The Systematic Predator: Twenty Years Of Calculated Murder
Between 2000 and 2023, Kolsum Akbari orchestrated one of Iran’s most methodical killing sprees, transforming marriage into a deadly business model across Mazandaran province. The 56-year-old woman confessed to murdering eleven elderly husbands through carefully planned poison cocktails, targeting vulnerable men for their inheritance and dowries.
Akbari’s lethal methodology revealed the mind of a calculating predator. She systematically combined blood pressure medications with diabetes drugs, creating customized poison formulas tailored to each victim’s medical vulnerabilities. When pharmaceutical cocktails proved insufficient, she employed suffocation techniques using towels and pillows to ensure her husbands’ deaths appeared natural.
The geographic scope of her crimes demonstrated strategic thinking designed to evade detection. By spreading her murders across multiple cities—including Sari, Neka, Mahmoudabad, Babol, and Qaemshahr—Akbari prevented local authorities from recognizing patterns that might expose her systematic approach.
Each marriage followed an identical template: identify elderly, wealthy targets, establish legal relationships to secure inheritance rights, then execute methodical murder plans. This wasn’t passionate crime but calculated serial killing driven by financial gain. Over twenty-three years, Akbari perfected her technique, becoming increasingly confident in her ability to eliminate husbands while maintaining the façade of a grieving widow.
Her confession revealed not just the scope of her crimes, but the chilling premeditation behind each death, establishing her as one of Iran’s most prolific female serial killers.
The Deadly Method: From Pills To Pillows
Akbari’s confessions unveiled a sophisticated arsenal of murder techniques refined through decades of lethal practice. Her primary weapon was pharmaceutical cocktails meticulously crafted from medications readily available in Iranian households: blood pressure pills combined with diabetes drugs, sedatives mixed with industrial alcohol to create untraceable poison combinations.
The calculated dosages revealed her understanding of victim vulnerabilities. She exploited her husbands’ existing medical conditions, using their prescribed medications as delivery systems for death. When pharmaceutical approaches proved insufficient to guarantee fatality, Akbari escalated to physical suffocation methods, employing towels and pillows to complete what poison had started.
Her geographic strategy proved equally methodical. By establishing separate identities across Mazandaran province cities, she created compartmentalized crime scenes that prevented law enforcement from connecting related deaths. Each location—Sari, Neka, Mahmoudabad, Babol, Qaemshahr—represented a calculated choice to maintain operational security while maximizing victim access.
The industrial alcohol component added a particularly sinister dimension to her methodology. Unlike prescription medications, which might trigger medical examiner suspicion, alcohol poisoning in elderly men appeared entirely plausible, especially when combined with existing health complications.
Akbari’s technique evolution demonstrated learning from each murder. Early victims succumbed primarily to drug overdoses, while later cases showed sophisticated combinations of chemical and physical methods. This systematic refinement transformed her from amateur poisoner into a methodical killer whose techniques became increasingly difficult to detect.
The Final Victim: How The ‘Black Widow’ Was Caught
Yet this systematic refinement ultimately became Akbari’s undoing. Her final victim, 82-year-old Gholamreza Babaei, would prove the thread that unraveled twenty-three years of calculated murder when he died under suspicious circumstances in 2023.
Babaei’s death initially appeared consistent with Akbari’s established pattern—an elderly man succumbing to apparent natural causes following a brief marriage to a much younger woman. However, his son’s growing suspicions triggered the investigation that authorities had failed to initiate across multiple jurisdictions for over two decades.
The breakthrough came through an unexpected revelation. A family friend approached Babaei’s son with disturbing information: his own father had previously been married to a woman named Kolsum who had attempted to poison him. When the friend recognized Akbari as Babaei’s recent wife, the connection became unmistakably sinister.
This coincidental testimony provided the missing link investigators needed to establish a pattern. Babaei’s son immediately contacted authorities, triggering a police investigation that quickly revealed the scope of Akbari’s operations across Mazandaran province cities.
The geographic distribution strategy that had protected Akbari for decades suddenly worked against her. Once police began cross-referencing deaths of elderly men married to women matching her description, the systematic nature of her crimes became undeniable.
Within months of the tip, Akbari faced arrest and interrogation. Her methodical documentation of marriages and inheritances provided investigators with evidence that would soon place her before a Revolutionary Court, confronting charges that carried Iran’s ultimate penalty.
Facing Execution: Iran’s Death Penalty Reality
Her methodical documentation became the foundation for proceedings before Sari Revolutionary Court, where Akbari confronted a legal system notorious for swift capital punishment. Over forty-five plaintiffs—family members of her victims—packed the courtroom, their collective grief transforming judicial proceedings into an emotional reckoning.
Initially, Akbari maintained her innocence despite overwhelming evidence. Her denials persisted through preliminary hearings until investigators conducted crime scene reconstructions at locations where she had administered fatal doses. Confronted with forensic evidence and detailed testimony from surviving relatives, her fabricated narrative finally collapsed.
The confession that followed revealed not remorse, but cold calculation. Akbari described her systematic approach to victim selection, poison preparation, and inheritance collection with clinical detachment that shocked even experienced prosecutors handling capital cases.
Families demanded justice under Islamic law, calling for qesas—the legal principle of proportional retribution that makes murder punishable by death in Iran’s judicial system. Their emotional testimonies emphasized not only personal loss, but the broader threat Akbari’s predatory behavior posed to vulnerable elderly citizens.
This demand aligned with Iran’s broader capital punishment practices. The Islamic Republic executed 901 individuals in 2024, representing seventy-four percent of worldwide executions according to international monitoring organizations. With over two hundred criminal acts carrying potential death sentences under Iranian law, Akbari’s case entered a system where serial murder virtually guarantees the ultimate penalty.
Her fate now rested with judges whose interpretation of justice would determine whether Iran’s most prolific female serial killer would join the hundreds facing execution annually.
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