'Black widow', 56, who poisoned her 11 elderly husbands faces the death penalty in Iran
Kolsum Akbari, 56, married elderly men before administering blood pressure medications, diabetes drugs, sedatives and even industrial alcohol in order to inherit their property.
Akbari's sick actions went undetected for more than two decades, due to her victims old ages and health conditions, until she confessed to the killings. She currently awaits sentencing.
The families of her victims are now asking for her execution.
Beginning in 2000 and carrying on until 2023, she killed over and over until she became careless with her final husband, 82-year-old Gholamreza Babaei.
Babei's son was suspicious of the woman after a family friend revealed his own father had previously been married to a woman called Kolsum who had tried to poison him.
Police were called, and the woman was arrested. Upon interrogation police managed to get her to confess, though she reportedly gave conflicting accounts on just how many people she killed.
She said: 'I don't know how many I killed. Maybe it was 13 or 15 people. I don't remember exactly.'
Her life as a married woman began when she was just 18, having been involved in a short marriage with a man who suffered mental health problems.
She was then married to a much older man who had children from a prior marriage. Akbari was said to have been regularly beaten by her husband and stepsons.
After her second husband died, she is said to have sought out marriages with lonely older men through women's gatherings. She would befriend the daughters of these men and, after investigating their means, would agree to marry them for a significant dowry.
Though she administer poisons, in some cases she would suffocate victims with pillows and towels.
In many cases, the victims would die shortly after getting married to her. Mirahmad Omrani, 69, died a month after their marriage in 2013; Esmail Bakhshi, 62, died two months after their 2016 wedding, and Ganjali Hamzei, 83, died 43 days after marrying her.
One man survived Akbari's attempted murder in 2020 after consuming tainted soup. Though he kicked her out, he chose not to report the incident to police.
Akbari was charged with 11 counts of premeditated murder and one count of attempted murder.
Though Akbari initially tried to deny the charges in the Sari Revolutionary Court on Wednesday, she eventually confessed to the killings.
Her victims lives in cities across Iran, which stopped authorities from connecting the dots for years.
Their families have asked for her execution, though the court will only deliver its verdict once hearing from all 45 plaintiffs involved in the case.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
36 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Myanmar army detaining two-year-olds as proxies for parents, witnesses tell UN
Children as young as two years old have been detained by Myanmar's military, often as proxies for their parents, and held in prison facilities where there is systematic torture, UN investigators have warned. The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which was set up to document and share evidence of abuse with national, regional and international courts, said in a report that the 'frequency and brutality' of atrocities inside the country had continued to escalate, more than four years after the military seized power in a coup in February 2021. The IIMM said it had collected evidence from witnesses indicating that children aged from two to 17 had been detained, often in lieu of their parents. The military and police may detain children in cases where parents who are perceived to be associated with opposition movements cannot be found to arrest. Some of the detained children had been subjected to torture, ill treatment or sexual and gender-based crimes, the report said. The military has conducted mass arrests since the coup, detaining almost 30,000 people, including political opponents, journalists and activists accused of resisting junta rule, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), a local group that tracks arrests. The IIMM said it had gathered significant evidence that there was systematic torture inside prison facilities, including beatings, electric shocks, strangulation, torture by pulling out fingernails with pliers, and forms of sexual violence, including rape and gang-rape. Torture had resulted in death, the report said. Investigators had made progress in identifying specific members and units of security forces 'involved in operations at identified detention facilities', the report added, including direct perpetrators of sexual and gender-based crimes as well as high-level commanders. They had also gathered evidence of the identity of individuals – in the security forces and opposition armed groups – who had perpetrated summary executions, the IIMM report said. 'It's very important that perpetrators believe that somebody is watching, somebody is collecting evidence,' said Nicholas Koumjian, the head of IIMM, who said the conflict that had gripped Myanmar since the coup had become 'more and more violent'. It was crucial that there was 'commitment from the international community to see justice is done – not just for the people of Myanmar but as an example to the rest of the world also', said Koumjian. The IIMM report, based on the period July 2024 to June 2025, warned that an unprecedented funding crisis was threatening investigators' ability to collect and analyse evidence. It said funding constraints had affected the ability of investigators to travel, train and buy the necessary software to conduct their work. Staff positions would be reduced by 20% next year, it added. 'These financial pressures threaten the mechanism's ability to sustain its critical work and to continue supporting international and national justice efforts,' the report said. The UN is pursuing a cost-cutting drive, asking dozens of agencies, offices and operations to cut 20% of their staff, as it faces funding challenges. The IIMM is funded by the UN regular budget, as well as through grants from individual donor countries. Two US funding grants were terminated this year, though one continued, Koumjian said. The Trump administration has dismantled the US Agency for International Development, a major funder of humanitarian aid programmes around the world, and withdrawn from some UN agencies and ordered a broader review of US participation in the agencies. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has previously said efforts to cut back UN costs were due to a liquidity crisis, as member states were failing to pay their annual dues on time or in full. The IIMM has made more than two dozen requests to the Myanmar military, including for information relating to alleged crimes and for access to the country, but received no response. The military could not be reached by the Guardian for comment. It has previously denied atrocities have taken place and said its operations were in response to 'terrorists' who were causing unrest.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Kim Keon Hee: South Korea's ex-first lady arrested in bribery probe
South Korea's former first lady has been arrested over a string of charges including stock manipulation and Keon Hee, 52, denied all charges against her during a court hearing on Tuesday that lasted four hours. The Seoul court issued a warrant to detain her late in the day, citing risks that she may destroy evidence is the first time in South Korea's history that a former president and his spouse are in jail at the same husband, former President Yoon Suk Yeol, was detained earlier to face trial over a failed martial law bid last year that plunged the country into political turmoil and eventually led to his ouster. Prosecutors say Kim, 52, made over 800 million won ($577,940; £428,000) by participating in a price-rigging scheme involving the stocks of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea. While this allegedly happened before her husband was elected the country's leader, it continued to cast a shadow throughout his allegedly also accepted two Chanel bags and a diamond necklace as bribes from the controversial Unification Church in exchange for business favours. Among other charges, Kim is also accused of meddling in candidate nominations during the parliamentary by-elections in 2022 and the general elections last appeared solemn as she attended Tuesday's hearing wearing a black suit and a black skirt. "I sincerely apologise for causing trouble despite being a person of no importance," she told he was president, Yoon vetoed three opposition-led bills that sought a special counsel investigation into allegations against Kim. He issued the last veto in November, a week before he declared martial law.A special counsel was set up in June this year after Yoon's rival Lee Jae Myung became president.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: national guard gathers in DC as president mulls expanding their role across US
A steady stream of uniformed soldiers arrived at the national guard headquarters in Washington on Tuesday for deployment that evening to fight crime in the nation's capital. Donald Trump's deployment of the 800-strong force has been described by Democrats as political theater. With Trump threatening to replicate the move in other big cities, Democrats point to statistics showing that violent crime in Washington has dropped to historic lows in the past two years. About 850 officers and agents took part in a 'massive law enforcement surge' across Washington DC on Monday night and made nearly two dozen arrests, the White House said on Tuesday. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, 'this is only the beginning. Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the district who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans.' Trump's intervention has been widely condemned as an authoritarian power grab that undermines the autonomy of Washington's DC local government and seeks to distract attention from political problems such as the Jeffrey Epstein files. Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington DC, has pledged to work 'side by side' with the federal government as national guard troops arrive at their headquarters in the capital. The show of force came after Donald Trump announced that he was sending the national guard into the capital and putting city police under federal control, even though the violent crime rate is at a 30-year low. Read the full story Donald Trump could expand the use of national guard troops in US cities even further, if a plan from the Pentagon comes to fruition. The Washington Post, reporting on internal documents on Tuesday, says Pentagon officials are 'evaluating plans' to create a 'Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force' that would deploy to crack down on cities in events of unrest or during protests. Read the full story A US appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a group of unions to block the Trump administration government downsizing team known as the 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) from accessing sensitive data on Americans. Read the full story An outbreak of a respiratory disease, possibly Covid-19, is running rampant through the remote Florida immigration jail known as 'Alligator Alcatraz', according to the attorney of an infected detainee removed from the camp last week. Read the full story A newly appointed official at the US Department of Labor hired by the Trump administration has a recent history of racist, sexually graphic, and conspiratorial posts on social media. Jessico Bowman was appointed deputy chief of staff of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the labor department, which is to lead 'the US Department of Labor's efforts to ensure that workers around the world are treated fairly and are able to share in the benefits of the global economy'. She has deleted her account on X and Facebook accounts since announcing her hiring. Read the full story Donald Trump's administration says it has determined that George Washington University has violated federal civil rights law, making it the latest higher educational institution to be targeted by the White House over last spring's campus protests against Israeli military strikes in Gaza. Read the full story Donald Trump hit out at Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, saying the bank had been wrong to predict tariffs would hurt the economy. The White House told the Smithsonian that it plans a wide review of exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of the US's 250th anniversary celebrations in 2026. US prices continued to rise in July, according to key economic data, as Donald Trump's international tariffs shake-up started to impact consumer costs. Catching up? Here's what happened on 11 August 2025.
