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The births recorded on this date span continents and centuries, yet share a common thread: violence turned inward against the domestic and the familiar. Mária Gerzsány, born in the mid-nineteenth century in Austria-Hungary, carried out her crimes within the close quarters of a small community, using arsenic — the quiet instrument of choice for poisoners across that era — against people within her own circle. More than a century later, Cleophus Cooksey Jr. represents a different but equally intimate form of lethal violence, his crimes rooted in personal grievance and proximity. Together they reflect a recurring pattern: destruction that begins not in grand theaters of war or ideology, but in the immediate, the personal, and the close at hand.

March 25, 1851 - Mária Gerzsány

Operating in a rural Hungarian town over roughly six years, she worked not only as a killer but apparently as a supplier — selling arsenic to others seeking to eliminate family members, which suggests her reach extended well beyond the three deaths for which she was convicted. The life sentence she received reflected the courts' certainty, even as the full scope of her activity remained difficult to establish.

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March 25, 1982 - Cleophus Cooksey Jr.

Over the course of three weeks in late 2017, Cooksey carried out a string of killings across the Phoenix metropolitan area that left eight people dead — a sustained episode of violence that also encompassed serial rape. The span and pace of the attacks, compressed into so short a window, distinguish this case within the record of American spree killings. Conviction came in 2025, nearly eight years after the crimes.

Read more …March 25, 1982 - Cleophus Cooksey Jr.

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