Grim Maternal Infamy

History has plenty of powerful and complicated mothers, but some of them left behind legacies that are harder to soften. Some protected their children through ruthless choices. Some harmed their own blood directly. Others merely used their influence to devastate families far beyond their own homes. Whatever the case, these 20 women aren’t earning themselves a Mother’s Day gift any time soon. 

Attributed to Germain Le Mannier on Wikimedia

1. Olympias of Epirus

Olympias was Alexander the Great’s mother, and she became deeply involved in the violent succession struggles after he died in 323 BC. Accounts connect her to the brutal elimination of rivals, and in 317 BC she had Philip III Arrhidaeus executed while his wife Eurydice was forced to the same fate. 

Manuelarosi on Wikimedia

2. Agrippina the Younger

Agrippina the Younger, born in AD 15, was Nero’s mother. She didn’t just sit on the sidelines; she helped maneuver him into position as Roman emperor in AD 54. She also married Emperor Claudius in AD 49, pushed Nero’s interests ahead of Claudius’s biological son, and became a dominating force in the early years of Nero’s reign. However, her political parenting circled back to bite her after Nero had her murdered in AD 59.

Anonymous (Rome)Unknown author on Wikimedia

3. Magda Goebbels

Magda was the mother of six children with Joseph Goebbels. On May 1, 1945, as Nazi Germany collapsed, the six Goebbels children were murdered in Hitler’s bunker before Magda and Joseph ended their own lives. Her devotion was so intense that she ended her own children’s lives rather than let them survive without the regime.

Unknown on Wikimedia

4. Fredegund

Before Fredegund died around 596, she was a Merovingian queen and the mother of Chlothar II. She encouraged King Chilperic I to abandon his first wife and murder his second around 568, which only jumpstarted a feud in Frankish politics. To make matters worse, after Chilperic was assassinated, Fredegund acted as regent for her young son.

Emmanuel Herman Joseph Wallet on Wikimedia

5. Mary Ann Cotton

Mary Ann Cotton didn’t even make it to 40 before she was executed in England in 1873. After being convicted of poisoning her stepson, she was suspected of ending many more lives with arsenic, including several of her own children. That being said, her single legal conviction was only for the one murder. 

\the ledgeand on Wikimedia

6. Irene of Athens

Irene of Athens became guardian and co-ruler of her young son Constantine VI after Emperor Leo IV died in 780. It was far from a mother-son duo, though; when Constantine became a rival, she had him deposed, blinded, and imprisoned in 797. She then ruled the Byzantine Empire alone. 

anonymous on Wikimedia

7. Nannie Doss

Nannie Doss confessed to a plethora of crimes after her 1954 arrest, mainly admitting to taking multiple relatives' lives over several decades. Reported victims included just about her entire family tree: husbands, her mother, her sister, grandchildren, and two of her own children. She wasn’t remorseful, either—she smiled for cameras after her arrest.

Susie Burleson on Unsplash

8. Gesche Gottfried

When people first caught wind of Gesche Gottfried, she appeared to nurse sick relatives and friends without complaint. Her seemingly blatant kindness earned her a reputation as the “Angel of Bremen,” though the truth was far darker. In reality, she poisoned 15 people between 1813 and 1827, and her victims included her own children. She was publicly executed in 1831.

Rudolf Friedrich Suhrlandt on Wikimedia

9. Jeanne Weber

To put it bluntly, Jeanne Weber was convicted of murder and declared insane after a series of child deaths. Historical accounts label her as having strangled them, and some victims included children from her own family, between 1905 and 1908. By the end, she became known as “The Ogress” in newspapers.

A. Lévy de Saint-Mihiel on Wikimedia

10. Waneta Hoyt

At first glance, it’s almost easy to feel bad for Waneta Hoyt. She lost five biological children between 1965 and 1971 in what was assumed to be cases of SIDS. In 1995, however, she was convicted of five counts of second-degree murder for smothering them, then sentenced to 75 years to life in prison. She died in prison just three years later.

GVZ 42 on Unsplash

11. Marie Noe

Marie Noe was a Philadelphia mother whose children mysteriously died across the span of 1949 to 1968. They were far from accidents, though, and in 1999, she pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder after claiming the lives of all eight. Astonishingly, the sentence was probation rather than prison because of her age and mental health history.

Chris Black on Pexels

12. Empress Lü Zhi

Empress Lü Zhi was Emperor Hui of Han’s mother, and her cruelty irreparably damaged the son whose throne she claimed to protect. Around 195 BC, she had Liu Ruyi, her son’s half-brother and rival, poisoned. She then had Consort Qi brutalized and showed the result to Emperor Hui. That plan backfired; Hui was so horrified by what his mother did that he actually withdrew from active rule.

Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France on Wikimedia

13. Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi was the mother of the Tongzhi emperor and adoptive mother of the Guangxu emperor. Neither went particularly well, however. After Guangxu launched the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898, Cixi backed the coup and then left him on Yingtai Island. 

Yu Xunling (court photographer). on Wikimedia

14. Catherine De’ Medici

Catherine de’ Medici really only used her children’s marriages and positions to ensure Valois power. She’d also do anything to protect it. One especially ugly account states that when she discovered her daughter’s secret involvement with Henry of Guise, Catherine and King Charles IX beat her and pulled out her hair. 

After Justus Sustermans on Wikimedia

15. Minnie Dean

Born Williamina McCulloch, Minnie Dean cared for children for a fee in New Zealand during the late 1880s and 1890s. That ploy didn’t last long, however, and in 1895, she was convicted of taking an infant’s life. Dean later became the first and only woman hanged in New Zealand.

Unknown author on Wikimedia

16. Ilse Koch

Ilse Koch was not only a mother, but she was also the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of Buchenwald from 1937 to 1941. She was convicted by an American military court in 1947 for war crimes connected to Buchenwald and later received life in prison in 1951. 

Ilse_Koch.jpg: unknown soldier or employee of the U.S. Army Signal Corps derivative work: PawełMM (talk) on Wikimedia

17. Amelia Dyer

On the surface, Amelia Dyer was nothing more than a mother and trained nurse. Dig a little deeper, and people soon discovered that she was also a Victorian “baby farmer” who took in infants for money. Between 1869 and 1896, she ended the lives of babies entrusted to her care, and she was hanged at Newgate Prison on June 10, 1896, after being convicted.

Unknown Police photographer on Wikimedia

18. Miyuki Ishikawa

Miyuki Ishikawa wasn’t exactly a mother of her own, but that doesn’t negate her heinous crimes. After securing a job as a Japanese midwife, she was later connected to the deaths of infants at Kotobuki maternity hospital after WWII. In January 1948, police discovered remains, and investigators later uncovered evidence of many more tragedies tied to neglect and abandonment. 

US military Photograph on Wikimedia

19. Gertrude Baniszewski

You’ve likely heard the case, but you might not remember Gertrude Baniszewski’s name, the so-called mother in Indianapolis who took in Sylvia and Jenny Likens in 1965. Sylvia was tortured and killed in October 1965 by Baniszewski, some of Baniszewski’s children, and neighborhood youths, after the girls’ parents had left them in her care. The case was so brutal that it eventually made its way to books and movie portrayals. 

Press photographer Joe Young. on Wikimedia

20. Elena Ceaușescu

Elena Ceaușescu, born in 1919, was the mother of three children and the wife of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. Though she held high status during Romania’s communist regime, she was convicted of genocide with her husband during the rushed trial that preceded their execution in 1989. Her public image leaned hard into national motherhood, but the record would claim otherwise. 

Unknown (AGERPRES) on Wikimedia