DDT - Deambulações DeMentes Teóricas 24

The Serial Killer - Part XIV
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Next we have La Quintrala or Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperger, a chilean colonialist who abused and murdered more than 40 of her tenants in the XVII century.

I do love serial killers in skirts. Maybe because we tend to look at them as even more cruel than men, perhaps because women are usually not expected to be violent. There's a certain poetic paradox in a violent woman that attracts me. Not that I would ever be sexually interested in one such specimen. I prefer other things. But we will come to that at some other time.

Catalina was notorious for being a beautiful woman who became an icon of colonial abuse and opression. Her skin was described as snow white, her hair a wonderful red cascade (hence the nickname Quintrala) and her eyes as green as those of a cat. Her beauty was the result of a combination between indian, spanish and german blood. Bishop Francisco González de Salcedo said of her that she had physical atributes "that made her sexually very attractive to men." I always wondered if the bishop himself ever had sinful thoughts with Catalina.

It was also said that Catalina was initiated in witchraft by her aunt and grandmother. The young woman supposedly murdered her own father, by poison prepared by herself, while he was ill. She was never punished for that crime. Her next victim was the daughter of her husband. She had many lovers, some of which she killed. The first one was murdered with a knife, and Catalina blamed a woman slave for the crime. The next one she also stabbed to death, feeling offended with his dismissal because he claimed she was enfatuated with a clergyman. Catalina also cut the left ear of a nobleman and killed a knight.
While her husband was still alive, rumours were spread about terrible things happening in her own lands. Many slaves were murdered and disappeared. A priest warned her about her love life and her cruelties and she tried to murder him. In that same year her tenants rebelled against her and abandoned the lands. Catalina brought them back by force and tried each and every one in a court presided by herself.

For many years she went unharmed and continued her reinship of cruelty and murders, because she was a wealthy member of society and had many known acquaintances in high places. Until at last a secret investigation was initiated concerning the acusations of Bishop Francisco Luis de Salcedo. She was taken away from her property so that her victims could feel safe to tell what had been happening. She was brought to justice and tried in a public court. This took a long time, because of her power and money, and she was set free in the end. She died alone and feared. Her property was for a long time abandoned, for people did not want to have anything to do with anything concerning La Quintrala.

Maybe this was all true, or maybe it was just a product of a certain Bishop's elbow pain for feeling rejected in his interest in the red haired beauty. Or maybe the world at that time was not yet prepared for a woman with any kind of power.