In the small Serbian village of Vladimirovac, an elderly woman named Ana di Pištonja spent decades building a quiet but deadly reputation. Known to locals as Baba Anujka, she presented herself as a healer, an herbalist, and a maker of medicines. Behind that image, she ran a poisoning operation that claimed the lives of at least 50 people — and possibly as many as 150.
Baba Anujka was born in 1838 in Romania to a wealthy cattleman, though she personally claimed her birth year was 1836. She received a proper education, attending private school in Pančevo, which was uncommon for women of her era. She later married a landowner and had 11 children. After her husband died, she turned to chemistry and herbal medicine, converting one wing of her home into a small laboratory.
Her laboratory work earned her real income. She produced medicines and herbal mixtures for people dealing with various health problems, and her skills as a self-taught chemist gave her credibility in the community. But alongside the legitimate remedies, she was producing something far more sinister.
Baba Anujka sold what she called “magic water” and “love potions.” These mixtures contained small amounts of arsenic combined with toxic plant substances. The low doses made them difficult to detect during any examination of the deceased, which allowed the poisonings to go unnoticed for years. Her primary customers were women who wanted to rid themselves of abusive husbands. She even employed a sales agent who sought out potential clients on her behalf, extending her reach well beyond the village.
Her operation unraveled in the 1920s when one of her regular clients, a woman named Stana Momirov, was arrested for murdering her husband. Under questioning, Momirov implicated Baba Anujka directly. A second case emerged around the same time, involving a woman who had purchased a potion specifically to kill her husband’s father. That man died, and the transaction was traced back to Baba Anujka.
Authorities arrested Baba Anujka along with six others connected to the two killings. Her co-defendants took a consistent position during the trial: they claimed they had no idea the potions contained poison and placed the full blame on her. Baba Anujka denied wrongdoing, but the court found her guilty. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role in the two murders.
She served eight years before being released early on compassionate grounds, likely due to her advanced age. She returned to her home in Vladimirovac and died there in 1938 at the age of 100. The exact number of her victims was never established in court, as investigations focused only on the two confirmed deaths that triggered her arrest. The broader toll — estimated between 50 and 150 — comes from the scope of her sales operation and the patterns investigators uncovered.
What makes Baba Anujka’s case so striking is not only the scale of the killings but the method. By keeping arsenic doses low and mixing them with plant-based compounds, she crafted a product that was both effective and nearly undetectable by the forensic standards of the time. Her clients were not random — they were largely women in desperate or dangerous domestic situations, which gave her poisoning service a consistent and willing market for years. She operated for decades before a single arrest brought the entire network into the open.
