It is reported, that over the 25 years that Enriqueta Marti worked in Barcelona, she was quite possibly the most prolific female serial killer in history...

Who was the depraved Enriqueta Marti?

This woman was a very attractive young girl when she came to Barcelona, born in 1868 (although some claim she was actually born in Barcelona.) She started working as a servant in several bourgeois houses.

Soon she realized she would earn a lot more money making a profit from her beauty working as a prostitute. This landed her in prison a few times. She always went back to the streets though.
Even after her marriage, which was on and off for nearly a decade, and she rarely saw her 'husband' Juan. She was always chasing the dream of huge amounts of money and wealth,

After a time doing this job (prostitution) she learned a lot about some of the darker and evil wishes certain humans have and, after saving enough money to rent a stylish apartment, she decided to open her own brothel in 1909.

But not a normal one:

The vile woman used her false 'sweetness' (i.e manipulative character) and sneaky, wicked ways to kidnap infants and children - from babies to fourteen years old -and used them as prostitutes for some of the richest and fully depraved men of Barcelona.

1909 was a shocking year for Barcelona. The city suffered the social rebellion called 'La Semana Tragica' (The Tragic Week) in which about forty churches were burnt. Enriqueta Marti's brothel was discovered by the police as well.

But some hidden person, a mysterious 'friend', who held high influence in Spain, helped her to get out the jail. After that, she started an even more terrible business, in a new place, in the middle of the Raval quarter, a very poor slum of the city.

The new business consisted of the kidnap of children; usually from infants to twelve years old. Once she got them, she used them for prostitution, as she did before the arrest.

But now, she decided to select some of them to be killed for their fat, blood, and bones, hair and sinew. This she used to create her facial cremes, potions and 'elixirs'.

With these final products, she provided a selected group of distinguished ladies from the high society of Barcelona 'perfect, eternal youth'...at a huge price.

Those ladies knew very well where the products came from, but they considered poor children to be nothing more than pieces of rubbish.

At the time, it was a popularly held superstition that the blood of young children was a fabulousway to extend and enrich long life, aiding the preservation of beauty, and it was claimed that their fat was superb for conserving a young skin.

(Please also see my previous poem 'The Blood Countess' about Countess Elisabeth Bathory who shared this belief.)

During the day, Enriqueta dressed in very shabby clothing, almost like a beggar. It was the best way to avoid suspicion when she was looking for her next child to kidnap.

She always went where the children were most abandoned or poor, waiting at the bread queue in front of the nun's convents, orphanages, monasteries and such.

At nightfall, she went out dressed as if she was a Marquis or Duchess, wearing the most expensive clothing, perfumes and jewelry normally sported mainly by royalty. Whispers linger to this day she used the creams, potions and drank the blood of children herself as she was never seen to age.
Of course, her lack of aging suited her business well. She was her own best advertisement. That said since only two pictures of her face remain this may just be hearsay.

Then she went to El Liceu (the glamorous Opera Palace in Barcelona) where she enjoyed the plays or attended the call of some well-connected new client, and casinos where she mixed with the well-to-do.
In fact, it seems El Liceu was her main field of operations. People from the highest levels of society were their main clients: the gentlemen for the child prostitution, and the women for the cosmetics and 'products'.

The lost children were always kids from the most miserable, lowly families. The fact that somebody was kidnapping them, for some mysterious reason, started to become obvious.

Even without the mass media of today, rumours spread rapidly amongst the population. Although, having said that, the Barcelona mayor did not take the stories about kidnapped children seriously at all.

In fact, late in 1911, the mayor of Barcelona issued a statement saying that there was no basis to the rumours which had been circulating in the city. He officially stated that children were not being kidnapped and murdered. Unfortunately for everybody at that time, the stories were painfully true.

Thanks to a concerned neighbour, the truth was discovered when a little girl with shorn hair was seen peering repeatedly from an upper window, in an apartment where Marti was seen to enter regularly. From then, it was just a short time before the ghastly truth was revealed.

The police rescued a poor seven-year-old girl, still alive, who lived in a true regime of slavery and deprivation. Another little five year old, Angelita was also rescued.
Sadly, they weren't in time to save the last dead victim of the woman, Pepito, a boy of seven, killed just some few days before, while a terrified Terasita secretly watched. His body parts had been prepared for preparations and his clothes and parts of his spine and skull were found in a rotting bag.

Enriqueta had several apartments around the city. In one of them, she killed and made her horrible potions with the bodies. In another one, she lived with the kids, feeding them on rotten potatoes and crusts of dry bread (more of which later.)

In the last one, a very luxurious place indeed, she had the brothel, with state of the art baths with running hot water, and where rich important people of the political, business, and even the art world, enjoyed degenerated orgiastic ceremonies of blood and sex.

The police (imagine their nausea) found pieces of at least twenty bodies, perfectly prepared in what was a true factory for cosmetic products.

In 1912, Enriqueta Marti, at the age of 43 years old, and still a young looking woman(main picture), was imprisoned in jail. At that time the death penalty existed in that country.
Attempts to find the whole truth about the list of the rich clients of Enriqueta were fruitless. The newspapers of the time started a series of chronicles about the case, and it was first-page news not only in Catalonia, but in all of Spain for many weeks.

But the judgments seemed never to arrive. In fact, Enriqueta plainly said: 'My clients, maybe were monsters, but not me.'

And, this for me is one of the most important points about this terrible story. She was not a 'psychotic killer' as ' El Sacamantecas', Jack the Ripper or even (semi) fictional killers such as Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates, but a woman who purely lacked the merest shred of conscience, albeit a very intelligent one.

She just had no moral compass and, in the coldest and most evil way you can imagine, worked for her own benefit, thinking only of her own fortunes. She was in other words, a Psychopath, but not a mad one. She could control her actions very well if need be.

For her, all she did was just 'her business' and nothing more. (Assuming the drinking of the children's blood was a rumour and nothing more. If the stories are true, and she did drink it, she was mad as well as wicked and evil. )

But her clients were a lot more powerful than the police and the journalists imagined. Nobody could discover who was mentioned in the mysterious and very long list of clients (and victims), left in code in her skin-bound diary in her last apartment, along with potions recipes and spells. The mystery still remains...
This reminded me of a prayer to the Hindi Goddess Kali:
''Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone?
Was she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?
Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, woman.
You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.
It matters not how much I call you 'Mother, Mother' You hear me, but you will not listen...."

Enriqueta tried to kill herself two times. She was finally lynched by her own fellow inmates at the jail. Therefore the people of the town never lived to see her die.

Of course, as often with these stories, stories persist that Enriqueta and several ghost children seem to haunt the villa. This was the same villa where Teresita's face, (the girl who was joyfully reunited with her parents after the arrest, and whose testimony helped to imprison the wicked woman) was originally seen. The other child, Angelita was also reunited with her parents...she said she had been forced to eat human flesh by the monstrous Enriqueta...

No-one knows exactly how many children were killed by this woman, but the numbers, considering the amount of money made and 'products' sold, as well as the charred remains of a hasty attempt to burn bones and skulls and teeth, found by the police appear to number into the hundreds...truly one of the most chilling killers of all time.

Notes (other than my own translated very tediously from the original Spanish ):http://murderpedia.org/female.M/m/marti-enriqueta.htm

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