There have been legions of men over the centuries who have married, then murdered, their spouses for profit, from the original “Bluebeard,” Henri Landru, to the notorious H.H. Holmes, who still stands today as one of America’s busiest mass murderers. Such a gruesome habit, however, on the part of the female of the species is relatively rare. A dark exception to this historic rule was Tillie Gbrurek Klimek, a resident of Chicago’s Little Poland neighborhood.

 Tillie Gbrurek was born to immigrant parents in 1865. At a young age, she began working in a North Side sweatshop, a fate shared by many poor inhabitants of the city in those days. By the age of 20, Tillie had given up on the idea of every finding a husband. To be charitable, she was not exactly the sort of girl to attract a man. She was short, broad, muscular and red-faced and dressed poorly in mannish-looking clothes. She was said to be a superb cook, however, one of the best in Little Poland (a Polish neighborhood near Damen and Augusta) – a skill that would someday bring Tillie into the public eye.

Unable to find a husband on her own, Tillie took $50 that she had saved over a three-year period and risked her savings with a marriage broker. Her investment gained her a dull young man named John Mitkiewitz, who promptly proposed to her. Mitkiewitz was also a little short on marriage prospects and he also knew that Tillie was the best cook in the community. The marriage did not save Tillie from the sweatshop, for Mitkiewitz turned out to be a shiftless type who would rather eat and drink than support his young wife. He occasionally labored as a handyman and jack-of-all-trades, but most of the time, his efforts were directed toward starting, or recovering from, a serious hangover.

 The years passed by and Tillie remained a meek and uncomplaining wife. She continued to labor in the sweatshop and by 1911, she seemed to be completely lost among the thousands of faces in the neighborhood. The only thing that saved her from complete obscurity was a certain amount of renown that attached itself to her ability as a cook. Stews were her specialty and she carefully guarded her recipes, obviously knowing that they were the only thing that set her apart from the rest of Little Poland.

Around this time, for reasons that remain unknown, a great change came over Tillie. Almost overnight, she seemed to gain some new sense of purpose and instead of grimly facing each new day, she charged forward with a fierce intensity. On one occasion, she earned the respect of her fellow workers in the sweatshop after she stopped the owner from beating a sickly child who worked there. Tillie physically attacked the man and after two blows, sent him to the floor. He was so frightened of her after this incident that he was too scared to fire her.

Feeling surprised at her newfound strength, she went home and, discovering her husband in one of his usual drunken stupors, gave him a beating that the entire neighborhood talked about for weeks afterward. For the first time in her previously uninteresting life, Tillie found herself being spoken to with admiration as she walked the streets of Little Poland. She finally had a taste of popularity and power – and she wanted more.

Tillie began searching for ways to enhance her popularity and knew that using the superstitions of the local people was an excellent way of making a name for herself. Many of the people in the neighborhood still embraced the customs and beliefs of the old country and looked at those who possessed supernatural powers with a mixture of awe, reverence, and, of course, fear. With that in mind, Tillie decided to become a prophet.

One hot summer evening in 1911, Tillie was sitting on a fire escape with a neighbor woman and she pointed to a yellow mongrel dog that was sniffing around for food in the alley below. She told the neighbor that the dog would be dead within a week. When asked how she knew this, Tillie replied, “My powers tell me so.”

On the seventh day, the dog was found lying stiff and dead and Tillie’s fabulous career as a seer was begun.

Over the course of the next three years, Tillie predicted the deaths of neighborhood cats and dogs with stunning accuracy. As a result, Little Poland learned to respect and fear her. She found the butcher would give her excellent prices on the meat that she bought for her stews when she hinted that evil might befall him if he overcharged her. The ice man made sure that his deliveries reached Tillie’s house first, especially after she mentioned to him that she disliked his product to be melted when it arrived. Men, women and children went out of their way to be nice to her. In fact, the only person not impressed by Tillie’s claims of prophecy was her husband. That, as it turned out, was to John Mitkiewitz’s misfortune.

One night in 1914, Tillie was sitting outside with a neighbor and made a strange and spooky comment to the other woman. She said, “I don’t think John is long for this world. The powers tell me that I will be a widow within three weeks.”

One morning, exactly three weeks later, Tillie went into the local butcher’s shop to buy some meat for a stew and announced, rather indifferently, that her husband had died. The butcher inquired about the cause of death. “He just got numb all over and then he stopped breathing,” she replied. Tillie then purchased her stew meat and left the store without another word.

She didn’t shed a single tear as her husband was lowered into the ground at All Saint’s Cemetery. After the funeral, she invited friends to her home for dinner and an impromptu celebration. Toward the end of the party, she let it be known that, although her husband had been a miserable drunk, she considered marriage to be a fine institution and was contemplating finding another mate.

Even though John Mitkiewitz was “barely cold,” as the saying goes, Tillie returned to the marriage broker a few weeks later. She had received, she admitted, $1,000 from an insurance company after her husband had died. Her money, along with her prowess as a cook, was enough, the broker believed, to counterbalance her lack of physical attraction when it came to arranging a match. Six weeks after the funeral of John Mitkiewitz, Tillie married again, this time to a man named John Ruskowski, who had recently taken a job as a section hand with the Pennsylvania Railroad and who, as luck would have it, carried a large insurance policy for $2,000.

Ruskowski, a man known for his enormous appetite, was pleased with his new bride. He often boasted to his friends and neighbors about how well Tillie kept him fed. He had no idea what she put in those stews of hers, he told everyone, but he had never tasted anything like them.

One night, after their first month of marriage, Ruskowski noticed that something seemed different about that evening’s stew. He asked Tillie what she had added to it and she simply told him that it was “a new spice.”

The following afternoon, Tillie was gathered with some of her friends and she told them that she was about to make another prophecy – her powers had previewed a new death in the neighborhood. Her friends asked her who was going to die. She replied, “Don’t say anything about it to him because it would worry him – but it’s my husband.”

Two weeks later, Tillie was in the butcher shop buying meat for another stew and just before she left, she informed the butcher that she had become a widow again during the night. She explained, “It was the same thing that happened to my first husband; he just got numb and died.”

John Ruskowski was laid to rest in All Saint’s Cemetery, just a short distance away from Tillie’s first husband. As on the occasion of the previous burial, she showed little emotion at the gravesite and later, at another party in her home, she expressed to her friends that she had every intention of finding another husband.

A hulking, ugly man by the name of Joseph Guszowski had put in a bid for a wife with the same marriage broker whom Tillie consulted about a third husband. Guszowski, a railroad laborer, was known to his friends as “Blunt Joe” because he honestly spoke his mind about everything. If he didn’t like the looks of someone, he told them, no matter what the consequences. When he met Tillie, he definitely did not like her looks. Despite his own, flat-faced countenance, he had hoped for a wife who was young and pretty, and said so to the marriage broker while still in Tillie’s presence. Tillie kept her feelings about the man’s comments to herself and, in fact, acted so grateful to him that Guszowski felt ashamed of himself and agreed to move into Tillie’s home on a trial basis. His notions about what a bride should be were somewhat alleviated by the fact that Tillie was such an excellent cook and that she had a bank account, thanks to the insurance payments from her two dead husbands, that was quite substantial in those days.

Guszowski became quite taken with Tillie’s cooking and eventually he overlooked her plain appearance and asked her to marry him. Tillie delayed the marriage, though, shortly after finding out that “Blunt Joe” carried no life insurance policy. However, still remembering his stinging remarks about her looks, she continued to feed him her “special” stew. Within two months of her last husband’s death, Guszowski had taken to his bed. Tillie told an impressed neighbor, “He’s numb all over, poor man. My powers tell me that he has less than two weeks of this life.” He died a short time later and was laid to rest in All Saint’s Cemetery.

Thirteen months after she had buried her first husband, Tillie married for the third time. The unlucky man was named Frank Kupczyk but he was known to his friends in the sweatshop where he worked as “Kuppy.” He was a friendly, easy-going man who, for whatever reason, believed that Tillie was the most attractive woman that he had ever met. This was a new experience for Tillie. It was the first time that she was married to a man who liked her for herself and not only for her cooking. Many believe that, at the age of 50, Tillie was in love for the first time in her life.

On the day of the wedding, Tillie and Kuppy threw a wild party in their home, serving huge quantities of food and drink. The party went on for hours but the only person who did not take part in the merry-making was a young woman named Rose Chudzinski, a distant relative of the bride who lived in a nearby apartment. Many of the guests tried to get Rose to join in the party, but she refused. Finally, Tillie demanded to know what was wrong with her. Rose’s reply had an ominous tone, “I have been wondering how long your new husband is going to live.”

Tillie grew angry and demanded to know what she meant by the remark. Rose told her that she thought was odd how soon after marrying her that her previous husbands had died. Tillie threw her out of the house and Rose left without another word.

Several of Tillie’s friends, who had been temporarily sobered by the incident, waited in embarrassed silence for some sort of explanation from the bride. Tillie had been unnerved but she quickly recovered herself. She shook her head before she spoke, “Poor child. We must be sorry for her rather than angry because she’s soon going to die.”

Her friends expressed shock that a girl as young and vibrant might die but Tillie told them there was nothing she could do it about it. Her powers foretold Rose’s death – and there was nothing Tillie could do to stop the future from coming to pass.

Tillie enjoyed such a status as a prophet in the neighborhood that no one who heard her wedding night pronouncement ever made any connection between the coming death of Rose Chudzinski and the fact that the girl had made some very pointed remarks to Tillie. These same witnesses were, in fact, greatly impressed when it became known that Tillie was making frequent visits to Rose’s home in an effort to patch things up between the two of them. When Rose died within six weeks of Tillie’s third wedding, Tillie, rather than drawing suspicion to herself, took on added stature as a prophet. She had foretold, ten days earlier, the exact day of Rose’s death. The young woman became the fourth person close to Tillie to die.

In retrospect, it seems incredible that Tillie could have been so closely associated with four deaths within such a short space of time without drawing official suspicion to herself. The neighborhood where she lived, however, offers much in the way of explanation. To speak out against a seer in Little Poland in those days, let alone suspect one of ulterior motives, was considered the same as signing one’s death warrant by way of courting a prophet’s curse. Rose Chudzinski had cast aspersions on Tillie and the young woman’s fresh grave was a frightening reminder of the terrible things that could happen to anyone who entertained ideas similar to those of Rose.

In addition, Tillie had also seen to it that four different doctors and four different undertakers had been summoned following the four deaths. Two different insurance companies had paid policies on Tillie’s dead husbands and therefore, no outsider in possession of sufficient facts upon which to draw a suspicious inference could be found. Since no one brought the deaths to the attention of the Chicago Police Department, there was no one to look into her mysterious “special” stews.

Following the death of Rose Chudzinski, Tillie went into a quiet period. She left the sweatshop where she had toiled for years and was apparently quietly content to stay home and cook for her adoring husband. Just to maintain her reputation, she continued to predict the deaths of dozens of neighborhood dogs and cats. Her predictions, of course, were never wrong.

In early 1920, circumstances arose that caused Tillie to be glad that she had maintained her reputation as a seer. She had gotten into arguments with the parents of three small children, and the children died, one by one, just as Tillie had predicted they would.

Shortly after the death of the third child, Tillie turned her attentions to Kuppy, whose affections had somewhat cooled toward her over the previous five years. Moreover, during a fire escape chat with a neighbor lady, Tillie also learned that Kuppy had developed a roving eye. By strange coincidence, her “powers” revealed to Tillie that Kuppy was not long for this world at the same time she discovered that his romantic interests lay elsewhere.

Tillie went into a neighborhood store and bought some black cloth, which she announced was going to be for the funeral of her husband, who was going to die in 10 days.  Tillie’s next stop was at the undertaker’s establishment, where she bought the cheapest casket available. While Kuppy was at work, she had it delivered to the basement of the tenement where she lived.

Kuppy, who was a great believer in his wife’s supernatural powers, noticed that she was sewing a black hat one evening and he asked her what it was for, commenting that it looked like a mourning hat. Tillie told him that it was and added that her powers told her that a death was coming in eight days and that she would have to attend a funeral.

Six days later, Kuppy was restricted to his bed, unable to rise, suffering from severe pains in his legs and stomach. He was dead within two days and Tillie had him laid out in his coffin for the wake. She threw another party on the night of Kuppy’s funeral and with a mug of beer in her hand, remarked to a neighbor woman that it was unfortunate that she had such bad luck with husbands. The neighbor was shocked when Tillie said that she hoped the next one lasted longer. She explained, “His name is Anton Klimek. He works in a brewery.”

In the summer of 1921, shortly after collecting the insurance money for Kuppy’s death, Tillie married Anton Joseph Klimek, a short, mild-mannered man in his fifties. Tillie left the old apartment, where three husbands and a prospective groom had died, and moved to Winchester Street in Little Poland.

Tillie and Klimek were quite happy during their first months of marriage until two large dogs, which Joe had owned for several years, caused a rift to form between them. Tillie complained to a friend one day that Klimek spent more time with his dogs than he did with her. Her “powers,” though, provided a solution to the problem. She predicted that the dogs were going to die within one hour of each other. Klimek was not told of this prophecy and the first that he heard about it was one night in October when, returning from the brewery, he stumbled over the bodies of both dogs as he let himself into the apartment.

Klimek went around to tell his brother, John, who ran a blacksmith shop about his misfortune. John stared at his brother curiously as he told the story and while he expressed condolences about Anton’s beloved dogs, he stated that he was more worried about the life of his brother. When asked why, John told him that his face was puffed up and had a purple cast to it. He wondered if Joe might be coming down with something.

The following day, Joe called on his brother again and told him that he had pains in his legs and that something seemed to be wrong with his hearing. John began to question his brother about his wife’s previous husbands, a subject that Joe knew very little about. When he arrived home, he asked Tillie about them and she dismissed the subject and chalked up their deaths to bad luck. Joe’s aches and pains were nothing that a hearty meal couldn’t cure. Even though her stew tasted bitter, she coerced him into eating a bowl of it anyway.

It was John Klimek who finally contacted the Chicago Police Department about his brother’s situation. Several officers came to Tillie and Joe’s apartment at 924 North Winchester on October 27, 1921 and found that Klimek was literally at death’s door. One more bowl of stew likely would have done him in – and it was simmering on the stove when the police arrived.

Klimek eventually recovered, after suffering from paralysis for a time, and became the only victim of Tillie to survive her “special” stews. The bitter flavor that Klimek had tasted in his bowl was arsenic and the authorities only had to dig up one body, Kuppy’s, to prove that Tillie was a “female Bluebeard.”

Tillie fought savagely against the police and sent several officers to the hospital before she could be tossed into a cell. In the investigation that followed, several of Tillie’s friends and cousins were also arrested and newspapers called Tillie a “high priestess of the Bluebeard clique”. Eventually, the others – each of whom had also suffered the loss of spouses and family members – were cleared. Tillie’s trial, for the murder of three husbands, quickly commenced and it became a circus. Three gravediggers and a “lady undertaker” reportedly kept the audience laughing and the judge had to frequently remind the giggling crowd that the court was not a vaudeville theater. Tillie’s casual attitude about the death of her husband startled the press. One nurse testified that Tillie said about her paralyzed husband, “if (Joe) gives you any trouble, hit him over the head with a two-by-four.” Tillie strutted around in court, posed for the newspaper cameras, sneered at the prosecutor and even made another prediction – that she would escape the gallows.

And she did: she was sentenced to life in prison instead. She was put to work in jail but prison officials expressly ordered that she never be allowed to cook for her fellow inmates.