Hélène Jégado (1803 – 26 February 1852) was a French domestic servant and serial killer. She is believed to have murdered as many as 36 people with arsenic over a period of 18 years. After an initial period of activity, between 1833 and 1841, she seems to have stopped for nearly ten years before a final spree in 1851. Early life and crimes Hélène Jégado was born on a small farm in Plouhinec (Morbihan), near Lorient in Brittany. She lost her mother at the age of seven and was sent to work with two aunts who were servants at the rectory of Bubry. After 17 years, she accompanied an aunt to the town of Séglien. She became a cook for the curé, where an incident arose where she was accused of adding hemp from his grain house to his soup. Her first suspected poisoning occurred in 1833 when she was employed by another priest, Fr. François Le Drogo, in the nearby village of Guern. In the three months between June 28 and October 3, seven members of the household died suddenly, including the priest himself, his aged mother and father, and her own visiting sister, Anne Jégado. Her apparent sorrow and pious behavior were so convincing that she was not suspected. Coming shortly after the cholera epidemic of 1832, the deaths may have been attributed to natural causes. Jégado returned to Bubry to replace her sister, where subsequently three people, including her other aunt, died over the course of three months, all of whom she cared for at their bedside. She relocated to Locminé, where she boarded with a needleworker, Marie-Jeanne Leboucher; both Leboucher and her daughter died and a son fell ill. It is possible that the son survived because he did not accept Jégado's ministrations. Then, in the same town, the widow Lorey offered Jégado a room; she died after eating a soup that her new boarder had prepared. In May 1835, Jégado was hired by a Madame Toussaint; four more deaths followed. By that point in time, she had already put seventeen people in their graves. Later in 1835, Jégado was employed as a servant in a convent in Auray, but rapidly dismissed after several incidents of vandalism and sacrilege. Jégado worked as a cook in other households in Auray, then in Pontivy, Lorient, and Port-Louis, although she was employed only briefly in each one. Often someone