While jazz babies danced the Charleston and downed hooch in illegal speakeasies, more sinister crimes were taking place in the 1920s, both in the U.S. and abroad. Following are four creepy crimes from the less jovial side of the Jazz Age.

Note: These crimes are excerpts from my upcoming eBook, A Decade of Crime: The 1920s, set for publication in the spring of 2016. This will be the first in a series of eBooks that explore American and world crimes from throughout history, decade by decade. More details to come!

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1. The Angel Makers of Nagyrév

While their husbands fought during World War I, female residents of the Hungarian community of Nagyrév began canoodling with Allied soldiers from a nearby prisoner-of-war camp. When Nagyrév’s men returned from battle, a midwife named Júlia Fazekas, as well as her “assistant,” Susi Oláh, encouraged the community’s women—who were less than happy about resuming their lives as put-upon housewives—to poison their spouses with arsenic ob-tained from flypaper. These so-called “Angel Makers of Nagyrév” continued their killing spree throughout the 1920s, extending it to include parents, children, and other family members whom the women regarded as burdens. It’s estimated that the Angel Makers murdered 45 to 50 people before authorities discovered their crimes (which the women had been able to conceal because of the fact that Fazekas’ cousin was the clerk who filed the death certificates). Twenty-six of the Angel Makers stood trial; eight received death sentences (though only two, including Oláh, were executed), and 12 were imprisoned. Fazekas herself committed suicide in 1929.

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2. Fritz Angerstein

Whether it was mental illness or a more calculated motive that led to the December 1924 bloodshed in Fritz Angerstein’s villa in Haiger, Germany, one thing is certain: Angerstein was a deeply disturbed man who believed that the only way to escape his troubled life was to eliminate the people in it. Early in the morning of December 1, having recently learned that he was suspected of embezzling from the limestone mine where he worked, Angerstein stabbed to death his wife, Käthe, then killed with an axe his mother-in-law, his sister-in-law, and the family’s maid. Angerstein used his axe again later that morning to kill four more people—two of his employees (a bookkeeper and a clerk), a laborer, and the son of Angerstein’s gardener. Angerstein then tried—and failed—to kill himself. When authorities arrived, Angerstein told them that bandits had attacked his family. However, physical evidence—including the fact that Angerstein’s fingerprints were found on the dagger that killed his wife—proved otherwise. Angerstein ultimately confessed to the crimes, for which he received eight death sentences—one for each of his victims. He was decapitated on November 17, 1925.

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3. Henry Colin Campbell

With a number of marriages—but no divorces—under his belt, Henry Colin Campbell was definitely not “husband of the year” material. Throughout the early 20^th century he preyed on lonely hearts who submitted newspaper advertisements looking for love. Instead, the ladies found Campbell, who took their money, then left them high and dry. However, these women were lucky compared to Mildred Mowry, who married Campbell in 1928, gave him the $1,000 in her savings account, and then disappeared. Her charred, bullet-riddled body was discovered a few months later along a roadside in Cranford, New Jersey. Authorities quickly tracked down Campbell, who was living with his “real” wife and children in the nearby community of Elizabeth. Surprisingly, Campbell didn’t deny that he had killed Mowry. Instead, he claimed that he had no memory of her death, having been under the influence of drugs at the time. The jury didn’t buy his defense and convicted Campbell of Mowry’s murder. He was sent to the electric chair in April 1930.

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4. Bertha Gifford

For ailing residents of Catawissa, Missouri in the early 1900s, Bertha Gifford seemed like a godsend. Initially, those who knew the middle-aged wife and mother looked upon Bertha as a kind woman who enjoyed caring for sick neighbors. However, that perception changed after George Schamel moved in with Bertha and her second husband, Eugene, bringing with him his sons, nine-year-old Lloyd and seven-year-old Elmer. According to Bertha’s confession (given upon her arrest in 1928), when Lloyd fell ill in August 1925, she gave him the medicine that the doctor had prescribed, but added her own touch—a dose of arsenic. Bertha did the same thing when Elmer fell ill a month later. Both boys died. Bertha also confessed to giving arsenic to Edward Brinley, a drunk man for whom she had fixed a bed in the Gifford home in May 1927. She stood trial for the deaths of Elmer Schamel and Brinley, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. Bertha was suspected of killing as many as 17 people, including her first husband, but never stood trial for those deaths.