11 Facts About Mariam Soulakiotis

Mariam Soulakiotis started as a nun in the mainstream Greek Orthodox Church, but soon became a close confidante of her religious superior, the Bishop Matthew Karpathakis of Vresthena.

Matthew's health is said to have begun declining during World War II, leaving him even less able to effectively supervise Mariam Soulakiotis, and making him more dependent on her.

Mariam Soulakiotis' alleged modus operandi was to encourage wealthy women to join the convent, and then torture them until they donated their fortunes to the monastery; once the money was donated, Mariam Soulakiotis would embezzle it and, in some cases, kill the "donor".

Mariam Soulakiotis further faced police scrutiny when they were searching for an 18-year-old female from Toledo, Ohio, born in Greece, Simela Spyrides, who first went missing in 1949.

Mariam Soulakiotis said that the properties were put in Soulakiotis' personal name simply because there was no legal person behind the monastery.

Mariam Soulakiotis was found guilty of the following seven murders in particular between her three trials:.

Mariam Soulakiotis adamantly denied all the charges against her until her death, deriding them as "satanic fictions".

In 1961, police stated that they did not know who had taken over from Mariam Soulakiotis, stating that the monastery's new presumed abbess had "perfected the art of making herself and her pseudo-sacred sisters vanish" without a trace.

The number of Mariam Soulakiotis' victims is a matter of some debate; the most commonly cited figure of 27 murders and 150 negligent homicides from tuberculosis comes from medical testimony during her trial.

Some modern English-speaking Matthewite writers, such as the priest Constantine Kouris, assert that Mariam Soulakiotis was innocent and unjustly tried.

Explanations in support of her innocence offered by nuns contemporary to Mariam Soulakiotis included the idea that male bishops and monks were "jealous" of the wealth and power held by the female Mariam Soulakiotis, and were instead guilty of the crimes they accused her of; another is that the number of deaths was simply attributable to the fact that many who joined the monastery "were already old".