Marrakesh Arch-Killer

Real Stories

The late 1800s saw the homicides of at least 36 women by Moroccan shoemaker and trader Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi. Monikered as the “Marrakesh Arch-Killer”, he hosted dinner parties for affluent women at his home, where he would drug them and then decapitate them with a dagger while they were asleep. He robbed them of their possessions and money and buried them. Authorities in Morocco recovered the remains of 20 mutilated people in a deep trench beneath his store, and another 16 were located in the garden outside. Mesfewi admitted that he slayed for money, often very modest sums. In 1906, Mesfewi was eventually arrested and executed. Mesfewi was initially ordered to be crucified. However, the sentence was then altered to beheading in response to public outrage. Ultimately, it was decided that he should suffer. Every day for four weeks, he was carried from his cell onto the market square and whipped 10 times with a rod made of prickly acacia. On June 11, 1906, Mesfewi was to be walled up alive in the Marrakesh marketplace bazaar. Mesfewi went silent on the third day, and many people in the crowd expressed their rage that he perished too quickly.


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