89.Nannie DOSS
A.K.A.: "The Zardad's Dog"
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: "Crime of passion"
Number of victims: 5
Date of murder: August 6, 1996
Date of arrest: Same day (wounded by police)
Date of birth: 1941
A.K.A.: "The Giggling Grandma"
Birth name: Nancy Hazel
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Poisoner - To collect insurance money - Search for "the real romance of life"
Number of victims: 8 - 11
Date of murder: 1920s - 1954
Date of arrest: October 1954
Date of birth: November 4, 1905
Victim profile: Four of her husbands, her mother, her sister Dovie, her grandson Robert and her mother-in-law, Arlie Lanning's mother
Method of murder: Poisoning (arsenic)
Location: Alabama/North Carolina/Kansas/Oklahoma, USA
Status: Pleaded guilty on May 17, 1955, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Died of leukemia in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on June 2, 1965
On the outside Nannie Doss of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a friendly and happy neighbor, wife, and parent. On the inside lurked a cold-blooded murderess who nearly wiped out her entire family singlehandedly.
Her first victims her own children. Her first husband, George Frazer arrived home one day in 1920 and found the kids lying on the kitchen floor dead. Doss claimed it had been an accidental poisoning but evidently Frazer was not convinced. He left and never went back.
Relatives and husbands continued to die of "stomach problems" and other such ailments until Doss' fifth husband, Samuel Doss sudenly passed away.
The doctor in the case was not as gullible as the previous ones were evidently and didn't simply take Doss at her word. He ordered an autopsy be done, which revealed massive doses of arsenic in the man's system.
The bodies of doss' husbands, relatives, and children were exhumed and tested. It was found that Doss' two infant children, four of her husbands, two of her sisters, her mother, and a nephew had all been killed by arsenic poisoning.
Armed with this information police soon convinced the poisoner to confess and she was sent to prison for life in 1964. She succumbed to Leukemia the following year.
Doss, Nanny Hazel
A daughter of Dixie, born in 1905, Nanny Doss had been molested by a string of local men before she reached her middle teens. At age 16, she married Charles Braggs, bearing him four children in rapid succession. Braggs was mystified when two of them died suddenly, a few months apart, but Nanny could offer no explanation. Each child had seemed healthy when Charles left for work, but they cried at his leaving and died in convulsions not long after breakfast.
Small insurance payments eased the pain, but Braggs became increasingly suspicious of his wife. One afternoon, he took their oldest living child and struck off for parts unknown, leaving Nanny behind with their daughter, Florine. Packing up their meager belongings, Nanny moved to Cedar Town, Georgia, where she met and subsequently married Frank Harrelson. Florine was barely two years old when Harrelson and Nanny hit the road, leaving the child alone in their abandoned house. Neighbors managed to track down Charles Braggs and he came for the child, but Nanny would not see her daughter again for nine years.
Their reunion evidently smoothed things over, and by 1945, Florine now married -- felt secure enough to leave her infant son at Nanny's home in Jacksonville, Alabama, while Florine took off to see her father. Baby Lee survived three days in Nanny's care, his death producing anguished speculation that he accidentally "got hold of some rat poison." Three months later, Frank Harrelson fell suddenly ill and died within the week. Nanny used the insurance money to buy ten acres of land and build a small house for herself outside Jacksonville.
The early 1950s were a lethal time for Nanny's relatives. Her third husband, Arlie Lanning, died at Lexington, North Carolina, in 1952. A few months later, in January 1953, her mother died while Nanny nursed the woman for a broken hip. Two of her sisters died the same year, in different towns; each collapsed while Nanny was visiting, each with the same mysterious symptoms of stomach cramps and convulsions. In 1953, it was husband number four -- Richard Morton -- laid to rest at Emporia, Kansas.
Nanny married her fifth and last husband, Samuel Doss, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during July 1954. He died a month later, and the obligatory autopsy revealed enough arsenic to kill twenty men. Confronted with the evidence of guilt, Nanny Doss issued confessions spanning three decades and at least ten murders, drawing a term of life imprisonment for the Tulsa case in 1955. She served ten years before succumbing to leukemia in 1965.
Throughout her various confessions and the years in jail, Nanny insisted that money played no significant role in her crimes. Despite various insurance payments, her murders were actually motivated by marital boredom, a dream of discovering the ideal husband, as described in her favorite "True Romance" magazines. "That's about it," Nanny told her interrogators. "I was searching for the perfect mate, the real romance of life."
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Nannie Doss
Oklahoma’s Jolly Widow (also known as the original Black widow)
Nannie Hazle,(Hazel), a.k.a. Nancy Hazle, born to Louisa Holder and Jim Hazle (Hazel), about 1905, in Anniston, Blue Mountain, Alabama.
A skeleton in our ancestral closet, but an ancestor none the less.
During the course of genealogical research we come across many people, some notorious for their acts of bravery, some for unlawful deeds, and some who are just plain people like ourselves.
Nannie Doss was one of those people whose deeds will forever be recorded in our history, however cold and malicious they may have been. How could this pretty, romantic girl and later a soft-voiced woman still seeking the “perfect love” lead an incredible saga of murder by poison for over 28 years leaving a trail of victims across half the country before arousing suspicion? This is a puzzle still left unsolved by authorities.
Arrested in 1954 for murder by poison of her present husband and possibly the murder of another, the investigators had no idea what a web they were about to unweave that had been woven by the “Black Widow”
Called the Jolly Widow by many, because of her cheerful disposition, her last victim was the unfortunate Samuel Doss of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sam and Nannie were married in July of 1954 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shortly after that Doss became ill, after a trip to the Hospital, Doss’ condition continued to worsen and by October 1954 he was dead.
After several weeks of investigation into the death of Sam Doss, Oklahoma police had enough evidence to arrest Nannie Doss for the murder of Doss and possibly another.
Nannie faced her interrogators with equanimity on November 26th, 1954 when she was arrested She laughed at the accusation, always stating, “my conscience is clear”. “I married these men because I loved them”.
She told the detectives, “I have never poisoned anyone”. That she read a lot of love story magazines and that her favorite television programs “are of amour”, seems she favored the sophisticated sound of the word. “I’m sure I’ll find my perfect mate yet”, she told the officers. All through the night and into early morning , in two-man teams, detectives questioned the “Jolly Widow”.
During these intervals, she would remove her horn-rimmed glasses stating, “I’m not near or far sighted”, she explained she only wore them for the headaches.
“I’ve had terrible headaches all my life, or rather from the time I was seven. That was when the train hit the buggy I was riding in and I was thrown out”. The smiling suspect never once lost her composure and wore out four teams before they gave up for the night.
While the officers took a few hours of grateful rest, a new force had entered their side of the battle.
Newspapers and wire services had spread the word that Nannie Doss was being questioned in at least one and possibly two deaths caused by poisoning.
By sunrise the Oklahoma police phone was jumping off the hook , more evidence was pouring in by the second against Nannie. Stories of other men Nannie had been married to who had met untimely deaths , the deaths of her sisters while in her care, mysterious death of two of her young daughters, and even the death of her own mother was being questioned. This story began to grow, hour by hour , in length and horror. Apparently anything or anyone that annoyed “Arsenic Nannie” was sure to have a death warrant signed with their name on it.
Once again, the interrogation began, this time the investigators were armed with evidence against her.
Sometime during the next seven hours, she faltered and at times a self-conscience giggle heralded a small admission, “I lied about that”. At last she weakened and admitted that she had poisoned Sam Doss. he had begun to annoy her shortly after their marriage. She stated she felt sorry for him, when she should have felt sorry for herself. “I didn’t know what I was getting into”.
Some of the “little things” he annoyed her with was having to go to bed at dark, and “he wouldn’t let me have a television set or radio or even a fan in the house. She quoted Doss with “Ive been a Christian man all my life and you’re going to be a Christian woman. You don’t need a radio and television.
This “got on her nerves” so bad that she put an inch of rat poison in Doss’ coffee. She apparently overestimated the dose, causing him to retch so violently it saved his life. Afterwards she was “nursing” him back to health and reportedly stated that he was a mean as ever. Again she poisoned his food, that day he died.
After Nannie signed the confession, the investigators began the task of leading this extraordinary woman, like a clock running backwards , over her trail of murders. She would admit a chilling crime and the back off on a minor detail. Her final words on Doss were, “now my conscience is clear”.
She claimed to have met husband #4, Richard Morton, in Birmingham, Al at the bus station. Morton was a 69 yr old native of Emporia, Kansas, after a long period of questioning, she admitted to having poisoned Morton in 1953 as well. Her reason for his death..”he had been making me mad ‘shining up to other women”.
After she signed this confession, once again she stated “ Now my conscience is clear”.
The expectant officers were disappointed when the floodgates of Nannie’s soul did not open up. Without rancor, she continued to verbally fence with the investigators until they trapped her with new confessions. This brought out the confession of the murder of husband #3, Arlie Lanning resident of Lexington, NC. Married in 1952.
Her brow was darkened with one of her infrequent frowns when she recalled the provocation’s that led to the fate of Lanning.
This marriage was the longest of all, five years. He crossed the fatal line in 1952. “He was a womanizer” and “He started running with other women”, she stated. Shortly afterward, she confessed to murdering Lanning with poison. Once again, “Now my conscience is clear”.
The investigators gently led Nannie into a discussion of Frank Harreslon, husband #3, who’s murder would be her first so far as present admissions went. She claims they were married in 1937 in Jacksonville, Al. but, Harrelson’s brother claims they were married in 1945, the year of Harrelson’s death.
Nannie stated she married him for love but, that was a disappointment. “I found out that he was a jailbird and a drunkard”.
Then she enlightened them on that story, “One Sunday I was at my mothers and Frank’s brother showed up stating that Frank wanted to see me”. Frank had been out all night the night before drinking. She went with the brother to the edge of town, where she found him passed out from too much to drink.
After driving him home and helping him inside, she states that “He wanted me to go to bed with him, I refused” Frank then replied, “My God woman, I may not be here next Sunday to go to bed with”. After thinking about what he said, “I went and got the whiskey bottle out of the flour bin in the kitchen and poured poison into it, I thought I’ll just teach him a lesson”.
The next morning the bottle was empty and Frank was sick all week,, by Sunday he was dead. When the investigator asked her, “How’s your conscience now”? She replied, “CLEAR”.
No amount of prodding could evoke more confessions from her. Her soft reply was “You can dig up all the graves in the world and you won’t get anything more on me”.
Although exhumation of more bodies proved that the deaths had been from poisoning, No more confessions were forthcoming.
Returning Nannie to the time when she was a wild and pretty girl of 15 in her home town of Blue Mountain, Al where she met and married Charlie Braggs, it became apparent that she may have included children in her lethal activities. Braggs is known as “the one who got away”.
Unfortunately, not before two of their young daughters died mysteriously. He stated “she was always running off with this man and the other”, he divorced her after one of her escapades when she returned home bringing another man home with her The only statement from Nannie of Braggs was, “she was forced to leave him because of him running around with other women”.
Braggs said he was afraid of Nannnie, as was his family. He never ate or drank anything that she had prepared when she was in a foul mood..
After all was said and done, Nannie appeared as “fresh as a Daisy”. she laughingly outlined a meal complete with coffee she would like to prepare for them.
When ask what she thought they should do with her for poisoning all those people, her answer was,” why anything they like”, she answered calmly, “Anything they do is perfectly all right with me”.
Four confessed murders and at least eight that were still under investigation? What could have cause Nannie to commit such hideous crimes? And some her own children and grandchildren, her sisters, and even her mother and possibly her father. Did she commit even more crimes? After all these years the answer may never be known.
We know that had she continued on, even more would have fallen prey to her. Before Doss died she was corresponding with a farmer in NC, for whom she and baked a cake and mailed to him. he was anxiously awaiting the day when they would meet.
There was even a period unaccounted for in her life where it is believed she lived in New York and Idaho and was possibly married to a man named Hendrix..... did he fall prey to Nannie’s temperament as well?
Was it the head injury as small child, due to the time and era, that possibly lacked for medical attention that could have caused her to be a murderess? We will never know.
Although Nannie’s education is believed to not have reached past the sixth grade, and she probably never read “The purloined Letter’, yet she unerringly executed the bold psychology advocated in that famous story.
She moved so openly and with such guilelessness that she was never questioned although victims dropped around her like winter’s snow.
We are not accountable for our ancestors actions, however it is strongly believed that knowing about them helps us to understand more about ourselves.
It is believed that Nannie died in an Oklahoma Prison for Women, still looking for that “Perfect Love”.
The Giggling Grandma
Nannie Doss, dubbed by the popular press of the time as “The Giggling Grandma” and “Arsenic Annie,” loved to read the pulp magazine True Romance, and she spent most of her life searching for “the real romance of life.”
However, when Nannie didn’t find the love affair she was seeking, she had a strange way of ending the relationship.
Nannie enjoyed killing, and it didn’t matter who the victim was. Born Nancy Hazle and known popularly by the moniker “Nannie,” she was linked to the murders of four husbands, her mother, two sisters, two of her children, a grandchild, and a nephew. She had a successful 30-year murder spree in several states across the south before she was finally brought to justice.
“Very likely there were others who also sampled Nannie’s stewed prunes,” wrote criminologist Eric W. Hickey. “Each of her victims died agonizing deaths after being fed large amounts of rat poison laced with arsenic.”
Nannie was first married in 1921 when she was 15 years old. It turns out that that husband, who by various accounts is named Charles Bragg, Charles Braggs, and George Frazer, was the only one of her five husbands who managed to survive marriage with Nannie. Three of their five children weren’t so lucky. (Hickey uses Charles Bragg as the name of her first husband, while Colin Wilson uses Frazer. Sherby Green, a relative of Nannie, reports that her first husband was Charles Braggs.)
Nannie’s first marriage lasted eight years and according to Bragg(s)/Frazer was stormy from the beginning. Nannie was an insatiable lover who apparently had never heard of the word “fidelity.” She also had a vicious streak that Bragg(s)/Frazer described as “high-tempered and mean.”
“When she got mad I wouldn’t eat anything she fixed or drink anything around the house,” he told reporters years later.
It was his opinion that the only thing that kept him alive was the fact that he was uninsured. When the law finally caught up with Nannie, however, she scoffed at the idea that her motive was money. The meager insurance she did collect backs up her claim that something other than money drove Nannie to kill.
Before her relationship with husband number one ended, one of their children died very shortly after birth, and two others died when they were very young. Some anecdotes report that husband number one returned home one day to find the children writhing in agony on the floor of the cabin that served as a home. There is no evidence to confirm this, however.
“Back at the time, I didn’t know about poison,” Bragg/Frazer said. “The undertakers told me at the time that they were poisoned.”
Nannie and Charles Bragg/George Frazer divorced in 1929, but Nannie wasn’t ready to play the gay divorcee. Placing an advertisement in a lonely hearts magazine, she quickly hooked up with Robert F. Harrelson and the two were wed.
They stayed together for 16 years until Nannie decided the romance had gone out their relationship. One day, Harrelson up and died and when Nannie told the coroner that Harrelson was an “awful drunkard,” the coroner ruled the manner of death to be natural and put down “acute alcoholism” as the cause. Harrelson was buried near his two-year-old grandson.
It wouldn’t be for many years that Nannie would admit that she ended the marriage by putting rat poison in Harrelson’s corn whiskey. At the same time, she admitted that their two-month old grandson “just might have gotten hold of some rat poison.”
Harrelson knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He did, however, see impending doom.
“I’ll be next,” he said at his grandson’s funeral.
In 1947, two years after burying Harrelson, Nannie met and married Arlie J. Lanning in North Carolina. He managed to avoid the stewed prunes for five years before Nannie dispatched him. She later said she did so because he “was running around with other women.” Just before Lanning died, a nephew living with him died “of food poisoning.”
In 1953, Nannie, using the tried-and-true stewed prune recipe murdered Lanning’s elderly mother with whom she was living.
Later that year, again through a lonely hearts magazine, Nannie met and married Richard C. Morton, Sr. That marriage lasted just four months before Morton died.
Again, when she was finally brought to justice, Nannie blamed Morton’s womanizing as the cause of her anger.
Nannie collected five life insurance policies on Morton, worth $1,400 (approximately $10,600 adjusted for inflation over 52 years).
In the summer of 1954, the 49-year-old Nannie married Samuel Doss, 58 after the two met through a lonely hearts magazine and began corresponding. After they were married Samuel Doss repeatedly became ill with stomach ailments and in October he ended up in the hospital with a severe stomach ache. When Sam Doss recovered and went home, Nannie fixed him a bowl of stewed prunes
Sam was dead the next day. He and Nannie had been married four months. (Nannie admitted feeding Doss the prunes around the time of his death, but some accounts have her confessing that the final dose of poison was administered in a cup of coffee).
Sam’s doctor couldn’t understand how his patient had died so quickly when he was on the mend in the hospital and suggested an autopsy be performed.
However, at that time most states had had a very rudimentary murder investigation process and a great deal of authority was vested in justices of the peace who also served as coroners. Most of these men were lawyers or morticians and had little training in death scene investigations.
“They’d walk around it and then come out in the front yard and talk about it, and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah. Old Harry killed himself. It’s a suicide.’ Then the justice of the peace would sign off on it,” Ray Blakeney, a former medical examiner told the Daily Oklahoman in a retrospective on Nannie’s case.
In Oklahoma, authorities who wanted to perform an autopsy needed the permission of the family or a court order if there was probably cause to suspect foul play.
Dr. N.Z. Schwelbein didn’t know if foul play was to blame, but that problem was solved when Nannie for some reason eagerly agreed to an autopsy.
“Of course there should be,” she reportedly said. “It might kill someone else.”
Little did authorities know, but Nannie was already corresponding with a man who she desired as husband number six.
John H. Keel, a 60-year-old milkman from Goldsboro, North Carolina had been exchanging letters with Nannie for some time.
“I’m mighty proud I didn’t meet her and she didn’t come down here,” he told investigators when they contacted him. “From now on I am through with these women who make their matches by mail.”
When the results of Sam Doss’s autopsy came back, authorities found enough arsenic in his stomach to kill 10 people. Nanie played dumb.
“How could such a thing happen?” she asked. “My conscience is clear.”
Unsatisfied, but still unsure if Nannie was to blame, police began digging into her past. They found a string of deaths connected to Nannie Doss and confronted her.
She was caught in a lie when asked about Richard Morton, saying she had never heard of the man.
“Well, I guess I wasn’t telling the truth,” Nannie confessed with a coy giggle. “I was married to him.”
Over the course of the next couple of days, police were shocked by her continuous string of confessions. She was adamant, however, that she only poisoned people “who deserved it” and none of the deaths of her relatives were due to poisoning.
“I never did feed that stuff to my blood kin,” she claimed. The facts showed otherwise. Belated autopsies of her mother who died in in 1953 and a sister who passed on in 1950 both had massive amounts of arsenic in their systems.
Police were amazed at the joy Nannie took in confessing her crimes and reliving the details of her husbands’ deaths. She laughed and giggled like a schoolgirl recounting the events of a pleasant summer vacation, and often gave bizarre little asides that demonstrated her lack of compassion.
“He sure did love those stewed prunes,” she said about one husband.
On May 18, 1955, Nannie Doss pleaded guilty to Sam’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
“Take it easy,” she told her daughter as she was taken away to prison. “Don’t worry. I’m not.”
Nannie died of leukemia in 1965 at the age of 59.
MarkGribben.com
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: "Crime of passion"
Number of victims: 5
Date of murder: August 6, 1996
Date of arrest: Same day (wounded by police)
Date of birth: 1941
A.K.A.: "The Giggling Grandma"
Birth name: Nancy Hazel
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Poisoner - To collect insurance money - Search for "the real romance of life"
Number of victims: 8 - 11
Date of murder: 1920s - 1954
Date of arrest: October 1954
Date of birth: November 4, 1905
Victim profile: Four of her husbands, her mother, her sister Dovie, her grandson Robert and her mother-in-law, Arlie Lanning's mother
Method of murder: Poisoning (arsenic)
Location: Alabama/North Carolina/Kansas/Oklahoma, USA
Status: Pleaded guilty on May 17, 1955, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Died of leukemia in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on June 2, 1965
On the outside Nannie Doss of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a friendly and happy neighbor, wife, and parent. On the inside lurked a cold-blooded murderess who nearly wiped out her entire family singlehandedly.
Her first victims her own children. Her first husband, George Frazer arrived home one day in 1920 and found the kids lying on the kitchen floor dead. Doss claimed it had been an accidental poisoning but evidently Frazer was not convinced. He left and never went back.
Relatives and husbands continued to die of "stomach problems" and other such ailments until Doss' fifth husband, Samuel Doss sudenly passed away.
The doctor in the case was not as gullible as the previous ones were evidently and didn't simply take Doss at her word. He ordered an autopsy be done, which revealed massive doses of arsenic in the man's system.
The bodies of doss' husbands, relatives, and children were exhumed and tested. It was found that Doss' two infant children, four of her husbands, two of her sisters, her mother, and a nephew had all been killed by arsenic poisoning.
Armed with this information police soon convinced the poisoner to confess and she was sent to prison for life in 1964. She succumbed to Leukemia the following year.
Doss, Nanny Hazel
A daughter of Dixie, born in 1905, Nanny Doss had been molested by a string of local men before she reached her middle teens. At age 16, she married Charles Braggs, bearing him four children in rapid succession. Braggs was mystified when two of them died suddenly, a few months apart, but Nanny could offer no explanation. Each child had seemed healthy when Charles left for work, but they cried at his leaving and died in convulsions not long after breakfast.
Small insurance payments eased the pain, but Braggs became increasingly suspicious of his wife. One afternoon, he took their oldest living child and struck off for parts unknown, leaving Nanny behind with their daughter, Florine. Packing up their meager belongings, Nanny moved to Cedar Town, Georgia, where she met and subsequently married Frank Harrelson. Florine was barely two years old when Harrelson and Nanny hit the road, leaving the child alone in their abandoned house. Neighbors managed to track down Charles Braggs and he came for the child, but Nanny would not see her daughter again for nine years.
Their reunion evidently smoothed things over, and by 1945, Florine now married -- felt secure enough to leave her infant son at Nanny's home in Jacksonville, Alabama, while Florine took off to see her father. Baby Lee survived three days in Nanny's care, his death producing anguished speculation that he accidentally "got hold of some rat poison." Three months later, Frank Harrelson fell suddenly ill and died within the week. Nanny used the insurance money to buy ten acres of land and build a small house for herself outside Jacksonville.
The early 1950s were a lethal time for Nanny's relatives. Her third husband, Arlie Lanning, died at Lexington, North Carolina, in 1952. A few months later, in January 1953, her mother died while Nanny nursed the woman for a broken hip. Two of her sisters died the same year, in different towns; each collapsed while Nanny was visiting, each with the same mysterious symptoms of stomach cramps and convulsions. In 1953, it was husband number four -- Richard Morton -- laid to rest at Emporia, Kansas.
Nanny married her fifth and last husband, Samuel Doss, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during July 1954. He died a month later, and the obligatory autopsy revealed enough arsenic to kill twenty men. Confronted with the evidence of guilt, Nanny Doss issued confessions spanning three decades and at least ten murders, drawing a term of life imprisonment for the Tulsa case in 1955. She served ten years before succumbing to leukemia in 1965.
Throughout her various confessions and the years in jail, Nanny insisted that money played no significant role in her crimes. Despite various insurance payments, her murders were actually motivated by marital boredom, a dream of discovering the ideal husband, as described in her favorite "True Romance" magazines. "That's about it," Nanny told her interrogators. "I was searching for the perfect mate, the real romance of life."
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Nannie Doss (November 4, 1905 –
June 2, 1965) was a serial killer responsible for the
deaths of eleven people between the 1920s and 1954.
She finally confessed to the murders in October
1954, when her fifth husband had died in a small hospital
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In all, it was revealed that she had
killed four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her
mother, a grandson and a nephew.
Early life
Doss was born in Blue Mountain, Alabama as Nancy Hazle,
to James and Lou Hazle. Nannie was one of five children;
she had one brother and three sisters. Both Nannie and her mother
hated James, who was a strict, often controlling father and
husband with a nasty streak. There is evidence that Doss was
conceived illegitimately, as James and Lou married after
1905; census records also show that in 1905 she and her
mother were living on their own.
She had an unhappy childhood. She was a poor
student who never learned to read well; her education was
erratic because her father forced his children to work on
the family farm instead of attending school. When she was
around seven years old, the family was taking a train to
visit relatives in southern Alabama; when the train stopped
suddenly, Nannie hit her head on the metal bar on the seat
in front of her. For years after, she suffered severe
headaches, blackouts and depression; she blamed these and her mental
instability on that accident.
During childhood, her favorite hobby was
reading her mother's romance magazines and dreaming of her
own romantic future. Later, her favorite part was the lonely
hearts column. The Hazle sisters' teenage years were
restricted by their father; he forbade them to wear makeup
and attractive clothing. He was trying to prevent them from
being molested by men, which happened on several occasions.
He also forbade them to go to dances and other social
events.
First marriage
Doss was first married at age sixteen, to
Charlie Braggs. They had met at the Linen Thread factory
where they both worked, and with her father's approval they
married after dating for just four months. He was the only
son of his unmarried mother, who insisted on living with
them. Doss later wrote
I married, as my father wished, in 1921 to a boy I only knowed about four or five months who had no family, only a mother who was unwed and who had taken over my life completely when we were married. She never seen anything wrong with what he done, but she would take spells. She would not let my own mother stay all night...
Braggs' mother took up a lot of his attention,
and she often prevented Nannie from doing things she wanted
to do. The marriage produced four daughters over a four-year
period of 1923–1927. Under a lot of stress, Doss started
drinking and her casual smoking habit became a heavy
addiction. The marriage was an unhappy one, and both
suspected each other, correctly, of infidelity. Braggs often
disappeared for days on end. In early 1927, they lost their two middle
daughters to suspected food poisoning. Suspecting she had
killed them, he fled from her, taking eldest daughter
Melvina with him and leaving newborn Florine behind. His
mother also died around this time. Doss took a job in a
cotton mill to support Florine and herself.
Braggs returned in the summer of 1928, with him
and Melvina was another woman, a divorcée with her own
child. Doss and Braggs soon divorced, and she returned to
her mother's home taking her two daughters with her. He
always maintained he left her because he was frightened of
her.
Second marriage
Living and working in Anniston, Doss soothed her loneliness by reading True Romance
and other such reading matter. She also resumed poring over
the lonely hearts column, and wrote to men advertising
there. A particular advert that interested her was that of
Robert (Frank) Harrelson, a 23-year-old factory worker from
Jacksonville. He sent her romantic poetry, and she sent him a
cake. They met and married in 1929, when she was 24, 2 years after her
divorce from Braggs. They lived together in Jacksonville,
with Doss's two surviving daughters. After a few months, she
discovered that he was alcoholic and had a criminal record
for assault. Despite this, the marriage lasted sixteen
years.
Grandchildren
Melvina, Doss's oldest daughter, gave birth to
Robert Lee Haynes in 1943. Doss came to help, and after a
painful few hours a baby boy was born, but died soon after.
Melvina, exhausted from labor and groggy from ether, thought
she saw Doss stick a hatpin into the baby's head, and later
told Mosie and Florine. They told her how Nannie had said
the baby was dead, and they noticed she was holding a pin.
However, the doctors could not come up with an explanation
for the death. After this, Melvina and Mosie drifted apart
and Melvina began to date a soldier. Doss disapproved of him, and
while Melvina was visiting her father after a particularly nasty
fight with Doss, her son Robert died mysteriously under
Doss's care on July 7, 1945. The cause of the death was
diagnosed as asphyxia from unknown causes, and two months
later she collected the $500 life insurance she had taken
out on Robert.
Death of Frank
In 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied powers
at the end of World War II, and Harrelson, Doss' second
husband, was one of the many people who celebrated rather
robustly. After an evening of particularly heavy drinking,
he raped Doss. The following day, as she was tending her
rose garden, Doss discovered Harrelson's corn whiskey jar
buried in the ground. The rape had been the last straw for her, so
she took the jar and topped it off with rat poison. Harrelson
died a painful death that evening.
Third marriage
Doss met her third husband whilst travelling in
Lexington, North Carolina. He was Arlie Lanning and she
married him within three days of meeting him through another
lonely hearts column. Lanning was in many ways like his
predecessor, Harrelson: he was an alcoholic and a womanizer.
However, in this marriage, it was Doss who often
disappeared for months on end. When she was at home, however,
she played a doting housewife, and when her husband died of what was
said to be heart failure, the whole town turned up to his
funeral in support of her.
Afterwards, the house the couple lived in
burned to the ground. It had been left to Lanning's sister,
and had it survived it would have gone to her. As it
happened, the insurance money went to Doss, and she quickly
banked it. She soon left North Carolina, but only after
Lanning's elderly mother had died in her sleep. She ended up
at her sister Dovie's home. Dovie was bedridden and soon after
Doss's arrival she died.
Fourth marriage
Doss had joined the Diamond Circle Club,
looking for another husband. She had met Richard L. Morton
of Emporia, Kansas. While he did not have the drinking
problem of his predecessors, he was a womanizer. Before she
could poison him, she ended up poisoning her mother, Louisa,
on January 1953 when she came to live with them. Morton met
his death three months later.
Fifth marriage
Doss met and married Samuel Doss, of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, in June 1953. A clean-cut, churchgoing man, he
disapproved of the romance novels and stories that Nannie
adored. In September, Samuel was admitted to the hospital
with flu-like symptoms. The hospital diagnosed a severe
digestive tract infection. He was treated and released on
October 5. Nannie killed him that evening in her rush to
collect the two life insurance policies she had taken out on him.
This sudden death alerted his doctor, who ordered an autopsy. The
autopsy revealed a huge amount of arsenic in his system.
Nannie was promptly arrested.
Confession and conviction
Nannie confessed to killing four of her
husbands, her mother, her sister Dovie, her grandson Robert
and her mother-in-law, Arlie Lanning's mother. The state of
Oklahoma centered its case only on Samuel Doss. The
prosecution found her mentally fit for trial. Nannie pleaded
guilty on May 17, 1955, and was sentenced to life
imprisonment. The state did not pursue the death penalty due to
her gender. Doss was never charged with the other deaths. She died
of leukemia in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary in 1965.
Wikipedia.org
Nannie Doss
Oklahoma’s Jolly Widow (also known as the original Black widow)
Nannie Hazle,(Hazel), a.k.a. Nancy Hazle, born to Louisa Holder and Jim Hazle (Hazel), about 1905, in Anniston, Blue Mountain, Alabama.
A skeleton in our ancestral closet, but an ancestor none the less.
During the course of genealogical research we come across many people, some notorious for their acts of bravery, some for unlawful deeds, and some who are just plain people like ourselves.
Nannie Doss was one of those people whose deeds will forever be recorded in our history, however cold and malicious they may have been. How could this pretty, romantic girl and later a soft-voiced woman still seeking the “perfect love” lead an incredible saga of murder by poison for over 28 years leaving a trail of victims across half the country before arousing suspicion? This is a puzzle still left unsolved by authorities.
Arrested in 1954 for murder by poison of her present husband and possibly the murder of another, the investigators had no idea what a web they were about to unweave that had been woven by the “Black Widow”
Called the Jolly Widow by many, because of her cheerful disposition, her last victim was the unfortunate Samuel Doss of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sam and Nannie were married in July of 1954 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shortly after that Doss became ill, after a trip to the Hospital, Doss’ condition continued to worsen and by October 1954 he was dead.
After several weeks of investigation into the death of Sam Doss, Oklahoma police had enough evidence to arrest Nannie Doss for the murder of Doss and possibly another.
Nannie faced her interrogators with equanimity on November 26th, 1954 when she was arrested She laughed at the accusation, always stating, “my conscience is clear”. “I married these men because I loved them”.
She told the detectives, “I have never poisoned anyone”. That she read a lot of love story magazines and that her favorite television programs “are of amour”, seems she favored the sophisticated sound of the word. “I’m sure I’ll find my perfect mate yet”, she told the officers. All through the night and into early morning , in two-man teams, detectives questioned the “Jolly Widow”.
During these intervals, she would remove her horn-rimmed glasses stating, “I’m not near or far sighted”, she explained she only wore them for the headaches.
“I’ve had terrible headaches all my life, or rather from the time I was seven. That was when the train hit the buggy I was riding in and I was thrown out”. The smiling suspect never once lost her composure and wore out four teams before they gave up for the night.
While the officers took a few hours of grateful rest, a new force had entered their side of the battle.
Newspapers and wire services had spread the word that Nannie Doss was being questioned in at least one and possibly two deaths caused by poisoning.
By sunrise the Oklahoma police phone was jumping off the hook , more evidence was pouring in by the second against Nannie. Stories of other men Nannie had been married to who had met untimely deaths , the deaths of her sisters while in her care, mysterious death of two of her young daughters, and even the death of her own mother was being questioned. This story began to grow, hour by hour , in length and horror. Apparently anything or anyone that annoyed “Arsenic Nannie” was sure to have a death warrant signed with their name on it.
Once again, the interrogation began, this time the investigators were armed with evidence against her.
Sometime during the next seven hours, she faltered and at times a self-conscience giggle heralded a small admission, “I lied about that”. At last she weakened and admitted that she had poisoned Sam Doss. he had begun to annoy her shortly after their marriage. She stated she felt sorry for him, when she should have felt sorry for herself. “I didn’t know what I was getting into”.
Some of the “little things” he annoyed her with was having to go to bed at dark, and “he wouldn’t let me have a television set or radio or even a fan in the house. She quoted Doss with “Ive been a Christian man all my life and you’re going to be a Christian woman. You don’t need a radio and television.
This “got on her nerves” so bad that she put an inch of rat poison in Doss’ coffee. She apparently overestimated the dose, causing him to retch so violently it saved his life. Afterwards she was “nursing” him back to health and reportedly stated that he was a mean as ever. Again she poisoned his food, that day he died.
After Nannie signed the confession, the investigators began the task of leading this extraordinary woman, like a clock running backwards , over her trail of murders. She would admit a chilling crime and the back off on a minor detail. Her final words on Doss were, “now my conscience is clear”.
She claimed to have met husband #4, Richard Morton, in Birmingham, Al at the bus station. Morton was a 69 yr old native of Emporia, Kansas, after a long period of questioning, she admitted to having poisoned Morton in 1953 as well. Her reason for his death..”he had been making me mad ‘shining up to other women”.
After she signed this confession, once again she stated “ Now my conscience is clear”.
The expectant officers were disappointed when the floodgates of Nannie’s soul did not open up. Without rancor, she continued to verbally fence with the investigators until they trapped her with new confessions. This brought out the confession of the murder of husband #3, Arlie Lanning resident of Lexington, NC. Married in 1952.
Her brow was darkened with one of her infrequent frowns when she recalled the provocation’s that led to the fate of Lanning.
This marriage was the longest of all, five years. He crossed the fatal line in 1952. “He was a womanizer” and “He started running with other women”, she stated. Shortly afterward, she confessed to murdering Lanning with poison. Once again, “Now my conscience is clear”.
The investigators gently led Nannie into a discussion of Frank Harreslon, husband #3, who’s murder would be her first so far as present admissions went. She claims they were married in 1937 in Jacksonville, Al. but, Harrelson’s brother claims they were married in 1945, the year of Harrelson’s death.
Nannie stated she married him for love but, that was a disappointment. “I found out that he was a jailbird and a drunkard”.
Then she enlightened them on that story, “One Sunday I was at my mothers and Frank’s brother showed up stating that Frank wanted to see me”. Frank had been out all night the night before drinking. She went with the brother to the edge of town, where she found him passed out from too much to drink.
After driving him home and helping him inside, she states that “He wanted me to go to bed with him, I refused” Frank then replied, “My God woman, I may not be here next Sunday to go to bed with”. After thinking about what he said, “I went and got the whiskey bottle out of the flour bin in the kitchen and poured poison into it, I thought I’ll just teach him a lesson”.
The next morning the bottle was empty and Frank was sick all week,, by Sunday he was dead. When the investigator asked her, “How’s your conscience now”? She replied, “CLEAR”.
No amount of prodding could evoke more confessions from her. Her soft reply was “You can dig up all the graves in the world and you won’t get anything more on me”.
Although exhumation of more bodies proved that the deaths had been from poisoning, No more confessions were forthcoming.
Returning Nannie to the time when she was a wild and pretty girl of 15 in her home town of Blue Mountain, Al where she met and married Charlie Braggs, it became apparent that she may have included children in her lethal activities. Braggs is known as “the one who got away”.
Unfortunately, not before two of their young daughters died mysteriously. He stated “she was always running off with this man and the other”, he divorced her after one of her escapades when she returned home bringing another man home with her The only statement from Nannie of Braggs was, “she was forced to leave him because of him running around with other women”.
Braggs said he was afraid of Nannnie, as was his family. He never ate or drank anything that she had prepared when she was in a foul mood..
After all was said and done, Nannie appeared as “fresh as a Daisy”. she laughingly outlined a meal complete with coffee she would like to prepare for them.
When ask what she thought they should do with her for poisoning all those people, her answer was,” why anything they like”, she answered calmly, “Anything they do is perfectly all right with me”.
Four confessed murders and at least eight that were still under investigation? What could have cause Nannie to commit such hideous crimes? And some her own children and grandchildren, her sisters, and even her mother and possibly her father. Did she commit even more crimes? After all these years the answer may never be known.
We know that had she continued on, even more would have fallen prey to her. Before Doss died she was corresponding with a farmer in NC, for whom she and baked a cake and mailed to him. he was anxiously awaiting the day when they would meet.
There was even a period unaccounted for in her life where it is believed she lived in New York and Idaho and was possibly married to a man named Hendrix..... did he fall prey to Nannie’s temperament as well?
Was it the head injury as small child, due to the time and era, that possibly lacked for medical attention that could have caused her to be a murderess? We will never know.
Although Nannie’s education is believed to not have reached past the sixth grade, and she probably never read “The purloined Letter’, yet she unerringly executed the bold psychology advocated in that famous story.
She moved so openly and with such guilelessness that she was never questioned although victims dropped around her like winter’s snow.
We are not accountable for our ancestors actions, however it is strongly believed that knowing about them helps us to understand more about ourselves.
It is believed that Nannie died in an Oklahoma Prison for Women, still looking for that “Perfect Love”.
The Giggling Grandma
Nannie Doss, dubbed by the popular press of the time as “The Giggling Grandma” and “Arsenic Annie,” loved to read the pulp magazine True Romance, and she spent most of her life searching for “the real romance of life.”
However, when Nannie didn’t find the love affair she was seeking, she had a strange way of ending the relationship.
Nannie enjoyed killing, and it didn’t matter who the victim was. Born Nancy Hazle and known popularly by the moniker “Nannie,” she was linked to the murders of four husbands, her mother, two sisters, two of her children, a grandchild, and a nephew. She had a successful 30-year murder spree in several states across the south before she was finally brought to justice.
“Very likely there were others who also sampled Nannie’s stewed prunes,” wrote criminologist Eric W. Hickey. “Each of her victims died agonizing deaths after being fed large amounts of rat poison laced with arsenic.”
Nannie was first married in 1921 when she was 15 years old. It turns out that that husband, who by various accounts is named Charles Bragg, Charles Braggs, and George Frazer, was the only one of her five husbands who managed to survive marriage with Nannie. Three of their five children weren’t so lucky. (Hickey uses Charles Bragg as the name of her first husband, while Colin Wilson uses Frazer. Sherby Green, a relative of Nannie, reports that her first husband was Charles Braggs.)
Nannie’s first marriage lasted eight years and according to Bragg(s)/Frazer was stormy from the beginning. Nannie was an insatiable lover who apparently had never heard of the word “fidelity.” She also had a vicious streak that Bragg(s)/Frazer described as “high-tempered and mean.”
“When she got mad I wouldn’t eat anything she fixed or drink anything around the house,” he told reporters years later.
It was his opinion that the only thing that kept him alive was the fact that he was uninsured. When the law finally caught up with Nannie, however, she scoffed at the idea that her motive was money. The meager insurance she did collect backs up her claim that something other than money drove Nannie to kill.
Before her relationship with husband number one ended, one of their children died very shortly after birth, and two others died when they were very young. Some anecdotes report that husband number one returned home one day to find the children writhing in agony on the floor of the cabin that served as a home. There is no evidence to confirm this, however.
“Back at the time, I didn’t know about poison,” Bragg/Frazer said. “The undertakers told me at the time that they were poisoned.”
Nannie and Charles Bragg/George Frazer divorced in 1929, but Nannie wasn’t ready to play the gay divorcee. Placing an advertisement in a lonely hearts magazine, she quickly hooked up with Robert F. Harrelson and the two were wed.
They stayed together for 16 years until Nannie decided the romance had gone out their relationship. One day, Harrelson up and died and when Nannie told the coroner that Harrelson was an “awful drunkard,” the coroner ruled the manner of death to be natural and put down “acute alcoholism” as the cause. Harrelson was buried near his two-year-old grandson.
It wouldn’t be for many years that Nannie would admit that she ended the marriage by putting rat poison in Harrelson’s corn whiskey. At the same time, she admitted that their two-month old grandson “just might have gotten hold of some rat poison.”
Harrelson knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He did, however, see impending doom.
“I’ll be next,” he said at his grandson’s funeral.
In 1947, two years after burying Harrelson, Nannie met and married Arlie J. Lanning in North Carolina. He managed to avoid the stewed prunes for five years before Nannie dispatched him. She later said she did so because he “was running around with other women.” Just before Lanning died, a nephew living with him died “of food poisoning.”
In 1953, Nannie, using the tried-and-true stewed prune recipe murdered Lanning’s elderly mother with whom she was living.
Later that year, again through a lonely hearts magazine, Nannie met and married Richard C. Morton, Sr. That marriage lasted just four months before Morton died.
Again, when she was finally brought to justice, Nannie blamed Morton’s womanizing as the cause of her anger.
Nannie collected five life insurance policies on Morton, worth $1,400 (approximately $10,600 adjusted for inflation over 52 years).
In the summer of 1954, the 49-year-old Nannie married Samuel Doss, 58 after the two met through a lonely hearts magazine and began corresponding. After they were married Samuel Doss repeatedly became ill with stomach ailments and in October he ended up in the hospital with a severe stomach ache. When Sam Doss recovered and went home, Nannie fixed him a bowl of stewed prunes
Sam was dead the next day. He and Nannie had been married four months. (Nannie admitted feeding Doss the prunes around the time of his death, but some accounts have her confessing that the final dose of poison was administered in a cup of coffee).
Sam’s doctor couldn’t understand how his patient had died so quickly when he was on the mend in the hospital and suggested an autopsy be performed.
However, at that time most states had had a very rudimentary murder investigation process and a great deal of authority was vested in justices of the peace who also served as coroners. Most of these men were lawyers or morticians and had little training in death scene investigations.
“They’d walk around it and then come out in the front yard and talk about it, and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah. Old Harry killed himself. It’s a suicide.’ Then the justice of the peace would sign off on it,” Ray Blakeney, a former medical examiner told the Daily Oklahoman in a retrospective on Nannie’s case.
In Oklahoma, authorities who wanted to perform an autopsy needed the permission of the family or a court order if there was probably cause to suspect foul play.
Dr. N.Z. Schwelbein didn’t know if foul play was to blame, but that problem was solved when Nannie for some reason eagerly agreed to an autopsy.
“Of course there should be,” she reportedly said. “It might kill someone else.”
Little did authorities know, but Nannie was already corresponding with a man who she desired as husband number six.
John H. Keel, a 60-year-old milkman from Goldsboro, North Carolina had been exchanging letters with Nannie for some time.
“I’m mighty proud I didn’t meet her and she didn’t come down here,” he told investigators when they contacted him. “From now on I am through with these women who make their matches by mail.”
When the results of Sam Doss’s autopsy came back, authorities found enough arsenic in his stomach to kill 10 people. Nanie played dumb.
“How could such a thing happen?” she asked. “My conscience is clear.”
Unsatisfied, but still unsure if Nannie was to blame, police began digging into her past. They found a string of deaths connected to Nannie Doss and confronted her.
She was caught in a lie when asked about Richard Morton, saying she had never heard of the man.
“Well, I guess I wasn’t telling the truth,” Nannie confessed with a coy giggle. “I was married to him.”
Over the course of the next couple of days, police were shocked by her continuous string of confessions. She was adamant, however, that she only poisoned people “who deserved it” and none of the deaths of her relatives were due to poisoning.
“I never did feed that stuff to my blood kin,” she claimed. The facts showed otherwise. Belated autopsies of her mother who died in in 1953 and a sister who passed on in 1950 both had massive amounts of arsenic in their systems.
Police were amazed at the joy Nannie took in confessing her crimes and reliving the details of her husbands’ deaths. She laughed and giggled like a schoolgirl recounting the events of a pleasant summer vacation, and often gave bizarre little asides that demonstrated her lack of compassion.
“He sure did love those stewed prunes,” she said about one husband.
On May 18, 1955, Nannie Doss pleaded guilty to Sam’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
“Take it easy,” she told her daughter as she was taken away to prison. “Don’t worry. I’m not.”
Nannie died of leukemia in 1965 at the age of 59.
MarkGribben.com
Nannie Doss: Lonely Hearts Lady Loved Her Men to Death
by Joseph Geringer
Recipe for Death
Nannie's Apple & Prune Pie
Approx. Time: 45 minutes
Oven: 350 degree baking temp.
Ingredients: 1 c.
water, 1 c. flour, 1/2 c. butter, 3 eggs, pinch of sugar, 4
apples sliced, 1 c dried prunes, dash of granulated sugar, 5
tablespoons rat poison
* Bring to boil water, butter, sugar. At boil, stir in flour.
* Over low heat,
continue to stir until able to form doughy ball. Into dough, mix
egg mixture (well beaten) until ball is smooth.
* Grease 9-inch pie tin.
* Roll out pastry, lining bottom and sides of pan with pastry dough, clipping excess for pie top.
* Add apple slices and
prunes in hearty layers. It is best to soak prunes
overnight in rat poison; generic hardware store variety will do quite
well.
* After spreading
pears and prunes into shell, pour d lethal juice of
marinated prunes over apple and prune contents. Juice adds extra
flavor - and conceals taste of rat poison. (If sting of arsenic
tartness remains, add extra tbsp of sugar for good measure.)
* Cover pie with
leftover dough in preheated oven for 45 minutes, checking
occasionally. Top with granulated sugar while top crust is fresh from
oven.
Guaranteed to be...er, a real man-pleasing treat??
*****
NOTE:
The following
biography of poisoner NANNIE DOSS has been compiled by information
from various sources, chief among them a member of Nannie's
family, Sherby Green, who opened up her research materials
to The Crime Library. Much of Nannie's life, however,
remains shrouded in mystery and in between Ms. Green's
papers and other sources there exists a few blank spots
where events can be only conjectured by those who write
about Nannie. In those very few instances, I created an assumption
based on research available.
Most of the following story, however, is unembroidered.
Charley
"I was afraid of Nannie, deathly afraid..."
-- Charley Briggs, 1st husband
For most of her life,
Nancy Hazle - later to be called Nannie -- loved two things:
romance magazines and prunes. An odd combination indeed, but, oh, so
necessary in sustaining herself day to day; that is, to keep
her fresh as a daisy despite the reality of the world's
disappointments. Romance - or at least the conception of it
-- provided her with an escape into a reverie of delightful
images of knights in shining armor carrying her off to
wonderland.
Prunes, known for
their medicinal power of natural elimination, helped her carry out
another type of elimination: one husband after another.
When arrested, she
chuckled. And she continued to chuckle through the ensuing police
interrogation, even as she named the men she killed, prune-fed and
unsuspecting. The press dubbed her "The Giggling Granny"
and "The Jolly Widow." Whether because of embarrassment or
to cover a mean streak that burned rabid inside - a side she
wouldn't allow herself to emanate for all to see - she
never quite showed remorse, repentance nor, for that matter,
a real understanding of her crimes. She went to prison for
life, giggling.
Nannie Doss got
around. She was found to have killed four husbands - one in
Alabama, one in North Carolina, one in Kansas and one in Oklahoma -
the last one, Samuel Doss, for whose murder she was eventually
tried and convicted. And there are other purported victims
as well. Nannie is also alleged to have killed her mother,
two of her four daughters, a mother-in-law and other family
members, either by her favorite form of homicide, prunes
salted with rat arsenic, or through one or another
spontaneous means of annihilation.
The Crime Library
hails its fortune to have been able to interview Sherby Green,
a direct relative of Nannie whose search for her family genealogy
brought her to studying Mrs. Doss over the last ten years.
"My great grandmother
and Nannie's mother were sisters. That makes me a cousin
twice removed. My family doesn't like to talk about Nannie; she's the
bloodline black sheep," Sherby confides, "the skeleton in our
closet."
Nonetheless, Sherby
has found her cousin fascinating in a macabre way: "Nannie
lived, she committed atrocities. Good or bad, she's become folkloric
here," alluding to the northeastern corner of Alabama where she
and Nannie grew up. "In Blue Mountain, where Nannie was
born, she's a legend."
Nannie, however,
legend and color aside, was a killer. "She killed because she
liked it," attests The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Harold
Schechter and Everitt David.
And it is a testimony
to which Sherby, despite her familial ties, agrees. "Each of
us determines our fate or destiny, as well as what type of life we
live. No one put a gun to her head or twisted her arm to make
her commit such cold, heartless crimes. They were her
decision."
*****
Born to poor farming
parents in Blue Mountain, a tiny hamlet nestled in the
bottomlands of Alabama's northeast hill country, Nancy Hazle's life
promised little glamour, meager romance. Glamour did not attract
her, but of love; she would spend a lifetime pursuing it.
The nearest claim to fame she had, and it was little, was
that her Grandma Holder was remotely related to the Lincoln
family that produced Honest Abe.
Nancy's mother,
Loulisa (Lou) was a caring creature, though deathly afraid of
her husband, one hot-tempered James Hazle. "There is some evidence
that Nancy was born before Lou married James," says Sherby.
"Census records right after Nancy's birth in 1905 show Lou
as living alone with a daughter. James appears to have come
on the scene later. From where or exactly when he appeared
is a mystery."
Nancy's childhood
wasn't happy. Nannie - Nancy became known by this nickname
at an early age -- wandered aimlessly on an erratic schedule to and
from and around school; sometimes she went, other times she
didn't. So did a trio of sisters and a brother who came
after her. If their father wanted the kids on the farm that
morning to help with the fieldwork, the never-ending field
work, the entire brood stayed home. After all, James Hazle
was the boss and, if rumors are correct, he wouldn't spare
the switch - on his daughter nor his wife -- to get what he
wanted.
"By the age of five,
Nannie was made to cut wood, plough the fields and clear the
land of weeds and debris," says Terry Manners in his book on Nannie
and other serial killers, Deadlier Than the Male. "Ballgames
and seeing friends were forbidden." And when Nannie was able
to traipse to school, well, that was hard work too, adds
Manners. "It was a two-mile walk there and...two miles
back."
Of fun, there was
none. If the Hazle's lights stayed on late into the evening it was
to finish the pots and pans and the sweeping required in their
little house, or to mend a shutter or clean out the dustbin.
Before the crow of the cock, it was up and out of bed, Old
Man Hazle grunting, Into your calicos, and hurry down to the
harvest!
In an interview Nannie
gave to Life magazine in her later life, she tended to
blame her adult problems on a head injury she received when seven
years old. She had gone with her family to visit a relative in
downstate Alabama; the train ride was the thrill of her young
life; she'd never been off the farm, muchtheless on a
vacation, to anywhere. But, when the locomotive was forced
to make an emergency stop, Nannie jolted forward to slam her
head on the iron seat frame in front of her. She suffered
"pains and blackouts for months, and headaches the remainder
of my life," she asserts.
While some writers
with a social bent point to the train accident as the cause of
her dementia-to -come, Sherby Green scoffs. Tongue in cheek, she
replies, "No, Nannie just had a plain old mean streak. I am
addicted to genealogy, and in studying my family I have
learned that many of our members carried a fierce pride and a
tough, tough, tough reputation. While they didn't take
lives, they were nonetheless hard people. I believe Nannie
bore that trait, but simply took her bad humor dangerously
further."
According to author
Manners, "Nannie, who had terrible mood swings, dreamed of love
and of finding her own Prince Charming. Her only interest was her
mother's romantic magazines and she would sit for hours in her
bedroom just looking at the loving couples staring out at
her from the pages. As she grew older, her favorite bits
were the ads for the lonely hearts clubs."
The early 1900s were
the age of romantic frivolity, when every female wanted to
look like a Gibson Girl, cherubic and lovely at all angles. Men were
the bosses in their high-starched collars and walrus mustaches,
but all of society knew that it was the feminine sex who,
under coy smile and blossoming fragrance, really ruled the
world.
As Nannie entered
dating age, she was held back from the ready boys of Calhoun
County by a father who saw Nannie and her three sisters as field hands
that he wasn't too eager to give up. He forbade them from
attending the church socials and the Saturday night
hootenannies at Crispin's Tavern or the community hall.
Makeup was outlawed, silk stockings were considered sinful,
fixed hair hell-bent and form-fitting dresses absolutely
slutty. No daughter of his would tempt the male libido! When
the time came, he often growled, [he] would pick the husbands for
his daughters.
Weekend nights would
find the sisters Hazle staring in sorrow at the flickering
lights in so and so's barn down the road where a dance was in
progress; they were barred from its premises by Papa Hazle, but at
least they could watch the glow of the lanterns bouncing in
rhythm to the neighborhood mandolins and the stomp - only a
muffle to their far-off ears - of the feet of the rest of
Blue Mountain's youths having a hell of a time.
Nannie, however, did
manage to sneak away here and there and learned that if the
hayloft or the corncrib was the only place to please the boys, and
get a little loving herself away from James Hazle's eyes, then
where was the harm? The boys liked her; her hair was dark,
her eyes were dark, and her giggle was bright. Plus, she was
easy. Lou might have known of her daughter's escapades, but
kept quiet. Her reconciliation may have been that if Nannie
"came with child" then at least she would be able to do
something that the mama herself was unable to do: get away
from the dictator.
Evidently, Squire
Hazle approved of young Charley Braggs, Nannie's attentive
co-worker at Linen Thread Company where she went to work in 1921.
Tall, handsome, curly-haired, he hung on 16-year-old Nannie's
shadow and doted. The elder Hazle noted that, unlike the
other boys in Blue Mountain who idled their time in cafes
and at parties, playing those crazy, jazzy records coming
out of New York, Charley's main preoccupation - even above
Nannie - was his mother. His paycheck supported her and he
treated the old lady like the Queen of Alabama. That was
good, estimated James Hazle; good old-fashioned respect for
his elders, something his own daughters could learn.
Braggs was in like
flint, and within four months after bringing the boy home for
supper one casual day Nannie found herself walking down the aisle on
her way to marital bliss. Whether she wanted it or not.
Years later, Nannie
wrote, "I married, as my father wished, in 1921 to a boy I only
knowed about four or five months who had no family, only a mother
who was unwed and who had taken over my life completely when
we were married. She never seen anything wrong with what he
done, but she would take spells. She would not let my own
mother stay all night..."
Rephrased, Nannie
hadn't lost a demanding poppa; she gained a mother-in-law of
identical cloth. If Nannie wanted to dine out and Mrs. Braggs didn't,
the latter would contract a dizzy spell or a stomach cramp
until her son was forced to relent; they stayed in. If
Nannie wanted to attend the picture show at the Bijou and
Mrs. Braggs didn't, the symptoms would return; and they'd
spend the evening at home playing Mah-Jongg at the kitchen
table.
The Braggs had four
daughters within a four-year period, the first, Melvina, in 1923,
and the last, Florine, in 1927. Pressures from raising babies,
pleasing Mother Braggs and cooking for a ravenous husband
mounted - she began to partake of the family's liquor closet
and what had been a casual smoking habit escalated to
chronic. Eventually these built-up tensions exploded within
her. Her only recourse was to cry onto the shoulders of
strangers.
Between her
pregnancies she found time to seek coventry in Blue Mountain's
assorted gin mills where drunken men pawed at her and drooled over
her and made her feel that she was still attractive.
Her indiscretions were
fairly easy to pull off because she chose to effect them
when Braggs himself was inebriated and cozy in the arms of
another woman or two on the outskirts of town. He would disappear for
days, she later testified, forgetting to remind herself that
she looked forward to his binges. And hers.
The marriage was down
and up, mostly down, flat on its back. Having both found
sexual satisfaction in others, even the marriage bed, the one factor
that might have kept them together, albeit carnally, faded.
Their sexual AWOLs increased and if the couple happened to
be together once a week - say, at the dinner table -- it was
quite by accident.
Early in 1927, the
Braggs' lost their two middle daughters, both, says Terry Manners
in Deadlier Than the Male, to "suspected food poisoning." Each
child seemed fine at breakfast, but had died by lunchtime.
Although the local medics called their deaths accidental,
Charley Braggs wasn't convinced. He evidently had seen
something [wrong] in Nannie's coal eyes, up close. He soon
bolted, taking his oldest daughter Melvina, his pet, with
him. He left newborn Florine behind.
Of the two deceased
children, although there is no proof, there is little doubt
that their mother consciously slew them. Overwhelmed and unable to
cope with the responsibilities of her situation, with her own
reality, Nannie simply and cold-heartedly trashed those two
extra mouths to feed. To her, it was a matter of deadly
economics.
According to family
historian Sherby Green, "Braggs has gone on record to state
that he was frightened of his wife, as was his mother and the rest of
his family. He never drank or ate anything that she prepared
when in a foul mood. Those at the time who knew her less
intimately than Charley might have laughed at his
suspicions, for she always appeared domestic and happy. She
ceremoniously outlined every meal, complete with coffee for
Charley and milk for the kids."
When hubby left this
time with Melvina it wasn't for his usual three or four
days; this time he disappeared for months. His mother had died in the
meantime, a natural death, and he remained apart from
something he was afraid of. Not knowing where he had gone
nor if he would ever return, Nannie was forced to take a job
at the nearest cotton mill to support herself and Florine.
Charley finally
reappeared in Blue Mountain in late summer 1928, a year after
he had departed. He brought back with him more than himself and
Melvina - he also came arm in arm with another woman, a divorcee,
and her own child. Few words were spoken between the awkward
adults - and Nannie took the hint. She packed her personal
belongings, dressed her two daughters, and left, cursing
Charley, cursing Charley's girlfriend, cursing her own bad
fortune. Cursing...cursing...cursing.
"Charley is known as
'the husband who got away,'" Sherby reports. "Husbands number
two, three, four and five wouldn't see the handwriting on the wall
that he had seen. They died horrible deaths."
Frank
"If'n you don't listen to me, woman, I ain't gonna be here next week."
-- Frank Harrelson, 2nd husband's final words
After her break-up
with Charley Briggs, Nannie found employment in a cotton mill
in Anniston, just outside Blue Mountain. Hours were long and hot, but
it gave her the excuse she wanted, to get out of the house
and away from her nagging parents, to whose house she
returned. It was an equal compromise. Mama Lou Hazle enjoyed
watching over her grandkids and Nannie appreciated the
interested glances she was receiving from the boys in the
shop.
But, she didn't want
to make the same mistake, marrying another immature dungaree
mountain boy with a mother complex - nor one with his
wandering ways. (Even though she had spent a good portion of her
married life in other men's beds, she acted as if she herself
believed it was Charley's womanizing that caused the
divorce.)
Nannie turned
wide-eyed to the lonely-hearts column in the local newspaper, writing
fastidiously to a number of men whose advertisements
interested her. Only one of their responses engaged her,
however; that from 23-year-old factory worker Frank
Harrelson who wrote pretty verse and whose black-and-white
Kodak photo looked even prettier, what with dimpled cheeks
like Clark Gable and wavy hair like Grant Withers. In
return, she sent him a cake, a picture of herself and pert words that
edged on the essence of sex. Since Harrelson lived in nearby
Jacksonville, he fired up his flivver and headed straight
south to Blue Mountain. On her door stoop, waiting, he found
an alluring young thing, more magnetic than the photo she
had sent. The picture hadn't captured that twist of amour
that sparkled so...so afire...in her black eyes.
He proposed; she
accepted. "They married in 1929," reads Terry Miller's Deadlier
Than the Male. "The rains came and went, the autumn leaves fell and
they made love by crackling log fires in the winter. But all
the time drink was part of Frank's life. As the months went
on the honeymoon period crumbled and Nannie realized that
her tall, good-looking husband, with the square chin and
rugged features, was an alcoholic."
Not only that, but she
discovered much to her chagrin that he had spent time in jail
for felonious assault. Gentleman Frank was no gentleman.
When she wed this
disappointment-to-be, Nannie had taken her two daughters from
Grandma Hazle's tender loving care, a place they liked being, and
brought them with her to Jacksonville. There is no recorded
testimony of the girls' experience with, nor their opinion
of, their stepfather, but they must have been in for a
shock. Too young to have clearly recalled the shouting bouts
between their natural father and mother, their earliest
memories probably lay in their days and nights with Lou
Hazle. Now they were old enough to understand what it all meant when
the Jacksonville cops showed up at their door a couple of times
every week to tell Nannie that Harrelson was in the brig -
again -for brawling drunk in a gutter. And they saw Nannie's
dark face, and comprehended her dark moods, sometimes
sinister, each time she had to fetch the wavering and
slur-tongued Harrelson from the hoosegow.
Life went on.
Strangely, Nannie abided for many years. Her husband's drinking rarely
let up, but she abided. He'd even smack her around in his
most drunken state, but she abided. He'd yell at and
threaten her growing kids for nothing, but she abided. Black
and blue, forlorn and unloved, in tatters and lace, she
abided. The marriage would last sixteen years.
"But, don't get the
impression Nannie was a sympathetic character," Sherby Green
reminds us of her cousin. "She simply had not yet discovered how to
rid herself of a husband, that was to come."
Nannie had learned to
kill. Perhaps she was merely practicing her skills, and at
the same time building her nerve, for the big day when Frank Harrelson
was to go. She had already, it seemed, disposed of two infant
daughters, so killing children had little effect on her.
They were extra baggage.
By the early 1940s,
the surviving daughters Melvina and Florine had grown and
married. Melvina bore a son, Robert, in 1943, and, in February, 1945,
went into labor again. This pregnancy was hard on the smallish
woman; frightened and suffering wracking pains this time
around, she called for her mother to be by her bedside at
the local hospital. Melvina's husband, Mosie Haynes, fetched
Nannie. Like a good mother, Nannie remained on duty
throughout the night, wiping her daughter's scalding
forehead and comforting her during the ordeal; she ordered Mosie to
fetch continual glasses of water, wet towels, this and that, and
to keep the attending nurses and interns stepping lively
dusk to dawn. Mosie, of course, didn't complain. And like a
good grandmother, Nannie celebrated with her daughter and
son-in-law when Melvina produced a lovely little girl.
Within the hour the child died.
Details are sketchy at
best. Mosie had fallen asleep on the chair in the hospital
room and Melvina, in a state of semi-consciousness from the surgical
ether, lay prone in her bed. At one point, she happened to
glance over at her mother and the newborn cradled in her
arms. But, Melvina perceived what she was never afterwards
able to determine as a truth or a nightmare: She thought she
saw Nannie sticking a hatpin into the child's tender head.
The "dream" bothered
Melvina, especially since the doctors could not account for
the child's death. Back at home a few days later, Melvina told her
husband and Florine about what she thought she had seen. Her
confidantes startled. They had seen Grandma Nannie toying with
such a pin, turning it over and over between her fingers,
earlier in the evening.
Six months later,
Melvina's son Robert also passed away while in Nannie's care.
The daughter had gone to stay with her father, Charley Braggs, after a
fight with Mosie, leaving Robert with Nannie. How little
Robert Lee Haynes died was a mystery. Nannie seemed
heartbroken - she didn't know what happened - the doctors
diagnosed his death as "asphyxia" from unknown causes - and
she played the grieving grandmother right up to the lowering
of his tiny coffin graveside. She fainted, she wailed and
she blew despair. Then several months later, she collected a $500 life
insurance check on a policy she had taken out on the boy.
Having refined her
skills, in murder and theatrics, she was now ready to take on the
bigger game: Frank Harrelson. She waited for the opportunity and
(perhaps to ease her conscience just a little) a provocation.
International events
had thrust America into a world war; American GIs were dying by
the droves in Europe and the Pacific, and the world had little time
to note the deaths of an infant girl and a two-year-old boy
in an out-of-the-way burgh in the foothills of northeastern
Alabama. In August, 1945, the last of the enemy powers,
Japan, surrendered; the nation thought of one thing: to
welcome home its fathers, brothers, sons. In every state in
the union, there was hailing and bunting and balloons and
all-round ecstasy. Alabama was no exception. On the night of
September 15, 1945, Frank Harrelson went out to the tavern to
welcome home some friends from overseas. Tonight patriotism had given
him an excuse to get loaded.
Arriving home, he was
still in a festive mood. He wanted sex, fireworks style, and he
wanted it fast. When Nannie refused, he slammed the wall with a
ham-size fist and shouted, "If'n you don't listen to me, woman, I
ain't gonna be here next week."
She listened to him, just to avoid a broken jaw.
"As they had sex,
Nannie stared at the ceiling and vowed to get even," author Terry
Manners declares. "The next day, tending the little rose garden
she adored, she found her husband's corn liquor jar hidden
deep in the surrounding flower-bed. That was enough. She
liked to keep her yard pretty. She took the jar to the
storeroom, poured away some of the foul drink...and topped
it with rat poison. (That evening) Harrelson died of
excruciating pain, aged just thirty-eight. An hour later,
Nannie washed out the empty-corn liquor jar."
Sherby Green states,
"Nannie later stated that she married him for love, but like
all her amours - she loved the continental sound of that word - Frank
Harrelson was no Sir Lancelot. Instead, he was a jailbird and
a drunkard, and now he was a dead husband. Killing husbands
became easier after that. Killing, in general, had become a
cinch."
Arlie
"It must have been the coffee."
-- Arlie Lanning, 3rd husband's last words
"There is a brief
period in Nannie's life that is unaccounted for," reports Sherby
Green, Nannie's descendant and armchair biographer. "It is believed
that she traveled around the country by rail, possibly
north to New York or west to as far as Idaho. What she did
on these excursions is anyone's guess. She may have even
been married to a man named Hendrix - certain records
indicate that - but the police never really followed it up.
Did Mr. Hendrix fall fate to Nannie's temperament?"
Wherever Nannie roamed
after Harrelson's death, she eventually wound up in the
scenic little town of Lexington, North Carolina, in response to
another lonely-hearts column. The year was 1947 and the
husband-to-be this time was laborer Arlie Lanning, an
ex-Alabaman. After meeting her for the first time, the
couple married two days later. Tongue-in-cheek, writer Terry
Manners asserts, "Arnie believed their marriage was set in
heaven, where he was later to be dispatched."
Life with Arnie wasn't
as dramatically chaotic as it had been with Harrelson,
partly because for most of the time Nannie wasn't home. Whereas her
former spouse had been the prodigal, Nannie now mimicked him.
Whenever things got hectic, whenever Arlie drank too much
and flirted too much - he, too, like his predecessor, loved
his alcohol and his females - Nannie pulled the suitcase
from her closet and went away to parts unknown, sometimes
for months on end. She would leave without a word. Or maybe
she would leave a message on a crumpled piece of paper under
the salt shaker: "Gone." Occasionally, Arnie would receive a
cablegram, "Send money" or "Be home soon". The wires came from all
directions; she seemed not to remain in one place too long; she
simply darted as if on an escape route from responsibility.
Out of the blue she
would come home. Arlie, not brutal like Frank had been, would
merely shrug a hello; that is, if he wasn't unconscious on the sofa
from drink. For a while, he and Nannie would play loving
couple. He knew the reason she took flight so often was
because - or so she claimed - his drinking binges and his
womanizing. So, upon her return, he always committed to the
dry wagon, a promise that she, and probably he too, knew
would be busted maybe days, weeks or, if luck was with them,
months ahead.
When on the homefront,
Nannie acted the perfect wife for the benefit of her
neighbors. Her trips away would be explained as visits to friends and
family; in part they were true, for Nannie would occasionally
bus to Gadsden, Alabama, to tend to her sister Dovie who had
contracted cancer, or visit Arlie's 84-year-old mother who
lived in a nearby town and needed help housecleaning and
canning.
Evidences of a
domestic woman were there for all the Lexington neighbors to see:
aroma of apple pie cooling on the window sill, fresh laundry
lemon-scented hanging on the backyard line, a manicured garden,
and lace curtains in all the front windows. At night she
would read her monthly True Romance or a novel she had
picked up at the community rummage sale. She wasn't literate
and her vocabulary was minimal, so the books she chose to
read were basic and a little tawdry; of well-built heroes
and shapely dames caught in at least one love triangle that
usually contained several scenes in a boudoir.
Her favorite pastime
was television, that modern new wonder box that brought into
America's homes live stage shows, teleplays and stand-up comedians.
When a love story was to be aired, one didn't dare bother
Nannie. She would pull up her most comfortable chair, a
plate of leftovers, her pack of Camels, the ashtray, and
lose herself in a grayscale kaleidoscope of heartthrobs and
kisses. That world had yet to take seed in Nannie's world,
but at least she could envision it more focally now,
compliments of her RCA.
In Lexington, Nannie
was an avid churchgoer and she had become intimate with the
minister's family and many of the families in the Methodist
congregation. Arlie Lanning, during sober periods, would accompany his
wife to Sunday morning services and remain at her side
afterwards for the tea socials and picnics hosted by the
ladies auxiliary, to which Nannie belonged. But, there were
whispers among the attendees at these functions, generated
by the presence of Mr. Lanning. His reputation, to be blunt,
preceded him. Before and during his marriage to Nannie he
was often seen in the lower Lexington dives with one of the floozies
who hung there. Arlie was a rapscallion, said the fine people
of the Lexington Methodist Church, and poor Nannie...well,
they didn't know if she was aware of his maneuverings, but
be it far from them to break her heart. Behind closed doors
in quiet conversation, Lanning was the town's villain, she
its travailing martyr.
When the town turned
out, then, for Arlie's funeral in February, 1950, it was out of
great respect for the heartbroken widow, not the corpse. Yes, Arlie
had died suddenly. Cause: heart failure. Of course, there
was something that had caused the heart to fail, the doctor
said, but in cases like Arlie's, where there was absolutely
no reason for suspicion, it would be superfluous to conduct
an autopsy. Any number of things could have caused him to
lie in pain as he did for a couple of days before
succumbing. Most likely, it had been the dangerous flu virus
that had been sweeping the state, striking some people worse
than others. He had had all the symptoms - sweating, vomiting,
dizziness - and, after all, the doctor admitted, Arlie's body was
not in the best shape, his stomach already half gone with
the drink, his heart already weakened.
"He just sat down one
morning to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bowl of prunes I
especially prepared for him," Nannie admitted to her neighbors
gathered around his coffin. "Up until then, why let me tell you, he
looked in fine shape. Then...well...two days later...dead. I
nursed him, believe me, I nursed him, but I failed."
And for an extra touch, she dabbed her eyes with her kerchief.
"Poor, poor Arlie. You
know what he said to me before he breathed his last?
'Nannie,' he said, 'Nannie, it must have been the coffee.'"
*****
On April 21, eight
weeks after Arlie's passing, the tidy frame home that he and
Nannie had lived in burned to the foundation. It was a stroke of luck
for the widow because had the house survived it would have,
under conditions set forth in Arlie's will, gone to his
sister. (Coincidentally, Nannie was not home at the time,
having just left the premises with her favorite household
item, the TV set, tucked away in the back seat of her Ford.
"I was on my way to have it repaired," she explained.) As it
were, the insurance company issued a check to "Arlie
Lanning, deceased," which was mailed to his widow who was lodging by
then with Arlie's mother.
The claimant
expediently cashed the check and left North Carolina - but only after
the elder Mrs. Lanning died strangely in her sleep.
Within days, Nannie
showed up at her sister Dovie's residence in Gadsden - with the
TV -- where she nursed the bed-ridden sibling whose condition, from
that point, seemed to continue downhill. Dovie died June 30,
also in her sleep.
"Apparently," says
Sherby Green, "anything that annoyed 'Arsenic Annie,' another
name given to Nannie during her eventual trial, met with elimination.
And if killing people brought in a little extra income, an
insurance policy here or there, well, she considered that a
bonus. Payment for her cleverness, if you will.
"And, fitting with her
dark side, Nannie was clever -- very, very intelligent. It's
been said," continues Sherby, "that she was able to get away with her
crimes because of the backwards places she lived and the
naïve times. That's simply not true. Where and when she
lived had nothing to do with it. I know the temperament of
the people she familiarized; they can be quite suspicious
and alert to hypocrisy. But, Nannie was an actress, she
fooled so many people, laymen and professionals, during a
killing spree that lasted more than twenty years."
Richard
"He had been making me
mad, shining up to other women." -- Nannie Doss, about
4th husband Richard Morton
The Diamond Circle
Club was a correspondence association for those looking for
life partners; membership was $15 per annum. Suitors and ladies
received a monthly newsletter regaling the newest members and their
heart's desires. Nannie was enthralled.
"Nannie's despicable plans never waned," adds case student Sherby Green. "By 1952 she was at it again."
Nannie's hips had
fattened by now, she wore glasses and the once-pretty profile had
taken on a double chin. She found that she didn't turn heads the
way she used to and decided that maybe the time had come to
seek admiration in the eyes of a more mature type of male.
Curly-headed boys were passe. Maybe what she had needed all
along was a real man anyway, she surmised. And she thought
she had found him in recently retired businessman Richard L.
Morton of Emporia, Kansas.
While her girth had
widened and her temples had slightly grayed, Nannie still
carried a girlish giggle, and she knew how to use it to entice. She
had learned how and when to turn on the flash in her eyes and at
age 47 she proved more capable than ever of shaping, at a
whim, the two beams into bedposts.
Morton, a former
salesman of routine coolness, bought for a change. The old boy
was transfixed. She was the gal for him, and to prove it he wrote
Diamond Circle, asking them to delete his and Nannie's names
from the availability list and thanking them for introducing
him to "the sweetest and most wonderful woman I have ever
met." They wed in October, 1952, and she moved into his
little home in Emporia.
Kansas' eternal plains
were vastly different than the mountain greenery Nannie had
known her whole life. For a while the sight of surrounding horizon
thrilled her; she was happy in the arms of her man under that
endless sky. Half American Indian, he was tall, dark and
handsome with eyes that pierced like arrows straight to her
romantic daydreams. As well, he bought her things - clothes,
jewelry and knick-knacks --never seemingly worried about
the price of adornments he thrust upon her.
Reality, however,
waited 'round the next corn stalk. Within months of their
marriage, Morton manifested as flat as the countryside. He was,
despite his flair, broke, deep in debt to everyone. And when he did
buy her a bauble on whatever credit he managed to effect
through charming circumlocution, he also bought a double for
another girl he had stashed away in town.
Morton's occasional
trips to the stores in his Chevy pickup truck to buy this
and that for the house and farm struck Nannie as being rather lengthy
for casual jaunts; they became more prolonged each time. If
prodded why so long, the husband would reply with an air of
apathy, "Ohhh, just dawdled, I guess." She investigated and
discovered that he was seeing someone he had known before he
married and seemed to have no intention of dropping.
Nannie had made a mistake, but Morton had made a bigger one. She picked a phony, he chose a killer.
By Christmas, two
months after she tied the knot, Nannie was again answering other
gentlemen's ads from the lovelorn columns in the Kansas papers.
She'd be sure to fetch the mail every day from the mailbox,
then, if a letter from one of her admirers had arrived, she
would sneak off with it to the bathroom. In silence, she
would swoon over their remonstrations of amour. The writers,
thinking she was a widow, offered to sweep her away from
her troubles to promises of marital bliss.
Each sentimental "Till
We At Last Meet, Nannie" or "Hoping To See You Soon,
Nannie" whisked Nannie a step closer to ridding herself of the thing
beyond the bathroom door who, to her, had grown ugly and
repulsive.
Husband number four
was destined for the ground. But, he might have been spared a
couple of months when Papa James Hazle died in Blue Mountain and Mama
Lou suddenly announced she was coming to board with the
couple. With mama there, the daughter's murderous designs
were delayed -- well, at least on Morton.
By all accounts, Nannie performed the unthinkable. She murdered her mother.
Whether Lou's money
was the object, or whether she got in the way of Nannie's plot
against Morton -- perhaps mama may have gotten a glimpse of one of
Nannie's intimate letters -- the motive here is unclear.
Nannie would always vehemently deny poisoning Lou, but,
considering the hasty manner in which all others had died
after crossing Nannie's path, as well as the preceding
symptoms of death, it seems very likely that her mother did
not die naturally.
Terry Manners in
Deadlier Than the Male believes that it was simply Mrs. Hazle's
inopportune arrival that sealed her fate: "In January, 1953, (Lou)
came to stay. She had obviously picked a bad time. After a
couple of days with her daughter, she fell ill with chronic
stomach pains and died."
In retrospect, Nannie
had grown totally devoid of heart. Had she one at the outset,
this latest act shows a total lack of sympathy, loyalty and
conscience.
"Although Nannie's
education is believed to not have reached the past sixth
grade, and she doubtlessly read The Purloined Letter, she unerringly
executed the bold psychology exhibited in that famous story,"
Sherby Greene points out. "Three months after Louisa was
buried in the earth, her latest son-in-law, Richard Morton,
joined her. He died of similar symptoms."
And still no one - family, friends, neighbors, and doctors - asked questions.
Sam
"Christian women don't
need a television or romance magazines to be happy!" --
Samuel Doss, 5th husband; words that sealed his fate.
Sam Doss was a sturdy
man, a solid man, and a God-fearing man. He didn't chase women,
never smoked, never drank, refused to play dice and lacked the
effort to exhale a single cuss word. He was careful about
his appearance, thrifty with his bank account, never riled,
loved nature and saw the good in almost everything.
Sam Doss was unbelievably, irrevocably boring.
At least Nannie found him so.
At 59 years old, his
clean living emanated across his surface; he looked younger
and he looked healthy. His conservative haircut and tidy manner or
dress gave him a wealthy appearance, a trusting appearance, and
maybe one or both of these suggestions had drawn Nannie to
his side when he proposed to her in June, 1953.
Nannie was a widow,
that's all he knew, and all he cared to know. Like his pennies,
he counted his blessings, and this fine, smiling, good cook of a
woman was what he had wanted in his later life. Someone who
preferred home and hearth, who would stay by his side until
death did them part.
He was exceedingly correct, if not foresighted, on the latter supposition.
Sam had been one of
Nannie's pen-pal paramours. After Richard Morton began pushing
daisies, she grabbed the first bus out to meet Doss in his hometown
of Tulsa, Oklahoma. At first, he provided his bride with a
refreshing detour from all her past mates; he worked a
steady job (he was a state highway inspector), spoke softly
and succinctly and often wore a necktie. He helped around
the house, helped her cook and did not portray the "king of
the house" attitude so many of the others had. Certainly he
was neither threatening nor violent.
But, he was set in his
ways, ways that irritated the less conservative wife. He
did not believe in wasteful reading of cheap magazines or romance
novels; he saw them as evil idleness. Radio and television were
products meant to enrich the mind, which meant that comedies
and love stories were taboo. Bedtime came promptly at 9:30
p.m., an agenda he followed like an automaton and to which
he expected his wife to adhere. Sex was pre-scheduled.
Spending patterns came
hardline: One never used the electric fan until
temperatures exceeded the unbearable; lights room to room were
frugally used - turned on only when entering and turned off
immediately upon leaving; when reading, only the reading lamp behind
the easy chair would be illumined in an otherwise darkened
chamber; furniture was costly so doilies were prevalent to
preserve upholstery.
When the pinching of
pennies and the die-hard living became overbearing, Nannie
took a hiatus home to Alabama. Most likely, it was strategy; and if
so, it worked. The moment she escaped he was hot on her trail
with letters pleading forgiveness. To show his earnestness,
he opened up his pocketbook to let her enjoy the life to
which she was more accustomed. And when she continued to
balk that he still controlled the finances, he rearranged
his banking account to give her equal liberty. And he took
out two life insurance policies naming her the beneficiary.
Blunder. Big-time.
On a cool September
evening, Doss sat at the dinner table sliding his
cleaned-off dinner plate aside to partake of Nannie's prune cake. That
night, he began wrenching and grasping his stomach in violent
pain. Spasms were ungodly. "(He) took to his bed for days,
losing 16 pounds in weight," Terry Manners' Deadlier Than
the Male tells us. "Finally, his doctor sent him to the
hospital, where he stayed for twenty-three days."
The hospital's
diagnosis had been a severe infection to the digestive tract. Upon his
release October 5, Nannie, disgruntled at the time wasted,
went right back to where she had left off. Right back. After
allowing him one good afternoon's rest back in his own
overstuffed chair, she awoke him for the dinner she had
prepared especially for his welcome home.
"This will get you
back on your feet in a jiffy," she promised, passing him a cup of
coffee first. Doss sipped it first, and then as it cooled took a
larger and a larger gulp each time between a mouthful of
delicious pork roast. The roast was fine. The coffee was the
harbinger, mixed with arsenic. Before the toll of midnight,
Sam Doss was dead.
In her rush to rid
herself of her latest and by far not the greatest husband, Nannie
erred. Usually adroit, she had been too much in a hurry this time
around. Dr. Schwelbein, the physician who had examined Doss
prior to his release from the hospital only the day before,
dismayed to hear that his patient was dead. This, he said,
did not make sense. He ordered an autopsy.
As he had suspected,
Sam Doss had not died of natural causes. In the intestines
and stomach, Schwelbein found remains of a pork roast dinner and
enough arsenic to kill a team of horses.
Nannie Doss, unable to explain where the arsenic came from, was promptly arrested.
Nannie Confesses
"I'm sure I'll find my perfect mate yet..."
-- Nannie Doss
At first, Nannie
refused to acknowledge her role in Sam Doss' poisoning. He was
her husband, she said, and wouldn't have harmed him. But, the police
wouldn't let up. Arsenic, they reminded her, does not come
naturally with pork meat or coffee beans. In fact, when Sam
was admitted into the hospital a month earlier, he had just
devoured a plateful of her prunes. "Were they poisoned, too,
Nannie?" they asked.
I don't know what
you're talking about," she giggled at the ridiculousness of their
line of questioning. "Me? Poison?"
Hour after hour, they
drilled her, trying to get her to pay attention to them and
nevermind the copy of the romance magazine she kept thumbing through.
"Put the magazine down, Nannie, and listen to us. Nannie...Nannie? Look at us, why did you kill Doss?"
Ordinarily, any one of
the investigators wouldn't have put up with this crap. They
would have ripped the magazine from the suspect's hands and flung it
in the trash can. And, if the suspect didn't open up, they
might damn well follow the magazine to the same spot. But,
it was difficult to get rough with
this...sweet...grandmotherly type.
That giggle. That harmless, innocent giggle.
"Nannie, we've been
here for hours now, aren't you getting tired? You killed him, we
know you killed him, you know you killed him."
"Oh, boys, come on now, I killed nobody. I don't know why you think I did," she fluttered.
Special Agent Ray
Page, heading the investigation, signaled his own men aside and
stepped forward. He lit a cigarette and sat beside her at the long
table in the dim, tunnel-like Interrogation Room and rubbed a
pair of tired eyes. He noted with surprise that, unlike
himself and his squad, she had not wilted at all. "We've
made phone calls, Nannie, and we've learned that Mr. Doss
was your fourth husband to die of the same symptoms. We're
putting two and two together, Nannie, and it looks like we
just might come up with...well, four. Arsenic, Nannie, we
believe that they all died of arsenic. It will be easier if you admit
what you've done, ahead of time I mean, before we have to find
out for ourselves."
"Are you saying, young
man, that I killed all my husbands?" and she giggled again.
"You're a nice-looking young man, but so foolish." And she
flipped over a page of the Romantic Hearts publication before her.
Page didn't know
whether to laugh or cry. Was she insane? Or was she the greatest
actress who ever lived? Move over, Bette Davis, he thought. He'd
seen some cool cucumbers in his days, but this woman had
them all beat. It was time to get serious with Old Mother
Arsenic. He reached over and drew the magazine from her
hands. "No more reading, Nannie. This isn't the Christian
Science reading room. You're gonna answer us."
She looked at him, not giggling.
"Nannie," he went on,
"there are others, too, aren't there? A lot of people around
you dropped dead over the last couple decades and their ghosts are
coming back to haunt you. They're here, Nannie, in this room.
Put'em to rest, Nannie, put them to rest."
For a moment their
eyes met. Page detected, in a breath, those twinkling granny
eyes solidify into something nasty. A devil lurked just within and he
was going to yank it out. And she knew it. She sighed, heaved
and nodded. "All right, all right..."
Then, she giggled
again, those eyes turning innocent once more, but at least she
began to talk. She confessed to poisoning Doss' coffee, but not out
of maliciousness. "He wouldn't let me watch my favorite
programs on the television," she commenced, "and he made me
sleep without the fan on the hottest nights. He was a miser
and...well, what's a woman to do under those conditions?"
The detectives in the
room exchanged glances, eyebrows raised. She is serious, isn't
she? their expressions asked.
"OK, there, you have
it," she laughed in the same demeanor as a child admitting
she stole her sister's hair ribbon. "Can I have my magazine back now?"
"First tell us about the other husbands," Page returned.
Nannie thought a second. "If I do will you give me back my Romantic Hearts?"
"I promise," answered the other.
She shrugged and smiled. "It's a deal," she winked.
And she told them
about Richard Morton, Arlie Lanning, Frank Harrelson, too. All
men whom she had at first admired, but they turned out to be duds.
All she had ever wanted was romance, a man to love her, but
instead she got what she described as "dullards". Each and
every one of them. "If their ghosts are in this room they're
either drunk or sleeping."
Page, shaking his head, handed her back the magazine.
"Looking at her and
talking to her, detectives just could not believe that Nannie
could be a killer," Terry Manners relates in Deadlier Than the Male.
"But now the confessions just poured out. She had killed four
husbands...At one stage, an officer asked: 'Which one are
you going to tell us about next, Nannie?'"
The morning after the
confessions, Page and other detectives from Tulsa fanned out
to Kansas, North Carolina and Alabama to take part in the exhumations
of her husbands, her mother, her sister Dovie, her nephew
Robert and her mother-in-law, Arlie Lanning's mother.
Arsenic traces were heavy in every one of the deceased
spouses and in her mother. Bodies of the other family
members, while not indicating toxic substance, all appeared
to have perished by asphyxia. Strong suspicion animated that
they were probably smothered in their sleep.
Several days after
Nannie's arrest, a man by the name of John Keel stepped forth
from North Carolina, looking very relieved. He was a dairy farmer who
had been corresponding with Nannie after finding her ad in a
lonely heart's column. She had told him she was a widow and
yearning for a good man with whom to settle; she sent him a
homemade cake. And that was why Keel was relieved - it
hadn't been his favorite, apple and prune. Or else, he might
have...er, keeled over, too.
First husband Charley
Braggs, the "husband who got away," as Nannie's family
historian Sherby Green calls him, was prime reporter material. As the
laboratory findings from Nannie's corpses came in,
newspapermen swarmed upon Braggs for his take on the case.
His opinions and recollections of his ex-wife provided
excellent, sometimes even witty, material for column upon
column.
"She was always
running off with one man or another, never home, and was about
town more than me!" he exclaimed when one reporter asked him if it
was true that their marriage had been adulterous. "And
anyway, to tell you the truth, I was glad when she was off.
It got to a point I was afraid to eat anything she
cooked...I smelled a rat!"
He had asked that the
bodies of his two daughters be disinterred along with the
others that the papers had listed as being suspect. But, the
government had obviously figured that they had enough on Mrs. Doss to
send her away for a long, long time.
The state of Oklahoma,
deciding the case, centered its allegations on the death of
Doss only, who died in Tulsa. The states where the litter of victims
were uncovered still wanted her for the respective deaths
within their jurisdiction. She was never tried outside
Oklahoma, however.
When newshounds
finally caught up with Nannie after her indictment, they
asked her what she thought should be done with her for poisoning Doss.
Her answer came in the form of her familiar jocularity.
Grinning into their flashbulbs, she replied, "Why, anything.
Anything they care to do is all right by me."
After a quartet of
psychiatrists diagnosed her mentally sane, her trial date
was set for June 2, 1955, in the Criminal Court of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But, on May 17, she decided to forget the rigmarole and, simply
because her lawyers did not know how else to advise, she
pleaded guilty.
After a brief hearing,
Judge Elmer Adams sentenced her to life imprisonment, barring
the electric chair because of her sex. According to Sherby Williams,
Nannie spent the rest of her days "in the Oklahoma State
penitentiary, still dreaming of eternal love".
Nannie Doss died of
leukemia in the prison's hospital ward in 1965. Her hopes by
that time were as rusty as the armor of the knights she had known.
Bibliography
-
Kelleher, Michael D. & C. L. - Murder Most Rare - The Female Serial Killer - Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 1998
-
Manners, Terry - Deadlier Than the Male - London: Pan Books, 1995.
-
Nash, Jay Robert - Bloodletters and Badmen - NY: M. Evans & Company, 1995.
-
Schechter, Harold & Everitt, David - The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers - NY:Pocket Books, 1996.
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