker 1: law enforcement's frame of reference. A more modern idea that
[4:30] Speaker 1: comes in with more modern criminology and psychology as reference.
[4:35] Speaker 1: When unnatural deaths occurred without an obvious culprit, people might
[4:39] Speaker 1: blame robbers on the road, or in extreme cases, witches, werewolves,
[4:45] Speaker 1: and other supernatural horrors, rather than suspecting an unidentified human
[4:52] Speaker 1: predator with a pattern of psychopathic murder. But in any case,
[4:59] Speaker 1: when we look back with a more modern perspective, we
[5:02] Speaker 1: can identify a few medieval English figures whose multiple crimes
[5:06] Speaker 1: make them candidates for being called serial killers. These were
[5:10] Speaker 1: historically verified cases, documented in court rolls, chronicles, or letters
[5:15] Speaker 1: at the time. It's all very real. And in exploring them,
[5:21] Speaker 1: we have to broaden the usual definition to include not
[5:25] Speaker 1: just lust-driven or sadistic killers who are rare or elusive
[5:29] Speaker 1: in the records, but also repeat murderers who killed for
[5:33] Speaker 1: profit or power. Medieval England's serial murderers were often not
[5:39] Speaker 1: mysterious prowlers lurking in alleyways, so much as they were
[5:44] Speaker 1: powerful individuals abusing their authorities, or even clever poisoners preying
[5:50] Speaker 1: on those close to them. And another thing, outlaw gang
[5:55] Speaker 1: leaders and robbers, where they sometimes committed serial killings as
[5:59] Speaker 1: part of their crimes. And by examining all of these cases,
[6:04] Speaker 1: I think we'll gain a pretty good insight into how uncommon,
[6:07] Speaker 1: yet very real, serial-style murders were, and how they were
[6:13] Speaker 1: perceived in an age that was, well, very, very different
[6:18] Speaker 1: from our own. And to understand any medieval killer, you've
[6:24] Speaker 1: got to appreciate the violent backdrop of the Middle Ages.
[6:28] Speaker 1: Like we've said, an age very different to our own.
[6:33] Speaker 1: The daily life in medieval England was... By our standards,
[6:39] Speaker 1: exceedingly rough. Feuds, brawls, assaults, they were all pretty common occurrences.
[6:46] Speaker 1: Historians estimate that homicide rates in medieval England were dramatically
[6:50] Speaker 1: higher than today. And by some analysis, on the order
[6:55] Speaker 1: of ten times higher or more. For example, in 14th
[7:00] Speaker 1: century Oxford, the murder rate might have reached an astonishing height.
[7:05] Speaker 1: The figure often cited around 110 homicides per 100,000 people
[7:09] Speaker 1: in the 1340s, at a time when modern England's rate
[7:13] Speaker 1: is about 1 per 100,000. While exact numbers are pretty debated,
[7:21] Speaker 1: as you can imagine, it's still clear that medieval communities
[7:24] Speaker 1: were no strangers to a bit of the old bloodshed.
[7:29] Speaker 1: Weapons like knives and daggers, of course, you've got to
[7:31] Speaker 1: carry them around, that's normal. and there were no professional
[7:34] Speaker 1: police force to prevent violence. Disputes that might be settled
[7:39] Speaker 1: in our modern day by dialing 999, or 911 for
[7:44] Speaker 1: you Americans, well, could easily just be ended in a
[7:48] Speaker 1: fatal stabbing in a medieval tavern or marketplace. In any case,
[7:53] Speaker 1: the dispute was ended. And then there was the honor culture.
[7:59] Speaker 1: That was quite strong, too. An insult could quickly provoke
[8:03] Speaker 1: a fight, and intoxication in ale houses often fuelled deadly quarrels.
[8:09] Speaker 1: If you've watched my video about medieval taverns, you'd know
[8:11] Speaker 1: a bit about that. But in any case, life was difficult.
[8:15] Speaker 1: Medical care was primitive. And even a minor wound could
[8:20] Speaker 1: turn lethal by infection. All these factors contributed to the
[8:24] Speaker 1: milieu where homicide was, if not normal, certainly far from rare.
[8:33] Speaker 1: But we have to draw a distinction too. Most medieval
[8:36] Speaker 1: murders were one-time events, not the work of repeat offenders.
[8:41] Speaker 1: A typical homicide case in England's 1200s or 1300s involved
[8:46] Speaker 1: a quarrel between neighbours, maybe a drunken argument between apprentices,
[8:52] Speaker 1: or even a revenge killing between two families. The royal
[8:58] Speaker 1: courts and coroner's rolls, which recorded inquests on sudden deaths,
[9:02] Speaker 1: are filled with such stories. For instance, records from London
[9:08] Speaker 1: show many incidents like an argument in a bar that
[9:12] Speaker 1: ends with one man dead, or a dispute over debt
[9:16] Speaker 1: where tempers flare into lethal violence. These were often impulsive acts, though.
[9:23] Speaker 1: Medieval observers, like chroniclers, often lamented the hot-blooded nature of
[9:28] Speaker 1: their countrymen. One scholar famously argued that the medieval man
[9:33] Speaker 1: was prone to violent passions and lacked self-control, implying that
[9:38] Speaker 1: killing sprang from spontaneous rage rather than cold calculation. While
[9:45] Speaker 1: that may be an exaggeration, it is true that premeditated,
[9:50] Speaker 1: repeated murder for its own sake was highly unusual. Most
[9:55] Speaker 1: killers of the era did not kill again and again,
[9:59] Speaker 1: even if they got away with it the first time.
[10:02] Speaker 1: Communities were small, you see, and if a murderer's identity
[10:06] Speaker 1: was known, he could expect swift retribution, or legal prosecution,
[10:13] Speaker 1: whichever came first. Now importantly... Medieval justice often allowed for
[10:19] Speaker 1: community involvement in catching offenders. Hue and cry would be raised,
[10:24] Speaker 1: and neighbours were obliged to pursue a fleeing murderer. There
[10:29] Speaker 1: were also strong familial and social networks. A sudden disappearance
[10:34] Speaker 1: or unexplained death was more likely to be noticed when
[10:38] Speaker 1: everyone knew everyone else in the village. Small world, hard
[10:43] Speaker 1: to get away with anything. Yet it is precisely against
[10:48] Speaker 1: this backdrop of everyday violence that serial murders stand out
[10:53] Speaker 1: as unique. In a culture used to single murders, born
[10:57] Speaker 1: of passion or feud, someone who deliberately killed multiple people
[11:01] Speaker 1: in separate incidents would have seemed particularly unpleasant. And, not
[11:08] Speaker 1: to mention, strangely motivated. It's worth noting, too, that in
[11:13] Speaker 1: the medieval view, serial killing might resemble the work of
[11:15] Speaker 1: the devil more than that of the ordinary criminal. The
[11:20] Speaker 1: imagination of most Christians of the day, that someone would
[11:24] Speaker 1: be going around killing just for fun, especially with the
[11:28] Speaker 1: threat of eternal damnation over their head, well, it's a
[11:31] Speaker 1: little bit beyond the pale. Repeated, senseless murders could be
[11:36] Speaker 1: attributed to supernatural evil or monstrousness. since they just didn't
[11:41] Speaker 1: fit the pattern of normal human behavior. This notion is
[11:47] Speaker 1: reflected in how some medieval writers describe tyrants and outlaws.
[11:52] Speaker 1: There's words like demons and beasts, when that cruelty seems
[11:57] Speaker 1: to be beyond human bounds. And we'll see that even
[12:01] Speaker 1: in our examples, accusations of sorcery and demonism sometimes swirl
[12:07] Speaker 1: around the culprits. Medieval England did have a concept of
[12:11] Speaker 1: unchecked evil in a human form, even if it didn't
[12:15] Speaker 1: have the term serial killer. And finally, consider the medieval
[12:21] Speaker 1: law enforcement's limitations. And there were, well, more limitations than anything.
[12:28] Speaker 1: You didn't have any detectives dusting for fingerprints or compiling
[12:31] Speaker 1: profiles of a killer on the loose, anything like that.
[12:36] Speaker 1: If a person in, say, I don't know, 1300 managed
[12:40] Speaker 1: to kill two or three people on separate occasions to
[12:43] Speaker 1: conceal their involvement, it'd be very difficult for medieval justice
[12:47] Speaker 1: to connect the dots. Many murders just went unsolved, especially
[12:52] Speaker 1: if the victim was a stranger or the crime took
[12:55] Speaker 1: place on the dangerous highways between towns. For example, if
[13:00] Speaker 1: travellers were found dead on the road, people might assume
[13:04] Speaker 1: bandits were to blame. without realising one particular brigand was
[13:09] Speaker 1: responsible for multiple attacks. In such an environment, a determined
[13:14] Speaker 1: murderer could be, in theory, at large for longer than
[13:19] Speaker 1: we might expect. This is provided that they did not
[13:23] Speaker 1: arouse any immediate suspicion, and thus while serial killers are
[13:28] Speaker 1: certainly few and far between, the possibility of their existence
[13:33] Speaker 1: lurked in those unsolved crimes and little folk tale stories
[13:38] Speaker 1: of the era. And so with that context in mind,
[13:43] Speaker 1: I think we can all better appreciate the known cases
[13:46] Speaker 1: of repeat murderers in medieval England. Quite lucky to have
[13:50] Speaker 1: that documentation. The cases are rare in the records, and
[13:55] Speaker 1: indeed historians have sometimes questioned whether England had any true
[13:59] Speaker 1: serial killers in its medieval centuries. So as we proceed,
[14:04] Speaker 1: I think it'll become evident that the examples we do
[14:07] Speaker 1: have involve either elite perpetrators leveraging their own power, or
[14:13] Speaker 1: perhaps cunning methods like poison that allowed a murderer to
[14:16] Speaker 1: strike multiple times without immediate detection. So with that in mind,
[14:22] Speaker 1: let's turn to the rogues gallery of medieval England's multiple murderers.
[14:28] Speaker 1: A pretty grim and intriguing history. Well, let's start with
[14:34] Speaker 1: one of the most famous candidates for the medieval serial killer.
[14:39] Speaker 1: That is Dame Alice Kittler. Now, although Alice's story unfolds
[14:45] Speaker 1: in Kilkenny, Ireland, then under English rule in the early
[14:48] Speaker 1: 14th century, it's closely tied to England, not least because
[14:52] Speaker 1: she was of English Norman descent and fled to England
[14:55] Speaker 1: after her crimes came to light. Alice Kittler's case is extraordinary.
[15:01] Speaker 1: She was accused of murdering multiple husbands, one after the other,
[15:06] Speaker 1: in order to amass wealth. If the allegations are true,
[15:11] Speaker 1: then she would certainly represent the classic black widow serial
[15:15] Speaker 1: killer long before the term existed. Alice was born around
[15:21] Speaker 1: 1280 into a well-to-do merchant family in Kilkenny. Over the years,
[15:26] Speaker 1: she married four times, each husband wealthier than the last,
[15:31] Speaker 1: Sounds like that Addams Family movie, doesn't it? Strangely, or
[15:36] Speaker 1: perhaps not so strangely, each of those husbands died relatively
[15:43] Speaker 1: young and under suspicious circumstances. Her first husband, a merchant
[15:49] Speaker 1: named William Outlaw, died and left her a pretty good fortune.
[15:55] Speaker 1: She then married a banker, Adam LeBlond, who, guess what,
[16:00] Speaker 1: also died followed by a prosperous landowner, Richard de Val,
[16:06] Speaker 1: and guess what? Seems to be following a trend, doesn't it? Died.
[16:14] Speaker 1: She was widowed for the third time, and quite wealthy. Now,
[16:20] Speaker 1: by the time Alice's fourth husband, Sir John Lepore, fell
[16:25] Speaker 1: gravely ill in 1324, there were more than a few
[16:29] Speaker 1: eyebrows raised. The first time is a tragedy, the second
[16:33] Speaker 1: time is a pretty terrible tragedy, but the third time,
[16:37] Speaker 1: come on. Come on. Anyway, chroniclers note that Sir John,
[16:45] Speaker 1: on his deathbed, voiced suspicions that he was being poisoned.
[16:50] Speaker 1: The fact is, hair and nails had fallen out, which
[16:54] Speaker 1: is not normal, and a detail that suggests some kind
[16:58] Speaker 1: of toxin might have been administered. probably something like arsenic
[17:04] Speaker 1: or a similar poison known even then. But it was
[17:08] Speaker 1: the stepchildren from Alice's earlier marriages who finally blew the whistle.
[17:15] Speaker 1: They accused her of killing their dads through sorcery and poison,
[17:21] Speaker 1: essentially claiming that she was indeed a serial husband killer.
[17:27] Speaker 1: In that deeply religious age, the accusations took on a
[17:31] Speaker 1: sensational twist. Alice Gettler was not charged only with multiple
[17:37] Speaker 1: murders by poison, but also with witchcraft and heresy. She
[17:43] Speaker 1: became the central figure in the first major witch trial
[17:47] Speaker 1: in the British Isles. The Bishop of Ossory, a zealous
[17:52] Speaker 1: churchman named Richard de Ledred, pursued her relentlessly. According to
[17:59] Speaker 1: the surviving account, penned by the bishop himself, Alice was
[18:03] Speaker 1: said to have engaged in diabolical practices, from sacrificing animals
[18:09] Speaker 1: to praying to demons, to concocting magical potions, one of
[18:15] Speaker 1: which allegedly contained ingredients like worms, spiders, and even the
[18:20] Speaker 1: brains of a decapitated thief. While these lurid details were
[18:26] Speaker 1: probably exaggerated by the prosecution, but they gave a sense
[18:30] Speaker 1: of how her contemporaries struggled to explain the unnatural pattern
[18:34] Speaker 1: of deaths around her. Rather than see Alice simply as
[18:38] Speaker 1: a greedy poisoner or a malicious gold digger, many truly
[18:45] Speaker 1: believed that she was a witch, invoking dark powers to
[18:49] Speaker 1: kill her husbands off, perhaps sending them into the arms
[18:53] Speaker 1: of the Dark Lord, who knows. You have to think
[18:58] Speaker 1: about it from the medieval point of view. Multiple unexplained
[19:02] Speaker 1: deaths equaled conspiracy with the devil. What makes Alice Kettler's
[19:09] Speaker 1: story especially intriguing is that she managed to escape. Yeah,
[19:14] Speaker 1: that's right. In 1324, as the authorities closed in, Alice fled.
[19:22] Speaker 1: Most likely to England. Some sources suggest she might have
[19:25] Speaker 1: gone to Flanders. But the common belief is that she
[19:29] Speaker 1: ended her days quietly in England, beyond the reach of
[19:32] Speaker 1: the Irish church law. She was never caught. She was
[19:37] Speaker 1: never brought to justice. Which only added to the legend.
[19:43] Speaker 1: In her absence, her less fortunate associates were punished. Her maidservant, Petronella.
[19:50] Speaker 1: was flogged and burned at the stake for witchcraft, effectively
[19:54] Speaker 1: becoming Ireland's first witch-burning victim. One can imagine Alice, safely
[20:00] Speaker 1: hidden somewhere in England, reading the reports of Petronella's fate
[20:05] Speaker 1: at the outcry in Kilkenny, and feeling both relief Maybe
[20:10] Speaker 1: a twinge of guilt. From a more critical perspective, I
[20:17] Speaker 1: suppose we have to ask, was Alice truly a serial killer?
[20:25] Speaker 1: It is possible that some of her husbands simply died
[20:28] Speaker 1: of illness, given the air as mortality rates. But you
[20:32] Speaker 1: think if you got a sick husband in the house,
[20:34] Speaker 1: you'd get sick too, right? The charges for sorcery were
[20:39] Speaker 1: certainly coloured by medieval superstition, too, and by local family feuds.
[20:45] Speaker 1: Her stepchildren were, of course, motivated by inheritance disputes, after all.
[20:49] Speaker 1: I suppose, taking after their mother. Some modern scholars have
[20:54] Speaker 1: even portrayed Alice as a shrewd businesswoman, who became the
[20:58] Speaker 1: victim of a witch hunt rather than a murderer, but
[21:01] Speaker 1: I don't know about that. There is a consistent pattern
[21:06] Speaker 1: between of her outliving four spouses, combined with testimony, coerced
[21:12] Speaker 1: as it might have been about potions and poisons, and
[21:15] Speaker 1: I strongly suggest that there was a little more than
[21:18] Speaker 1: a coincidence at work. So let's strip away the supernatural accusations,
[21:24] Speaker 1: because I think we can put them to the side
[21:27] Speaker 1: pretty safely. And what we have remaining is a portrait
[21:32] Speaker 1: of a calculating killer, who knew how to make murder
[21:36] Speaker 1: look like a natural death. A very early example of
[21:40] Speaker 1: a serial poisoner. And I really think that if she
[21:44] Speaker 1: only had done it once, perhaps twice, then we wouldn't
[21:48] Speaker 1: have anything to talk about. Well, four times is just
[21:53] Speaker 1: a little bit of a bridge too far. Notable that
[21:57] Speaker 1: poisoning was a preferred method for female serial killers historically, too.
[22:02] Speaker 1: We spoke about it a little bit in the Serial
[22:04] Speaker 1: Killers of Ancient Rome video. I hope you've watched that one.
[22:08] Speaker 1: Perhaps it's next on your list. In Alice's case, the
[22:16] Speaker 1: idea of a high-born lady secretly dispatching multiple husbands was
[22:22] Speaker 1: both shocking and compelling to contemporaries. You see, it showed
[22:26] Speaker 1: that serial murder in the Middle Ages, as now could
[22:30] Speaker 1: certainly hide behind the facade of domestic respectability. Alice Kittler's
[22:36] Speaker 1: case also had an impact culturally, you see. Her dramatic
[22:40] Speaker 1: trial became a template for the later witch trials to come.
[22:45] Speaker 1: She was literally demonised as an explanation for her alleged
[22:50] Speaker 1: serial murderers. Murderers, rather. People apparently found it easier to
[22:56] Speaker 1: accept that a woman might kill repeatedly if they framed
[22:58] Speaker 1: her as a witch in league with the devil himself.
[23:01] Speaker 1: rather than just an ordinary run-of-the-mill flesh-and-blood human being. And
[23:08] Speaker 1: this shows, once again, how we have to view it
[23:11] Speaker 1: in the medieval mindset, of how medieval English people struggled
[23:16] Speaker 1: to rationalise things like this. It had to be the
[23:20] Speaker 1: work of witchcraft. It had to be some unnatural evil.
[23:24] Speaker 1: Alice's story has since passed into folk memory. Even today
[23:30] Speaker 1: in Kilkenny, you can find Kittler's Inn, tavern in a
[23:34] Speaker 1: medieval building associated with her. And that's one way her
[23:38] Speaker 1: legend is kept alive. Visitors hear tales how the Witch
[23:43] Speaker 1: of Kilkenny brewed potions to murder her husbands. In truth,
[23:50] Speaker 1: whether she was a sorceress or simply a cold-blooded poisoner,
[23:55] Speaker 1: she stands out as one of the closest things to
[23:57] Speaker 1: a serialized Britain had recorded. A life as a strange
[24:02] Speaker 1: mix of the ordinary, marriages, building wealth, and the extraordinary,
[24:09] Speaker 1: multiple mysterious deaths and a spectacular witch trial. And so
[24:14] Speaker 1: as we move on to other examples, just keep in
[24:17] Speaker 1: mind how different this scenario is from what we think
[24:20] Speaker 1: is a typical serial killer today. Yet how many elements
[24:24] Speaker 1: resonate with that modern concept too? Serial spouse murders for
[24:28] Speaker 1: gain evading capture. And ultimately, public fascination. Of course, you
[24:35] Speaker 1: wouldn't be watching a video like this if there wasn't
[24:38] Speaker 1: any of that involved. Well, if the weapons of Alice
[24:44] Speaker 1: Kittler were poisons and subtle means like that, the next
[24:49] Speaker 1: figure's tools were a little bit more overt. Daggers. Arson.
[24:57] Speaker 1: Raw intimidation. The old-fashioned way. John of Tintern, he was
[25:04] Speaker 1: a medieval English monk, believe it or not, who incredibly
[25:08] Speaker 1: turned into a serial murderer. His tale remained hidden in
[25:13] Speaker 1: the archival records until very recently, when a historian uncovered
[25:18] Speaker 1: the evidence of his misdeeds. What emerged is almost unbelievable.
[25:25] Speaker 1: The story of an abbot, who ended up behaving like
[25:27] Speaker 1: a mafia boss. John of Tintern's life shows that serial
[25:32] Speaker 1: killing in medieval England was certainly not confined to shadowy outsiders,
[25:37] Speaker 1: but it could also wear the robes of clergymen, and
[25:40] Speaker 1: operate within the very institutions meant to uphold morality. So,
[25:46] Speaker 1: let's talk all about him. John of Tintern was a
[25:50] Speaker 1: Benedictine monk, and eventually became abbot of Melmsbury Abbey in
[25:54] Speaker 1: Wiltshire during the 1340s. On the surface, an abbot is
[26:00] Speaker 1: a pretty holy man, devoted to prayer and the well-being
[26:04] Speaker 1: of his monastery. But not Brother John. He was anything
[26:09] Speaker 1: but that. Contemporary accusations and testimonies paint him as a violent,
[26:15] Speaker 1: corrupt schemer who committed multiple murders by proxy. How did
[26:21] Speaker 1: this come to light? Well, in 1343, local villagers and
[26:26] Speaker 1: families lodged a litany of criminal charges against the abbot,
[26:30] Speaker 1: prompting an official investigation. The file, essentially a medieval criminal dossier,
[26:37] Speaker 1: details his shocking crimes. He was accused of ordering the
[26:41] Speaker 1: murders of at least four men over a period of
[26:43] Speaker 1: several years. These victims were not random strangers either, they
[26:47] Speaker 1: were individuals who had crossed him in disputes over land
[26:50] Speaker 1: and money. Once again, always follow the money. Well, in
[26:55] Speaker 1: other words, the abbot had rivals or enemies eliminated to
[26:58] Speaker 1: protect his interests and those of the abbey. But how
[27:02] Speaker 1: did he carry out these killings? Well, he employed a
[27:05] Speaker 1: personal henchman, a man named Henry of Badminton, described in
[27:11] Speaker 1: records as a kind of enforcer. This hitman did John's
[27:16] Speaker 1: dirty work, stalking and dispatching the targets as needed. And
[27:21] Speaker 1: if it sounds like organised crime, well, it essentially was.
[27:26] Speaker 1: One contemporary complaint described John of Tintern as operating like
[27:30] Speaker 1: a gangster in the region. And it certainly sounds like that.
[27:36] Speaker 1: His criminal exploits didn't stop at murder, however. He was
[27:40] Speaker 1: also accused of theft, embezzlement of large sums of church money.
[27:45] Speaker 1: It apparently misappropriated about £ 10, 000 of the king's funds. which
[27:50] Speaker 1: is roughly equivalent to millions of dollars in today's money,
[27:55] Speaker 1: and even of arson and kidnapping. In a particularly brazen episode,
[28:02] Speaker 1: Abbot John allegedly had a local gentleman's house burned down
[28:05] Speaker 1: and arranged for the man's wife to be abducted, all
[28:10] Speaker 1: because the Abbey was in a feud with that family.
[28:15] Speaker 1: But even more scandalously, John of Tintone took his kidnapped
[28:19] Speaker 1: woman as his mistress, openly living with her in defiance
[28:24] Speaker 1: of those vows of chastity. It's a pretty lurid list,
[28:30] Speaker 1: isn't it? Arson, abductory, adultery, grand theft, and multiple accounts
[28:37] Speaker 1: of murder, all perpetuated by a clergyman of high rank,
[28:42] Speaker 1: who would have thought Well, when word of his crime
[28:47] Speaker 1: spree finally reached royal authorities in 1343, you might have
[28:51] Speaker 1: expected swift and harsh justice. And sure, initially that seemed
[28:56] Speaker 1: to be the case. An arrest warrant was issued for
[28:59] Speaker 1: the abbot, and he went on the run with his
[29:02] Speaker 1: lover to avoid capture. For some time, he roamed southern
[29:07] Speaker 1: England as a fugitive monk, which must have been a
[29:10] Speaker 1: remarkable sight in itself. But in the end, His story
[29:14] Speaker 1: did not conclude at a gallows, or in a dungeon,
[29:18] Speaker 1: as one might think. Instead, it actually ended with a pardon,
[29:24] Speaker 1: which is the detail that speaks volumes about medieval priorities.
[29:29] Speaker 1: But how exactly did this murder at Abadus Gabriel punishment?
[29:33] Speaker 1: That's the real question. Quite simply put, and you are
[29:39] Speaker 1: not going to lie, this at all, he bought his
[29:43] Speaker 1: way out of it. He paid for his innocence. King
[29:48] Speaker 1: Edward III was then on the throne, embroiled in expensive wars.
[29:53] Speaker 1: This was the time of the Hundred Years' Wars against France,
[29:56] Speaker 1: by the way. Royal coffers were perpetually starved, and John
[30:01] Speaker 1: of Tintern, once caught, managed to put together a hefty fine,
[30:07] Speaker 1: or rather a bribe, to secure royal pardon. The Crown
[30:12] Speaker 1: was more interested in money for the war effort than
[30:15] Speaker 1: in executing a monk, so this serial murderer, in habit,
[30:20] Speaker 1: walked free after paying his dues quite literally. No justice, right?
[30:28] Speaker 1: It is noted in records that his crimes were forgiven, quote,
[30:32] Speaker 1: by the grace of the king. And that shows that
[30:36] Speaker 1: lawlessness and corruption could certainly reign in rural England. Local
[30:41] Speaker 1: chroniclers were probably astounded. Here was a man clearly guilty
[30:45] Speaker 1: of ordering multiple killings, yet he just bought his way
[30:51] Speaker 1: out of justice. John of Tintin's case shows a different
[30:57] Speaker 1: kind of serial killer. One shielded by status, willing to
[31:01] Speaker 1: misuse that status to eliminate adversaries. He wasn't sneaking in
[31:06] Speaker 1: the shadows. He was commanding murder from the abbot's chair.
[31:14] Speaker 1: In a sense, he could be compared to later serial
[31:16] Speaker 1: killers who used positions of authority as cover. Though, in
[31:20] Speaker 1: John's case, it was power and greed, not some sort
[31:24] Speaker 1: of psychological urge driving him. but it also shows how
[31:30] Speaker 1: medieval society sometimes failed to punish even known killers, if
[31:34] Speaker 1: those killers were powerful or could be useful. The common
[31:40] Speaker 1: folk who had raised the alarm about the abbot likely
[31:43] Speaker 1: felt a grave injustice at seeing him set free. I
[31:47] Speaker 1: don't think we need a historical source to come to
[31:51] Speaker 1: that conclusion. And indeed, His story survived in monastic gossip
[31:57] Speaker 1: and local lore as an example of extreme clerical corruption. Sure,
[32:02] Speaker 1: Martin Luther would have had a field day with that one.
[32:06] Speaker 1: Only in recent times has the full documentation of his
[32:09] Speaker 1: deeds been punished, and it reminds us that truth can
[32:13] Speaker 1: be stranger than fiction. You can't help but think that
[32:17] Speaker 1: Brother John would make a pretty good character in some
[32:20] Speaker 1: kind of TV series or... Crime novel, something like that.
[32:25] Speaker 1: Maybe he'll get his own Netflix show one day. Who knows? Well,
[32:31] Speaker 1: the legacy of that saga is twofold. First, it shows
[32:35] Speaker 1: that England did experience serial-like killings, often intertwined with broader
[32:40] Speaker 1: patterns of lawlessness during troubled times. In fact, his crimes
[32:44] Speaker 1: occurred during the tumultuous reign of Edward II and the
[32:46] Speaker 1: beginning of Edward III, and that was a period of
[32:50] Speaker 1: baronial rebellion and general unrest. In such chaos, local warlords,
[32:57] Speaker 1: even ecclesiastical ones, could run amok. But secondly, it is
[33:03] Speaker 1: an example that blurs the line between criminal and state violence.
[33:08] Speaker 1: Put it this way, because when authorities pardoned him, it
[33:12] Speaker 1: almost sanctioned the murders post facto. In later centuries, An
[33:19] Speaker 1: account like this surfaced as evidence in debates against monastic
[33:23] Speaker 1: corruption leading up to the Reformation. It fed the argument
[33:28] Speaker 1: that medieval monasteries had strayed so far from piety that
[33:32] Speaker 1: one of their numbers could even be a murderer. And
[33:36] Speaker 1: for our purposes, I suppose John of Tintern stands out
[33:40] Speaker 1: as England's perhaps most malevolent monk. A man who absolutely
[33:47] Speaker 1: meets the criteria of serial killer A serial killer, rather,
[33:50] Speaker 1: in action, if not in name. His story might have
[33:54] Speaker 1: remained a footnote in an archive. But, lucky for us,
[33:58] Speaker 1: it can now be told as one of the broadest
[34:00] Speaker 1: illustrations that even in that age of faith, human brutality
[34:05] Speaker 1: knew no bounds. Well, so far we've looked at individual cases.
[34:11] Speaker 1: We've seen the lone poisoner and the criminal abbot. But
[34:15] Speaker 1: you've got to note that some medieval English serial killing
[34:17] Speaker 1: took place in the context of outlawry and banditry, rather
[34:21] Speaker 1: than at the hands of a single stealthy predator. While
[34:26] Speaker 1: the most notorious bandits, like Robin Hood in legend, are
[34:29] Speaker 1: often romanticised as righteous thieves, the reality of medieval banditry
[34:36] Speaker 1: is quite grim. Bands of desperate robbers roamed forests and highways,
[34:44] Speaker 1: Some had no qualms about killing travellers repeatedly as a
[34:47] Speaker 1: matter of course, just part of doing business. And though
[34:52] Speaker 1: these outlaws might not have been serial killers in a
[34:55] Speaker 1: modern sense, they certainly engaged in serial murder. I mean,
[34:59] Speaker 1: killing random people over and over again. I mean, it's
[35:03] Speaker 1: certainly getting up there, isn't it? Well, understanding this, it
[35:09] Speaker 1: helps us broaden that picture of medieval serial violence. beyond
[35:14] Speaker 1: the rare poison plot or vengeful noble. One such case,
[35:21] Speaker 1: from English or rather British laws, deserves a bit of
[35:26] Speaker 1: attention is the legend of Sawney Bean. Now, we have
[35:30] Speaker 1: to take it with a bit of a grain of salt,
[35:32] Speaker 1: but we will tell the story as the, well, as
[35:35] Speaker 1: it's been told for a while. The Scottish have their
[35:38] Speaker 1: own point of view on it. It is the story
[35:42] Speaker 1: of a Scottish serial killer clan that while probably apocryphal,
[35:47] Speaker 1: or exaggerated, or at the worst completely made up, certainly
[35:51] Speaker 1: reflects the fears of the time. According to later folklore,
[35:55] Speaker 1: Alexander Sawney Bean was the patriarch of a cannibalistic family
[36:01] Speaker 1: that lived in a cave on the Scottish coast. The
[36:04] Speaker 1: tale goes that for over two decades, Sawney, his wife,
[36:08] Speaker 1: and their incestuous brood ambushed countless travellers by night on
[36:13] Speaker 1: lonely roads. murdered them, ate their bodies, and thereby left
[36:19] Speaker 1: no evidence. Eventually, the Beans were caught by the King's
[36:24] Speaker 1: men and executed. While this particular account is almost certainly
[36:29] Speaker 1: a product of sensational later storytelling, no medieval record of
[36:33] Speaker 1: Sawney Bean exists, it is revealing that people believe such
[36:37] Speaker 1: a story could have happened in late medieval Britain. Watch
[36:40] Speaker 1: out for the cannibals. Watch out for the bandits. This
[36:46] Speaker 1: figure of a mass-murdering cannibal lurking in the wilderness certainly
[36:49] Speaker 1: captured imaginations. Perhaps it was used as a cautionary tale. Essentially,
[36:55] Speaker 1: a folk-horror version of a serial killer story, transplanted into
[37:00] Speaker 1: a medieval setting. And intriguingly, historians note that the Sawney
[37:06] Speaker 1: Bean myth might have been inspired by an earlier, genuine case,
[37:11] Speaker 1: that of Christy Klee Scottish highway robber, during the famine
[37:16] Speaker 1: in 1341, who allegedly turned to cannibalism and murder to survive.
[37:23] Speaker 1: Christy Cleek, a nickname meaning hook, after the hook he
[37:27] Speaker 1: reportedly used to drag victims off their horses, which is
[37:31] Speaker 1: pretty ominous, was said to have killed and eaten several
[37:36] Speaker 1: people in the company of fellow brigands. He eventually vanished
[37:40] Speaker 1: into legend, Some say he returned to a normal life,
[37:43] Speaker 1: and his real name after the famine. If even part
[37:48] Speaker 1: of that tale is true, then in the year 1341,
[37:50] Speaker 1: as the Black Death loomed on the horizon, Britain saw
[37:56] Speaker 1: something close to a real serial killer slash cannibal in
[38:00] Speaker 1: its northern reaches. But back in England itself, documented outlaws
[38:06] Speaker 1: like the notorious Foleville Gang show a serial violence of
[38:10] Speaker 1: a different sort, The Folevilles were a gentry family in Leicestershire,
[38:16] Speaker 1: who turned to crime in the early 14th century. Led
[38:19] Speaker 1: by Sir Eustace Foleville, they and their retainers committed a
[38:23] Speaker 1: string of murders, robberies, kidnappings, and extortions over many years.
[38:30] Speaker 1: One of their most famous deeds was an assassination of
[38:32] Speaker 1: an unpopular royal judge, Roger de Belair, in 1326. Essentially
[38:38] Speaker 1: a hit carried out. according to some chronicles, in revenge
[38:42] Speaker 1: for the judge's corruption. But the Falbills didn't just stop
[38:46] Speaker 1: there at killing. They were implicated in other homicides while
[38:52] Speaker 1: on the run. Remarkably, much like John of Tintern, they
[38:58] Speaker 1: received pardons when they agreed to serve King Edward III's
[39:01] Speaker 1: war in France. Desperate times, desperate measures, that's for sure.
[39:06] Speaker 1: I wonder if Edward's legacy Edward III, that is, is
[39:12] Speaker 1: letting off murderers and hardened criminals and letting them walk
[39:16] Speaker 1: the streets free. Sounds like the modern British government, to
[39:22] Speaker 1: be honest. Not to get political on you. Well, anyway,
[39:28] Speaker 1: here again we see a scenario where... multiple murders were
[39:32] Speaker 1: committed by the same actors. A whole gang, in fact.
[39:37] Speaker 1: And yet medieval justice partially turned a blind eye because
[39:42] Speaker 1: the killers had political or military usefulness. Another aspect is
[39:49] Speaker 1: to consider urban violence. In busy medieval cities like London
[39:54] Speaker 1: or York, gangs of youth or unruly apprentices sometimes engaged
[40:00] Speaker 1: in vicious cycles of violence. There are accounts of gangs
[40:04] Speaker 1: who went out expressly to start fights, some of which
[40:07] Speaker 1: led to fatalities. For example, One chronicler in London noted
[40:13] Speaker 1: with dismay that certain young men took pleasure in randomly
[40:16] Speaker 1: attacking passers-by at night, a medieval precursor to something like
[40:21] Speaker 1: a thrill-killing. I will not advise you to look up
[40:26] Speaker 1: any cases of that. Most of these incidents were one-off,
[40:31] Speaker 1: perhaps a single fatal beating or stabbing. But if we
[40:35] Speaker 1: imagine some of those youth remained violent over time, we
[40:39] Speaker 1: could certainly put them in the bracket of serial street killers.
[40:43] Speaker 1: Kind of a clockwork, orange kind of thing. I'm sure
[40:49] Speaker 1: you've seen the film. Well, the difficulty of all this,
[40:53] Speaker 1: of course, is that records seldom link multiple incidents to
[40:57] Speaker 1: a single named culprit in these scenarios, unless the person
[41:00] Speaker 1: was caught and confessed to a spree. Which, no point
[41:06] Speaker 1: in them confessing to that, isn't there? From surviving records,
[41:11] Speaker 1: we do get hints of repeat offenders. The medieval courts
[41:14] Speaker 1: occasionally describe a man as having a reputation for violence,
[41:19] Speaker 1: or note if he had been indicted before for another killing, perhaps.
[41:25] Speaker 1: A repeat murderer might exist in the role simply as
[41:27] Speaker 1: someone who, quote, had done likewise before. And you could argue,
[41:33] Speaker 1: I suppose, that medieval England's closest analogy to a roaming
[41:37] Speaker 1: serial killer was the professional brigand or soldier who had
[41:42] Speaker 1: effectively made killing a way of life. During times of war,
[41:49] Speaker 1: or in the chaos of civil strife like the Wars
[41:52] Speaker 1: of the Roses in the 15th century, some soldiers turned
[41:56] Speaker 1: bandits committed murder after murder. Chronicles from the Wars of
[42:01] Speaker 1: the Roses mention cruel captains who after a battle might
[42:06] Speaker 1: execute prisoners or civilians. repeatedly out of either policy or bloodlust.
[42:13] Speaker 1: While that is in a war context and not street killing,
[42:17] Speaker 1: it certainly shows how the environment allowed certain individuals to
[42:21] Speaker 1: kill multiple times. Such men, once peace came, could be
[42:26] Speaker 1: extremely dangerous if they resorted to crime. They'd already had
[42:31] Speaker 1: the practice in the more brutal aspects. But to focus
[42:36] Speaker 1: back on the highways, Travellers in medieval England often feared
[42:41] Speaker 1: the nameless highwaymen who might rob and kill them. When
[42:46] Speaker 1: multiple victims turned up dead on a particular road, people
[42:49] Speaker 1: certainly suspected one gang or a particularly vicious robber at work,
[42:55] Speaker 1: whether it be rumour or real. For instance, of the
[43:00] Speaker 1: latter we have the case of Geoffrey Porte, a somewhat
[43:05] Speaker 1: lesser known name. a highway robber in the late 15th
[43:09] Speaker 1: century who was executed for a series of roadside murders
[43:12] Speaker 1: around Oxford. He and a small band held up and
[43:16] Speaker 1: slain several merchants over a period of months. Once caught,
[43:22] Speaker 1: Geoffrey confessed to at least six murders. The local ballads
[43:27] Speaker 1: of him made him into a kind of boogeyman figure.
[43:30] Speaker 1: And again, what distinguishes him from the modern serial killer
[43:36] Speaker 1: figure His primary motive, robbery rather than compulsion, and the
[43:43] Speaker 1: fact that he didn't bother to hide bodies since he
[43:46] Speaker 1: relied on fear to keep people away from certain routes.
[43:50] Speaker 1: But the result, multiple separate murders by the same person,
[43:55] Speaker 1: certainly qualifies him for the title of serial killer. It's
[44:00] Speaker 1: interesting that in many of these outlaw cases, society responded
[44:04] Speaker 1: with folklore as much as actual law. Tales of wild
[44:09] Speaker 1: men in the woods or demon robbers were ways to
[44:13] Speaker 1: warn people of dangerous areas and also to somewhat mythologise
[44:17] Speaker 1: the criminal. Where law enforcement was weak, legend stepped in.
[44:23] Speaker 1: The line between a serial killer and a legendary monster. Well,
[44:28] Speaker 1: it only takes a few pints down the pub to
[44:31] Speaker 1: blur that one. And of course, stories like that spread everywhere.
[44:36] Speaker 1: a lot quicker than anything else. An outlaw who killed
[44:40] Speaker 1: dozens might within a generation be talked about not as
[44:44] Speaker 1: a mere human thief, but as some fiend with an
[44:48] Speaker 1: insatiable hunger for violence. And we see this clearly with
[44:54] Speaker 1: how cannibalistic and supernatural elements creep into the Sawney Bean
[44:58] Speaker 1: and Christy Cleek stories. Even in England, an outlaw with
[45:03] Speaker 1: a particularly brutal streak might be rumoured to use black magic,
[45:09] Speaker 1: or just be inhumanely cruel. And all of that goes
[45:12] Speaker 1: to show that medieval England's potential serial killers didn't always
[45:16] Speaker 1: operate in isolation. Some were embedded in group criminality, and
[45:22] Speaker 1: their repeated murders were part of a larger pattern of
[45:25] Speaker 1: banditry or feuding. While this differs from the lone, secretive
[45:30] Speaker 1: predator image we might have, it was the more common
[45:33] Speaker 1: scenario in that era. for someone to accumulate a body count.
[45:40] Speaker 1: So when we broaden our view to include these patterns,
[45:43] Speaker 1: we see that medieval England indeed had individuals who over
[45:46] Speaker 1: time killed many people, even if no one pinned a
[45:50] Speaker 1: modern label upon them. Of course, the attitude at the
[45:56] Speaker 1: time towards someone who killed multiple times was heavily influenced
[45:59] Speaker 1: by myth and superstition in general. We've already touched on
[46:02] Speaker 1: how Alice Kettler was cast as a witch and how
[46:05] Speaker 1: outlaws could be seen as ogres and monsters, that kind
[46:09] Speaker 1: of thing. It's worth going a bit deeper into how
[46:13] Speaker 1: the medieval mind made sense, or failed to make sense
[46:17] Speaker 1: of serial killing. First, I want you to consider the
[46:22] Speaker 1: role of witchcraft and the devil. If a series of
[46:25] Speaker 1: unexplained deaths occurred, especially in one household or in one locale,
[46:30] Speaker 1: people in medieval times might suspect maleficium. Evil magic at work.
[46:38] Speaker 1: The case of Alice Kittler demonstrates that. Rather than purely
[46:42] Speaker 1: focusing on physical evidence of poison, her contemporaries zeroed in
[46:47] Speaker 1: on more supernatural things. Alleged pacts with demons. Another example
[46:55] Speaker 1: comes from a century later in England, wherein some villagers'
[46:57] Speaker 1: clusters of sudden deaths led to witchcraft accusations. Against local women,
[47:04] Speaker 1: of course. In one 15th century incident, a woman was
[47:09] Speaker 1: blamed for, quote, making a wax doll to magically murder
[47:14] Speaker 1: multiple children in her neighbourhood who had died over a summer.
[47:18] Speaker 1: A tragic outbreak, likely due to illness, and thus attributed
[47:22] Speaker 1: to a supposed serial child killer using sorcery. But she
[47:27] Speaker 1: was not a serial killer at all. But the point is,
[47:31] Speaker 1: the framework to imagine a person intentionally causing multiple deaths
[47:35] Speaker 1: certainly existed, but it was cast in a supernatural light.
[47:41] Speaker 1: The witch hunts would then erupt in the late medieval
[47:43] Speaker 1: and early modern period, sometimes functioning as a way to
[47:46] Speaker 1: explain these events. For instance, several members of a family
[47:51] Speaker 1: dying in succession might result in someone being accused of
[47:54] Speaker 1: systematically killing them via witchcraft. And the second point I
[48:00] Speaker 1: want to make is that there was the fear of
[48:03] Speaker 1: monsters and werewolves more prevalent on the continent, but not
[48:09] Speaker 1: entirely absent in England. Now in France, Germany and elsewhere,
[48:14] Speaker 1: the late Middle Ages saw a few notorious trials of
[48:17] Speaker 1: serial killers framed as werewolf cases, like Peter Stumpf and
[48:24] Speaker 1: Giles Garnier, who were said to take the form of
[48:27] Speaker 1: a wolf and kill children at night. Well, England did
[48:33] Speaker 1: not have wolf-man trials. perhaps because actual wolves had largely disappeared,
[48:39] Speaker 1: and English folklore didn't emphasize werewolves. Instead, the English had
[48:44] Speaker 1: other monsters. Now, you probably know a bit from the
[48:49] Speaker 1: folklore videos I did about the fairies in England. Well,
[48:55] Speaker 1: it was said that they could steal infants, explaining infant
[48:59] Speaker 1: disappearances or death. Or the demons could prey on the unwary.
[49:05] Speaker 1: and if ever there were a medieval English equivalent to
[49:07] Speaker 1: a ripper, for instance, it could have been chalked up
[49:11] Speaker 1: to a demon from hell prowling the streets, telling that
[49:16] Speaker 1: in 1888, when Jack the Ripper terrorized London, some frightened
[49:20] Speaker 1: folk initially speculated the killer could be a devil or
[49:24] Speaker 1: supernatural being, if the idea of one man doing such
[49:27] Speaker 1: deeds was so disturbing. In the 14th century, that instinct
[49:34] Speaker 1: to blame a monster would have been even stronger now.
[49:39] Speaker 1: One evocative English legend is that of Black Annis, a
[49:43] Speaker 1: folklore hag said to lurk in Leicestershire, devouring lambs but
[49:47] Speaker 1: also children. Black Annis was described as a hideous old woman,
[49:53] Speaker 1: sometimes a giantess with big iron claws, who lived in
[49:58] Speaker 1: a cave and came out at night to snatch up
[50:00] Speaker 1: any unwary little ones whose bones she'd gnaw. Some scholars
[50:06] Speaker 1: think that Black Annis might be a mythologized memory of
[50:09] Speaker 1: some real person, or simply just a tale to keep
[50:14] Speaker 1: the children indoors at night. Sure, it probably worked. But essentially,
[50:20] Speaker 1: she is a serial killer of folklore. It's fascinating to
[50:26] Speaker 1: consider that this legend filled the conceptual space of a
[50:30] Speaker 1: serial killer for that community, a lone entity repeatedly committing
[50:34] Speaker 1: murder in a gruesome and ritualistic fashion. Medieval parents would
[50:38] Speaker 1: warn their children not to stray at night, or black
[50:42] Speaker 1: anise will get you. Whether or not any actual historical
[50:46] Speaker 1: crimes underlie the story, it shows how the idea of
[50:50] Speaker 1: someone or something who kills again and again was often
[50:53] Speaker 1: cloaked in mythic terms. And who knows, maybe, like the
[50:58] Speaker 1: abbot we had before, we'll dredge up some old historical
[51:02] Speaker 1: documents that perhaps give us some hints. but for now
[51:07] Speaker 1: there's nothing. Additionally, medieval chronicles sometimes personified serial killing in
[51:13] Speaker 1: the form of tyrants or warlords. For example, English chroniclers
[51:18] Speaker 1: writing about King Richard III, though technically post-medieval by a hair,
[51:25] Speaker 1: accused him of multiple secret murders. Not only a famous
[51:30] Speaker 1: princess in the tower, other princes in the tower, rather
[51:33] Speaker 1: his two young nephews, but also of other nobles. Sir
[51:39] Speaker 1: Thomas More later compiled tales of Richard having a long
[51:43] Speaker 1: career of quietly eliminating rivals. While Richard did this for power,
[51:50] Speaker 1: not due to compulsion, the way his story is told,
[51:54] Speaker 1: it certainly makes it sound very cold-blooded. Another earlier case,
[52:00] Speaker 1: King John, late 12th and early 13th century, was said
[52:03] Speaker 1: to have killed or ordered the killing of numerous opponents,
[52:08] Speaker 1: including potentially his own nephew, Arthur. Chronicles openly called John wicked,
[52:14] Speaker 1: and spoke of him as if he had a taste
[52:16] Speaker 1: for blood. But here's where we have to be careful.
[52:21] Speaker 1: These accounts are often moralistic character attacks. So, yes, once again,
[52:28] Speaker 1: get the salt shaker out. but they contributed to the
[52:31] Speaker 1: mindset that serial killing was associated with tyrannical rulers and
[52:36] Speaker 1: evil nobles, almost going as far to say that it's
[52:40] Speaker 1: a character trait. So a medieval peasant might hear that
[52:45] Speaker 1: some duke had secretly put to death a whole bunch
[52:48] Speaker 1: of men in the dungeon, essentially a serial killer scenario,
[52:53] Speaker 1: wrapped in the trappings of authority. Whether that's true or not, well,
[52:59] Speaker 1: It didn't matter if it was part of the cultural imagination.
[53:01] Speaker 1: It was only as true as somebody believed it to
[53:04] Speaker 1: be true. But finally, let's not forget how religion itself
[53:11] Speaker 1: addressed repeated murder. In medieval Christian belief, each murder was
[53:17] Speaker 1: a mortal sin that put one's soul in peril. To
[53:21] Speaker 1: kill repeatedly, well, that was to pile sin upon sin,
[53:26] Speaker 1: virtually signing a pact with damnation The figure of Cain
[53:30] Speaker 1: from the Bible, the first murderer, was a cautionary example
[53:35] Speaker 1: often cited. Cain slew his brother and was cursed. A
[53:39] Speaker 1: person who kept on killing would be seen as utterly
[53:42] Speaker 1: lost to sin, possibly even possessed. Medieval sermons occasionally mentioned
[53:49] Speaker 1: those brigands who kill without remorse, saying that their souls
[53:54] Speaker 1: were bound for hell. And this religious lens meant that
[53:59] Speaker 1: if someone in reality did commit serial murders, some clergy
[54:03] Speaker 1: or devout folk might interpret it not in psychological terms,
[54:08] Speaker 1: but as evidence of satanic influence, or just divine punishment
[54:13] Speaker 1: waiting to happen. A chronicler might write that multiple murderer,
[54:19] Speaker 1: that a multiple murderer rather, was seized by an evil
[54:23] Speaker 1: spirit or had become like Cain. and such descriptions were
[54:28] Speaker 1: not analytic, they do give us a bit of a
[54:30] Speaker 1: flavour of how abominable serial killing was considered. They put
[54:35] Speaker 1: one outside the community of man and God, and in
[54:39] Speaker 1: medieval times, that is not where you want to be. Well,
[54:45] Speaker 1: having talked about all this, the known and suspected serial
[54:49] Speaker 1: murderers of medieval England, I am sure you have the question,
[54:55] Speaker 1: why weren't there more of them Why do they appear
[54:58] Speaker 1: to be so rare, compared to modern times or even
[55:01] Speaker 1: compared to some other regions in medieval Europe? England's catalogue
[55:07] Speaker 1: of serial murders seems to be a little bit scant. Well,
[55:12] Speaker 1: it's due to several reasons. Or at least it could
[55:15] Speaker 1: be due to them. We'll list a few of them off.
[55:18] Speaker 1: Understanding them doesn't only satisfy our curiosity, but I think
[55:22] Speaker 1: it shows the differences in social structure and record-keeping. The first...
[55:28] Speaker 1: We have a case of limited anonymity and mobility. You see,
[55:33] Speaker 1: medieval England was a world of close-knit communities. Most people
[55:38] Speaker 1: lived and died within the same few square miles. As
[55:43] Speaker 1: for strangers, they were noticed pretty quickly, and often viewed
[55:47] Speaker 1: with suspicion. A person today can move from city to
[55:51] Speaker 1: city and remain fairly anonymous, but if you were back
[55:54] Speaker 1: in the 1300s, You couldn't so easily do that without
[55:57] Speaker 1: attracting attention, whether that be from the townspeople or robbers
[56:03] Speaker 1: or worse. For a would-be serial killer, this lack of
[56:06] Speaker 1: anonymity was a major hindrance. If someone started killing in
[56:11] Speaker 1: their own village, the pool of suspects would be pretty small,
[56:16] Speaker 1: pretty hard to hide when everyone knows everyone. If they
[56:21] Speaker 1: tried to roam to another town, they risked standing out
[56:24] Speaker 1: as a newcomer, This doesn't mean it was impossible, but
[56:28] Speaker 1: it does mean the practical opportunities to quietly murder someone
[56:33] Speaker 1: were quite a bit fewer. Those who did manage it
[56:37] Speaker 1: often had some way to deflect the attention. Alice Kettler
[56:40] Speaker 1: had the veil of apparent respectability and wealth, and John
[56:44] Speaker 1: of Tintin had legal immunity for a while. As for outlaws, well,
[56:49] Speaker 1: they were outside of normal society altogether, so they're kind
[56:54] Speaker 1: of different. Now, the second is the pretty swift and
[57:01] Speaker 1: very brutal justice for those who were caught. The consequences
[57:06] Speaker 1: of getting caught for a single murder in medieval England
[57:10] Speaker 1: were quite dire, usually execution, or at least maiming or
[57:16] Speaker 1: long-term imprisonment. There was also the possibility of summary revenge
[57:22] Speaker 1: by the victim's family if the law didn't act quickly. Thus,
[57:27] Speaker 1: any killer risked a lot by repeating crimes. In modern times,
[57:32] Speaker 1: serial killers get away with multiple murders due to procedural
[57:35] Speaker 1: limits or investigative challenges. Medieval killers had to worry less
[57:41] Speaker 1: about detectives and more about an angry mob or a
[57:44] Speaker 1: lord's armed men. It took a truly brash or well-insulated
[57:47] Speaker 1: person to kill repeatedly. Right, so the third reason we
[57:52] Speaker 1: have is different outlets for violence. and this is perhaps
[57:57] Speaker 1: an important one. It has been suggested that people who
[58:02] Speaker 1: might in another era have become lone serial killers had
[58:07] Speaker 1: different ways of satisfying the bloodlust. For example, a sadistically
[58:11] Speaker 1: inclined individual in the Middle Ages might channel that into warfare,
[58:15] Speaker 1: becoming a particularly brutal knight or soldier. The frequent wars
[58:20] Speaker 1: of the era, the feuds, the acceptability of violence in
[58:25] Speaker 1: certain contexts, provided a vent for this aggression. Now, that's
[58:29] Speaker 1: not to romanticize it. It's just to say a potential
[58:33] Speaker 1: serial killer type might instead be known as that knight
[58:37] Speaker 1: who kills people with his bare hands on the battlefield,
[58:41] Speaker 1: or some baron who tortures poachers on his land. That
[58:45] Speaker 1: kind of thing. Society might even reward such behavior in
[58:50] Speaker 1: certain confines. Therefore, fewer people felt the need to kill
[58:55] Speaker 1: illicitly for a thrill. They could just sign up to
[58:59] Speaker 1: be a man-at-arms for that. Next we have record-keeping. It's
[59:06] Speaker 1: possible that serial killers did exist, but were not recognized
[59:09] Speaker 1: as as such in records. So we just don't know
[59:12] Speaker 1: about them. Medieval courts did not cross-reference cases, and at
[59:18] Speaker 1: least not the way that the modern police forces might.
[59:22] Speaker 1: If someone killed in Essex and then in Yorkshire, no
[59:25] Speaker 1: one would connect the dots in 1400. There was no
[59:28] Speaker 1: National Crime Registry either. So a murderer might move and
[59:33] Speaker 1: kill again, and the pattern would be lost to history.
[59:39] Speaker 1: Only if a chronicler took a personal interest, or if
[59:42] Speaker 1: the murderer confessed multiple crimes would the record explicitly show
[59:46] Speaker 1: serial killings. Our sources are pretty sparse, often incidental. We
[59:54] Speaker 1: might only catch a hint This man was known to
[59:57] Speaker 1: have killed before in another shire. Something like that. Thus
[1:00:02] Speaker 1: part of this rarity could just be the illusion of sources.
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: Next we have cultural and religious inhibitions. And that's a
[1:00:14] Speaker 1: more psychological note. Medieval Christian teaching placed enormous emphasis on
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: the sinfulness of murder and the damnation awaiting unrepentance. While
[1:00:26] Speaker 1: religion didn't prevent the many homicides that did occur, one
[1:00:32] Speaker 1: wonders if it deterred the kind of psychological gratification killings
[1:00:37] Speaker 1: we had seen in later serial killers. Those who had
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: such impulses might interpret them as temptations of the devil
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: and seek confession or penance. But evil people also feared
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: ghosts of the murdered. It was thought that restless spirits
[1:00:52] Speaker 1: of victims could haunt or harm the killers. And superstitions
[1:00:56] Speaker 1: like that are certainly another way to discourage people. And finally,
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: we have the sheer survival difficulty. Lastly, the medieval period
[1:01:11] Speaker 1: had many other dangers and high mortality from disease. A
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: psychopath might simply not live long enough or remain healthy
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: enough to commit a sense of murders. Life expectancy was
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: pretty low. and any criminal risked execution or death in
[1:01:27] Speaker 1: a brawl at some point. It sounds almost trivial, I know,
[1:01:32] Speaker 1: but an aspiring serial murderer in medieval England could easily
[1:01:36] Speaker 1: die of plague or get killed in a tavern fight
[1:01:38] Speaker 1: before they finished whatever dark career they were imagining up.
[1:01:43] Speaker 1: Longevity was certainly not on your side, as it is
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: for the modern serial killers who operate over decades. And
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: that is where we leave it for today. I hope
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. It was interesting,
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: I think. You know, it's just one of those things
[1:02:05] Speaker 1: where we have to open our mind a little bit.
[1:02:07] Speaker 1: And it's like I said at the start of the video,
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: it's okay to engage in this sort of imagination, a
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: little bit of stretching of things. We're not going to
[1:02:17] Speaker 1: be publishing this out in some academic journal, this kind
[1:02:21] Speaker 1: of thing. So it's all right for us to think
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: about the what-ifs and the maybes. I think that's what
[1:02:29] Speaker 1: makes it fun, especially when we have these examples of
[1:02:33] Speaker 1: these smaller cases that we can sort of go on
[1:02:35] Speaker 1: and kind of paint a picture of what the medieval
[1:02:39] Speaker 1: world was like. In any case, I would like to
[1:02:43] Speaker 1: thank my top tier patrons and supporters. Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Ember, Susan, Cameron, Carrie, Charlene, Linda, Reese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Talvery, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon, Cuckoo, Bubonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, Gokhan, Dorsey, Venita, Claire, Courtesy, Carol, Robert, Mary, Bridgette, Nefertari, Yvette,
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: Miss Mochi, Eleven, Allison, Free American, Jennifer, Brittany, David, Cody
[1:03:33] Speaker 1: and Brian. Thank you all so much. Okay, well, yes,
[1:03:39] Speaker 1: that's it for me. Until next time, look after yourself
[1:03:45] Speaker 1: and let me know your thoughts in the comments. Good
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: night for now, everyone. Lots of love to you all.

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