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Kulthum Akbari was first married at the age of eleven. After her first husband died, she remarried — and then again. Each time, she inherited her late husband’s assets and moved on to the next. Over two decades, she perfected a chilling system. She presented herself to families as a kind, reliable caretaker for their elderly, lonely fathers. Warm and attentive, she quickly gained their trust. Families who were overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities often welcomed her. She would marry the man — frequently securing a substantial dowry upfront — and then begin the slow process of killing him. She deliberately targeted men between 65 and 82 years old. Using a combination of sedatives, blood-pressure medication, diabetes drugs, and occasionally industrial alcohol, she administered the substances gradually. Because her victims were already elderly and frail, their deaths appeared natural. Families grieved, accepted the loss, and Kulthum collected the inheritance before disappearing to find her next husband. This pattern continued for twenty years until her final marriage to an 82-year-old man in Mahmudabad. Unlike the others, he grew suspicious. Days before he was expected to die, he confided in his son that Kulthum had been forcing high doses of medication on him. The son alerted the police. The ensuing investigation uncovered a trail of dead husbands stretching back to the early 2000s. Kulthum eventually confessed to killing multiple men, though she gave conflicting accounts of the exact number and admitted she could no longer remember precisely how many there had been. Investigators believe the true total exceeds twenty. In September 2025, a court in Mazandaran convicted her of 11 murders. Ten of the victims’ families demanded the death penalty, while one accepted blood money. She was sentenced to ten death sentences, plus an additional ten years in prison for the attempted murder of her final husband — the only one who survived to expose her. She is currently awaiting execution.