The Witch of Vladimirovac: Baba Anujka and Fifty Years of Murder
Between approximately 1879 and 1928, Ana di PiStonja-known as Baba Anujka, the Witch of Vladimirovac-operated the most extensive murder-for-hire operation in Balkan history. From her modest home in rural Serbia, this illiterate elderly woman supplied arsenic disguised as "magic water" to desperate women seeking to kill abusive husbands, facilitating an estimated 60-100 murders over half a century.
Ana's operation thrived in the gap between traditional folk culture and emerging forensic science, exploiting systemic weaknesses in law enforcement, women's legal subordination, and normalized domestic violence. She evaded detection through operational sophistication that would be remarkable even today-oral-only communication, geographic dispersion of clients, and framing poison as magical remedy rather than chemical weapon.
Her eventual capture in 1928 at age ninety required advances in forensic toxicology, coordinated investigation across jurisdictions, and the testimony of her former sales agent. The sensational trial exposed not just one criminal but systematic social failures-patriarchal violence, institutional inadequacy, and the desperate circumstances that drove dozens of women to murder.
This is the story of how one woman built a criminal empire that lasted longer than most legitimate businesses, how forensic science finally caught her, and why her legend persists in Serbian culture nearly a century after her death
