Maria Velten

Maria Velten (1916 – June 9, 2008) was a German serial killer, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders. Maria Velten died in 2008 in a nursing home after having been released from prison for health reasons.

Velten was a war widow with six children, two of them conceived after the war. In 1983, she was arrested after one of her daughters-in-law told her lawyer that her mother-in-law had poisoned her two husbands. Following investigations by the police revealed that Velten had killed in about 20 years - from 1963 to 1982 - a total of five people: her father, an aunt, two husbands and a partner. She mixed parathion with bilberry pudding, as the colour of the pudding covered the blue warning colour of the poison. Therefore, she was referred to in the tabloid press as "Bilberry Mariechen" and "The Poison Witch from Lower Rhine".

Maria Velten killed mainly for financial reasons; however, most of the time she did not spend on herself, but gave it to her children and grandchildren.

In 2009, a documentary about Velten was broadcast on German television (ARD). The accompanying text from the film states:

The case was also featured in a RTL series Anwälte der Toten.

Film ARD: The Bilberry Mariechen. Documentary by Ute Bönnen and Gerald Endres. (2009)