We return to Belgium for the most lurid killer nun tale I know.
It takes place in Wetteren, ten miles East of Ghent where on
January 16th, 1978, three nuns broke their vow of silence to
tell the police of their suspicions about their Mother Superior,
Sister Godfrida.
They believed she had murdered several of the old people in
her care so the officer asked what possible motive she could have.
"To pay for her expensive meals in fine restaurants and for her
wines and brandy," said Sister Godlive.
"To buy her filthy pornographic magazines and her sex toys," said
Sister Pieta.
"And her drugs, her morphine, her heroine, her cocaine and other
things." said Sister Franziska.
Sergeant Gropa - I am NOT making this up! - learned that Sister
Godfrida had undergone a personality change after a brain operation
some seven years previously. The investigation revealed that she
had been seen entertaining a younger nun at a seaside resort, where
they had worn trouser-suits and fondled each other.
As the investigation continued, stories emerged of her exposing herself
to patients and performing sexual favours for them - for a price!
Meanwhile she ruled the convent with an iron rod, jabbing complaining
nuns in the buttocks and privates with a hyperdermic needle and chastised them
with a dog-whip. She would visit the younger nuns in their beds and
engage in lesbian acts.
Some doubts arose when it was discovered that some of the patients she
was alleged to have fondled were penniless, though it turned out that she
was willling to do these things for nothing, if necessary.
Confronted with the case against her, Sister Godfrida admitted her deeds, but
she was judged unfit to stand trial and it remains uncertain quite how many
old people she had sent to heaven with overdoses of insulin or morphine.
Source: Murderous Women by John Dunning, 1983. reprinted in Poison, the
world's greatest true murder stories, 1987.
