Talk:Vera Renczi

message: Vera Renczi is one of those unusual murder cases in which every account has the same basic "facts" beginning with the Encyclopaedia of Murder by Wilson and Pitman in 1961.  Vera Renczi almost certainly never existed. Try googling her - not one picture exists of her or any of her 35 "victims". Great story but not a word of truth in any of it.
*Wikipedia works through references and sources - not personal opinions. All of the information is sourced with reliable references. You obviously missed this photograph and article of her in Google search here. I can find no doubts with historians that she existed. If you can find reliable sources to suggest that she never existed please add them. In the meantime, I reverted your edit. ExRat (talk) 02:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The May 26 date of that Dutch newspaper means it's not the first report on the case. There was a story in the US on May 19. That Dutch newspaper has about the same info as the May 25 reports in the US (“The victims were all between the ages of 23 and 30, except the boy. Fourteen of them were Roumanians.”), even the same alleged quote from her. So nothing not already accessible in English. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 01:51, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fiction 

message: Beyond any doubt, the story has two severe deficiencies -- times in which the crimes were committed and of any legal process, and names of even one victim. Romania underwent wild changes of political system from her early adulthood until about 1955 from democracy to a fascist takeover, Nazi hegemony, a transitional era to Commie rule, and Commie rule itself.  There was World War II and there was the 1946 overthrow of a shaky democracy by the Communists. Romania was a death penalty country, and it is hard to see why Romanian Commies would have allowed her survival; as a profiteering murderer she would surely have been an example of the depravity of the old era and someone to be disposed of promptly. 
Men of different economic status? When?  During World War II? It is easy to imagine a thoroughly-ruthless person exploiting Jewish men who had something to fear by getting them to secrete large sums of money with her with the promise of going off with them to a safe location (let us say Turkey or Sweden) and then killing them... and keeping the money. After World War II she could have enticed men with money to leave money with her so that she could take off with them for safe places like Turkey or Sweden, and then killed them and kept the money. 
Do you see what I am doing here? I am adding material to the story while remaining vague about the dates of her deeds. Years would be adequate. But I have added nothing specific or credible except general knowledge that anyone could have about Romanian politics between about 1930 and 1955  without having any connection to Romania. 
If she was sentenced to life imprisonment or death, then wouldn't there be some judicial record? Wouldn't there be a record of her death in custody?  One can't simply say that Romanian courts were unreliable or that judicial findings were travesties. Pbrower2a (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates 

message: I understand that the following is original research so I put it here:
First of all the closest thing I found to a primary source for the story are supposed two magazine articles cited here: http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2011/07/vera-renczi-used-men-as-disposible-sex.html
The older one is supposed to be from "The Bee" magazine (Danville, Va.), May 22, 1925, the later, more elaborate one is from "San Antonio Light" Sunday magazine section, Aug. 22, 1925. The latter magazine was purchased by William Randolph Hearst, the yellow press magnate in 1924. (as can be seen here: http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ees05 ), so the news credibility might be considered dubious.
The killings supposedly took place in a town called Berkereckul, Jugo-slavia, but strictly speaking there is no such place. However there is a town in what was in 1925. officially Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, (after 1929. Kingdom of Yugoslavia) called Bečkerek (Бечкерек) or Veliki Bečkerek (Велики Бечкерек), today called Zrenjanin, situated in Republic of Serbia whom Romanians call Becicherecul Mare (often probably just Becicherecul - veliki(sr)=mare(rom)=big, large or great(eng)) - a comment on this page (in Romanian, but readable with Google Translate) elaborates on that. http://www.ziare.com/international/stiri-internationale/dosarele-istoriei-cel-mai-mare-criminal-in-serie-este-o-romanca-1042227 however, other, less detailed sources, that I generally dismiss,  put the location for the murders in Bucharest http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/R/RENCZI_vera.php
*Regarding: "strictly speaking there is no such place." I am open to the skeptical approach in this matter. Let me offer this bit on researching method. I have done many thousands of searches in digitized old newspapers and have researched many eastern European cases. Spellings of names and places are very irregular because they are Anglicized in different spellings, plus there is the problem of transliteration of characters. "Vera Renczi" is sometimes "Madame Renici, or "Madam Reniel." The place-name spelling should not be taken as evidence of a non-existent place.
I am from Serbia so once I came across this story I took interest to check it and the truth is - no one from here I asked, including a Faculty of Law professor and a Crime Academy assistant from Zrenjanin ever heard of the story before. There is also an online archive of the country's leading daily newspaper Politika dating from 1904. I checked the numbers dated 18-22. May 1925. and there is no word about Vera Renczi - here's a link to 1st Jan 1925. number - use the middle of the five buttons to chose a different day in the same year: http://scc.digital.nb.rs/document/P-2484-1925 . There are extensive descriptions of much less important criminal trials then would be a case for a woman that poisoned 35 people, so if her story were true it would have certainly been covered.  I failed to find a single source in Serbian about her even though she was a Hungarian-Romanian who killed in Yugoslavia which would be hard to explain - if she had indeed existed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.208.200.246 (talk) 14:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vera Renczi story is most probably US 1920s yellow press fiction 

message: Taken this to WP:RSN. Dougweller (talk) 08:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That May 22 wire wasn't the first story though. There is an earlier one dated May 19 in the Indiana Evening Gazette / Page-1 without a byline. The full text from that blog  (which they have it from The Kingston Daily Freeman, but was apparently syndicated) can verified at http://newspaperarchive.com/indiana-evening-gazette/1925-05-19. "A MODERN BORGIA FOUND. Remorseless Woman Calmly Admits Slaying Two Husbands, Her Son and 32 Suitors, All with Arsenic" etc. She is identified as "Madame Renici at Berkerkul, Serbia." No dates or anything more verifiable in that article and does not say where she was from. (I came here via ANI. I'm unrelated to the other IPs who posted above.) 86.121.18.17 (talk) 01:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

text: I think the English spelling "Berkerkul" comes from a mangled combination of the Hungarian spelling Bečkerek / Becskerek and adding the "ul" termination from the Romanian pronunciation. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 03:56, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blog source 

message: The book The Female Serial Murderer: A Sociological Study of Homicide and the "Gentler Sex" by Scott, Hannah who was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology when this was published. Great expectations of an actual criminology discussion. Instead, a bland and almost blind regurgitation entirely sourced from a newspaper article. And not even a newspaper of the time when this might have happened, but of Haines, M. (1991, July 15) "When Vera tired of her many lovers SHE KILLED THEM." The Daily Mercury, p. A4. ZOMG and LOLOLOL. Oh, there is a slither of critical thinking in that book. Scott says "sources cannot confirm when she was born or the actual dates these events took place". ORLY? 86.121.18.17 (talk) 02:46, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Oy, I missed that the publisher of that book was Edwin Mellen Press. But that's as good as it gets in terms of academic sourcing on this. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 03:45, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I was under the impression that the Edwin Mellen Press was an academic vanity publisher. -- Hoary (talk) 13:11, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's what my "oy" was about... The publisher was involved in some controversies. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 16:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The final frontier in academia 

message: If there's no picture, a good tabloid conjures one. And the unlucky model finds out they are serial killer!  86.121.18.17 (talk) 04:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  [E]pic(s) 

message: The H2g2 story is, its web page tells us, by "Farlander", and last edited by "echomikeromeo". Here's Farlander. He doesn't claim any expertise in Romanian, Hungarian, or psychopathology. Here's echomikeromeo. Ditto.
H2g2 appears to be no more than a content farm. The only thing unusual and mildly interesting about it is that it temporarily interested the BBC. 
I say: Replace the references to h2g2.com with "Citation needed" flags. -- Hoary (talk) 13:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: See also this at WP:RSN. I'm about to do what I suggest immediately above. -- Hoary (talk) 13:34, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: H2g2

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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