caption country death_date death_place birth_place cause penalty birth_date victims beginyear birthname article_title endyear name apprehended
daisy de melker in 1932 south africa 30 december 1932 pretoria seven fountains , eastern cape province , south africa execution by hanging death 01 june 1886 3 1923 daisy hancorn-smith daisy de melker
 1932 daisy de melker april 1932
daisy de melker

daisy louisa c. de melker -lrb- née hancorn-smith ; 1 june 1886 -- 30 december 1932 -rrb- simply known as daisy de melker , was a trained nurse who poisoned two husbands with strychnine for their life insurance while living in germiston in the central transvaal -lrb- now gauteng -rrb- , and then poisoned her only son with arsenic for reasons which are still unclear .
she is the second woman to have been hanged in south africa .
daisy de melker was accused of three murders but was only convicted of one , that of killing her son .
the charges of poisoning her husbands were never proved in a court of law .
it was william sproat , the younger brother of her second husband , who accused her because he wanted robert sproat 's will in favour of daisy declared invalid .
daisy refused to refund an alleged loan from mrs jane sproat , robert 's mother , to robert ; she regarded it as a gift and argued that it was not stipulated in the will as a loan .
william sproat won the civil case regarding the will , which ran concurrently with the murder trial , and was awarded costs .
daisy withdrew on the date justice greenberg sentenced her for murder .
william 's was a pyrrhic victory however .
to pay her exorbitant legal costs daisy had to hock all her assets .
she was declared insolvent and was eventually buried in a prison pauper 's grave .
