Marie Fikáčková

Marie Fikáčková
Marie Fikáčková
	Executed
Conviction(s)	Murder
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	2–10+
Span of crimes	1957–1960
Country	Czechoslovakia

Marie Fikáčková (9 September 1936 – 13 April 1961) was a

executed by hanging

in 1961.

Early life

Marie Fikáčková (

nurse in the obstetrics

department of the hospital in Sušice.

newborn babies died at the obstetric department while Fikáčková was working. Both newborns were females, aged 20 hours and 5 weeks, and the following autopsy found the babies had died an unnatural violent death. Four days later, on 27 February, Fikáčková was arrested directly in the workplace, and during the subsequent interrogation, she confessed to killing the children. She admitted that both had their skull

cracked, and broke one of their hands, and acknowledged she also used violence against a dozen other newborns, but those - in her words - survived the attack. During the investigation, Fikáčková confessed to killing at least ten newborn babies at Sušice hospital since she began working there in 1957.

The motive for the murders was never officially confirmed, but based on statements made by Fikáčková, claimed she developed temporary feelings of

paedophobia (hatred of children) during her menstruation periods. While invoking crying in the newborn children as part of her work, the crying would cause her to enter a rage where she beat the children severely. The court doctors found Fikáčková to be sane, but prone to depression, hysteria and uncontrollable outbursts of anger

.

At her trial, Fikáčková was charged and convicted for only the two murders on 23 February 1960, as it was not possible to prove the older killings she claimed to have committed. The hospital was found to have lacked properly functioning supervision mechanisms to deal with the deaths of newborns, and the murders were discovered only because she killed two children in one day and their corpses were properly examined. No responsible physician or administrator was charged or even demoted, and the whole affair was kept secret from the public for decades.