The Story of the "Funny" Killer Nannie Doss, Who Killed 12 People

The smiling older lady in the photo is Nannie Doss. Her family and friends described her as a sweet, good-natured person with a positive attitude. “A bright, sunny, kind-hearted person,” one of her neighbors described her. A loving wife, mother of four, and a wonderful housewife — that’s all about her, too. No one could have imagined that Nannie was a ruthless serial killer for whom other people’s lives were worth nothing.

Nannie Doss was born into a farming family on November 4, 1905, in Blue Mountain, Alabama, USA. There were five children in the family, all of whom were considered by their parents as labor force. The father forbade his offspring to go to school and from an early age forced them to work in the fields and barnyards.

Doss later said that her father was cruel and uncouth, and that was why she hated him. Nannie's mother was too depressed by her husband's will to argue with him. All she could do was teach the children to read and write. One day, the family went on a train to visit, and during an unexpected stop, 7-year-old Nannie hit her head hard on the handrail. From that moment on, she suffered from excruciating headaches and sometimes lost consciousness unexpectedly for the rest of her life.

As a teenager, Nannie became interested in reading. She loved her mother's books about romantic relationships. She imagined herself in the heroines' place and dreamed of a "handsome prince" who would take her away from the hated farm in Alabama. She also enjoyed reading personals ads. Nannie always looked very carefully at the "lonely hearts" section of magazines and newspapers.

When Nannie's peers began to dress up and put on eyeliner, she still went everywhere in the same dress and barefoot. Her father forbade her to take care of her appearance in order to "protect her from the advances of men." Going to dances or fairs was out of the question. All this greatly depressed Nannie, who was sociable and cheerful.

At 16, Nannie got her first job at a textile factory. There she met Charlie Braggs. The young people developed feelings for each other, which, however, cooled after four months. But the girl’s father liked Braggs and insisted on marriage. Doss described her first marriage as follows:

From 1921 to 1927, Nannie gave birth to four daughters. When the youngest was born, the couple's marriage was already falling apart. It wasn't even that there was no feeling between the spouses. Charlie's mother lived with them, and she literally made her daughter-in-law's life miserable. She turned out to be even more cruel and rude than Nannie's father and considered her son's wife a second-class citizen.

In 1927, Nannie's two middle daughters suddenly fell ill and died on the same day. They didn't even have time to see a doctor. In the morning they were healthy and cheerful, but after lunch they fell ill and died almost immediately. This was very suspicious. Charlie, who suspected something, took his eldest daughter and ran away. Nannie, her infant daughter, and Miss Braggs were left at home.

A few months later, the mother-in-law fell seriously ill and died as well. Nannie and her younger daughter, Florine, were left alone. The woman got a job at a cotton mill to support herself and her child. In 1928, her runaway husband showed up at her door. All he wanted was a divorce. Nannie agreed, but demanded that she return her eldest daughter, Melvina. Braggs agreed, and the couple officially separated. Later in court, the man said that he was terrified of his wife.

Just a couple of months after the divorce, Nannie Doss met a Florida resident, Robert Harrelson. She found him through the "Lonely Hearts" column in her favorite magazine. The woman's new lover was a great romantic. He wrote her tender letters and even poems. Nannie kept up with him and showed a delicate and gentle nature in their correspondence. They soon met, and in 1929 they registered their marriage.

But family life did not proceed as the lovers had planned in their correspondence. Soon Nanny was unpleasantly surprised that her new husband was not only a romantic, but also a bitter drunkard. He also had problems with the law - Robert had convictions for hooliganism and robbery. Despite all these disappointments, Doss and Harrelson lived together for 16 long years.

Nannie Doss's second marriage was not without tragedy. First, her granddaughter, just a few days old, died. She was found lifeless with a hairpin sticking out of her nostril. The doctor who pronounced her dead determined that the sharp object had pierced a thin bone and lodged itself in her brain. The death was ruled an accident.

A few months later, Nannie's two-year-old grandson died of suffocation. His grandmother was with him at the time of his death. Both children were the children of the eldest daughter, Melvina. Then it was Harrelson's turn. Nannie's husband had been celebrating the end of World War II for several days, and when he died, everyone decided that alcohol and bad food were to blame. The inconsolable Nannie, having received the insurance, bought a cozy house near Jacksonville.

Nannie didn't want to vegetate alone and very soon turned to the "Lonely Hearts" again. This time she met Arlie Lanning from Lexington. It was real passion - the lovers exchanged rings just three days after their first meeting. Arlie didn't last long and passed away a couple of years after the wedding, in 1952.

Like Harrelson, he broke the heart of a sweet woman. Lanning suffered from chronic alcoholism, and on top of that, he was a terrible womanizer. Nanny, in order to take revenge on her husband, also began to have affairs on the side. But she acted secretly, remaining sweet and thrifty at home.

Nannie Doss told investigators that she killed her third husband the same way she did her second. She put rat poison in Arlie's food and he died quickly. And because her husband was on another drinking binge, no one investigated his death and it was attributed to alcohol poisoning. The enterprising woman again received a good insurance policy, although it had to be shared with Lanning's mother. The old woman lived in the house with Nannie, so she soon passed away too. She died in her sleep, only four months after her son.

It was high time to think about a new marriage. But life made its own adjustments. Nannie received a letter from her sister Dovie, who was seriously ill. She asked her to come and help her with the housework, because she lived alone. Doss generously responded to the request. True, her sister died soon after her arrival.

Having quickly eliminated the obstacle, Nannie began reading the dating columns again. But something was wrong and her new husband was in no hurry to meet his destiny. Luck smiled on the woman when she turned to the Diamond Circle Club dating service. She found Richard Morton from Kansas, who seemed like a decent person.

In fact, Mr. Morton was a moderate drinker. But he had another flaw - gambling. The man spent too much time playing cards. Later, he also began to cheat on his wife. For a while, he got away with it because Nanny was too busy. Her elderly mother Louise broke her leg and was bedridden. By this time, she had long been a widow, and all her daughters, except Nanny, had moved away. The woman had to answer the call for help and surround her mother with care.

In November 1952, Nannie became a bedside nurse for her mother. By the New Year, the old woman had already given up the ghost. After burying her mother, the grief-stricken woman returned to her husband. At home, she learned that Richard had cheated on her, and in the most cynical way possible – in their own home. It seemed that Nannie had resigned herself to it and forgiven him, but her husband still died suddenly on May 19, 1953. And again, his death was considered natural.

Nannie's last husband was Samuel Doss from Oklahoma, under whose name the poisoner went down in history. This man did not drink and did not cheat on his wife. But he was too demanding and began to establish his own rules in the house. His wife's patience snapped after Samuel allowed her to read magazines exclusively for educational purposes.

After living by her husband's rules for a few months, Nanny baked him a prune pie. Its recipe was special, because the filling included poison. In October 1954, after dinner, Mr. Doss became ill. He was taken to the hospital, where they urgently pumped out his stomach. To his wife's surprise, a month later, her husband returned home as if nothing had happened. Nanny corrected his mistakes by giving him a cup of coffee. Samuel's body could no longer cope with it, and he died before the doctor arrived.

But this time, the husband's doctor suspected something was wrong. He was sure that Mr. Doss had been poisoned, but he had no proof. The man's death was again registered as food poisoning, and Nannie began to prepare for the funeral. But the cunning doctor convinced her to take her time and perform an autopsy. He told the widow that this way she could double the insurance payment.

Nannie Doss, blinded by greed, agreed. An examination of the body revealed a huge amount of arsenic in the tissue. Immediately after this, the bodies of the fourth and third husbands were exhumed. Their remains were literally soaked in poison. Nannie Doss was arrested on November 1, 1954. The woman immediately confessed to killing four of her five husbands. But she categorically denied guilt in the other deaths that occurred around her.

But Nannie's confession was of no interest to anyone any more. The bodies of all her victims were examined and it was discovered that they had died from arsenic, rat poison or strangulation. They even remembered the baby with the hairpin. At that time, poison could be easily bought at any hardware store in the countryside without arousing suspicion. The strangest thing about this story is that no one from Nannie Doss's circle suspected anything was wrong when one death after another occurred in her family.

Could this good-natured and smiling housewife harm anyone? But the police quickly proved that the funny fat woman had sent at least 12 people to the next world. Among them were her daughters, grandchildren and even her own mother. The killer did not deny much, but insisted that a childhood head injury was to blame. She also claimed that she was looking for the perfect man, and she came across scoundrels from whom the world needed to be rid.

Journalists immediately fell in love with Nannie Doss, who was nicknamed "Giggling Grandma." She willingly gave interviews, while making sparkling jokes and giving everyone a sweet smile. Even when telling about the poisoning of children and mother, Nannie sometimes laughed, as if she was telling a joke.

Alabama did not execute women, so Nannie Doss received several life sentences. She served only 10 years behind bars. The poisoner died in prison in 1964 at the age of 59.