Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
Nanny Doss: The Giggling Granny Serial Killer
Could a traumatic brain injury at age seven have paved the way for one of America's most chilling female serial killers? In this episode, we unravel the dark and twisted life of Nanny Doss, known by many as the "Giggling Granny." We'll explore how definitions of a serial killer can vary, providing critical context before delving into the sinister timeline of her crimes. From her troubled childhood, marked by academic struggles and a harsh family environment, to her morbid fascination with romance magazines, we paint a picture of the early influences that may have shaped her violent tendencies.
Join us as we piece together the chilling details of Nanny Doss's murderous spree that began in the early 1950s. With a string of suspicious deaths involving family members and husbands, we examine the mysterious use of rat poison and the unexplained house fires that plagued her life. Through the tragic stories of her grandson Robert, husband Frank, and others, we question what could drive such lethal actions. We'll also explore the haunting transition from heavy metal-based poisons to blood thinners, and how these choices impacted the investigation that eventually led to her downfall.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the complexities of Nanny Doss's mental health and the legal challenges faced during her trial. From her disturbing interactions with her daughter Melvina to the unsettling contrast between her cheerful demeanor and the gravity of her crimes, we explore the duality that makes her case so fascinating. We discuss her body language during rare interviews and the chilling implications of her behavior. Finally, we reflect on the broader phenomenon of serial killers, comparing her case to other notorious family annihilators, and ponder the psychological mechanisms that allow such duality in seemingly ordinary people.
www.deviantcriminology.com
I am Dr Richard Weaver.
Speaker 3:Heather, kenney, rachel Zarn.
Speaker 2:And we're going to be talking about one of the rare instances of a female serial killer In the United States. There's actually somewhat of a federal definition that was established in 1998 that actually comes with the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act. So in that the term serial killer is defined as a series of three or more killings, not less than one of which has to be committed within the United States, having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor or actors. So this is kind of the concept of a signature of a serial killer. But there's also an academic standard that was kind of made after a symposium a couple of decades ago, which goes into more of the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offenders in separate events. So the big difference there in that definition being the common characteristics. So the academic definition is not looking for that signature of a killer and takes it down to two or more victims. So today we're going to be talking about Nanny Doss, who goes by many names.
Speaker 4:She had a what giggling granny. Her real name was Nancy Hazel.
Speaker 3:That's what I found, too, is Nancy Hazel.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the information you'll find will refer to her as Nanny Doss. She was a black widow killer, um, and also partially, uh, family annihilator, if you would like to go into a little bit of the history of that sure, um, so like, factually it's, it's kind of hard to determine exactly what what happened.
Speaker 4:Really, her whole timeline is full of conflicting information between like websites and a book that we have, et cetera. So this is what we're able to put together and I've tried to note where we have some some conflicts. So 1905, she was born in Alabama. She was one of five children. She was frequently made to stay home from school to work on the farm instead, so she had a history then of poor academic performance. The first thing we really know about her is when she was seven she was riding a train to go visit a family member and sustained a serious head injury. I guess the train came to a sudden stop and she hit her head on a seat or a bar or something and then said to result in headaches, blackouts and depression and that sort of flagged for me and I wondered about how common it is among people who exhibit this kind of like serial killing behavior later in life to have maybe an early head injury. Like what the connection might some? Chris Benoit, the wrestler who killed his wife and kid.
Speaker 2:Aaron Hernandez, the NFL player, had obviously a known history of concussions and head trauma as well, dating back to when he was a kid being hit in the head with a hammer by his younger brother accidentally, but the head flew off a hammer. So there has been some layman looks into if head trauma can lead to violence. But there's actually been some research done on this as well, like in 2018, an article was released in the Lancet Psychiatry that looked at traumatic brain injuries and the potential for violence. So in a group of 12,000 males in Norway, researchers found that adolescents that had a traumatic brain injury had four times higher rate of mental disorders, that had mild TBI instances at a young age and they had showed an increased risk of criminal behavior by the age of 17 compared to the non-TBI group. So that's kind of looking at traumatic brain injuries, even at the mild level.
Speaker 2:There's also a study in the School of Public Health, the Flint Adolescent Studies, the title. Researchers found a group of ninth graders from four schools in Flint, michigan, and they followed them into adulthood. They conducted annual interviews over eight years and in years five and six participants who were asked if they had sustained a head injury in their life about 23% had reported they had, and the study found that they had more violent behaviors by year eight of the study. There was also another research study that was released in 2020 looking at young male violent offenders, from the Frontier of Psychiatry magazine, and it concluded that their study confirmed a prevalence of TBIs among young violent offenders compared to the general population, as well as associations between TBI, aggravated antisocial behaviors and substance use disorders.
Speaker 2:Research is starting to go that way, but it's still kind of early in itself. And then the other thing with this instance is the way it sounds and, of course, being back in the 1910s, we don't have photos and people don't really describe what happened. But if you're thinking of a train smashing forward, coming to a stop and slamming your head, it's going to be more of the frontal lobe. So there's research looking at the frontal lobe and we know that the frontal lobe has to do with impulse control. It controls happiness. It looks at higher levels of thinking anger, jealousy, pain and people with damage to the frontal cortex sometimes have problems controlling his emotions and anger. With frontal lobe function damage, they could have problems with decision-making, self-control and emotional regulation, which may play part into like you talked about later in some of her crimes, where she may not have been able to control those impulses but also kind of go to some of the things you see in photos and interviews with her later.
Speaker 4:So it was early. She was like seven, so before her brain really had a lot of development left ahead of it, so I don't know what the effect was. It sounds like it could have been significant. Another thing we do know is as a child she really liked her mother's romance magazine. She was enchanted with the Lonely Hearts columns, right Early personal ads. Her dad did not allow her or her sisters to wear makeup or dress up. He had a fear they would be molested. And even though they were not allowed to do those things right of course that did not does not prevent anything. Several sources said that they were molested repeatedly, which you know is certainly a childhood trauma which I'm assuming also can be a predictor of later, later trouble.
Speaker 2:Again going back to female serial killers. Uh, specifically, like you see that with warnick that she had a history of being molested when she was a child, there are some links again between that, that trauma and causing a lifelong mistrust and that makes sense to me.
Speaker 4:But but still, the story is just really strange. I feel this or like there's a lot of like missing info of why all this stuff happened, but here are some of the things that happened. She was 16. She married her first husband as a co-worker that her dad like found for her or approved of Apparently. They cheated on each other a lot, but they did have four daughters. Names I found most consistently were Gertrude, zelmer, florine and Melvina. There's also maybe mention of a fifth child who may have died in very early infancy but didn't get a lot of details about that, not able to determine definitively the birth dates or the order of birth. There's a lot of conflicting information out there, but what we do know is in 1926, after the birth of all those children, nanny started drinking more heavily due to the stress. 1927, zilmer, one of the children, who was a couple of years old, died, I guess right after breakfast. The cause of death was identified as food poisoning and like a month later, another child, gertrude, died after breakfast, presumably as another incident of food poisoning. And at that point Charlie, the husband, took off with Melvina, one of the two remaining children, and then Charlie's mom, who lived with them died A very tragic few years. At this point it's just Nanny and Florine left. Some sources said that Florine was with Nanny and some said that Florine was staying with Nanny's mom, mom or maybe her dad. It's not really clear what was happening there. The family was fractured for a time, but a year later Charlie brought Melvina back. He also at that time brought a girlfriend with him and the girlfriend's kid, but Charlie and Nanny got divorced. She took Melvina back. Nanny, melvina and Florine went back to live with her parents. A year later she met and married a second husband named Frank Harrelson, and I had a couple of places that said she met him through a Lonely Hearts column, was unfortunately unable to find any sort of primary source to see what sort of ads she was putting out there or responding to. That would have been really interesting. But after she married him she learned he was an alcoholic with a criminal record. The story is sort of quiet then for a long time. Right, it was 1929 that she married him and 14 years later we didn't really know what happened in between. Melvina has grown up. Melvina has a baby. She's married. She has a baby named Robert, 1945,. Melvina has another baby.
Speaker 4:Nanny was present at the birth of this second baby and Melvina, I guess, was sort of delirious after a difficult labor and she could have sworn. She saw Nanny stick a hat pin into the baby's head right after it was born and the baby did die almost immediately. Doctors couldn't really determine the cause of death. Melvina had asked her husband and, I think, another witness who was there if they saw the same thing, asked her husband and, I think, another witness who was there if they saw the same thing. And they hadn't exactly seen that. But they'd seen Nanny playing with a hat pin earlier that day or something like that. So it's one of those things where I'm like, was there not any like more investigation into that? Did Melvina not go to the police and say I think my mom killed my kid like I don't know it's, it's all very thinly available information there, I don't know. It's all very thinly available information there, I don't know. But the baby did die. Then Melvina and her husband got separated and she had a new boyfriend. Nanny did not like the boyfriend, so they had some sort of argument.
Speaker 4:Melvina went to visit her dad shortly after the birth of the second baby. She left her first child at home with Nanny while she was away visiting and while she was gone. The first child, robert, died of asphyxia due to unknown causes while Nanny was caring for him. He was two years old and could not find any more information about what asphyxia due to unknown causes might have meant. If that was a common cause of death at the time. I don't know. That was a common cause of death at the time, I don't know. But we did read that Nanny collected a $500 life insurance policy on her grandson Robert. I don't know. Do either of you know if it was common to take out life insurance policies on your grandchildren in the 40s?
Speaker 2:I have no idea, I have no idea. But on the asphyxia thing, like usually that's suffocation and sometimes you see that commonly with vomiting, you know we're seeing somebody who's poisoning kids and people. If the child was poisoned, threw up and asphyxiated on its own, vomit, that's possible. But again we don't have the records to be able to look at that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that would be consistent with her two children having the food poisoning deaths later became suspicious for poison as well. So shortly after the grandson Robert died and she got that life insurance money, her husband Frank came home drunk. He was celebrating with some buddies who just came home from World War II and he assaulted Nanny and the story is the next day she put rat poison in his corn whiskey. Of course we didn't know that immediately, right At the time. We just learned that he died in great, great pain the day after he came home from partying with his friends. And then the timeline gets a little hard to piece together. But she did meet her third husband named Arlie Lanning, through a Lonely Hearts column. They lived in North Carolina and she was known to disappear for months at a time from Arlie. And a bunch of things happened in the early, very early 1950s, like I think the consistency of that was between 1950 and 1952, although the order in which these things happened was sort of unclear. But I think the most common timeline was that Arlie died. It was officially from heart failure but we later found out after an autopsy it was really rat poison in his food. Then Nanny burned down their house and collected the life insurance proceeds, although some sources didn't say she burned it down, they just said it burned down. But either way, it burned down and she collected some insurance. She poisoned her mother-in-law, made it look like she died in her sleep, although it's possible. Again, I don't think she ever confessed to that one. So it may be that she just legitimately died in her sleep. And then Nanny at that point went to visit her sixth sister, I think, who had cancer. Was stuck in bed, dubby and shortly after Nanny got there, dubby also died under mysterious circumstances. And again, a different source said that she visited the sister. The sister died, then the mother-in-law died, then Arlie died, then the house fire. So not entirely sure what order those things happened in, but they were all within a two-year time frame.
Speaker 4:In the early 50s and also in 1952, she joined a Diamond Circle Club dating service which was described as a lonely hearts club, so sort of like the column. But instead you pay for a membership to the service over the course of the year and they send out a list of you know, hot singles in your area, basically. And uh, as a result of that she met and married a man named Richard Morton and moved to Kansas with him. Um 1952, 1953, her mom came to visit I think her dad had just died, but her mom definitely came to visit the couple. Shortly after the mom arrived, nanny fatally poisoned her mom, um in January.
Speaker 4:In May 1953, richard, her husband of less than a year, also died after drinking a thermos of coffee which we later found out was full of arsenic. And this is where I mean I've been wondering, but I just keep wondering, like why is she doing this, if indeed she is killing all these people? Like why? And that answer question is never, never really really answered, but it keeps going. So her third husband died on May 19th and in June, so like less than a month later, she married. That was her fourth husband.
Speaker 4:In June, less than a month later, she married her fifth husband, samuel Doss, whom she had met through another Lonely Hearts column, and I saw a couple of references to not only her cheating on some of these husbands but also like scoping out the next husband before the last one was gone. So she was supposedly engaging in these like letter writing campaigns, I guess, these Lonely Hearts correspondences while still married, which she almost would have had to be given the timeline. But when she married this last husband, samuel, he really did not like all of her hobbies. She liked TV, she liked romance novels, she liked dancing and he was a minister and he sort of forbade her from doing any of that. I guess there was some drama.
Speaker 4:I think Heather, you found this where she left him for a while and then she wouldn't come back until he put her name on his bank account and took out two life insurance policies with her as the beneficiary. And I don't I don't know Back in 1953, if that was common to have your wife's name on your bank account. If it was common to take out life insurance policies with your wife as beneficiary, I guess it was. I don't know if she could have done it for herself, because she apparently took out one for her grandson. I don't know why she wouldn't take out one for her husband. I don't know, but that was the information that we have. So after he completed those to-do items she came back.
Speaker 4:In late 1954, the husband, samuel, was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and diagnosed with a severe digestive tract infection, which they later found out, and there were sources where she had talked about this. He really liked prunes, so she had cooked him up some prunes or prune cake, or something like that, with poison. She had expected he would die, but he did not die. They treated him, they released him on October 5th and then on October 12th he died, and that was very suspicious. So the doctor finally ordered an autopsy. Heather, did you have some information about how the autopsy came to be?
Speaker 3:I actually found that there was a physician who suspected that there was a problem and was very suspicious of how Mr Doss came to his demise. And he was able to convince Nanny to allow an autopsy to be done by telling her that it would save lives in the future if he could determine what illness had caused the death of her husband, Even though he suspected foul play. He didn't say that the doctor was very crafty in getting that consent to do the investigation and the autopsy. That eventually led to her downfall and it was the only thing she was ever convicted of. So if she had not consented to that one autopsy for that one victim, she might never have been caught or prosecuted.
Speaker 4:That's wild and it's a bit funny because it may have prevented the deaths of people in the future, since you know she was arrested as a result. But yeah, so that autopsy revealed a like a huge level of arsenic poisoning and I spent some time trying to figure out if rat poison contains arsenic and I guess at the time it very likely did. Arsenic or other heavy metals were and since, like the mid 20th century, they have phased out that sort of rat poison and now it's more of a like a blood thinner type, I guess, probably because people were using it for stuff like this I don't know but I did notice a lot of references to rat poison and arsenic, sort of interchangeably, um, and I don't know if that's so much of an inconsistency, as it is just like that was the most likely source of arsenic.
Speaker 4:Where she was able to source it, I don't, I don't know, but they definitely did the autopsy tons of arsenic levels in him and she was arrested for that and most sources say that she did confess to killing him for insurance money, although she was also quoted as saying she never killed for insurance, she only killed for love. I really wanted more info on that because I'm like, how does that fit together?
Speaker 3:I also noticed in one of them it had her quoted as saying I was searching for the perfect mate, the real romance of life. So maybe when she said she was murdering for love, she meant I had to get this one out of the way to move on to the next one.
Speaker 4:Well, you know it is consistent with the right looking for one while she still got got the last one with her. She still got the last one with her but specifically at the time where she was arrested for killing her fifth husband, she supposedly had potential husband number six lined up. She sent him a cake in the mail and she told him she was caring for a sick relative but she would be with him soon and I think she said it was her aunt. But I think in reality it was her sick and dying husband she murdered. So I don't think you know that guy really dodged a bullet. But I did see where she confessed to killing this last husband, samuel Doss for sure. And it's very, very hard to say what other murders she confessed to. I think several places said she confessed at least to killing four husbands. So the first husband divorced her and left, but husbands number two, three, four and five all killed by arsenic or poison. Other sources say that she confessed to killing the two children who had died of food poisoning right early on.
Speaker 4:One or both of the grandchildren we talked about, the one with the hat pin and the one who died of asphyxia, maybe her mom. There was mention of a nephew. I didn't have any details on the nephew. There was the sick sister Dovey, and then maybe another sister I couldn't find any info on, and maybe also the mother-in-law which was Arlie's mom, who died before the house burned down. And this is where I compile a whole timeline and I tried to put together a family tree and I can't figure out how all the people fit together. And so you know she killed somewhere between what? One and 14 people, I think, depending on what source you look at and what she actually admitted to.
Speaker 4:She had a video where it was taken after she was incarcerated and she was interviewed and in that video she said she didn't kill any of her husbands. And there were several sources that where she said she never killed any blood kin. So to me that is confessing to killing, like husbands only, but no children or grandchildren or nephews or anything like that. So I don't know what to make of those inconsistencies and it seems like some of that is probably, you know, due to having various sources and having been a long time since this was all recorded.
Speaker 4:But it sure seems like she said one thing at one point and another at another point and I don't really know why that might have been, except for she did have a video where she said that she didn't really know what was going on, but an attorney told her to go down to the court and say guilty. And so she did. And then she was sort of surprised when she ended up convicted and incarcerated for the murders. And I don't know if that's true. She's not a very educated woman. Some sources said that she was illiterate, so I don't know if she believed that. I don't know what she did or did not end up confessing to. It's really hard to find that information.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the things with this case is how much has been lost Accuracy to time, because so many people have covered this case from different angles. But really, when you go back to find like the Lonely Hearts ads, like you can't find them anymore, like people say they existed but they're not out there, the case files, like you can't seem to find those online either. Like you can find what other people have said and then they talk about and stuff like she was all over the media and there are tons of like interviews.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh interviews and it was a huge news, right, because she was portrayed, really, I guess portrayed herself as a super happy housewife and her house was always clean and she loved to bake and she was really like happy and smiley and flirty and everybody liked her. Clearly she's very likable. She's finding all these new husbands right right after one, right after the other, so it was really interesting then, I guess, to the public generally, that this lovely, like affable woman was perhaps like extreme murderer. When I think about that, right, I again I go back to why, like, why was she doing this? I understand, I might understand why you would kill an abusive partner. I understand if you have who's part of depression or psychosis and maybe you know you lose it and you kill a kid or two. I'm not saying it's great, but like, at least I understand, like how to connect those dots.
Speaker 4:I don't understand how to connect these dots of, and it does seem very likely she killed a large number of these family members. They did autopsies on a bunch of them after the fact and found out that it was unclear which one specifically, but I think all four husbands and at least her mom and some of the others who were on the list of potential victims did have arsenic poisoning. It was easy to tell after the fact. Why in the world? I really don't see like a why in here anywhere. So I'm just assuming that she's got some something miswired mentally and I don't know the way, the way to say that. But I do go back to that traumatic brain injury and I don't know and I guess if that happens to somebody early in life, like is there something then that would just develop or not develop?
Speaker 2:I mean that's. I mean that's something they're trying to research now. But I do think it's kind of interesting when you go back and like she said she was doing this for love. Well, that was also the same thing you hear from other serial killers, like jeffrey domber. That was his big thing. I'm looking for the perfect partner, I'm trying to make the perfect partner, but with her. I think that crosses the line when suddenly you're killing children and family members and everything else Like this is obviously well outside of love. And then when you also go to the I didn't do it for insurance and one thing you'd ask like is insurance?
Speaker 2:Like was it common back then? And like it's weird, you could buy insurance for things from vending machines. The bombing of United Airlines 629, which was the first documented bombing of an airline in the United States the guy right before bought insurance from a vending machine for his mother before he put her on the flight and blew it up. So like you could just buy insurance in these areas. So it was actually pretty easy to get insurance on people. So to say she wasn't doing it for insurance and all these guys had insurance and she wouldn't even come back to the one guy put on her account Like I think there's definitely some financial here, but again like the daughter didn't even come out afterwards and say a lot.
Speaker 2:The daughter of the one that lived there. She killed her two children and everything Like even what year did she die?
Speaker 3:1984.
Speaker 4:That's what I want to say it was 1984. Yeah, heather found a picture which I think was was that at the trial or shortly thereafter, where you know we'll find find a way to share this. But it has Nanny and it has Melvina, who's now, you know, a grown adult, and Melvina's two surviving children, who you know we didn't mention before because they weren't particularly relevant to the story, but I guess after Nanny killed the first two of Melvina's children, she had two more and then, all these years later, when she went on trial for killing her fifth husband, melvina was there to support her, I guess to visit her. I'm not entirely sure, but she brought more grandchildren to visit her and it's so interesting to me. Maybe she didn't know, maybe she blocked it out, maybe she forgets. I didn't know, maybe, like she blocked it out, maybe she forget, I don't know. There's a lot of like questions in there that I just you know I wonder.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and in this picture that you mentioned, when you look at it, the two children and Nanny Doss are smiling, but Melvina is definitely not smiling. She's glaring at her mother and the citation at the bottom states that she's displaying her grandmotherly pride in a courthouse corridor during a hearing to decide her fate for the death of her fifth mate, samuel Doss. So I don't know if, when you're waiting for a hearing, if that means a sentencing hearing or if this was some type of other hearing, but she looks remarkably happy for somebody who is at a courthouse regarding a murder charge. And the granddaughters are Janice, who was four years old, and Peggy, who was eight years old. It would have been about 1955 when that happened, so approximately two years after Melvina lost her children, she started having more children, because that would have been about when Peggy was born. So it's interesting and sad at the same time.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's really weird when you look at cause you know she was known as the giggling granny and you look at a lot of these photos they present of her and she's got a smile on her face but her eyes are furrowed and a lot of them. She looks like from, if you put a paper over her nose, like from the nose up she looks angry or just almost sad and some of them. But from the face down it's like a very forced open teeth smile and a lot of the photos it's the same exact smile. There's not like some where it's like no teeth, some it's teeth, like there's just so many, almost like it's staged, like a learned behavior. And when you talk about looking for the perfect mate and again like why would you do this? Like I go back to those romance novels and if she was interested from a child, if she had this unobtainable image of what life was supposed to be?
Speaker 4:I mean. But a lot of us have an unobtainable image of what life is supposed to be right. You, just you. You get that from TV or wherever and we don't go to these lengths to try to achieve it. So that's still the disconnect for me. Like, but why Like rather than just being depressed about it? Why does she kill 14 people about it?
Speaker 2:Right. And then the children thing. Like again you're trying to find love, like were the kids, your grandkids, getting in the way of you meeting somebody new.
Speaker 4:I don't know. You know, I think listening to that everybody would probably be like, yeah, there's something, something going on in there. And you know her attorneys were not dumb. They, she had some court appointed attorneys and early on they would not enter a plea for her. They wouldn't say she was guilty or not guilty. They said she was mentally incompetent and they needed so, you know, therefore not fit to be tried basically.
Speaker 4:And so I guess procedurally there was some sort of hearing about that the judge ordered her to stay in a state asylum for 90 days to determine whether she was sane, and it was interesting that one doctor came out and said she was perfectly healthy, except for headaches dating back to childhood, which presumably are then like a lifelong result of this train accident injury. I have no way of knowing if that was true, if that was something she was trying to bring up. You know it wasn't an ongoing issue, like you know, I don't know, but that was one doctor's report is that she was fine except bring up. It wasn't an ongoing issue, I don't know, but that was one doctor's report is that she was fine except the headaches? But I guess the larger panel or his supervisors disagreed and their finding was that she was mentally defective, with a marked impairment of judgment and willpower, which goes back to what you were saying earlier about people with those brain injuries sometimes being excessively impulsive or never developing the part of their, their brain, that allows them to overcome impulsive actions and things like that. So that seems really consistent to me and I'm like, oh okay, so maybe she, you know, had these momentary impulses and just acted on them her whole life. I don't know, but the recommendation from this, this team of doctors, was that she be committed to the asylum, like they basically said yeah, there's something wrong in here, like she needs treatment, she should not be on trial. But this is legally where it's fuzzy for me.
Speaker 4:Somehow, even though that was what the doctors recommended, the prosecution continued and I don't know, you know, in the state of Oklahoma during that time, if that was just how it was done. I don't know if there's some procedural information missing there, but maybe the outcome of that was her attorneys entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. They then went on to have, I guess, a preliminary hearing about that issue before they went on to decide whether she was actually guilty of the crime. So when the hearings about her insanity. They had a prosecution expert who said she was a sociopath. And I don't know a lot about that, but I know Richie does. I thought he, you know, wanted to give us something about that. So what in 1954 or 55, what would someone have meant if, if they were an expert witness who said that someone is a sociopath?
Speaker 2:So back then being a sociopath was in the DSM but it was still in the very beginning stages. So you would hear things like and you still do of like sociopath and psychopath or like interchangeable. But nowadays sociopathy is more associated with antisocial personality disorder or aspd or apd, and I think I've saw some places where people were saying, well, no, she had kind of more borderline personality. But I don't believe so, because there's things with borderline that don't fit her where and a lot of the stuff that I've seen with her. She never has like this doubt of herself or this bad self-image of herself. In fact it kind of seems almost the opposite, like she's very knows who she is, knows what she's capable of and expects better for herself and people aren't giving her what she deserves.
Speaker 2:It doesn't seem more like that. She's not good enough, um, but like with anti-social personnel, like some of the traits that the DSM requires to have APD are like this repeated performance acts that are grounds for arrest. She's committing murders, certainly.
Speaker 2:I think you're pretty much right there and there's a very big possibility again, like there's a lot of records were lost and, of course, a lot of the stuff that you can find online and books, stuff about the murders. But I wonder if we could ever find these things, if there may have been some financial crimes as well stealing from her husband's, insurance, fraud, things like that again we don't know, but it'd be interesting looking at that deceitfulness, obviously right, I mean, even just going to the lonely hearts ad, there had to be some deceit in there about who she was. She was still married when she was looking for people, impulsivity, which there seems to be a lot of that and the one that seems really interesting is the hat pin. Killing a newborn with a hat pin, like that doesn't seem like I planned this out and I knew when this kid comes out, like she was playing with it. The kid comes out, so that's again aggressive, aggressive, uh, aggressive, just resulting in assault, like we have murders. I don't. I think that fits pretty well reckless disregard for safety.
Speaker 4:I don't that one's kind of the one where historically we don't see well, and again, we don't have like documentation of all of this, but there there were, you know some places saying where she would, I want to say, run away from home, you know, as an adult married woman, though she would leave home for several months and maybe be seeing other other men, maybe, you know, be out drinking and partying with with you know other people, and it's like a reckless disregard. Maybe I don't know, I don't know this place, I don't know these, these people, um, but it maybe this speaks like to the impulsivity just out doing what, I guess, whatever occurs to her at the time to do, without a real thought for whether this is dangerous or, you know, appropriate behavior. I don't know.
Speaker 2:And that's when I get as hard to tell, because I mean in the 50s, going around and cheating on your husband, that could be pretty reckless, especially if she's already getting there's abuse in the home and stuff. So I would put that consistent irresponsibility killing husbands again killing children. I think there's a lot of irresponsibility running out on your husbands traveling, see other men and then finally like a lack of remorse. I think you see that in like the photos of her, the interview I watched, like she's smiley.
Speaker 4:She doesn't seem again, it seems like a very forced smile but there's no remorse in it well, there was a lot and I couldn't find any any videos of this, but a lot of newspaper reports and and magazine interviews at the time, all talking about how friendly and happy she was and like flirty and um never really seemed to be stressed about all of this like legal stuff going on around her and I I don't know how someone could behave like that if they were experiencing a lot of remorse and, like you know, possible, but you know it does make me me wonder about that. But at the end of the day they they put the question of her sanity to the jury and they said that she was sane and I guess that was a topic of some some interviews after that and she basically agreed she's like, yeah, as far as I know, I'm super sane. I don't think I have any mental problems, and not that everyone who has a mental problem knows about it or is willing to admit to it. But it was interesting that they did find her sane and at some point after that then she changed her plea and decided to plead guilty only to the murder of Samuel Doss, like her final husband.
Speaker 4:I think that was the only crime she was on trial for in Oklahoma and she received a life sentence. We had some conflicting reports about that. There was a quote from the judge that he wasn't going to consider the death penalty due to her sex. He wasn't going to start executing women. But there was also something in there about her mental status. Even though she was sane, there was some legally sane there was some speculation that she may have some mental incapacity and we didn't want to start, you know, putting people with that sort of mental problem um to a death sentence too.
Speaker 2:I don't, I don't know there does seem to be historically, like even up into the 80s, like women could get away with certain crimes because they weren't seen as being capable of committing like murder. Or if they did, they had to be mentally unstable. Like a rational woman would not kill a child or kill her husband again. I don't know how that comes from, like the legal side, I've seen that. But I know like up into the 80s and early 90s, like the case of the woman that drowned her two children, like there was like oh she, there's no way of a sane woman could have done that. It had to be mental illness.
Speaker 4:So I think that's something that, especially when you're talking late 50s- I guess, and especially so many, although I, you know, I have no idea, no way of knowing what, what um evidence was going to be entered there for that trial. I assume prosecutors would have tried to get in evidence of as many of these, these other, you know, sketchy acts as possible, and I so I don't know. But the more of her story that I think about, the more I just personally can't imagine anything other than a mental illness causing all of that. And I don't know if a this one has a traumatic brain injury. Is that considered a mental illness, or what is that considered?
Speaker 2:It's just considered brain damage.
Speaker 2:So TBI actually causes physical bruising and damaging to the brain itself when, like mental illnesses, it depends Like not all mental illnesses have physical deformities of the brain, sometimes the chemical imbalance and stuff.
Speaker 2:But when you look at like especially severe concussed brains, like there can be plaque buildup, um deadening in some areas of brain tissue and stuff, and even with, like the saying she may have had antisocial personality, like it's hard post-mortem for to go back and look at somebody's life and say, oh, they had this mental illness without actually knowing them. But we can't look at the signs and symptoms and the crimes that they committed and say it's very possible, like I wouldn't call her a psychopath. I don't think we have nearly enough evidence to be able to say something like that, but I think, apd you do, so a lot of it just comes down to like we can have a lot of hypotheticals but without a lot of the information being documented and really what the lawyers were looking at, I don't know if we can ever affirmatively say what happened that was interesting because it sort of looks like like she killed all these people, right, but she had.
Speaker 4:She was tried for one one murder, but she, uh, was also charged with murders. Um, so, after this start started coming out right, based on all those confessions that she gave or, you know, rescinded later, it's hard to say, but there was enough suspicion that they started exhuming other bodies and finding the arsenic poisoning in all of them and she ended up charged with other murders in North Carolina, kansas and Alabama. But she was never prosecuted for them and at first I was really confused about that. My initial thought was well, she's already in jail for life. Maybe they just didn't bother. But I saw an article where she was interviewed and she said that she expected to be prosecuted in those other states if she was ever paroled from Oklahoma. So I thought maybe that's a strategic decision on behalf of the other of the other prosecutors. That's a strategic decision on behalf of the other of the other prosecutors. So I don't know, heather, do you have any, any insights on that?
Speaker 3:It definitely could be. There's always the idea of saving resources. How many trials do you want to conduct when you already know the person is going to be locked away forever? It did indicate in what I read, just as you said, the state departments of North Carolina, kansas and Alabama charged her with murder. So you would have to have some type of an extradition to get her out of Alabama and into those other states in order to try her. And if Oklahoma already had her and said we don't want to transport her because maybe there's a safety risk to our officers, or we don't want to transport her because maybe there's a safety risk to our officers, or we don't want to give her up, she's ours and she's going to rot here, there's always that possibility that she wouldn't be leaving there and if you can't get her to your state, they wouldn't be able to do anything without her being there.
Speaker 3:I also noted when I was looking through some of these there was a spot where it said that she would have been the first woman in Oklahoma history had she been executed and two years after being found guilty of murder, the judge in the case declared her insane.
Speaker 3:And again, I don't know what basis he would have for declaring her insane or what the diagnosis would have been basis he would have for declaring her insane or what the diagnosis would have been. But by doing that he spared her the electric chair and he explained that he did not want to set a poor precedent by executing a woman, and especially not a person with mental disabilities. So she did receive her life sentence in 1955. At that point she was obviously older, probably closer to the end of her life than the beginning. So that might have also been something that the states figured in if they were going to have to go through years and years of litigation just to find out if she was competent to stand trial, especially after the Oklahoma judge declared her insane. Those are other hurdles that you would have to consider her insane. Those are other hurdles that you would have to consider. Is it worth going through all of these hoops to get a conviction if she's already convicted and never?
Speaker 4:going to leave. Well, that's confusing, though, because I don't know if this is a conflict or just like an apparent disruptancy. I don't understand, because the jury found her sane initially and that's how she was able to. They were able to go through with the trial with her. So was it the judge from her trial who said later that she was insane? Was that like part of sentencing or why? Why was he saying that, and how did that not like undo what the jury said?
Speaker 3:earlier. It doesn't specifically say whether it's the same judge or not. Typically the judge who does the trial is the same one who does the sentencing, but at the same time, when you're talking about mental illness and the ability to stand trial, there's many different things that go into that. The person might have a mental disability or defect at the time of the crime, it might be later at the time of the trial, or it might be later at the time of the sentencing, and some of these things aren't constant. Some of these things are things that can come and go or become better or worse over time. So there's always the possibility that when she had her trial one they might've made a mistake. She might have had a mental defect where she shouldn't have been on trial or charged or allowed to enter a guilty plea, because if you enter a guilty plea you have to have the ability to do that, the mental ability to do that. So even with a guilty plea, you have to have some level of sanity.
Speaker 3:But the judge again two years later declaring her insane. He could have done that, as you said, as part of sentencing. That could have been a mitigating factor that he found during sentencing when he decided that she wouldn't be executed. Later on it's always easier to become more lenient for the defendant. So several years ago probably more like decades ago now in California they had a whole bunch of inmates who were scheduled to be sentenced to death and they converted all those sentences to life. If you were to try to go the other way and say all of these people who were sentenced to life are now going to be executed, you couldn't do that. But as far as becoming more lenient, you can pretty much always go that way.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know about Oklahoma, but aren't there some states where, like a normal trial, you're found guilty, you're sentenced, but then they have to hold a separate trial if it's a death penalty attempt. So that judge could have said you know what? For the death penalty I'm going to decide that you're mentally incompetent, but for the regular trial you were fine. But we can't put you to death because there's enough question there.
Speaker 3:And there's a whole lot that goes into that and at this point in time in the 50s, it would have been up to the individual states, so each state would have been allowed to do their own thing.
Speaker 3:Individual states, so each state would have been allowed to do their own thing.
Speaker 3:Now in most states I don't know if it's all, but at least in most states you have to have a separate sentencing phase for things like that.
Speaker 3:Things like the death penalty or certain sentence enhancers, like it used to be a judge could just take judicial notice that you had this other condition, like being on a bail bond.
Speaker 3:It used to be that the judge could just take judicial notice. They were out on bail and they committed a new crime and it's an aggravator. So you're getting the additional sentence. But some places now you have to do a second phase of the trial where you have to call in the person who was the bail bond person who said, yes, I posted the bond for that person, they were out on bail bond when they committed the offense or a probation officer to say, yes, they were on probation, I was a probation officer at the time of their offense, instead of the judge just being able to look at a file and say, yep, here it is, you are on probation. So the one in California where there were many death sentences that were converted to life were because the federal government felt that they did not satisfy the requirements that they needed to satisfy with having more than one judge make the decision as to whether or not somebody would have the death penalty.
Speaker 4:And the last note that I have, which I may have mentioned earlier, is that there's an interview after her incarceration and she talked about life in prison a little bit. But the interesting thing I have there is the interviewer asked her OK well, how did you, how did you come? How did this happen to you? How did you get in jail for this? Did you do it? And she said no, I did not kill my husband. It's like well then, okay, why are you here?
Speaker 4:Because you know we had seen this information that she she confessed and she said something like she didn't understand what was going on. An attorney came and told her to go to the court and say guilty. So she did, without, I guess, questioning what that meant or why they might have done that. And you know we have no way of knowing if that's true or if she really believed that. But the interviewer continued to ask her several times, like and she was adamant she had nothing to do with the death of any of her husbands, like none of them. And so you know, I guess it's probably not uncommon for people to confess a crime and then later try to rescind that or have different stories at different times.
Speaker 4:But it's very interesting to me and I just, I just am left the whole time wondering like why, why, why did this, all of these things happen? I, I don't know, but I, uh, you know I now have a very suspicious Google search history about can you still buy arsenic in 2024? Does rat poison have arsenic in it? Um, so I you know how often did this happen. If you didn't do it to 14 of your family members, maybe you wouldn't get caught Like I don't know, um, um. But, richie, I think you had some insights about that video where she was saying no, she had nothing to do with with the death of any of her husbands as well there's like and you can find the video online.
Speaker 2:There's one interview that's been put out there I could find, and there's a couple of things where she won't directly engage and look at the interviewer. She's always kind of side eyeing, so it's almost like she can't bear to directly face to face have this person see her. But also, like, sometimes her body language doesn't match the answers she's giving. So she'll be saying no in response to something and shaking your head yes, or she'll say something that's supposed to be sad, but she'll smile a little bit. Even if it's a split second micro reaction, she'll. So it's definitely an interview to watch and there's definitely a lot.
Speaker 2:I think even people that are more expert than I am in micro facial expressions, the body could really look at that interview. But again, it's that big smile but the eyes are just not matching up. Her body movement's not matching up and some of her responses aren't even matching up, like. So he asks her who's responsible for you being here? And she, very quickly and very bold face I looking at him, says myself, and then she goes because I was told to come down here and say I was guilty by my lawyer. I was told to come down here and say I was guilty by my lawyer.
Speaker 4:So you think, like her first response, to say like myself, I'm the one responsible may have been giving away more than she intended to.
Speaker 2:Maybe again like this is post analyzing, which I've got some training in, but you're you're always going to have like some bias, especially if you've read as much as I did and I'm like you stabbed a child, of course. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely like some like interesting stuff with that, and then just also the photos for her and stuff and the photos and the way other people are interacting with her in those photos.
Speaker 2:That there's definitely some fear from family members, and it's very interesting. So what ended up happening to her in the end.
Speaker 4:She died 10 years after she was sentenced to life in prison. She died of leukemia. That's really all that we know about that. So she was 60 years old at that time.
Speaker 3:I also found it interesting, when we were looking, that she had offered to work in the kitchen when she was serving her life sentence and they had politely declined and told her she could work in the laundry instead.
Speaker 2:And like just everything about this case. I think it says like we can definitely track the court records and that she was convicted of this one and there are other charges pending and that they had found arsenic poisoning. But so much of the rest of her life is unknown and about this case is unknown, and of course there's a lot of speculation out there and stuff. But in the end what we do know is this is a woman that murdered eight to 12 people for no other reason that we can tell than the want to kill and maybe financial gain.
Speaker 4:For some of them. Right, there's a couple she definitely we know she had insurance policies out on, but like the newborn grand baby, like I don't I her two original of her four original children, like I don't know if there was a financial motive there, if it was less of a financial gain and maybe more, I have four mouths to feed and I have no idea. I just I don't. So much of this is just like it leaves me confused. But there are a couple of things you mentioned early on, phrases I've heard, but I'm not super familiar with, that you say might describe her. Can you tell us about black widows and family annihilators, because I don't really know what that means.
Speaker 2:So black widow is a term used in somebody that kills their spouse. It doesn't have to have a motive, but it's somebody that kills their spouse.
Speaker 2:OK, and then a family annihilator which again I'm using that term kind of loosely in this but and then a family annihilator which again I'm using that term kind of loosely in this, but I mean she was killing grandchildren, her own husbands. We usually think more of like John List, where he killed all his children, his wife and his mother and then ran. So you're wiping out a big chunk of your family.
Speaker 4:Would that typically be like at one time or like over decades, like she did?
Speaker 2:It's usually at one time, so like when you go back and she killed the two children in rapid succession. It sounds like she, she did. It's usually a one time, so like when you go back and she killed the two children in rapid succession. It sounds like she may have been aiming for more and the husband at that time caught on and went I gotta get these kids to safety right. And then. But in that same time she had that one that she was protecting, the one that she kept and took care of the rest of her life. So maybe that was like there's so many things with that that just ask questions like, like you said, like she so easily kills these other children, but yet then there's this one or two that she takes care of and like really cherishes. And you see the videos of her with her grandkids and in that interview that I watched they said you know, if you could get out right now, what would you do with your grandchildren?
Speaker 4:And she says I would take them home and protect them, something that lines and it's just like you killed all their grandchildren, like it's so yeah, but I mean, and I don't, you know, I don't know, I just keep going back to the all of the newspaper articles saying how friendly she was and how, what a perfect home she kept and and how that was such, you know, so at odds with doing all of this stuff. And you know, I, I don't know if that's true, I don't know that she was an excellent cook, et cetera. Right, but maybe some of that was just for the dramatic value of setting up this perfect looking housewife who actually ended up being a murderer. But this story feels very incomplete. We have, like a lot of facts and not a lot of explanations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of known, but a lot of details missing. Like we have this big murder was committed. But what happened in that relationship and between them? Details, that happened, but and that's kind of the thing, that, especially as we look at more cases and really when you, especially when you get into murders and serial killers.
Speaker 2:There's very few that people were like oh yeah, like I can totally see, like I knew. When he lived next to me I was scared he was gonna run through my house and murder me, most times like he was the nicest person, like we never thought about this, he was a family man until the crimes are found. Because one thing with psychopaths sociopaths is they're very good at superficial charm and making people like them. Because, like Ted Bundy, how do you get all these women to get in your car? It's not because you're hideous and you're like I'm going to murder you. It's because they see you as charming and friendly and they feel safe with you.
Speaker 4:I mean, I guess if you are in possession of charm, that would make it easier for people to get people close to you and, you know, expand your pool of victims, intentionally or unintentionally, I suppose.
