Enriqueta Martí was a witch doctor that also worked as a prostitute in the Fifth District when Barcelona was the center of pornography in all of Europe. She would kidnap children, procuring some of them for pedophiles, and then kill the rest in her home. She would drink their blood and dispose of their bodies by making slaves, powders, ointments, and potions out of their fat, blood, and bones.
Barcelona’s population increased drastically between 1860 and 1912–jumping from 140,000 to over 587,000. It was difficult to make money, these new residents were already poor and most of them ended up in El Chino and the Fifth District, which is now known as El Raval. At this point the Fifth District was the red light district, prostitution, sex trafficking, and pornography were commonplace and children were often forced to participate.
Children went missing all the time; many were sold into the sex-trade, or enslaved in sweatshops, or died of illness. Because of the prevalence of malnutrition and poverty, the infant mortality rate was over 17%. What people didn’t realize is there were even worse things happening to those missing children than imaginable. In the early 20th century, a woman named Enriqueta Martí made her way to the “Pearl of the Mediterranean” to prey on the weak and poor. She was from the countryside of Cataluña, a place of witchcraft where she was a practicing witch doctor.
She worked the streets of the Fifth District as a prostitute by evening, and timed her schedule just right, ensuring she’d meet as many children as possible and introduce them to prostitution. But prostituting children wasn’t enough for this depraved monster. Things soon escalated and Enriqueta Martí began luring children back to her home or just kidnapping them right off the streets. She would procure some of them for pedophiles and then kill the rest in her home.
She would drink their blood for youth and vigor as her dark magic instructed. As for her repugnant method of disposal, she’d use them as ingredients in the potions she pedaled on the streets. Kidnapping and murdering the children of the fifth district and selling them right back out to the people in bottles and jars. She made slaves, ointments, potions, healing elixirs of all kinds from their blood and fat. She’d grind down bones and teeth into powders and claim they had magic healing abilities. She boasted her remedies could treat tuberculosis and the people literally ate it up.
The Vampiress of Barcelona got away with murdering children ranging from infants to nine years old, from 1902 to 1912. The devastating number of children she took in that time is incalculable. She was finally arrested in February 1912 in her flat in El Raval. On February 10th, 1912 she kidnapped Teresita Guitart Congost right off the street while the girl’s mother was momentarily distracted. The vampiress covered the little girl with a black cloak and whisked her away to her house of horrors. There was another little girl there, Angelita.
Seven days later a neighbor, Claudia Elias, spotted the child looking out the window and when she asked about her Martí ignored her and shut the windows. Claudia was instantly suspicious and asked a friend’s opinion on the situation. As soon as little Teresita’s face was plastered all over the papers, Claudia’s friend reported Martí’s odd behavior and new houseguest to the police. The police found the two girls still alive and gave them back to their parents. Both of Martí’s flats were searched and chilling evidence was stacking up against her.
They were only able to differentiate the bodies of twelve children because there wasn’t enough left. Most were sold as medicines or consumed by Martí, what was left was unrecognizable. There is no official tally but she may just be the deadliest serial killer in all of Spain’s history. She would not confess to a single murder, what she did admit to was, procuring for pedophiles and performing abortions. Not that her denial got her anywhere, newspapers were already pegging her as a vampire who kidnapped at least 40 children from the Fifth District. She never made it to trial.
Martí was imprisoned and murdered by prison mates. She was too disgusting even for other criminals to stand to be around so they lynched her on one of the prison patios on May 12, 1913. The only downfall to the early execution is authorities were never able to get all the information they needed out of her. They still needed to know the names of the pedophiles that she gave children to. The exact number of her victims remains unknown.
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