Giulia Tofana Killed Over 600 Men With Her Poisonous Makeup - Mystery & Makeup | Bailey Sarian

hi my beautiful friends how are you today I'm so like hi how are you I hope you're doing well I changed up my background I know ground breaking and I went back to the original color I know I know fantastic love it beautiful Wow my name is Bailey serían and today is Monday which means it's murder mystery and makeup monday sunshine sunshine senate if you are new here hi every Monday I sit down I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my that wasn't a good one heavy on my okay we got

it noggin and I do my makeup at the same time if you're interested in true crime and you like makeup I would highly suggest you hit that subscribe button I'm here for you every Monday and I upload on Saturdays as well but other than that I think that's all I have to say oh don't forget to Like and subscribe and do all that nonsense take a lab walk around grab a snack come on back and and ah damn I feel like I was on a roll there so last week we talked about that very suspicious

case suspicion all sorts of ways so you know someone just got away with it spoiler sorry anyways today I want to talk about a story that I've been working on for like a year which makes it sound like I'm gonna have like some grand storyline right no you see this case there's not that much information about this woman but it's too interesting and it's too fitting to not talk about it the case of Julia Tofana have you heard of her well let me tell you if you're ever curious as to what I'm using I do

link it down in the description box down below but other than that I will just shut my little mouth and get right into it cuz this chick is crazy so she is the most successful serial killer whose name you've probably never heard of let's welcome to the stage Julia - oh ah I'm sorry that setup was like I was announcing her okay yes she's the most successful serial killer that lip has never talked about Juliet killed hundreds of men in the seventeenth century in Italy when she turned her makeup business into a poison factory did

I tell you it was fitting because it kind of is well no because I'm not killing people never mind Julia who is selling a deadly concoction called aqua - fauna which was thought to have been laced with arsenic lead and belladonna which I didn't quite understand what belladonna was hmm she doesn't know anything I'm an ad I know the belladonna berry juice was used historically in Italy you see the women use just a drop of it in each of their eyes to dilate their pupils and what this would do is give their eyes like this

luminous striking appearance so they say lead and arsenic were common ingredients for facial powders at the time and it would lighten the skin you know this was again during the Renaissance when nobody knew any better okay they found dilated pupils to be highly attractive which you know nowadays when you see someone dilated pupils you're like are you okay no now again this took place during the Renaissance so ranged marriages was still a thing definitely okay women were often forced into just marriages by their families without having any say whatsoever once married men had complete control

over their wives over women and just these women were left completely powerless they had no say no control and they just had to sit there and take it husbands would often beat their wives and not face any type of consequences are punishing it for that and would just subject them to all sorts of cruel treatments again they couldn't do a damn thing so that sucks it was a world it was a time when men just ruled over their own families and even the most aristocratic of daughters were often just seen as items to be auctioned

off into loveless marriage like it didn't matter if you came from money or anything everybody every woman was just an item an accessory just their divorce definitely was not a thing yet would never think to just leave your husband you wouldn't even bring it up so don't even think about it sit there look pretty smile and be a wife sounds awful so what do you do when you're in these loveless unhappy abusive marriages that you literally like cannot get out of what's your only option well some would say murder so who was this Julia Tofana

well one of history's most prolific serial killers still remains a mystery yeah you heard that right okay look there's no portraits of her information about her is very sparse there or there was an image going around a portrait of a young woman she was holding I think it was like a unicorn and many had said that this was Julia that this was a portrait of her it was proven in fact that it wasn't her and there are no portraits or no known surviving portraits of Julia at all she's seriously like a big mystery I tried

looking I've tried okay I was looking can it find much I mean I was a long time ago what do I expect Julia Tofana was possibly the daughter of a woman named the afonya D'Adamo Danielle it she was executed in July of 16 33 and she was executed because she actually murdered her husband now Julia was described as being very beautiful and she spent a lot of her time with apothecaries which are people who prepared and sold medicines and/or drugs but she spent a lot of time hanging out with them and learning how to make

her own concoctions how to make her own medicines how to make her own drugs Julia found a lot of interest in this she was good at it too she would ask a lot of questions and she started mixing her own potions now some say that Julia learned to make her own poison but then some say that she actually learned how to make poison from her mother the afonya who also made poison and she passed on the recipe to her daughter before she was executed but some heavily believed that Julia actually just learned how to make

herself regardless a clear harmless-looking liquid a small four to six drops were quote sufficient to destroy a man and quote is what julia made it was named aqua Tofana sounds bushi so this product it would appear to be like a typical woman's cosmetic product or even a religious healing oil that no husband or no person would suspect of being deadly poison and this poison was in Julia's possession and she began to sell sell it and also her daughter also helped make and sell it as well I'm sure you all know this like fragrance commercials God

they're the worst it's like what is going on they never make sense they're always so sexual and just ridiculous make sense right anyways what I'm getting at is aqua chill fauna sounds like something that would be like those damn Johnny Depp commercials where he's like just being weird out in the desert and they're selling a fragrance that's what it reminds me of not the point though so first Julia actually disguised aqua Tofana as a powdered makeup woman would like or could set it on the the counter on their dressing tables next to their lotions and

their beauty related products without raising any type of suspicion you know like what the hell is that her second disguise was even more ingenious she sold aqua to fauna hidden in small vials the vial claimed to be mana of Saint Nicholas of Bari a special healing ointment that looked like a devotional object you're probably asking well why is she doing this in the first place because julia was sympathetic towards like low status women and most often sold her poison to women who were trapped in difficult and abusive marriages she just really wanted to help she

became known as a friend to the troubled wife and you know due to word-of-mouth she was well known amongst the fellow ladies aquata fauna provided a quick discreet solution to their this looks crazy now to be fair she did sell her her concoction to men as well but mostly a lot of her customers were just women mainly women and these women would buy it from Julia and then give it to their husbands it was their only way out apparently now this product it was popular because it was almost impossible to detect and it was a

slow action poison that had two key benefits it made these symptoms it produced in its victims resembled those of like I don't know an advancing disease like a flu also it kind of made it look like it was a death from natural causes and because it killed slowly most of the men would put their affairs in order or even write a will most of the people during this time were deeply religious and I'm laughing because look most of the people were deeply religious I'm not laughing at that that's great because like this was a slow

working poison it gave them in time to repent his sins which was highly believed to guarantee their entry into heaven which also made the wives feel better like oh well at least he repented his sins so now he's gonna like go to heaven when he dies so kind of like made you know the women just feel better and plus they wrote a will now acqua to fun if I say it one more time this product was also colorless tasteless and she made it a liquid versus the powder that way it was easy for women to

mix it in with their water or their wine during meals all of the times also they would eat like soup and they would just put a couple of drops right in there now the symptoms would actually go unnoticed the first small dosage would produce cold like symptoms and by the third dose the victim would feel very ill be throwing up dehydration diarrhea and a burning sensation in their stomach and then by the fourth dosage it would kill the victim so women would just add a little drop of it into a meal or the drink and

just a tiny bit and just do it one day at a time some women would do shit-ton at once and they would get very ill and die women in Italy during that time had only three ways to make a living they got married they begged or they prostituted themselves now I know the word prostitute is kind of frowned upon it's not we call it sex workers now but back then it was considered prostitution so I'm gonna say prostituted themselves women would often die in childbirth due to complications a lot of the times women would have

tribes of children I mean tons of kids there was one woman she was like super powerful and she was on her eighth kid and she died of complications she came from a very wealthy family I want to say her name but I know I'm gonna say it wrong she came from a very powerful family at that time and they were very very wealthy so you would think like even the wealthy people could afford to take care of their women and they did not they often just died after trying to give birth or giving birth women

again were beaten and mistreated and just powerless and well some women just straight-up hated their husbands and a lot of women just feared childbirth because I mean they could die look their lives seemed to just not be that great I think we can all agree on that and they weren't less than - they weren't heard and if you're getting beat all the time it's much better to be considered a whit a widow which was like kind of frowned upon it's a way better option than dying that's for sure I think we can all agree on

that but we shouldn't murder people Bailey you can't say that I'm not saying that so Julia's her clients were very protective of her and her clients would only recommend Julia if they knew it was somebody that could be trusted and someone that was a good friend and nobody would ever you know send someone Julia's way if they knew like this person shady or whatever so it was again all word-of-mouth they were really protective of her because if authorities found out what Julia was doing what she was selling not only would she murdered but also her

client list would go down with her so everybody was very quiet about what was going on it was like everyone's just little secret now in order to sell this product Julia really just needed a front so what she did was she opened up her own like cosmetics counter but not really because it was just she was selling her own cosmetics to women in southern Italy some women would just come to her looking for cosmetics but most of her clients would be interested in aqua tal fauna and if there were any suspicions going on about what

julia was doing it she could easily be like what are you talking about I'm selling cosmetics obviously and this seemed to work for her because she was doing this for almost 50 years yeah 50 years everyone kept their mouth shut which is surprising I'm not saying that women can't keep their mouth shut but come on I mean you would think someone would say something right they were good they were loyal now poison was women's weapon of choice when they wanted to murder someone in medieval and early modern Europe historian annette drew bare has argued that

renaissance plays featured women applying face paint on stage to reference women's false and poisonous nature is that what I'm doing so Julia Tufano wasn't the only woman associated with poisoning people in the Renaissance not by a long shot Julia and her daughter though operated very quietly obviously should they went on for like 50 years in Italy so they ended up moving to Naples and then to Rome where she continued her booming business there was like a journal written about this time and in this journal they said that again it was administered in wine or tea

or some other liquid the husband would feel weak and then feel ill and that they would call a medical man and after the second dose of the poison the this weakness became more pronounced a beautiful wife express a lot of anxiety over her husband's illness and a lot of stress and rarely would she be under suspicion because of how she was acting a lot of the women would be coached on how to act when giving the husband's poison how to do it so again they would put it in the husband's food they would do one

drop a day just very slowly and then when the doctor would come over the doctor would see the husband and be like well you have a very simple illness let's give you this medicine that will make you feel a hundred times better and then the doctor would be called back again a couple days later because now the husband is doing worse the medicine man would be just completely puzzled like what the hell is going on I gave you some it's a simple illness I gave you some medicine like you should be doing way way better

and it would leave the doctors just really confused like what's going on what did you take whatever so they would give them more medication and the next thing you know the victim would be dead Julia would make sure to tell her clients what to do after the fact so she would say like you need to act a certain way you need to act like you're filled with anxiety and stress and sad and everything right put on show do it and then she said most of all like after they died you need to demand a post-mortem

examination which would result to nothing they could never trace a thing and then the widow would 100% be seen as innocent and nobody could blame her and Julia made sure that all of her clients followed through with this that way none of them would be under suspicion that they killed the husband and it was smart this was again a very long ago and they couldn't trace arsenic or any of that in the body so just always left everyone confused as to what was going on at this time they thought it was just the flu everyone

was getting the flu and dying wild times right because like people would stub their toe and died so I mean it was a pretty solid plan now it may sound like Julia was just counting out her product like nothing right left and right here you take a you didn't know she was very very selective with whom she sold a pod she made sure that any new clients she took were vouched for she got like background checks on them pretty much like asking who recommended them and then she would go and check with that person hey

is this person legit she was doing her homework to protect herself to cover her ass sure unless I explain more and then Julia did a little bit of a rebranding on the bottle she actually included directions on how to use it now this was to cover her ass again because on the bottle it would say a little step-by-step on how to use it which would make it seem more like a cosmetic product like use one to two drops on the face at night so Julia started putting this little label on there or even giving the

women a little card and these women would make sure to leave it on there or leave the card nearby again to just make sure and prove that this is a beauty product this is a cosmetic product this isn't anything almost like one to two drops at night let me alone you know and then if the husbands died and these women got questioned even more intensely then they could be like look there's directions on it I've been using it like so it wasn't me and because Aqua Tofana had belladonna in it which was in a lot

of beauty products again that would just further prove that it was indeed a cosmetic product belladonna makes my eyes nice and big there yeah but good things cannot last forever Julia you know I don't know look real talk I don't know if she's the good guy or the bad guy here and I know I'm going to get a lot of hate for that because of course murders awful and never like nobody know just don't do it murder just don't do it again this is during a time when women had no other choice they they couldn't

get divorced they were gonna die in childbirth they were gonna be beaten and lived miserable awful lives what else were they supposed to do Julia is the one over here who just has like a heart of old and wanted to help these women get out do you blame them and I know that sounds awful but it's I mean think about it nowadays you have so many options to get out of a marriage and whatnot so you shouldn't murder anybody but this again they didn't have any options they were gonna die while men got to go

just do their thing and check off did they jack off maybe anyways like I was saying in the 1650s though it all came crashing down over a bowl of soup yes that's right a bowl of soup damage a lady went to Julia to purchase she was new Julia did her part she did her little background check on this on this lady made sure that she's legit you know she's not gonna rat her out or anything she's not cop but this lady she bought the product and she takes it home she's gonna use it on her

husband she wants out of her marriage and she needs to get away from this man so this woman she ends up preparing her husband dinner and they're having a nice warm bowl of soup and she takes just two drops and puts it right into her husband's soup she calls him over honey soups ready and her husband comes over sits down he demands for some wine as well and she's like okay yeah so she goes and she gets him why and he sits down now this lady I mean good for her she obviously is a good

person she sees her husband reaching for the soup and he's going to slurp it whatever he takes a couple of slurps and she ends up yelling at him to stop and she pretty much gets slapped in the face with guilt and regret so she yells at her husband to stop eating to put it down and she just kind of freaks out and she didn't say why to her husband she's just yelling at him to put down the soup to stop eating it of course her husband's like why do you want me to stop eating the

soup it's kind of weird it's said that he holds her down and he beats her and he demands that she tells him what's in the soup like he has a feeling that there's something in the soup what's it you better tell me what's going on with this she confesses she said that she put poison in it no it's over baby it's over so this husband is upset for a good reason she just tried to kill him and he ends up dragging her down to the authorities in Rome and authorities hooked this lady up to some

kind of torture device to get out any information she had so it's not looking good for her it's a little unclear if this woman was killed or not I'm going to say she probably was just based off of their track record so she confesses to everything word got out that somebody had confessed and it got back to Julia now Julia was warned she was like hey look soup it happened this lady confessed you need to make a run for it you need to get out of here because they're gonna come looking for you so Juliana

starts to panic she knows her fate she's gonna die Julia's gonna die use-it gonna die Julia I'm sorry Julia ends up packing packing her stuff and she goes looking for somewhere to stay and she ends up going to a church and she asked the church for sanctuary and they granted it to her her plan was to stay there until she could make her escape I'm not sure what she was planning to escape but Julia's just laying low at this church so people are talking though now people got word about what this woman said over there

her arrest thing and her questioning and now rumors are starting people are talking okay and somehow there was a major rumor going around that Julia had poisoned the water supply throughout Rome do you know how rumors go it's a one big game of telephone starts off with one thing and it ends completely out of control overblown she didn't do that she didn't poison the water supply throughout Rome but everyone believed that she did so of course people are livid and they want Julia dead okay they want her removed word also got out that Julia was

actually hiding out at a church a lot of people kind of got together I pictured just a mob of people with like steak knives no I'm sorry what are those things called the forks never mind mob of people get together and they storm into the church demanding for Julia and they are telling this church you need a hand her over give her to us we're burning this place down of course the church is like sorry girl we got to give you over you know so the church handed over Julia to the authorities they brought her

in for questioning but really I guess they just tortured her until she confessed to what she had been doing so Julia ended up confessing to killing over what she averaged at six hundred men between 1633 and 1651 and it was believed that the number was even higher authorities also got her to name some of her clients not all of them obviously because she said she couldn't remember a lot of them but she did could like give out names July 16 fifty nine Julia was executed along with her daughter and three employees yeah remember her daughter

sorry I kind of like didn't really mention her much because again there wasn't much information about her but she did have some employees and sadly they all went down with her which I kind of like just lightly talked about 600 men that's a lot of goddamn man that's that's Wow here's the thing nobody really knows okay this story is is said to be true because there is like journals written about it from that era again like there's no paintings of her there's no portraits of heard there's like nothing to prove that she was a real

person really so what if this is all just BS so Julia three of her employees and her daughter were all killed and they were killed in Rome's campo de fiori it's a square that was called the field of flowers because it had been kept in open field for a long time in ancient Rome but eventually he'd been paved over and made into a square it would become a very popular location for hanging people and burning them at the stake I looked it up there's a lot of air beam beasts now I could get an air

B&B next to the square where tons of people were hung murdered burned at the stake and I get an Airbnb there isn't that nuts that's wild come on history's nuts sadly though okay so look they were all murdered Julia's body was thrown over the wall into the church that had offered her sanctuary as a big fu now some of her clients did indeed also get punished after her confession a number of clients tried to play dumb and claim that their aquata fauna was simply for cosmetic purposes and they had no idea just no idea that

you could kill someone with it I had no clue what that's wild it was harder to determine okay who was like an actual client and who was actually thinking this was a cosmetic product but some of the clients they were also executed outright while others were bricked into the dungeons of the palace of Holy Office now it said there were several others who were connected I mean obviously there are 600 victims then there's a lot of people involved but a lot of them just got away it's also possible that the number of victims was exaggerated

by Julia because she was being tortured when she was being investigated and you know people will just say whatever you want to make the torture stop so a lot of people also believe that she could have just been saying this number to make the authorities happy maybe they kept questioning her and pushing her for a bigger number and once they were satisfied with the number that she gave them they were like okay yeah that sounds good 600 you're dead some believe that Julia was completely innocent that she might well have simply been a woman dabbling

in cosmetics at the time and she was selling cosmetics but during that time there was a literal witch hunt was sweeping through like Europe and women doing anything was suspicioned a lot of women were just being killed for anything and everything so there are people out there who believe that Julia actually wasn't responsible for all of this and they killed an innocent woman plot twist am i right so long after Julia's death the legend of aquata fauna continued in 1791 you know the composer Mozart have you heard of him so he fell seriously ill he

became convinced that he had been poisoned and days before his death he said quote I will not last much longer I am sure that I have been poisoned I cannot rid myself of this idea that someone has given me aqua Tofana end quote yeah yeah he said it huh huh historians believe that he actually died of a fever from syphilis or from having eaten undercooked pork so it was a bit of a stretch but it's possible his paranoia shared by many who took ill in those days was testimony to continuing terror inspired by Julia Tofana

Tofana why did I say it like that I don't know so that's the story of Julia Tofana and her deli concoction aqua top on this one really sparked my interest because it's just fascinating I don't know we've got history we've got Mozart we have poison that looks like something from Alice in Wonderland possibly a lot of victims and you never hear about her I don't know I just found it to be very very fascinating I would love to hear your thoughts down below on Julieta fauna do you believe it I don't know actually I'm not

gonna say it I was about to say I think it would it's a cool story but I mean that's a lot of victims Bailey that's not very cool like shut up uh-huh let me know who you want me to talk about next week other than that I hope you have a wonderful day today you make good choices and please please please be safe out there don't poison anybody because nowadays you can get out of marriages and whatnot there's no reason to murder people okay jeez I'll be seeing you guys later sorry it's just really addicting

aquata fauna bye