One of the most cruel criminals of her time had everything she needed to be happy: beauty, health, intelligence. There was only one thing - the required number of banknotes. To find them, this woman went all out. This choice took her very far …
Enriqueta Martí was born in 1868 in the town of Sant Feliu de Llobregat (a small town near Barcelona). The family was very poor. Because of this, the girl, in her youth, moved to the metropolis and began working as a nanny in the families of wealthy citizens. But she didn’t like this kind of work, and she understood that something needed to be changed. After all, her unearthly beauty and youth made it possible to find a more profitable place. And what could give more money with very little mental effort? Only prostitution.
The shortest path to money
The 27-year-old beauty attracted the attention of one of her regular clients, the artist Joan Pujalo. The guy believed that he could change the girl's behavior, and she would become his muse for the rest of his life. But Enriketa was not going to change and continued to visit houses with a bad reputation. After a few months, their marriage fell apart.
Enriquete liked the life full of passions that the brothel gave. There she quickly realized that many men are real perverts with disgusting inclinations, and this can be played on.
By 1909, the prostitute had already saved enough money. On the outskirts of Barcelona, she opened an unusual brothel. There little girls and boys from 3 to 14 years old gratified rich libertines.
Enriqueta was a shrewd and not at all stupid "businesswoman": she chose a very successful area for her activities. El Raval was the most notorious. Once it was located outside the city walls, and there lived those who were often not allowed into the city at all: the sick, prostitutes, thieves, murderers.
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The abundance of gambling houses, taverns and brothels to suit all tastes made the area a desirable destination for many sailors from merchant ships who entered the port. And although the metropolis itself was developing rapidly at that time, El Raval was not affected - unsanitary conditions, smuggling and street crime still reigned here. As a rule, it was mostly street children who ended up in the brothel. According to the police, there were about 8-10 thousand homeless children in Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century.
Over time, Enriqueta became more and more impudent. It got to the point that she simply snatched small children out of the hands of gaping mothers. But the police quickly exposed this illegal business. The brothel was closed for a while. But then her rich and influential clients stood up for Senora Marty. At this time, she thought about a new business idea.
Expansion of the "service sector"
The greedy and depraved Enriquete was constantly short of money. After all, before she did everything for the sake of pleasing men, and now she wanted to make money on rich ladies. She decided to offer them exclusive cosmetics and elixirs, which supposedly not only emphasize their beauty, but also turn ugly women into beauties! Moreover, this effect will remain for many years. And the healing properties of its products are such that any alternative medicine can envy them!
Where official medicine was powerless, various folk remedies were used. Some of the recipes were downright gruesome because they required the blood of young children. Armed with an old book of "magic" recipes, Enriqueta began to offer wealthy representatives of high society miraculous creams, ointments, powders, love potions and even poisons. Many of them contained human fat, bile, and ground bones. Enriqueta sold these drugs to the elite, the cream of society. All of them knew perfectly well that the price of their beauty depends on the lives of small defenseless children, but no one wanted to forever interrupt this terrible chain of deaths.
In the fashionable area where the monster lived, it was dangerous to do this "business", so the child killer rented several apartments in the poor quarters of Barcelona. She had to lead a double life. During the day, dressed in rags, she wandered through the poor streets of the metropolis. Pretending to be a beggar, along with the local poor, I stood in line for free meals, which were handed out at the Hospital of the Holy Cross, and looked after future victims among the children. They soon got used to it and considered it their own. The local kids were not at all afraid of her, and this greatly facilitated the execution of bloody plans. And in the evening the woman changed into luxurious dresses and went on a hired carriage to the Rambla, to the then most fashionable theater "Liceo". There, clients and clients were already waiting for her, who generously paid for the funds they needed.
The collapse of a terrible enterprise
The mass disappearance of children in poor neighborhoods, especially in the El Raval area, suggested that the children were being kidnapped and then killed. But in the middle of 1911, the mayor of the city announced that it was all rumors. Allegedly, no one accepted statements about the loss from the poor.
But after the disappearance of five-year-old Teresita Guitart Kongost, her photographs were posted all over the city. And soon the police found out that a certain citizen Claudia Elias, who lived on Poniente Street, had allegedly seen the missing girl in the window of a neighbor's apartment the other day. A few days later, the neighbors turned to the police with complaints that an unpleasant smell ("the smell of a chicken coop") was constantly coming from this apartment.
The police immediately came to the facility with a search, because elementary sanitary standards were grossly violated. The owner of the apartment was Enriqueta. The guards asked to see her entire household. During the examination, they found not only the disappeared Teresita - in the apartment they found another girl named Angelita. She told the police that before Teresita appeared, their five-year-old "brother Pepito" lived with them, whom "mom" simply cut on the kitchen table. In the apartment they found bloody children's clothes, skulls and bones of children from three to eight years old, containers with blood, bloody knives and Finns.
The child killer tried to get out. She explained that Teresita had recently been picked up on the street, and Angelita had been declared her daughter by her marriage to the artist Joan Pujalo.
She later admitted that she had kidnapped the newborn girl from her husband's sister, Maria Pujalo, informing her that the child was born dead.
After Enriqueta was imprisoned, the police decided to conduct a more thorough search of all the apartments of the infanticide. And amazing things turned out. In one of them, the children served the men, in the other, all the stolen babies lived in terrible conditions. In the third and fourth, children were killed, and their bodies were allowed to go to perfumery.
Children's bones, scraps of bloody clothing, powder, elixirs and other cosmetics were found almost everywhere. Doctors in the laboratory have confirmed that all "products" are made of human material. And even in the house of Enriketa's parents, the remains of the bodies of babies were found.
In total, the police found the remains of 12 children's bodies. But according to the conclusion of the investigators, given the scale of the business of the "Barcelona Vampire" (as the criminal was nicknamed), in total, about 40 children were her victims. The child killer-maniac was placed in the strictest prison in the city, and the inhabitants were waiting for the death sentence day after day. But for some reason the judge was dragging out the time, explaining that he wanted to know all this information firsthand. A version appeared that the judge was one of her clients.
In prison, 44-year-old Enriqueta Martí tried to commit suicide by cutting her veins. But this was not allowed to her. As a result, the case never came to court: a year and three months after her arrest, on May 12, 1913, she was found dead in her prison cell.
According to one version, the prisoners themselves killed her, amazed by the numerous murders of children. And on the other, her life was shortened by one of Enriqueta's former influential clients, who did not want his name to be made public.
Victor VOLYNSKY