The Unseen Flames: A Mother’s Despair, a Monster’s Making, and the Society That Burned Them Both

The full, horrifying story of Dagmar Overbye — Denmark’s “Angel Maker” — and the mothers who paid her to erase their children

Copenhagen, July 1920
The summer heat clung to Vesterbro’s tenements like a shroud. In Apartment 3 of Enghavevej 218, a masonry stove crackled, its iron door glowing faintly. The room reeked of burnt sugar and something darker — a metallic tang that clung to the back of the throat. On the floor, a wicker basket held a pile of infant clothes: tiny bonnets, a lace-trimmed gown speckled with brown stains, a single leather shoe.

This was Dagmar Overbye’s “nursery.”

For seven years, desperate mothers had climbed these stairs, their arms cradling newborns they couldn’t keep. They paid Overbye — a stout, plain-faced widow with a voice like gravel — to arrange adoptions. Instead, she strangled their babies, drowned them in tubs, or fed their bodies to the stove.

But on this sweltering afternoon, one mother would return.

August 30, 1920

Karoline Aagesen, 22, a domestic servant with calloused hands and eyes hollowed by…