- Joined
- Jun 17, 2020
- Messages
- 17,112
- Points
- 113
Kulthum Akbari was married for the first time at age eleven. Her first husband eventually died. Then her second. Then her third.
Each time, she collected what was left behind and moved on.
What investigators eventually pieced together was that Kulthum had developed a system. She would present herself to families as a caring companion for their elderly and lonely fathers. She was warm, attentive, and reliable. Families who were struggling to look after aging relatives found her reassuring. She would marry the man, often with a substantial dowry secured upfront, and then begin the process.
She targeted men between 65 and 82 years old. She used a mixture of sedatives, blood pressure medication, diabetic drugs, and in some cases industrial alcohol, administered quietly over time. Because her victims were elderly, their deaths raised few questions. Old men die. Families grieved and moved on. Kulthum collected the estate and found the next husband.
She did this for twenty years.
Her last husband was an 82-year-old man in Mahmudabad. Unlike the others, he became suspicious. A few days before he expected to die, he told his son that Kulthum had been forcing high-dose medication on him. His son went to the police.
When investigators looked into her background they found a trail of dead husbands stretching back to the early 2000s. She confessed to killing multiple men but gave conflicting accounts of the exact number, saying at one point she could not remember precisely how many. The true number is believed to exceed 20.
In September 2025 a court in Mazandaran found her guilty of 11 murders. Ten families demanded the death penalty. One family accepted blood money instead. She was sentenced to ten death sentences and an additional ten years for the attempted murder of her final husband, the one who survived and reported her.
She is currently awaiting execution.
Each time, she collected what was left behind and moved on.
What investigators eventually pieced together was that Kulthum had developed a system. She would present herself to families as a caring companion for their elderly and lonely fathers. She was warm, attentive, and reliable. Families who were struggling to look after aging relatives found her reassuring. She would marry the man, often with a substantial dowry secured upfront, and then begin the process.
She targeted men between 65 and 82 years old. She used a mixture of sedatives, blood pressure medication, diabetic drugs, and in some cases industrial alcohol, administered quietly over time. Because her victims were elderly, their deaths raised few questions. Old men die. Families grieved and moved on. Kulthum collected the estate and found the next husband.
She did this for twenty years.
Her last husband was an 82-year-old man in Mahmudabad. Unlike the others, he became suspicious. A few days before he expected to die, he told his son that Kulthum had been forcing high-dose medication on him. His son went to the police.
When investigators looked into her background they found a trail of dead husbands stretching back to the early 2000s. She confessed to killing multiple men but gave conflicting accounts of the exact number, saying at one point she could not remember precisely how many. The true number is believed to exceed 20.
In September 2025 a court in Mazandaran found her guilty of 11 murders. Ten families demanded the death penalty. One family accepted blood money instead. She was sentenced to ten death sentences and an additional ten years for the attempted murder of her final husband, the one who survived and reported her.
She is currently awaiting execution.
