Traditional fairytales always praise a mother’s love. They tell wonderful stories of how mothers put their children ahead of their own needs, how they would fight to the end just to protect them from any perceived threat. Even if the outcomes are devastating, at the very least, their reasoning makes sense. But what of mothers who decide to disregard the wellbeing of their children? What of mothers we only see in horror movies, or Dr. Phil, or the late-night news, or books filled with tragic characters and backstories? Unfortunately, there was one real-life case of this. Her name was Klara Mauerova, and she was a mother who forced her son to eat himself.

The case first came to life when a neighbor was installing a baby monitor. As he was fiddling with it, he started getting signals. Very horrific signals, including images of a little boy being restrained. He called the police, and they went to investigate. And, when they did, the neighbor’s suspicions were tragically confirmed. Once the police arrived, they brought out three children, two boys, and their adopted sister, who later turned out to be a 33-year old woman.

And their story was terrifying, to say the least.

Their mother, Klara, and members of her adult family would torture the children. They were abused, physically, sexually, and mentally. They were forced to cut themselves, and burn themselves on their mother’s cigarette butts. They were kept in dog cages, and when that wasn’t enough, they slept in their own feces and urine. They were kept away so that no one would hear them. It was then that Klara started skinning one of her sons alive. She eventually forced her son to eat part of his own flesh.

Klara Mauerova, her sister, and the rest of her family were known as cannibals. One theory was that Klara, her siblings, and a friend were part of a cult called the Grail Movement. Led by someone called the “Doctor”, the leader instructed the family to eat her sons. Even so, police found little to no connection to Mauerova’s crimes and the cult, meaning there was something else involved. Another theory suggests that Mauerova was recording the children’s suffering and selling these to clients, though there was no evidence of that either. In the end, the police were left with the mind of a deranged woman who had little to no natural attachment to her children.

Cases like Mauerova’s have been studied and written about many times over. Books like Mothers Who Kill Their Children by Cheryl Meyer and Michelle Oberman and Why Mothers Kill by Geoffrey R. McKee, to TV shows like Deadly Women and podcasts like Crimes of Passion seek to answer just why women like Mauerova commit these unspeakable atrocities against their children. It’s yet another dark side to humanity, a mystery that refuses to be answered. It’s something that continues to haunt the general public, and writers especially. After all, we’re supposed to be the most knowledgeable about human nature. We’re supposed to provide the most accurate reflections of humanity in our books. But when confronted with these acts in real life, we’ve no answer.

We still don’t, by the way.