Iran Arrests "Agatha Christie Serial Killer"

Officials in the city of Qazvin, about 100 miles north west of Tehran, caught the country's first female serial killer. The 32-year-old suspect, named only as Mahin, stands accused of killing at least six people, including five women. She is claiming that her inspiration behind her crimes came from novels by Agatha Christie.

"Mahin in her confessions has said that she has been taking patterns from Agatha Christie books and has been trying not to leave any trace of herself," Mohammad Baqer Olfat, the Qazvin prosecutor, told Iranian journalists.

It is not known yet which the novels Mahin studied to plan these killings, though many of Agatha Christie's books describe killers using drugs. Christie's novels, some of which are about unsolved murders, are highly popular among Iranians. Agatha Christie visited Iran several times and used it as the setting for one of her stories, The House at Shiraz.

Qazvin's police chief, Ali Akbar Hedayati, said Mahin has a mental disorder by being deprived of her mother's love and an "intense hatred toward her mother." The police chief also said she would draw her chosen victims into conversation by telling them that they reminded her of her mother. The suspect allegedly confessed to luring elderly women by offering them rides in her car after they were going home from prayers. At some point, she would serve them fruit juice laced with some kind of sedatives and then strangled them then take their cash and jewelry and dump their bodies. One victim was beaten to death with an iron bar when she was regaining consciousness.

Police say Mahin has already admitted to killing five people and was arrested after a sixth victim managed to escape. The police had only one lead to this woman that was after a 60-year-old woman, who had read about the murders, told them she had escaped from a light colored Renault car. She fled the car after becoming suspicious of the female driver.

Being very careful to stay ahead of the police, it seems that the smallest thing, a road traffic offence, tipped off detectives and she was arrested. After checking cars matching that description, their attention was drawn to Mahin by records showing she had been fined following a recent road accident.

Officers first suspected the killer might had been a woman after studying a footprint found near one of the woman's body.

Mahin also admitted to the earlier murders of her former landlord, and her aunt. She confessed that since January, claiming to have been driven by a desperate need for money after chalking up debts of more than $24,000, she had to kill these people.