The “killer wife” superstition, by which we mean the belief that the husbands of certain women are doomed to die, is examined here as it appears in Jewish sources from the Bible to Maimonides. The many pertinent developments in post-talmudic-midrashic sources require a separate study. For this period we confine our discussion to Maimonides, the most significant medieval spokesman on the subject. Our topic is a popular theme in folklore. Here our primary interest is in how the religion of Israel reacted to the superstition, both conceptually and practically.