Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

This tale of love-gone-wrong--seven times!--appeared in the Salinas "Californian," November 23, 2009:

Marie Prieto was perhaps the most beautiful woman in California in her time. Starting in the late 1870s, men fell at her feet, pledging their eternal love to the San Juan Bautista woman.

Even in her later years, she retained her striking beauty and suitors were literally dying to marry her. They should have known enough about Marie Prieto to resist Cupid's tugs. Between 1880 and 1895, Marie Prieto was married seven times. And all seven husbands died premature, and gruesome, deaths.

Marie considered herself cursed and those men who would offer their affections to her as fate-tempting fools. And she finally resolved never again to send another man to an early grave by marrying him. She suspected some of her later beaus of courting her for the sole reason of defying the curse.

"San Francisco Examiner," February 12, 1899, via Newspapers.com

No one ever accused Marie of contributing to the demise of any of her seven spouses. In most of the cases she was nowhere near the scene of a husband's death. And the variety of the means of death that made her a widow seven times suggest a random pattern no human serial killer could conceive of. So there really must have been some sort of curse on Marie Prieto.

In 1880, a man named Jose Casella married Marie. Two years later, he was thrown from a wagon and landed on his head. The brain damage was fatal.

In 1883, Marie Prieto Casella married Manville Harris. Harris suffered a broken leg. It was not treated properly and became infected. Eight months after the original injury, Harris died of blood poisoning.

In 1886, Marie Prieto Casella Harris married Felipe Helmuth. Five weeks after the marriage, Helmuth was killed when a mine tunnel collapsed.

In 1891, Marie Prieto Casella Harris Helmuth married William Storey. Storey, while exploring the territory around San Juan Bautista, discovered a "talking" canyon, his way of describing a place where the echoes spoke before you did. He became convinced evil spirits were speaking to him through the echoes. Six months after marrying Marie, the echoes told him to shoot himself in the head. He did.

In 1892, Marie Prieto Casella Harris Helmuth Storey wed George Prouter. Six months later, Prouter accidentally shot himself to death while hunting.

In 1894, Marie Prieto Casella Harris Helmuth Storey Prouter married Beam Campbell, who, like husband No. 3, worked in the mines. Two months after the marriage, he fell down a mine shaft to his death.

Her seventh and final marriage also was the shortest. And the death of husband No. 7 was possibly the most macabre. In 1895, Marie Prieto Casella Harris Helmuth Storey Prouter Campbell married Rey Costillo. Only 28 days after marrying Marie, Costillo was caught in quicksand and suffered a slow, terrifying death.

After this seventh tragedy in her life, Marie swore off marriage for good. She still had plenty of suitors, however, and practically had to chase them away with a stick.

In 1899, Marie was interviewed by a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner who also seemed to fall under her spell. "She is still a beautiful woman," he wrote. "Her age has become uncertain and unreadable."

But Marie was adamant that the curse would claim no more lives. "Since my seventh and last husband got caught in quicksand and suffered a horrible death by suffocation, I have resisted several insistent demands for my hand in marriage," she told the reporter. "Some of the suitors seem to woo me expressly to defy fate and prove an exception to the gruesome fate by which seven of their fellow men had already been done to destruction with an innocent woman. To none of them would I listen, nor will I ever listen.

"Men call me beautiful, and I am accounted a companion worthy of seeking. But if I were as beautiful as Cleopatra and the only marriageable woman in California, I would denounce the man as a fool who would ask to marry me.

"No, I shall never send an eighth man to an untimely grave."

And you can take it from Marie Prieto Casella Harris Helmuth Storey Prouter Campbell Costillo that she never did.

Some people are just better off enjoying the single life.