While the the few records about Lady Zakharova portray an enigmatic and contradictory figure, rivers of ink had been used to write about Folker Krauser because of his fraudulent practices as an illusionist and conjurer.

Folker Krause started in show business at the early age of six, when he started working as a stagehand assistant at the Lyceums of Paris. He was introduced to the techniques about the art of magic while watching the performances of the reputed British magician Angus The Wizard from backstage. At the age of 16, Folker started his magic training with Angus The Wizard in order to perform as his partenaire. He only managed to work on stage for a couple of months. It’s been said that he didn’t have the required skills to be an illusionist, but rumor has it that he was actually fired by Angus for selling some of his secret techniques to a British illusionist for a large sum of money.

After this episode, Folker Krause moved to London to start his own magic show. Today, it is known that most of the tricks performed on his show had been pirated from the celebrate French illusionist Robert-Houdin, father of modern magic. He allegedly acquired the tricks from Robert-Houdin’s mechanic Le Grand and changed a few features to present them as his own creations.

In 1836, Krause took a young Russian lady, Raisa Zakharova, as a partenaire and became her mentor. Newspapers wrote about her as the most beautiful lady ever seen on stage, which leads to the idea that Krause used her physical beauty as an extra incentive for the audience to assist his shows. A proof of this is that his most celebrate magic number “The Progressive Disappearance of Lady Zahharova” is still considered by many magic historians as the first strip tease show in the history of show business.

The relationship between the magician and the beautiful partenaire has been described in chronicles as turbulent and sordid. Raisa Zakharova has always been portrayed as a woman who was completely devoted to and fascinated by the figure of the magician. Some people believed that at some extent he practiced hypnotism on her to control her will. Contrary to Raisa, Folker Krause was only devoted to himself.

He was always surrounded by a court of female admirers who were willing to oblige and he would visit the most bawdy places of the cities wherever he performed. But the last straw was his long affair with a very young cousin of him, Liduvina, who also worked as a stage partenaire. It is believed today upon recent examination that, consumed by the jealousy towards Raisa and with the ambition of becoming the first partenaire and marrying the magician, Liduvina manipulated the number of “The Tamed Arrow”. This consisted of Lady Zakhariova stopping an arrow through her own will power that was shot with a bow by the magician. The trick failed and Raisa lost her right eye. She was supposed to die on stage that fatal night at London’s Drury Lane Theater.

At the peak of Krauses’ career, both Raisa and Folker were accused of espionage by the secret services of Imperial Russia. Liduvina was the informant, who had completely lost her mind from jealousy. She had a perfect plan to save Krause’s life from execution: the magician would accuse Raisa for all the espionage issues and he would move out of the picture, getting rid of her at the same time. But something completely unexpected happened because, the same cruel man who had been humiliating and harassing his devoted wife so badly, in a sudden demonstration of unconditional love to her, denied all accusations of her and put all the blame on himself.

Folker Krause was severely tortured to death in front of his agonizing wife. She was later tortured with no mercy and her hands were cut off. The legend tells that she managed to escape from her executors by using some sort of control tricks that she had learn from her husband. Then she ran away to France carrying the inert corpse of his lover.