#7 - Berenice Alanís
In 2003, Mexican businessman Jacobo Quesada became romantically involved with his housekeeper,
Berenice Alanis, whom he would later marry. The pair lived peacefully with Quesada’s 2 children
for the better part of 20 years until things eventually turned sour. Alanis allegedly had
an affair, which prompted her wealthy husband to remove her from his will. The woman then
devised a plot to eliminate Quesada and his adult children in order to gain access to his fortune,
valued at approximately $19.5 million. On the night of April the 5th of 2019, Alanis arrived
at the family-owned gym in Mexico City to meet her husband and stepchildren. Shortly thereafter,
an armed man entered the premises and gunned down Alanis’ family. It didn’t take long for local
authorities to conclude that the now-widowed woman had not only been involved in the triple homicide,
but had actually been the murder plot’s mastermind. She was taken into custody
on 3 counts of aggravated homicide. A judge subsequently ordered her conditional release,
but Alanis took advantage of her freedom and went on the run. The so-called Black Widow’s
flight from justice lasted for about the next 3 years. Then, in the summer of 2022, Alanis
was spotted at an exclusive resort in Acapulco. She was arrested in the resort’s luxury hotel,
bringing her time on the run from the authorities to an end. As of the case’s latest updates,
the man responsible for carrying out the deadly shooting at the family gym was still at large.
#6 -
Roberta Williams
An Australian reality TV producer was savagely beaten in July of 2019 after a woman with whom
he’d entered a business partnership suspected him of scamming her. The victim, 36-year-old Ryan
Naumenko, reportedly came up with an idea for a reality television series akin to VH1’s Mob Wives,
that would center on Roberta Williams. The latter had been widowed back in 2010 after her husband,
infamous criminal Carl Williams, was murdered by a fellow inmate at Barwon Prison as part
of the Melbourne gangland killings. Roberta was initially receptive to Naumenko’s pitch for the
reality show. A couple of months later, however, she grew suspicious of the producer after he’d
begun “dodging payment requests from Daniel De Silva, the owner of the video production
company hired to edit the footage”. Enraged by the notion that Naumenko might be trying
to bilk her out of the money she was owed, Roberta subsequently lured the man to the
production company’s studio in Collingwood. Upon his arrival, Naumenko was ambushed by the widow,
as well as 5 male assailants, who tied him to a chair, wrapped an electrical cord around his neck,
and beat him to a bloody pulp. Court records revealed that, in addition to the beating,
Roberta threatened to harm Naumenko’s family or falsely accuse him of abusing them if he failed
to hand over the money. In the aftermath, Roberta and her accomplices were arrested in connection
to the brutal assault. The woman pleaded guilty to charges of blackmail and recklessly causing
injury, and was consequently sentenced to a 2-year community corrections order.
#5 - Betty Neumar
After Harold Gentry was gunned down in his North Carolina home under mysterious
circumstances in 1986, the police were urged to investigate the possible involvement of his wife,
Betty Neumar. In May of 2008, after investigators finally took a closer look at the widowed woman,
she was taken into custody on a charge of solicitation of murder. According to the
resulting criminal indictment, Neumar had "’sought out a former police officer and
her neighbor to kill her husband in the months before his death'",
with the motive allegedly being his $20,000 life insurance policy”. The woman, then in her 70s,
was extradited back to North Carolina, and it subsequently came to light that,
over the course of her lifetime, she’d been married to 5 men, all of whom had died, and
3 of whom had been fatally shot. The suspicious nature of Neumar’s other husbands’ deaths caused
her case to garner national headlines, and she quickly became known as “The Black Widow”. Then,
in June of 2011, the woman passed away from cancer-related complications in a
hospital in Alexandria, Louisiana, while still awaiting the commencement of her criminal trial.
#4 - Sabrina Cynthia Novillo
On July the 20th of 2020, police in the Argentinian city of Quilmes arrested Sabrina
Cynthia Novillo at a clandestine party being held despite the stringent pandemic-related
restrictions in place at the time. It subsequently emerged that the 36-year-old woman was a wanted
member of a crew of so-called “black widows”, who were accused of drugging and robbing five
wealthy businessmen between 2018 and 2020. The other women alleged to have participated
in the predatory scheme were Novillo’s sister and sister-in-law, as well as a 17-year-old accomplice
named Pamela Sosa. The crew reportedly carried out its final robbery on May the 25th of 2020,
when Novillo and Sosa accompanied an unidentified man they’d met on WhatsApp back to his apartment.
As the victim later told investigators, the women slipped him a pill of benzodiazepine,
which put him to sleep almost instantly. When he awoke the following morning,
$70,000 had been stolen from him, along with a pair of high-end watches, his cell phone,
and his car. In 2019, Novillo had received a suspended 3-year jail sentence for a string
of robberies committed between 2009 and 2012. In connection to her more recent crime spree,
Novillo was reportedly arraigned in Buenos Aires court in August of 2020.
#3 - Chisako Kakehi
In 2013, 75-year-old cancer survivor Isao Kakehi met his wife, Chisako Kakehi,
through a Japanese matchmaking agency. Within 2 months of their first encounter,
the couple were married, and had moved in together in Kyoto’s Muko City. However, the Kakehis’
seemingly blissful relationship took an abrupt turn for the worse when, on December the 28th,
while the couple were sharing a meal at home, Isao suffered a cardiopulmonary arrest. He was rushed
to the hospital, where he ultimately passed away an hour later. In the wake of Isao’s sudden death,
suspicions began to arise regarding Chisako, who had just been left widowed for the third time
in 2 years. One of her romantic partners, named as Masanori Honda, had lost consciousness while
riding his motorcycle on March the 9th of 2012 and died in the resulting crash. The following summer,
Kakehi’s new companion, Minoru Hioki, died suddenly after the couple had just finished eating
dinner. After Isao’s death in December, Japanese authorities began to notice the disturbing pattern
of Kakehi’s husbands dying under abrupt and mysterious circumstances. They conducted an
autopsy on Isao, whereupon it was determined that there were lethal amounts of cyanide in
his system. In August of 2014, the police raided Chisako’s home, where they discovered a plastic
bag containing trace amounts of cyanide buried in a potted plant that the woman had discarded.
She was arrested and charged with murdering Honda, Hioki, and Isao, as well as the attempted murder
of a fourth romantic partner in 2007. During the ensuing court proceedings, it emerged that
investigators also suspected Chisako of being responsible for at least 7 other deaths. She was
convicted of the murders and consequently sentenced to death in November of 2017.
#2 - Stacey Castor
In the winter of 1999, New York man Michael Wallace began feeling intermittently ill,
causing him to act unsteady, cough violently, and appear as though parts of his body were swollen.
The inexplicable sickness eventually killed him in early 2000, and although members of
his family requested an autopsy, his wife, Stacey, refused, saying she believed the doctor’s theory
that he’d died of a sudden heart attack. Three years later, Stacey married the owner of an air
conditioning installation and repair company named David Castor. Much like Stacey’s first husband,
David’s life came to an abrupt end in August of 2005, when he was found dead inside the couple’s
bedroom. The subsequent autopsy revealed that the man had died after being administered a lethal
dose of antifreeze, and investigators initially concluded that he’d taken his own life. However,
Stacey’s fingerprints were later found on the glass David used to drink the poison, and the
police began to consider the possibility that his death had actually been a cold-blooded homicide,
perpetrated by his own wife. The authorities later exhumed Wallace’s body and found that he,
too, had trace amounts of antifreeze in his system when he died. At that point,
Stacey became the prime suspect in both of her husband’s killings. In 2007, she was
arrested on a charge of second-degree murder in connection to David’s death, and was also accused
of attempting to murder her daughter, Ashley Wallace, with crushed pills mixed into vodka,
orange juice, and Sprite. Although she was never formally charged for her first husband’s death,
it was widely believed that she’d killed him in the same manner as David. Following her
criminal trial, Stacey was found guilty of the charges levied against her and sentenced
to 51 years in prison. In June of 2016, she was found dead in her cell at the age of 48. It was
reported that she’d died of a heart attack, and that there was no evidence of foul play.
#1 - Helen Milner
In May of 2009, New Zealander Philip Nisbet was found dead inside his Christchurch residence.
Investigators discovered a typed death note near his body, as well as empty bottles of Phenergan,
an antihistamine to which the 47-year-old was allergic. Nisbet’s grieving wife,
Helen Milner, showed the devastating note to the man’s sister, who immediately noticed that
something was amiss. In her 2016 book titled The Black Widow, Nisbet’s sister, Lee-Anne Cartier,
detailed how she’d instantly known that the handwritten signature at the bottom of the
note her brother had supposedly typed before taking his own life hadn’t actually been written
by him. Cartier began to suspect that Milner might have been somehow involved in his death,
and that she’d forged the note as a way of diverting suspicions away from her. The police
initially considered it an open and shut case. However, Cartier conducted her own detective
work over the next 2 and a half years, which led her to collect enough evidence to convince the
police to reopen the investigation. In October of 2011, Milner was arrested and charged with
her late husband’s murder, for which she went on trial in 2013. Court documents revealed that
the woman had procured the Phenergan used to kill her husband over time in a series
of purchases made under false names. Motivated by the victim’s $250,000 life insurance policy,
Milner allegedly tried to commit the murderous deed in a similar way 1 month prior to when
she was ultimately successful. In the summer of 2017, 53-year-old Milner was convicted of murder
and consequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 17 years.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather learn that each of your significant other's exes died
under mysterious circumstances or overhear your airplane’s pilot say mid-flight that
he is still drunk from last night? Let us know in the comments section below!