Evil Nun Turns Monastery Into A House Of Horrors

in 1950 a Greek Village found itself in the middle of one of the most horrifying cases imaginable miam solak kotus or mother Mariam as she called herself was the abbis of a radical Monastery headed by a disgraced monk named Matthew Caracus at first glance the monastery looked quaint it was positioned at the top of a hill it was white with a dome-shaped roof and it had a picturesque backdrop of forests and Rolling Hills it just looked like a nice Serene place of worship but eventually the villagers would report the sounds of Screams and B coming

from inside the monastery and others would report strange sightings of people in Chains roaming around the courtyard and then people started going missing and their Trails would lead back to the monastery hey everyone welcome or welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is Summer Sanchez and on this channel we talk about crime Cults and heinous history so if that sounds interesting to you please consider subscribing and turning on notifications so you never miss an upload today we are going to Greece and we are talking about the terrifying case of the

serial killer nun before we get into today's case I'd like thank today's sponsor nordvpn so if you don't know what a VPN is it stands for virtual private Network and a VPN service protects your internet connection by creating an encrypted tunnel for your data it hides your IP address and it makes it safe to use public Wi-Fi when you're working or browsing outside of your home my job is almost 100% online I'm on my computer a lot doing extensive online research and I like to work in coffee shop sometimes just for a change of scenery

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1883 although there are no official birth records that show the exact year she was born so this is just a guess and we know absolutely nothing about her childhood literally nothing so we are jumping ahead to age 23 by the time maram was 23 she was working in a factory and she was also helping out on her family's farm and it was around this time that she met a man named Matthew carpus and Matthew was a priest monk in the Greek Orthodox church but he had recently broken ties with the church after he was forced

to leave for Disobedience Matthew had been forced out of the church because he refused to recognize a pretty significant ific change in Greece and this change involved the calendar so from 46 BC up until 1582 most of the world went by the Julian calendar the Julian calendar was established by Julia Caesar back in 46 BC and this calendar worked out really well for a while but over time problems started popping up seasons were getting all out of whack like equinoxes were falling during wrong times of the year also Easter was falling at a weird time

and in the wrong season the Julian calendar was off by like 11 minutes it worked off the idea that there are 365.25 days in a year but that number is actually closer to 365.2422 days in a year and while that difference seems super small and insignificant over the years it actually started causing problems the way it worked out we would gain an extra day every 128 years and these extra days they started adding up over the next several centuries and it was causing a significant issue and people knew that this issue was just going to

get worse and worse and by the time the mid-6th century rolled around 10 extra days had been added to each year based on the current Julian calendar so mathematicians and astronomers they work together to figure out how to adjust the calendar and in 1582 Pope Gregory the 13th established the new calendar which was named after him it was called the Gregorian calendar and now they had to course correct they needed to make up for these 10 extra days you know try to get everything back in line so on October 4th 1582 the people went to

sleep and when they woke up the next morning it was October 15th they literally just jumped ahead 10 days now at first only certain countries adopted this new Gregorian calendar these were most of the Catholic countries France Portugal Spain Poland some parts of Italy everyone else stuck with the Julian calendar but over the course of the next few centuries other countries did finally get on board with the new calendar but there were some holdouts that didn't switch over until pretty late Greece was one of the last countries to adopt the new calendar and they didn't

do this until the 1920s and by this time 13 extra days had been added to each year so on February 15th 1923 the people of Greece went to sleep and when they woke up it was March 1st and this shift in gree to the Gregorian calendar it would actually be the Catalyst for the crimes in today's case and over 100 people would be dead by the end so like I said miam meets up with disgraced priest monk Matthew carpus and apparently miam shared his desire to maintain the old Julian calendar within the Orthodox church now

just a side note here don't know what miam's religious affiliation was prior to this point we don't even know if she was religious at all and we really don't even know how she and Matthew became acquainted in the first place some sources say that she was actually a nun when she met Matthew which would make sense it would kind of explain how they came to be so close but as far as I can tell there isn't any proof of that she could have even just been pretending to be religious to get in good with Matthew

because she saw an opportunity to take advantage of vulnerable people as you will see later on some people have even hinted at a potential Crush between Mariam and Matthew but whatever the case after meeting Mariam and bonding with her over their shared views on this calendar issue Matthew tells Mariam that he really wants to start his own Monastery he wanted a place of his own where he could bring in new members and fight against the Orthodox church and Mariam really wanted to be a part of this she wanted to be Matthew's go-to person in this

church so she made it a point to get as close as she could with Matthew she did whatever he wanted her to do without complaint just to show how devoted she was and it paid off because by 1927 Matthew was running his own Monastery in the city of keratea in Greece katea is about 45 km or 28 mi from Athens and Mariam solak kotus was named abbis of the church and they named their Church the convent of the virgin of the Pines that is the rough English translation at least now I had no clue what

an abbis was so I had to do some research so an abbis is like a Mother Superior this would be like the head none this person would rule all the other nuns in the convent she would have a lot of control which in miam's case was not a good thing so miam has very quickly been put into a position of power she is essentially Matthew's right-hand woman now it was not just Matthew and Mariam who were unhappy about this shift in the calendar thousands of other people including several Orthodox church leaders were not happy about

this change and they straight up rejected the Gregorian calendar and this would eventually lead to a lot of breakaway groups forming all over grece Matthew's people eventually became known as the matthu ites and people who refused to recognize the Gregorian calendar as the new calendar became known as the old calendars or just the calendar ists between the years of 1925 and 1935 at least 800 old calendar parishes were established all around Greece a group of Bishops who were forced out of the Orthodox Church due to their old calendar views they started consecrating new Bishops within

the old calendar movement and it just so happened that Matthew Caracus was one of those Bishops so Matthew is now a bishop but only in the eyes of the old calendar movement now like I said this Monastery that Matthew and miam set up was in the village of keratea it was a white church it had a dome-shaped roof and it was positioned on top of a hill in front of a forest and over time more and more nuns started joining the monastery and miam acted as the Mother Superior and everyone called her mother Mariam now

by the time Matthew and miam had established their Monastery Matthew was already 66 years old and he was not in good health and he spent most of his days in prayer and meditation and isolation and as a form of penance he would also wear chains and fast for several days at a time and because Matthew was spending most of his days in isolation Mariam was kind of put in charge of the monastery and this is really where all the trouble started so it's not really known how much Matthew knew about what was going on in

the monaster if he was totally in the dark or if he was a co-conspirator but once Miriam essentially took over the Monastery she turned it into a living nightmare several survivors would eventually come forward with stories of brutal beatings sleep and food deprivation torture and murder within the walls of the monastery and it was all seemingly at the hands of miam solak kotus miam wanted money and power above anything else in the world and I personally think she was a little sadistic I think that she actually enjoyed some of this stuff I don't think it

was all about money but she set out to recruit more and more members to the monastery specifically Aly targeting wealthy women lots of people were opposing the new calendar and so a lot of people were willing to listen when miam or any of the other nuns attempted to recruit them so when the nuns had someone on the hook to join their group they would instruct them to arrive at the monastery where they would then be brought into a room and told to pray the praying would last for several hours they would be there alone in

a room just praying some survivors said that they were forced to pray for up to 15 hours at a time then after this prayer Marathon the new members would be put in what is basically a cell like a prison cell down in the basement and they would have to fast for up to 40 days then once they were sufficiently weak from the fasting they would then be subjected to a week of sleep deprivation a member of the monastery would be standing guard making sure that the person did not fall asleep it's unclear what methods Miriam

used to keep her victims awake but based on several news articles we know that she did use some torture tactics this could have been you know forcing the victims to stand in uncomfortable painful positions for hours it could have been forcing them to walk continuously back and forth in their room sleep deprivation in itself is a form of torture when your brain is deprived of sleep for extended periods of time you can start to hallucinate your ability to regulate your emotions is limited you can literally be crying uncontrollably one second and then just suddenly burst

into laughter your sense of time becomes really foggy your ability to make sound decisions is lowered and these are just some of the psychological symptoms it affects people physically as well extreme sleep deprivation can cause impaired motor skills it can throw your coordination off it can cause your reaction time to be off as well it can cause trimers and miam would keep these new members deprived of sleep for at least a week at a time and once the potential member was physically and mentally broken down Mariam would then explain that they will have total salvation

as long as they commit themselves to the monastery and hand over their money property and possessions and she would justify this by telling them that they didn't need any worldly possessions they just needed to be 100% committed to the monastery and committed to God and in the in most of them agreed and they handed over everything to the monastery and by extension they handed over everything to miam there was also a vow of silence and this is something that's done in lots of places like this but Miriam was violent with her vow of silence there

was no speaking whatsoever and if miam caught someone speaking she would take off her shoe and beat them in the face with it she actually beat them all the time physical dominance was a huge part of miam's Monastery she would sometimes tie the victims up and hang them upside down from the ceiling and she would brutally beat them for hours she would also instruct the other nuns to beat them as well and just as a fell safe Miriam would have them confess their sins to her which meant that she now knew very personal secrets their

deepest darkest secrets and she would then use that information to Blackmail them in case they decided not to join or in case they decided not to hand over their property she would hold that information over their heads to get what she wanted Miriam would mostly target wealthy women women to you know join the monastery but there were some men thrown in the mix as well and sometimes entire families would be tricked into joining Miriam would dispatch nuns and Priests all over Greece with the sole purpose of targeting wealthy women to join the monastery and she

would promise them salvation all they had to do was join another way that Mariam Drew in new members was by advertising the monastery as a treatment center for tuberculosis patients tuberculosis was known as the white plague and it claimed thousands of lives before a solid treatment was discovered later in the 1940s there were tuberculosis sanatoriums all over the place and these were facilities where tuberculosis patients could go and get fresh air and adequate rest and there would typically be doctors at these sanatoriums looking over the patients tracking their progress making sure they were moving in

the right direction sanatoriums that were located in higher altitudes became very desirable doctors were finding out that higher out to-do places were showing less rates of infection and this worked out really well in Mariam favor because remember the monastery was positioned high up on a Hilltop it was in this picturesque Little Village right by a beautiful Forest it sounded like the perfect place to go and heal from this terrible disease but instead of being cared for the patients would be beaten tortured brainwashed and forced to hand over all of their possessions to the church there

is a woman associated with this case known only as Miss molo and she had tuberculosis so she hears about miam's Monastery and how you know it's a tuberculosis treatment facility and and she's like this is great this is a perfect place to go and rest and try to recover and so she travels to the monastery but when she arrived she was thrown into a cage and fed next to nothing and she was given zero medical attention after this case broke some doctors actually came forward and they said that they were not allowed to even enter

the monastery unless it was to sign a death certificate even though this place was advertised as a treatment facility doctors were never allowed to treat any of the patients they weren't even allowed to check on the patients the only time Mariam ever let them come into the monastery was to sign the death certificates so like I said Miss mikoo was thrown into a cage she was deprived of food she was deprived of any medical care and she very quickly started to become weaker and weaker until eventually she died tuberculosis did claim a lot of lives

and there was no guarantee that she would have recovered but the severe abuse and neglects definitely did not help and it likely sped up the progression of her disease and this was just one example Mary and did this exact thing to so many patients she would promise them treatment and Recovery in this beautiful facility she would promise them spiritual healing as well since this was a monastery after all she would convince them to join the monastery promising to take good care of them and then as soon as they had handed over all of their money

and their valuables and their Land Titles they weren't worth anything to her anymore so they would just be discarded and forgotten and left to rot and die one family called the Baka family they were drawn into the monastery because they shared the same Devotion to the old Julian calendar that the Matthew ites did some nuns had approached them one day and told them all about the monastery and their beliefs and stuff and the bakas thought it sounded great but as soon as they arrived at the monastery they were separated they were stripped down to their

underwear and forced to wear like burlap gowns Mrs Baka was thrown into a dirty cell where tuberculosis patients had died and she was kept there for weeks Mrs Baka was starved she was sleep deprived and by the time Mariam finally let her out of the cell she was so disoriented and confused and she was so weak she eventually fell into a coma and she died meanwhile Mr Baka was given pretty much the exact same treatment and he also died and keep in mind that there are also routine beatings thrown into the mix as well they

weren't just sitting in a Cell starving and deprived of sleep they were also being beaten on a regular basis and on top of everything else there would have been infections from all the wounds from the beatings none of these people stood A Chance in This Monastery it really was like something out of a horror movie there was was another couple that came into the monastery and they were also lured in with Promises of Salvation they were then starved beaten and tortured until they handed over all of their possessions to the monastery and they never recovered

from the experience and they also died maram would usually Dole out the beatings herself but there were times that she would instruct the other nuns to do it for her and they felt like they had to obey since she was the abis she was the Mother Superior and I'm sure they were all really scared to disobey miam after witnessing all the horrors that she had inflicted on some of these people but there were some nuns who started to speak up and push back against miam in the way she was running the monastery one of these

nuns was Sister Theodore sister Theodore did not like miam's cruel methods and she finally got up the courage to say something about it but when miam heard about what sister Theodore was saying she openly accused her of misconduct and then she ordered the other nuns to beat her and that's exactly what they did and they beat sister Theodore so badly that she lost her life they literally beat her to death right there in the monastery there was another nun who got up the courage to speak out against miam as well and she too was beaten

so brutally that she nearly died right there on the spot for whatever reason though miam let her go to the hospital after the beating but she did not recover and she ended up dying in the hospital here's this nun she's covered in bruises she's battered she's bloody she's obviously been severely abused why didn't anyone say anything to the authorities it seems like no one was really reporting any of the strange things going on at the monastery the villagers who live lived near the church later said that they could hear screams and moans coming from the

monastery at all hours of the day and night one man later said that he was riding his bike one day near the monastery and he saw an elderly woman roaming around the outside of the church and she looked terrible she looked like she was in really poor health she was dirty she looked weak she was wearing chains and so the man approached her and he was like do you need help but the woman said I don't need help I am repenting for my sins but none of this was ever reported not until much later when

this case broke and these Witnesses finally came forward so this abuse and torture went on for years and Matthew remember Matthew technically the head of the monastery well his health just continued to get worse and worse as the years went on and he eventually suffered a stroke after the stroke one side of his body was completely paralyzed and this left him even weaker than before so miam really became the leader at that point so if there ever had been a chance for push back from Matthew there was none miam was in full control but thankfully

miam's reign of terror was about to come to an end in 1948 a woman called the police in Greece to report that her mother had signed over all of her money to mariam's Monastery I am not sure how the daughter found out about this if she discovered paperwork or if her mother was allowed to go free and she told her daughter about it I'm not sure but the daughter finds out about the money being given to miam's Monastery and she called the police and she's like look I know my mother she would never have done

something like this and unless she was forced to do it unless she had been under some duress then another person came forward with accusations against Mariam a woman named eugina maretta said that she had been held captive in the monastery she said she had been beaten and forced to sign over a large sum of money to the abbis Miriam solak kotus before she was finally let go but it would actually take the FBI getting involved before the police in Greece finally took some action against Mariam a Greek man living in America reported that his 18-year-old

daughter was missing and he had managed to trace her her movements to Greece the girl's name was Ilana spirius and she had actually been born in Greece but her family had moved to America when she was a kid and her dad became really worried when he hadn't heard from her in several weeks the FBI got involved and they figured out that Ilana was last seen in the monastery in keratea and so they contacted the Greek government to you know get them involved to speed things up and try to find Ilana and after this the authorities

in Greece finally started asking questions and they started hearing about the screams and the mo the weird sightings of the people wearing chains roaming around the grounds of the monastery after hearing some pretty disturbing things from the villagers the police decided to start digging into mariam's dealings a little more and they discovered that she had actually been illegally importing and exporting olive oil and tires apparently in addition to the brainwashing and the torture and the murder and abuse of innocent people Mariam also dabbled in illegal importation and exportation so the police knew that they could

probably get maram on something at this point and this would allow them to get into the monastery and search for Ilana so at 6:00 in the morning on December 4th 1950 more than 80 police officers raided the monastery on the hill and what they found was absolutely disturbing they found several half-dressed elderly women completely emaciated tied up in the basement literally on the verge of death they were covered in Chains they were beaten and bloody one woman was found in a 4ft by 7t cage and she was in terrible condition they also found more than

30 children living in the monastery and these children were described as pale and stunted and growth it was like the police had stumbled upon a medieval dungeon there had been allegations of harsh physical and mental abuse of the children as well and so police took the children into custody all of the children were taken to the hospital for treatment police also found a huge stash of money some reports put the amount at the equivalent to over $750,000 they also found more than 300 Land Titles previously belonging to other people but had been signed over to

the monastery and they also found the remains of over 100 people buried on the property however they did not find IL during the search I'm actually not 100% sure what ended up happening with Iana but one source implied that she was found alive and that she was eventually reunited with her father so you would think with the way they found these people tied up in the basement the dead bodies found buried on the property the malnourished kids all of the money and the titles you would think that some serious charges would come against maram and

the monastery but no at least not at first so initially the prosecutors didn't think that they could get a conviction on the really serious crimes just yet many of the things that maram was doing had been done in other monasteries and convents the Val of Silence wearing chains as a form of penance the fasting this wasn't totally out of the norm and the people found buried on the property many of them were elderly women they could have died of natural causes also this was a tuberculosis treatment facility so some of the bodies could have been

of infected people who simply just didn't make it and I'm tried to figure out why the people that they found the victims that they found tied up in EN cages why their testimony wouldn't have been enough to move forward with the more serious charges and I couldn't really find an answer to that question all I can think of is that maybe those people were still very brainwashed maybe they felt like what maram was doing to them was deserved maybe she had convinced them that they were very sinful and you know this is something that they

needed to do maybe they didn't see it as torture or abuse just yet at this point they just don't think they have enough to get a conviction even with all of the findings from The Raid so instead they decided to move forward with the two counts of illegal business activities this was the illegal importing and exporting of the tires and the olive oil Mariam was found guilty on those charges and she was sentenced to 26 months in prison however after this case broke in the media it was a pretty massive story miam had been dubbed

the nuns serial killer and mother Ras Putin and everyone was talking about this insane story and since this case became so public more and more of miam's victims started to come forward with their own horror stories they told the police about being held captive about being kept in a constant state of weakness the disorientation the lack of sleep and food deprivation they told them about the beatings and the torture and I wish I knew more about the torture stuff like what did she do exactly but all the sources said was that she used medieval torture

tactics but the these people coming forward with their stories it kicked off a new investigation and in 1953 miam was pulled back into the courtroom for a second trial this time the charges included negligent homicide embezzlement abuse torture forging Wills extortion and the murders of three nuns and one monk police estimated that 177 people had lost their lives because of Mariam solak kotus some of them had been premeditated some due to medical negligence and some of them had died as a result of the insanely brutal Penance practices that miam inflicted Mariam was found guilty but

she was sentenced to only 10 years in prison when she was sentenced it was reported that she swore Vengeance on the prosecutors Mariam was actually tried for a third time on additional charges of illegal detention and she was found guilty on those charges as well so another four years was added to her prison sentence so all in all she only got like 16 years total that's it and this is a woman who has been called the most evil woman in the history of mankind that is what people have said about her and the judge who

presided over miam's second trial said that the case file for miam's case was so disturbing that anyone who read it would never recover that is how horrific this case was and I almost forgot about Matthew Matthew Caracus died in 1950 just a few months before Mariam was finally arrested so he did not live to see any of this go down after everything in this case came to light the Greek government outlawed any of these like radical old calendar groups May miams of course being one of those so after maram was taken into custody an unknown

nun actually took over where she left off but since it had become illegal for them to continue their group they basically just went underground and they just tried to stay off the radar but that did not stop them from continuing to recruit women into their fold in the Years immediately after maram was sentenced reports started to pop up of young girls going missing in Greece these were girls who had previously expressed interest in miam's Monastery so it is thought that a lot of these girls had joined miam died in avaro prison in 1954 some people

believe that miam was totally innocent of everything and she had simply been persecuted for being a successful female Monastery leader but based on all of the evidence and the testimony of several people who managed to escape this is highly unlikely and Mariam is still known as one of the most evil women in history and that is all I have on this case if you found this video interesting please consider subscribing liking this video and leaving me a comment that is the easiest way that you guys can support me in my channel and don't forget to

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