On a bright and sunny day in 1650, Palermo, Italy, a woman served her husband a bowl of soup laced with poison. Before her husband could take a spoonful, the woman had a change of heart and begged him not to eat it.
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This raised the man's suspicions and he abused his wife until she confessed to poisoning the food. With her confession, a bowl of soup brought down 17th-century Rome's most notorious assassin who murdered over 600 men.
Women were auctioned off like objects to loveless and often abusive marriages in 17th-century Italy. They had no standing in society and few opportunities to better their situations. They could marry and hope that their husband treated them decently, they could remain single and rely on sex work to survive, or they could become a widow.
For many women, the third option was the most attractive. Luckily for them, 17th-century Rome had a flourishing 'criminal magical underworld' that provided the services to make this possible. This underground community was made up of alchemists, apothecaries, and experts in 'black magic'.
One of the fastest and easiest ways for a woman to get rid of her husband was by means of poison. If poison is truly a woman's weapon, no one has wielded it like Giulia Tofana - the lady who was none other than the mother of Renaissance Italy's most effective and traceless poison 'Aqua Tofana'.
The poison was famously used by wives looking to discreetly off their husbands, mostly for the purpose of escaping dangerous and abusive marriages.
Giulia was the leader of a poisonous network that spanned across Sicily, Naples and Rome, providing a black market service highly in demand between the years of 1630 to 1655. Her underground empire included cunning women, back door apothecaries, crooked clergymen, and fortune-telling witches, solely dedicated to the sale and distribution of poison.
Some called her a serial murderer and others called her a seductive assassin, but the truth was far more sinister.
Giulia's personal life was not entirely disclosed. However it can be inferred that she was indeed living with an abusive father - Thofania d'Adamo, who was executed in Palermo on 12 July 1633, under accusations of having murdered her husband Francis.
Giulia was described as very beautiful and in light of her parents' deaths, she spent a lot of time with apothecaries and eventually developed her own poison.