Hélène Jegado

Hélène Jegado (1803–1851) was a French domestic servant and serial poisoner. She murdered twenty-three people with arsenic during the 1850s.

Helene Jegado was born in Brittany, France in 1803 in the middle of the French Revolution and was orphaned seven years later. She went to live with two aunts who were servants. At the age of 23 she became a servant girl herself.

Her first known poisoning is from the year 1833 when she was working for a priest, Le Drogo, in Guern. In the three months between June 28 and October 3 she poisoned seven members of the household, including the priest, and her own visiting sister. Her apparent sorrow and pious behaviour was so convincing she was not suspected.

Jegado went to replace her sister in Bubry and poisoned three people, including her other aunt. She continued to Locmine, where she boarded with a needlewoman, Marie-Jeanne Leboucher – both her and her daughter died and a son fell ill. He survived (maybe because he did not accept her ministrations). When a widow in the same town offered her a room, she died after eating a soup Jegado had prepared.

In 1831 Jegado joined a convent – and several nuns died before she renounced her new habit.

Jegado worked all over the country in many households and was employed only briefly in each. Often someone fell ill or died. Apparently the poisonings were retaliation for what Jegado considered ill treatment; if somebody admonished her, she answered with poison. Most victims died showing symptoms of arsenic poisoning, though she was never caught with arsenic in her possession. If she tended the "sick", she in effect ensured that they died. There is no record of suspected deaths from 1841 to 1849 but a number of her contemporary employees later reported a number of thefts; she was apparently a kleptomaniac and was caught stealing several times.

In 1850 Jegado joined the household staff of Théophile Bidard, a professor at the University of Rennes.

One of his servants, Rose Tessier, fell ill and died when Hélène tended her. In 1851, one of the other maids, Rosalie Sarrazin, fell ill as well and died. Two doctors had tried to save Sarrazin and because the symptoms were similar to those of Tessier they convinced the relatives to permit an autopsy. They found nothing, but enlisted the aid of the Procureur-General to talk to her employer. Jegado aroused their suspicions when she announced her innocence before she was even asked anything, and she was arrested July 1 1851.

Later inquiries traced 23 cases of poisoning between 1833-1841 to her, but speculations of possible deaths ran to about 60.

Jegado's trial began December 6 1851 but, due to local contemporary laws of permissible evidence and statute of limitations, she was accused only of 3 murders, 3 attempted murders and 11 thefts. Jegado's behaviour was erratic, changing from humble mutterings to loud pious shouting. She consistently denied she even knew what arsenic was, against all evidence to the contrary. Doctors who had examined her victims had not usually noticed anything suspicious, but when some of the victims were exhumed, they showed signs of arsenic.

Jegado was sentenced to death by guillotine and executed in 1851.

References

• J.H.H. Gaute and Robin Odell, The New Murderer's Who's Who, 1996, Harrap Books, London
• Arthur Griffiths, Mysteries of Police and Crime, 1898, London
• French Crime in the Romantic Age, 1970, London
• Lascelles Wraxall, Criminal Celebrities, 1863, London

External links

• A detailed analysis of Hélène Jegado and her murders