Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast · Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins

Portugal: The 1772 Foundling Wheel Killer

July 17, 2025·37 min·1 clip

A caretaker's lantern reveals a tiny bundle beneath the earth—a dead infant, hastily buried.

A thin sliver of moonlight cuts across the olive groves outside Coimbra in 1772. Angelica Maria, a caretaker from the local foundling home, notices disturbed earth on Monte Ario. Beneath it lies a tiny bundle. The infant has bruises, and the discovery quickly makes clear this is not a one-off grave. The story shifts to Luisa de Jesus, a 23-year-old woman once seen as a benefactor around the foundling home. Suspicion lands on her fast. Infants had gone missing while in her care, and the trail had gone cold. Luisa first answers with steady denial. She says the children died naturally after falling ill. Investigators set that claim against the hillside burial and the foundling home's records. There is no sign the children were ever handed over to any families. Under pressure, her composure cracks. Some accounts say by April 6th, she gives a partial confession and admits to killing the three infants found on the hillside. That confession turns out to be only the start. Magistrates send searchers to her cottage on the outskirts of town. Buried in the dirt floor they uncover a hidden clay pot. Inside are decomposed infant remains. Nearby, under straw, they find four more infant skulls. In another corner of the hut, ten small skull caps are buried in the earth. The search points to a longer killing spree marked by concealment and dismemberment. By the end of the investigation, authorities have recovered the remains of 18 children from Luisa's home. The episode treats the case as a study in betrayal as much as murder. It keeps returning to the ordinary setting that made the crimes possible. Foundling homes depend on trust. Records matter. Oversight matters. The story stays with the children who were meant to be protected and with the failures that let the violence continue. It closes by placing the case in the larger history of how institutions respond after the damage is already done.

As heard by us

A bleak, careful true-crime account of trust abused at a foundling home.

Portugal: The 1772 Foundling Wheel Killer opens with a buried infant in the olive groves outside Coimbra, then narrows in on Luisa de Jesus, a trusted woman whose care for foundling-home children hid something far darker.

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Why you'd press play

You want a historical case that starts with one buried infant and ends with the remains of 18 children.

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