CRIME HUNTER: Maria Becker’s murderous midlife crisis

Article content

Maria Becker had spent much of her life as a staid housewife in Liege, Belgium.

Article content

But when she turned 55-years-old in 1932, Becker decided it was time to let her hair down. And she did it in style.

Becker embarked on an affair with a local gigolo named Lambert Beyer who was much younger than she was. There was, however, a problem in the form of Sweet Maria’s hubby. So, she did what any black widow worth her salt would: She poisoned him with digitalis.

Now, she was loaded and free to spend her free time with Beyer. But the younger man could not keep up with Marie’s insatiable sexual appetite and was dispatched in a similar fashion. But who cared? Besides he left her a whack of dough in his will.

Soon, Becker became a frequent flier at local nightclubs, “performing wild dances with men half her age” and paying the young men to have sex with her. But the good times wouldn’t last, as she was running out of money.

Article content

So, our enterprising Belgian opened a modest dress shop. There, she robbed and poisoned elderly women with a little extra something in their tea.

Cops would later guesstimate that Maria murdered at least 10 old ladies in this manner. Detectives would later suspect the victim roster was closer to 20.

No one, least of all detectives, were looking at Maria as a possible serial killer. Her problem was that she cared. A friend told her she wanted her hubby dead so Maria suggested digitalis and even turned over some from her own stash.

“I can supply you with a powder that will leave no trace,” Maria allegedly told her friend.

But Maria’s pal cooled off from the white heat of the moment. Then she went to the cops and Maria was arrested in October 1936. Investigators exhumed the bodies and found poison in the bodies of her husband, lover and her elderly customers.

Article content

Detectives noted that Maria would attend her victims’ funerals and go into hysterics in grief.

But at her murder trial, was she remorseful? Not at all. Instead she gloated over her sexual and homicidal antics

“[One of her victims] looked like an angel choked with sauerkraut,” she told the court, adding that another was “dying beautifully, lying flat on her back.”

Maria maintained she was innocent despite a pile of evidence to the contrary. Belgium didn’t have a death penalty statute so Maria was sentenced to life in prison and died in the slammer during the Second World War.

CALIFORNIA WOMAN MURDERED IN 1977 IDENTIFIED

For Linda LeBeau, life stopped with a bullet in the head in 1977.

But 44 years later, the Southern California woman has finally been identified — as has her likely killer.

Article content

LeBeau had been reported missing that year in Tustin, in Riverside County. In 1986, a skull and other skeletal remains were found on the side of an embankment along the Ortega Highway by road surveyors. Cops determined she had been shot in the head, but for decades they were unable to identify who the remains belonged to.

Last summer, the Regional Cold Case Homicide Team had several sets of remains exhumed and sent for DNA comparisons. LeBeau’s remains were identified thanks to a match with relatives in the state’s missing persons database.

Cops learned that LeBeau was divorced and that her boyfriend had reported her missing. On the day she disappeared, LeBeau had been scheduled to meet her ex-husband Phillip LeBeau at a local gas station.

Article content

She was never seen again. Her ex-husband was considered the prime suspect in her disappearance but he died in 2008.

“Tustin police investigators had maintained an active investigation into the missing persons, possible homicide case, since her disappearance, continuing to follow up on leads, but had not been able to bring the case to resolution,”  the Riverside County district attorney’s office said.

MISSING – FOUL PLAY FEARED

SHARON DROVER – DEC. 29, 1979.

411: On the above date, Sharon Drover, 17-years-old at the time, vanished from St. John’s Nfld. According to cops, her disappearance wasn’t reported until several weeks later as her family thought she was staying at her foster mother’s house and the foster mother thought she was with family.

On the day she disappeared, Drover left her boarding house to pick up her paycheque at the McDonald’s on Kinmount Rd. She never arrived. Later, two brothers said they picked up a hitchhiker, whom they thought may have been Drover and dropped her off on Long’s Hill, adjacent to the boarding house. She stopped and talked with a man and then ran down Long’s Hill. Cops suspect it was Drover. Foul play is suspected.

CONTACT: Crime Stoppers, the RCMP or your local police department.

[email protected]

@HunterTOSun