An Iranian court handed 56-year-old Kolthoum Akbari ten separate death sentences for systematically marrying and killing elderly men across multiple towns, a killing spree she herself says may have claimed as many as 15 lives.
Akbari, whom Iranian media have dubbed the "Black Widow," drugged her victims with sedatives, rubbing alcohol, and diabetes medications before suffocating them, authorities in Mazandaran Province said. She targeted elderly men through Iran's "sigheh" system, a form of temporary marriage under Islamic law, then collected gold, cash, and dowry wealth before moving on to the next husband in a different town. The geographic spread kept anyone from connecting the deaths for roughly twenty years.
Her run ended in 2023, when her final known husband, 82-year-old Gholamreza Babaei, complained to family members that Akbari had been forcing him to take medications. Babaei died shortly after. That complaint prompted the investigation that ultimately unraveled the full scope of her crimes, the New York Post reported.
The court convicted Akbari in connection with the deaths of at least ten husbands and handed down a death sentence for each. She also received an additional prison term for attempted murder, though the exact length of that sentence has not been disclosed. Only one former spouse is believed to have survived.
But Akbari's own words suggest the real toll may be worse. In a confession reported by the Telegraph roughly a year before the sentencing, she offered a chilling accounting of her crimes:
"I don't know how many I killed. Maybe it was 13 or 15 people. I don't remember exactly. I'd drug them and then use a towel."
That gap, between the ten deaths prosecutors proved and the thirteen to fifteen Akbari herself claimed, remains unresolved. Iranian authorities have not publicly confirmed whether additional victims are still being identified.
Born in the village of Malekabad, Akbari divorced her first husband before beginning the pattern that would define the next two decades. Her second husband, a man identified only as Alijan, became one of her earliest confirmed victims. She confessed to pouring industrial alcohol into his mouth and suffocating him, according to Iranian outlet Faraz Daily. She reportedly told Alijan's family she had endured beatings, an apparent attempt to frame the killing as self-defense or garner sympathy.
From there, the method became routine. Iran International, a Saudi-based outlet, reported that Akbari used a rotating arsenal of poisons, rubbing alcohol, sedatives, and other medications, sneaked into her husbands' drinks. The temporary-marriage system gave her a legal pathway to new victims. Each sigheh arrangement granted her access to an elderly man's home, finances, and medicine cabinet. When the husband died, she collected whatever wealth she could and moved to a new town.
Authorities have speculated that greed drove the killings. Akbari allegedly amassed gold, cash, and other assets from the dowry arrangements tied to each marriage.
Under Iran's legal system, which incorporates elements of Islamic Sharia law, victims' families hold significant power over sentencing. They can demand qisas, the principle of retributive justice, often described as "an eye for an eye", or accept diya, a financial payment sometimes called blood money.
Ten of the victims' families chose qisas, resulting in the ten death sentences. At least one family opted for diya instead. The amount of that payment has not been made public. The Jerusalem Post reported that victims' families have until the end of the month to seek an appeal of the sentences.
Iran carries out public hangings for people convicted of violent crimes, and the country's execution apparatus has drawn sustained international criticism. The United Nations and other human rights organizations have repeatedly admonished Tehran for executing political prisoners, a practice that extends well beyond cases like Akbari's. Iran has executed at least 56 people on what critics describe as dubious national security charges since March alone.
Akbari is not the first serial killer to face execution in Iran. In 2006, Mahin Qadiri was executed after being convicted of killing five women. But the scale of Akbari's crimes, at least ten confirmed victims over two decades, with her own confession suggesting the number could be fifty percent higher, stands apart.
Several questions remain unanswered. Authorities have not named the court that issued the sentences or disclosed the specific towns where Akbari's victims lived. The identity of the one spouse who survived has not been made public, nor have the circumstances of that survival. And the discrepancy between the ten charges and Akbari's own claim of thirteen to fifteen victims has not been addressed by prosecutors.
The Mazandaran Province Judiciary's public relations office confirmed to Iranian state media that Akbari had confessed to much of the body count. The sentencing followed what officials described as a thorough investigation triggered by Babaei's death in 2023, an investigation that, by its own timeline, came roughly two decades too late.
When a killer can marry, poison, collect, and move on for twenty years without a single authority connecting the pattern, the failure belongs to more than one woman. It belongs to every institution that looked the other way.
