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The Strange Death Of Netta Fornario

Naughty_Felid

Naughty_Felid

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I can't find anything about this on the MB.


Occasionally, we hear about a story that intrigues us to the point that we want to pass it on. The occult case of the Netta Fornario death in Iona, Scotland is just that kind of story. Although the details surrounding her death are unsubstantiated and cannot be verified due to lack of information, it makes for a fascinating story, nonetheless.

https://www.historicmysteries.com/netta-fornario/

c27d016ac74771c8225cd6c9036d9009--the-sisters-occult.jpg
 
It says the doctor examining her couldn't tell how she died but isn't that a job for the police or a coroner? I think the cross cut into the turf was part of a ritual she was performing when her mystery assailant discovered her.
There must have been some resentment towards her from some of the islanders. She was an independent woman for a start, a southerner travelling alone on a Scottish island. And she was into occult practices...

My theory is that a misogynistic local with deep-rooted Christian beliefs caught her in mid ceremony and killed her in a fit of rage. Being on an island meant that the local doctor had to perform multiple duties, including that of coroner and that he missed or deliberately concealed the actual cause of her death. For that, I would guess strangulation or bludgeoning.

^^ ^^
Purely speculation of course!

EDIT: Or the doctor did it.
 
David Plankton said:
It says the doctor examining her couldn't tell how she died but isn't that a job for the police or a coroner? I think the cross cut into the turf was part of a ritual she was performing when her mystery assailant discovered her.
There must have been some resentment towards her from some of the islanders. She was an independent woman for a start, a southerner travelling alone on a Scottish island. And she was into occult practices...

My theory is that a misogynistic local with deep-rooted Christian beliefs caught her in mid ceremony and killed her in a fit of rage. Being on an island meant that the local doctor had to perform multiple duties, including that of coroner and that he missed or deliberately concealed the actual cause of her death. For that, I would guess strangulation or bludgeoning.

^^ ^^
Purely speculation of course!

EDIT: Or the doctor did it.
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Plankton Holmes you done it again! rushes off to grab Casebook...
 
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David Plankton said:
It says the doctor examining her couldn't tell how she died but isn't that a job for the police or a coroner?
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No Coroner in Scotland... They ceased to exist in 1800. One would have thought though that the Procurator Fiscal would still have records; apparently not!
 
I have a book which features this case - "Scotland's Unsolved Mysteries" by Richard Wilson (though presumably not that Richard Wilson). He interviewed the son of the family that Fornario stayed with on Iona, who described how she behaved while she was there. The 'cross' cut into the ground was apparently the invention of a journalist from The Scotsman, though she had apparently dug a small shallow hole in the ground next to where her body lay, and the silver knife she was alleged to have had with her was just an ordinary dinner knife. He reckoned she was mentally ill and died of hypothermia rather than any sinister occult influence.
 
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"Woman with apparent mental issues dies of hypothermia in mid-November in northern Scotland."

Not much of a headline, unless a penny-a-word hack gets a picture of a photogenic young woman and decides to insert a little spice: Naked. Black magic. Crowley...

Terminal burrowing and paradoxical undressing are well-known effects/symptoms of severe hypothermia.

Also, there is something about parts of the rugged, beautiful northern Highlands of Scotland that induces people of a certain disposition to believe that it is a liminal zone between reality and the woo-woo lands. I lived for a couple of years on the Isle of Skye, and can attest that it attracts a Stonehenge/Glastonbury/Avebury crowd.

A lesser-known attraction on Skye is the Fairy Glen, which has at its heart Castle Ewen, a rock promontory shaped like a submarine's conning tower:

castle-ewan-faerie-glen.jpg


The views from the top are spectacular, including the mystical spirals etc. that Sixties throwbacks and the unconventionally-medicated have laid out at its base. I have my own photos of it, but they're hidden on a PC drive somewhere. These will give you the idea:

rJe6k.jpg


faerie-glen.jpg


Movie buffs among you will recognise the area from the film Stardust which was filmed in the Fairy Glen while I lived on Skye.

maximus otter
 
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Tempest63 said:
The photo is of Moina Mathers, wife of M, acgregor Mathews. I have been unable to source a photo of Netta Fornario.
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Yeah I just found this thread for the first time and was about to say the same thing. Seems a bit sloppy that the author of the article didn't do their homework on the photo. I've never seen a photo of Fornario either. Dion Fortune who was friends with Fornario wrote about the case in her 1930 book Psychic Self-Defense.
 
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FrKadash said:
Dion Fortune who was friends with Fornario wrote about the case in her 1930 book Psychic Self-Defense.
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I must admit it is probably 20 years or more since I last read Psychic Self-Defenceand I didn’t recall the story from there when I heard it on a podcast recently.

I believe it was on the Thinking Sideways Podcast.
 
Which one's Mathers?

I've seen the photo on the left presented as Mathers, and I've seen it presented as Fornario. I gave up trying to figure out which attribution was accurate years ago.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Which one's Mathers?

I've seen the photo on the left presented as Mathers, and I've seen it presented as Fornario. I gave up trying to figure out which attribution was accurate years ago.
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My understanding is that he photo in post #1 in this thread (and the photo at the left in post #15) is Moina Mathers. But I don't remember where I got that info from. I had also heard that there are few (if any) photos of Netta Fornario available to view (as mentioned in post #11: it's difficult to find a photo of Netta Fornario).
 
Quote from article- "Even though Iona is a small island, it took two days to find Netta’s body. The death site was unusual, to say the least. A cross had been cut into the turf with a dagger (which was found nearby) and Netta’s body was lying on top of it. She was found only wearing a thin black cloak."

Interesting. Perhaps as the demons (or whatever) closed in on her, she cut the Christian symbol into the earth as a last-ditch attempt to ward them off?
 
AmCuriousNJ said:
My understanding is that he photo in post #1 in this thread (and the photo at the left in post #15) is Moina Mathers. ...
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That's my best understanding, too. FWIW the few other photos of Mathers I've ever found are a much closer match to that photo than the one on the right in post #15.

As time goes on the story gets regurgitated online (blogs, etc.) with that (Mathers?) photo alone being presented in relation to Fornario (sometimes without much or any mention of Mathers). I've even seen that photo explicitly cited as being Fornario.

Fornario was closely associated with Dion Fortune, and I've seen presentations of Fortune's photo(s) alone. Fortune didn't resemble either of the other two.
 
Carse said:
I have a book which features this case - "Scotland's Unsolved Mysteries" by Richard Wilson (though presumably not that Richard Wilson). He interviewed the son of the family that Fornario stayed with on Iona, who described how she behaved while she was there. The 'cross' cut into the ground was apparently the invention of a journalist from The Scotsman, though she had apparently dug a small shallow hole in the ground next to where her body lay, and the silver knife she was alleged to have had with her was just an ordinary dinner knife. He reckoned she was mentally ill and died of hypothermia rather than any sinister occult influence.
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In Chapter 17 of her 2007 book Classic Scottish Murder Stories author Molly Whittington-Egan reviews a number of accounts written about the Fornario case, including Wilson's.

A text transcription of the book can be accessed online. Chapter 17 begins here:

https://full-english-books.net/engl...cottish-murder-stories-read-online-chapter-25

Whittington-Egan cites Wilson's interview with Calum Cameron (the son mentioned above, age 12 at the time of Fornario's death) and relates Cameron's statement to Wilson as follows:

It was just an ordinary kitchen-knife, harmless, and there was no cross carved in the turf. She was just digging in the ground, maybe trying to get to the fairies inside. She was a disturbed woman, that's all. And she died of exposure as the doctor said.
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Whittington-Egan's account mentions a number of items rarely cited in sensationalistic accounts of Fornario's last days - most particularly that Fornario had stayed at two locations on Iona during that last trip; she'd originally arrived with a second unidentified woman; she'd pretty obviously exhibited signs of extreme personal distress in the last day or two before disappearing; and that it was 'bitter cold' at the time she died.
 
As was mentioned up-thread (at post #13), the (sadly, now defunct) podcast Thinking Sideways had an episode about Netta Fornario: http://www.thinkingsidewayspodcast.com/netta-fornario/. (And I'll just add that the Thinking Sideways podcast was really great, really entertaining. Too bad it is defunct.) (And, yeah, Thinking Sideways mistakenly has the photo of Moina Mathers to represent Netta Fornario. But it was an entertaining podcast. Too bad the co-host Steve moved to Southeast Asia, which reportedly caused the podcast to come to an end.)

Edited to add: Right after I originally posted the above part of this post, I see that there is a new episode for the Thinking Sideways podcast: Their annual April Fool's Day episode (posted April 1, 2019): http://www.thinkingsidewayspodcast.com/the-steve-is-dead-hoax/. I haven't listened to it yet, but I doubt it has anything to do with the podcast coming back, with the possible exception of occasional 'Special Occasion' episodes (such as for April Fool's Day), etc.
 
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Old Master Q said:
No Coroner in Scotland... They ceased to exist in 1800. One would have thought though that the Procurator Fiscal would still have records; apparently not!
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Yes, but you'd think that if it were such a big deal they'd have the body dug up and examined? You can't find much, but there's always something there. And they could have journals on the topic written by witnesses examined as well (I'm sure they exist).

Edit: I have to mention that I only heard about this case on a podcast today--the whole reason I'm here. If you have more reliable sources notify me.
 
halftlyn said:
Yes, but you'd think that if it were such a big deal they'd have the body dug up and examined? You can't find much, but there's always something there. And they could have journals on the topic written by witnesses examined as well (I'm sure they exist).
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Welcome to the board :bananas:
 
Into the maps...

"It wasn’t until the 19th of November that her black-caped body was discovered by two local men, Hector MacLean, of Sligneach, and Hector MacNiven, of Maol Farm. She lay between the Machar and Loch Staonaig, in a hollow in the moor. The body was found next to a fairy mound."

https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/historical-strangeness/netta-fornario

"She was eventually found on the Tuesday, by what the locals described as a ‘faery mound’ to the South of Loch Staonaig."

https://viewfromthebighills.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-terrible-case-of-healing-death-of.html

Here is the context of Loch Staoineig, Maol Farm (where one of the discoverers of Fornario's body lived) and the main (only real) town on the isle of Iona, which is only about 4 x 1 miles in size:

Iona-context-02.jpg


A closeup of Maol:

Maol-Iona-01.jpg


An aerial photo from Google Earth showing Loch Staoineig:

Loch-Staoineig-Iona-01.jpg


Loch Staoineig is a major source of fresh water on the island, so it may well be that the discoverers of the body - MacLean and MacNiven - were looking for livestock near there.

The area where the body was found:

Fornario-body-site-Iona.jpg


Loch Staoineig at top centre; St. Columba's Bay at bottom.

When MacLean and MacNiven say she was between the loch and the "Machar", I'm going to proceed on the assumption that they used the Gaelic word machair, which means "...the dune grassland unique to Western Scotland and north-west Ireland. In Scotland, some Gaelic speakers use machair as a general term for the whole dune system, including the dune ridge, while others restrict its use to the extensive flat grasslands inland of the dune ridge." So, I'll interpret that to mean that Fornario was found somewhere between the beach/grass area to the south, and the loch to the north. Google Earth gives the distance between the southernmmost tip of the loch, and the sea edge of the south- and easternmost beach (just below and left of the word "Image"), as 970 yards.

Unfortunately, OS maps from Victoria's time to the present are silent on the exact location of the "faery mound", unless it's an anglicisation of the Gaelic Cnoc na Faire (which actually means "Hill of the Watch", i.e. lookout point), which would be entirely consistent geographically if not linguistically:

Cnoc-na-Faire-Iona-01.jpg


Curious Forteans should note that they can rent a "glamping pod" at Maol Farm in order to continue their investigations. (I have no connection with/knowledge of the business).

maximus otter
 
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A bit more digging uncovers a map that is almost contemporary with Fornario's death. It was drawn in 1930:

Iona-1930-paths.jpg


This one's a bit eccentric, as north is to our right.

a) I have coloured in Loch Staoineig in blue.

b) I have also coloured in the established paths which flank the loch, in red.

c) As pure speculation on my part, I have taken the liberty of delineating what might have been Fornario's intended/actual route/s on the fateful day, in pecked red lines. At the west end of the east/west road to our right, she would have encountered a path onto the machair.

I speculate that her intended destination was St. Columba's Bay at the southern tip of the island. Her potential routes were either the one labelled on the map "Route to Columba's Bay" to the west of the loch, or the eastern route which passes more close by the loch. The established, named route seems more likely; also, in November weather, the one nearer the loch might have been flooded.

(The nearest Met Office station - Tiree - didn't start recording anything other than monthly sunshine totals until 1931. They show that in November 1931, Tiree experienced a max temperature of 10.1°C and a minimum temp of 6.4°C; the monthly rainfall was 167.2mm and there were only 37.4 hours of sunshine in the month.)

Somewhere between Cnoc na Buaile and Cnoc na Faire, we must presume that Fornario met her end.

As an aside, I believe that the photo below depicts Hector MacNiven, who was one of the discoverers of Fornario's body:

harvest1-1024x653.jpeg


The caption reads: Haymaking on Liana Mhic Chullaich around 1910, by then part of Maol farm tenanted by Hector MacNiven (centre). Image credit: Mairi MacArthur.

maximus otter
 
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Tempest63 said:
Is this Netta pictured next to Moina Mathers?
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The one on the right next to Mathers is Maud Gonne. That's my favorite graphic regarding the case because it's clearly two different women, both of whom are apparently Netta Fornario! I've never seen an actual picture of Fornario anywhere. Almost every website with an article on the case uses Moina Mathers' picture to illustrate it.
 
Just came across this image, which I didn't see posted in this thread; (though maybe someone linked to it and I missed it). (I hope the image displays correctly!) I don't know who this is an image of, but it appears to try to give the impression that is it an image of Netta Fornario. It is from a post made earlier this year at this link: https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/historical-strangeness/netta-fornario . But who knows: Since the online post never states that this is an image of Netta Fornario maybe its just some image of some woman meant to suggest Netta Fornario.
 

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AmCuriousNJ said:
Just came across this image, which I didn't see posted in this thread; (though maybe someone linked to it and I missed it). (I hope the image displays correctly!) I don't know who this is an image of, but it appears to try to give the impression that is it an image of Netta Fornario. It is from a post made earlier this year at this link: https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/historical-strangeness/netta-fornario . But who knows: Since the online post never states that this is an image of Netta Fornario maybe its just some image of some woman meant to suggest Netta Fornario.
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Well this one at least looks a little more promising!...although I have to admit that's only because I don't recognize her like I did the others...

Could also be the actress that portrayed her in the stage play that the picture is promoting.
https://www.shetlandarts.org/blog/the-mysterious-death-of-netta-fornario
 
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