Romantic Novels to Chilling Killings: The Horrifying Journey of Nanny 'The Giggling Granny' Doss

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Welcome to the Eastern Crime Zone, the podcast that takes you inside investigations of real, true crime cases. I'm your host, cassie Millay, and each week I'll guide you through the twists and turns of some of the most fascinating cases in history, from the familiar to the obscure. We'll deep dive into the details and explore new angles you've never considered before. But I don't want this to be a one-sided conversation. I want to hear from you too. If there's a case that's been on your mind, head over to EasternCrimesZonecom to leave me a voicemail or slide in my DMs on Instagram at EasternCrimeZone. Who knows, your suggestion just might be featured on an upcoming episode. So sit back, grab your detective hat and get ready for a journey through the criminal underworld. This is the Eastern Crime Zone. What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish? Mine would probably be mac and cheese, but I like that any time of year. I don't only have it on Thanksgiving, obviously, but maybe, if it's specifically Thanksgiving, it's the Green Bean Casserole, or maybe apple pie. I think everyone has their own favorites. Have you ever had sweetened prunes, for example? Or maybe cookies? Just a cup of black coffee? Well, I hope not, because the people in today's case who had those sweetened prunes, coffee or even just cookies made by their grandma. Yeah, they didn't end up too well. Yes, today's case is about poison and the woman who put it there. There's so much that goes into today's case. I obviously am at the beginning of the recording, but I think it might be a little bit of a long one. So buckle in. We've got love, we've got loss, we've got brain injuries, five marriages, we've got kids and obviously because I'm talking to you we have murder. So it's going to get pretty interesting today. But in order for me to set the stage to talk about who nanny Doss, the giggling granny, was, we need to start at the beginning. We need to talk about her parents. Let's start with James Hazel. In 1905, on the Hazel family farm, james was not having a good time, to say the least. His parents had passed away when he was relatively young and he had to settle loans that they had taken out against unrealized crops. They had taken out loans with the anticipation that these crops would grow and they would be able to sell them and pay back the loan and keep the rest, but that didn't happen. The soil was depleted and all the structures on the farm were falling apart. This was not a good situation for James to find himself in. He was completely alone, had no siblings, anything like that. All he had was this piece of almost worthless land and a modest herd of dairy cattle, and of course, no woman was going to tie herself to James because he was going to be destitute very soon, or at least from what it looked like. So James's situation was pretty bleak and we'll leave him there for just a moment while we talk about Lou Holder. At the same time that James was struggling with his farm situation and finances, lou was having very different problems with her family. She was pregnant and with no husband or even a father for the baby that she would name. This was not going to go down well. In 1905, women who became pregnant out of wedlock were considered ruined. In 1905, single mothers were ostracized and they were not treated very well by anyone around them, even by their own family members. It was considered a stain on the family name and Lou's father, when he found out, reacted pretty predictably for the time to the news, and her mother's swift intervention was the only thing that spared Lou from physical violence that day. But even though her mom spared her from getting beaten, she was still kicked out of the family home and homeless while she was pregnant. Now Lou would never publicly name the father of her baby that she was pregnant with, and we don't really know why. It could be that she was deeply in love with him and wanted to protect him from the shame of having sex outside of marriage. Or maybe she wanted nothing from him and wanted nothing to do with him. Or maybe she genuinely had no idea who the father of her baby was. But regardless, she was resolute in the fact that she never named who her daughter's father was. And after she was kicked out of her family home, she eked out a living through odd jobs from some sympathetic women in the town, but her earnings always felt just a little short of covering rent. And when she was approaching the later stages of her pregnancy, the cost of wood rent and her limited capacity to work left her drowning in debt with no lifeline to pull herself out. Now Lou's daughter, nancy or I will be calling her nanny for the rest of the case entered the world on November 4th 1905. Within one week of nanny being born, lou had secured a marriage proposal from a local farmer, james Hazel, who we've already talked about. This was kind of amazing. This was her lifeline. She was so excited to have a husband, have a family and to get some semblance of a life back after being ostracized for being a single pregnant woman. But this wasn't going to turn out to be what Lou was hoping. James was a little bit more challenging than Lou had anticipated. The little bit of kindness that he showed to her when she was pregnant and after he proposed was about it. He was actually a very miserable and mean man, and especially when he was under stress. There was no honeymoon period for Lou and James after their marriage. The moment she moved into the farmhouse he was barking orders at her with insults and often beat her with a cane when she didn't do what he asked. From dawn until dusk both of them would be working really hard on the farm doing endless chores, and often Lou would be doing the majority of them. Now Nanny was considered a hindrance from the moment she was born, probably beforehand, given how much trouble her mom had for even being pregnant with her. But a baby screaming when you're trying to plow a field isn't really the best situation, and they took it out on her. They ignored her and yelled at her and often beat her with the same cane as her mother and as soon as she was old enough to they sent her straight into farm work as well. Even tasks that were a little too old for her she would be given and beaten if she couldn't complete. Now I'm not defending James or Lou for beating their child or putting them to work on the farm as soon as they were old enough to walk, but I will say that it was very normal for the time, and even sometimes nowadays, if you have children and you work on a farm, you do consider them as part of your labor. More siblings would arrive I believe there were four sisters and one brother in addition to Nanny, and each one of them was expected to work on the farm from the moment they could walk, and each of the pregnancies were obviously time to avoid disrupting the harvest period. Now, something about Nanny is that she was never allowed to have a normal childhood. She was expected as the eldest to take care of her siblings when they were born, despite her being barely any older than them, and by 1910, when her peers were going off to school, she was not allowed to. She had to stay home and help on the field. She had to clear debris ahead of the plow, she had to help plant things, she had to help the harvest, and the only time she was allowed to go to school was during the winter, when there was rain or snow and there was no. There was no farm work that she could do and of course this put her incredibly behind her peers. Her academic gaps from Miss School were difficult to bridge and any progress made was often erased as soon as she returned to farm work in the spring. And not only that, but the Hazel children were scorned by their wealthier schoolmates, who correctly identified them as being poor. And of course kids are mean and it's not fair, but it happens. They got taunted for being peculiar and introverted from being so isolated on the farm. They really only talked to each other and their parents when they were doing farm work. They didn't have a reason to go outside of their property and they didn't have a reason for anyone to come over. So they might have been a little strange to most people. Just real quick, I do have a cat in the recording booth with me today. I do have a booth that I built in my basement specifically to record this podcast and it's soundproof and everything. But little kitties don't like to be excluded when their mommies are locked in a weird room talking into a microphone all night. So I let my cat, zelda, come hang out with me and I'm going to try to edit out any of her mewing and any of her purring. But I do apologize if you can hear any of it or maybe I leave in a bit by accident. I just she's so pitiful guys I couldn't leave her out there, poor baby. She just want to hang out with me, so I'm sorry if you can hear any of this Now. Despite not going to school very often, nanny did learn to read and she loved to read, especially her mom's romance books. And just keep in mind, throughout this whole case I'll mention it again and again she constantly is reading romance books and they kind of warp her sense of what love is. And we'll get more into that as we get into her love life as she gets older. But this was kind of her escape mechanism when you're reading you can't do anything else besides look at the page in front of you, and I completely understand this. I do this myself. I love to read. I've been an avid reader my whole life and you know it's hard to read something and not get completely taken in by a story. So maybe this was her way of escaping the farm, for a little bit at least. Even though the family rarely did ever leave the farm, they did occasionally go across Alabama to visit relatives, but only when the weather was bad or there wasn't any farm work to be done. So it was really really rare. But in the spring of 1912, there was a really bad storm and there was no way they were gonna get any work done. So the Hazel family set out on a train journey to visit James's family in Southern Alabama. The trip was very normal and the children were playing and their dad was mad, you know, as usual. But Lou decided to distribute old magazines, handing Nanny her favorite, a worn copy of True Romance, and Nanny was enveloped in the story until the world suddenly went dark for her. When she woke up, searing pain enveloped her, finding herself on an ottoman in her uncle's home in Southern Alabama. The storm that had freed them of their farm chores that day had actually knocked over a pine tree onto the railway tracks. The sudden breaking of the train to avoid the tree had flung passengers all around and it caused bruises and scrapes for all of the other children except for Nanny. Nanny was positioned in front of a metal bar and unfortunately she suffered a severe concussion At the tender age of seven. This trauma left her with permanent brain damage, resulting in chronic headaches and a very big shift in her personality, which was once very vibrant and sweet and bright and cheerful, she was now depressed and had dark moods and fleeting, uncontrollable rage. Share moods were very unpredictable from this point forward. In the year after this incident, nanny would have different health issues, including blackouts, debilitating headaches and prolonged bouts of depression, and she was constantly in tears. But James just didn't care about his daughter I mean, you'll see it multiple times throughout this case because she was not his biological child he cared a lot less for her than the other children and he refused to let Lou take Nanny to a doctor at all, citing their financial constraints and how important Nanny was on the farm that she couldn't even leave for long enough to go to the doctor. During these grueling months, nanny's perception of her father underwent a profound transformation. Once he was the center of her world and now he was just a tyrant, and she resented him deeply for this. She perceived herself as his antagonist and that she would one day get revenge on him. As Nanny distanced herself emotionally from her family, she became even more obsessed with the romantic tales that she once enjoyed in her mom's magazines. Love as depicted in these stories became her aspiration. It was a stark contrast from the coldness between her parents and the coldness she received from her own father. Nanny envisioned a life akin to the romantic narrative. She devoured A departure from the toil and resentment on the farm. She dreamed that she would find a lover who would rescue her from the cycle of poverty and labor and treat her like a lady that she deserved to be treated as. But unfortunately for Nanny, the Hazel girls were not allowed to date or go out at all if there might be men present. James was obsessive about protecting his daughters. He was very possessive over their virginities. He was convinced that if he let the girls wear pretty dresses or do their makeup or do their hair, that they would be molested, and he absolutely wanted to prevent that. I think most parents would. But he took it to a very unhealthy level. One time he caught Nanny doing her hair like the girl in the magazines and she received a beating for this, unfortunately for the Hazel daughters, including Nanny, james's attempts to protect their purity would be in vain. The Hazel girls would each be molested by family members and after his biological daughters were molested, james would beat the male relative who had done it and make it clear that his girls were off limits. But when Nanny was molested he didn't do anything to the man who had done it. But he would punish Nanny. For instance, when he caught one of his cousins trying to force up Nanny's skirt when she was only 12, he punished Nanny for it. When he caught an uncle unbuttoning her dress, he punished her for being too flirtatious. James did not care about Nanny. He didn't really consider her to be one of his children. He just needed someone to take out his anger on and he railed against her every time that she did anything or when anyone did anything to her. It didn't matter. He would blame her for the terrible example that she was setting for her younger sisters and make very strong implications that the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree as far as her mother was concerned, since she had premarital sex. He was basically saying that Nanny was going to turn out like her mom and probably called her things like a slut or a whore things like that you get the gist. Nanny's experiences of molestation and her feelings of betrayal and anger towards her father for punishing her for this, combined to a more potent harmful emotional state. Such a fusion of intense negative emotions can lead to a distorted worldview, maladaptive coping mechanisms and potentially really harmful behavior. In Nanny's case, this complex emotional and psychological state likely played a significant role in her evolution into a serial killer. When Nanny was 15 years old, she secured a job at the linen thread mill in Blue Mountain. This job would serve two purposes Obviously, bring in money to help the financial situation for the family, and two, give Nanny the freedom she so desperately wanted and needed from her family. After she began working, life got a lot easier for her. She was able to wear more fashionable clothes, to fit in with the people at the factory and make friends outside of her own family. Love was Nanny's primary objective. She wanted to find a husband, and she wanted to find love because not only was this something that she was fixated on because of her romance novels, but this was also one of the only ways that she could leave the home. Back then, women couldn't buy property by themselves. You couldn't have a checking account. So the only way for her to leave her abusive father was to find a husband who would now be in charge of her in a way. But even though Nanny was considered to be very attractive she had this cute little round face and these beautiful dark curls and she was very pretty and most men were attracted to her she wasn't considered marriage material. She didn't have a dowry, she didn't have any money. Nanny began smoking cigarettes so that she would have a reason to talk to men when they were at work on their smoke breaks. And she was so popular that she would sort of hold court outside. She would be talking and everyone would be listening to her and she would be funny and she would really just hold everyone's attention. She was captivating. I mean, there's this young, beautiful woman who's showing all these people her personality and that can be really captivating for a lot of people. And she did get a lot of attention this way and I guess her cigarette plan sort of works out At least a little bit for now you'll see, but right now it works out because she meets 17 year old Charlie Braggs. Charlie was dependable, hardworking and sober and he had a head full of curly dark hair. He was super cute, apparently, and he quickly won over her family and within four months Nanny became Mrs Charlie Braggs. Obviously, this is not a long amount of time for a courtship to get to know someone, but it's even less time when you consider how much they actually got to spend together. They only got to spend a few family dinners together and chat during work smoke breaks, so they were essentially strangers when they got married. But despite this, nanny went into her first marriage wanting to be the perfect wife, just like her romance novels. But the morning after her wedding, reality really bit Nanny in the ass. Not only was her first sexual experience as a wife disappointing, her new husband had neglected to tell her that his mother lived with him and, to make matters worse, mother Braggs was just as controlling as her father, if not a little worse. Charlie's mother was very strict with Nanny and would often make her new daughter-in-law repeat chores over and over again until they were done up to her incredibly high standards, and she would also be conveniently sick whenever Nanny might be able to have time alone outside of the house. Now, I'm not sure whether this was a real illness or what this illness was, but Nanny did imply later on that this was a fake illness that Charlie's mother would put on at her convenience whenever she wanted to mess with Nanny or make sure that she wasn't gonna have a good time. And this extreme stress of living in a new home with her mother-in-law and her new husband brought Nanny to smoke more and then begin drinking to excess. To cope, nanny began to also find other men to keep her entertained and she would go out and go to bars and have some pretty wild nights, from what I understand. And these stories would filter back to her mother, husband and mother-in-law, but no proof was ever found. They couldn't confirm anything, so no one confronted her about it and Charlie couldn't talk at all because Charlie was also starting to have his own affairs with other women as well. Charlie would often be gone for days at a time with these other women. However, between the years of 1923 and 1927, nanny and Charlie would have four daughters together, and this was Nanny's way of trying to fix her marriage, because nothing fixes a marriage like a baby, and at this time the couple slowly grew to hate each other and hate having sex with each other. Melvina was the oldest of the four daughters and nanny's favorite. I don't know the name of the two middle daughters and they are important to the case, but their names are a little bit tricky to find, but I know that the youngest daughter's name is Florine. Nanny's three youngest children were considered to be a burden and hindrance to her freedom. The more children that she had, the more work she would have to do and the less she could go out and have raunchy fun with men in the bars. And despite her growing disdain for her children, everyone else around Nanny believed that she was the perfect mother. She doted on her children and when anyone is around she always threw on a bright, big smile. Now, one of these times that Charlie was coming home after one of his weekends away with another woman, he found his home filled with people with mourners. Actually, james Hazel had to pull Charlie aside and explain that while he had been absent, his two middle daughters had passed away from acute food poisoning from bad grains in their porridge. The day they passed, melvina, the oldest, had skipped breakfast and the youngest, named Florine, was still breastfeeding. So they both were spared from these bad grains right. The two middle daughters were unable to walk by lunchtime and a doctor was called, but it was already too late. At this point no one had any suspicions that anything else had happened to the two girls other than food poisoning To the town and even mother Bragg's. Nanny was a poor mother who lost two of her children at once and she should be given sympathy and pity. Obviously, charlie was devastated and he was shocked by the passing of two of his children at once, but he was very unsettled by his own wife. He looked into her eyes and saw no emotion there, no sadness, just dark black circles. Whatever he saw in her eyes that day was enough to send him packing. Literally he fled in the night, taking Melvina with him. The only reason he left Florine was because, as a baby, she was still sleeping right next to Nanny at night time. And after Charlie abandoned them, nanny was given even more sympathy and love by the town To them. She had lost. Two of her children's death and her eldest daughter to her husband, who was a jackass for leaving her For a while. This life suited her fine. She was getting all the attention and sympathy and that made her happy. But unfortunately for Nanny at least mother Bragg's was still around at this time, living with and being taken care of by Nanny. She was appalled that her son had left and her health began to decline not long after Charlie abandoned them and by summer of 1927, she passed away from what the town believed to be natural causes and, without her mother-in-law and her husband, nanny, let the house fall into a state of disrepair. But by fall time Charlie had magically reappeared in taxi with Melvina and another woman and the other woman's son. It hadn't taken Charlie very long to realize that he didn't know basically anything about child care or taking care of a household. So he quickly found a widow with a son close to his daughter's age and promised her his home, the home that Nanny still lived in. So Nanny saw them and she quietly packed up her things and left her marital home with both of her daughters in tow. She moved back to the Hazel family farm where her father still ruled with an iron fist, and she found work at a cotton mill in Aniston, alabama, and started her life over again, including her love life. She turned to the Lonely Hearts column of the newspaper. She would send out her picture and some of her baked goods in the mail to find a new suitor. Soon she had a full mailbox of men to correspond with. She loved the beautiful words on paper, just like her romance novels. As these men tried to win her heart, the feeling was absolutely intoxicating to Nanny. In 1929, one of the letters stood out to her. This letter was from Robert Franklin Harrelson, known to most as just Frank. The day after he received a letter from Nanny, he drove the short distance from his apartment in Jacksonville, alabama, to the Hazel farm. He just had to see her in person and he was not disappointed. Frank thought Nanny was the perfect woman for him and showered her with gifts, flowers and chocolates. After only two months of dating, he asked Nanny to be his wife. Before their marriage, frank set up a new job at the Goodyear textile mill in Cedertown, georgia. He was trying to make good on his promise to Nanny that he would take her away from Blue Mountain and give her a better life. Once they moved to Cedertown to begin their new married life together, nanny came back down to earth just long enough to realize that this wasn't her romantic fairy tale either. Her new husband drank a bit more than she would like and he was emotionally unavailable. He would rather be out drinking than at home with her. She was back in the same boat she had been with her last husband, charlie. After bailing Frank out of the police drunk tank, nanny had enough. She went back to the newspaper and wrote letters to men in the Lonely Hearts column and life went on this for way longer than you would expect. This went on for 16 years. Both of Nanny's daughters in this time grew into beautiful women and in 1942, melvina the oldest and Nanny's favorite, don't forget married an 18 year old man named Mosey Haynes. Within one year she was expecting their first child together. Nanny and her dark moods didn't really love the idea that her favorite daughter was wasting her youth on motherhood, but she bit her tongue for the time being. Florine at the same time moved in with her sister to help with the baby. Not that Nanny really noticed anything Florine did. The real issue in Nanny's mind arose when Melvina announced her second pregnancy. Nanny remembered her own regrets about having more than one child and could not stand the thought of Melvina having the same life she did. She stood by and watched her daughter have a very rough second pregnancy. By July of 1945, melvina gave birth to a healthy baby girl. By the time the baby was delivered, melvina had no energy left to hold her new baby. So the baby was given to Nanny to hold. The doctor left the room and by the time the doctor returned to the room, the healthy baby girl was mysteriously dead. Melvina was obviously heartbroken when she woke to the news of her baby's death. She could not believe that God would take her child after all the pain she had endured during the pregnancy. But Melvina had seen something while she was in and out of consciousness, something she wasn't sure is real. But she confided in her sister, florine, that she had seen her mother take a hat, pin out of her hat and shove it into the soft part of the newborn's head. Without any proof of what she had seen, melvina ignored her gut instincts and chose to trust her mother. She had more concrete issues to tend to at the moment. Her and her husband's grief of losing their baby turned to resentment and their marriage hit a low point. Melvina began to leave her living child, robert, with Nanny while she went out for the day. One day Melvina and Nanny had a big blowout argument before Melvina went out, leaving Robert behind with his grandmother. The two women had such a big fight that Nanny stewed over her feelings while caring for Robert. So she began to bake. There were problems with rodents in Nanny's new home, a problem she would often solve with arsenic that she bought in a little white box. As she baked for her grandson, that little white box made its way off the top shelf. It was no accident when its contents were added into the cookie batter. The cookies were ready by lunchtime and she let Robert have several throughout the day until his stomach hurt so badly that he went to bed early. She had poisoned her own grandson because she was mad at his mother. Although doctors at the time believed little, robert had died of natural causes, melvina, florine and Mosey, melvina's husband, knew in their hearts that Nanny had done this on purpose and began to distance themselves from her. From what I know, they never spoke to her again, and one month after Robert's death Frank tested Nanny's patience for the very last time. Once again she had to go pick up her drunk husband from the bar. But this time at first was a little different. They were actually laughing and having a good time until Frank began to lose control of his sexual urges. He refused to stop. When Nanny told him to, he seemed to enjoy her struggling to get free of him. You can imagine what he did next. And this was the end for Nanny. Frank had to die. The issue for Nanny was that she couldn't simply poison Frank's food, as she had done before. Frank had not eaten any meals in the home for years and he hid his stash of liquor from her. And this problem was solved accidentally for Nanny. She was digging in the garden when she found his stash of moonshine in the garden bed outside. She carefully pulled the bottle out of the ground and took it into the kitchen to lace it with the rat poison. She then shook it up and buried it back in the same spot that Frank had hidden in the yard. To Frank's eye, nothing would look amiss and by morning Frank was dead in the yard with an empty moonshine bottle in hand. After Frank's death, nanny got a payout from his life insurance policy. This was the first time Nanny had had money in her entire life. She decided to buy 10 acres of land outside of Jacksonville, alabama. In one corner she built a small cottage for herself and the rest was used by sharecroppers that would supply her with regular income. She was now financially independent, but unfortunately for the single men of the Lonely Hearts column, she had more time than ever to find her prince charming. For the next two years, nanny traveled the US and met lots of men in the process. One of these men was Arlie Lanning of Lessington, north Carolina. His letters were so romantic and well written that they could have come straight from her romance books. As with all men who met her, he was captivated by Nanny as soon as she arrived in Lexington to meet him. Immediately after she got home from this trip, they began making wedding plans by letter, and within one week she was back on the train, ready to become Mrs Lanning. Now we know where this story is heading. After the initial rush of excitement at their meeting, arlie began to show his true colors. While he was more well off than her first two husbands, arlie had to spend a lot of time working to make this money, and when he wasn't working he was having affairs. One day he was late for dinner after falling asleep at a woman's home. When he rushed to give Nanny some sort of half-truth apology, he found the house empty with a note that said going on a trip, be back soon. When she returned, he tried to walk the line and keep his marriage vows, but Arlie would always backslide on these promises. Every time he would make a mistake, nanny would take a mysterious trip without saying a word. But it was actually a time when Arlie was on his best behavior that Nanny would finally snap again. During a particularly bad flu season in 1951, arlie barely left the house to avoid getting sick. His constant presence began to irritate Nanny to no end and by the time Christmas came around, nanny felt the urge to get back to baking. She made one of Arlie's favorite pies with sweetened prunes that had a strange bitter aftertaste. By morning the doctor had been called and when he arrived he pronounced Arlie dead, believing it was heart failure. Now, unfortunately for Nanny, arlie had never updated his will after their marriage and their marital home was left to his sister. But conveniently the house caught fire and according to the insurance policy on the house, which had been updated, nanny would be the beneficiary of any payouts, and obviously this aroused suspicion from Arlie's family, and at this time she was living with Arlie's mother and hating every minute of it. Especially after the fire, she was feeling watched, jailed, like she had so many times before. After Arlie's death and Nanny moving in, mrs Lanning, his mother, began to have a long bout of illness in 1952 until she passed away under Nanny's care. Soon after she was buried, Nanny left on a train back to Alabama. Back in Alabama, nanny found out that her sister Dovey, was bedridden and, being so gracious, nanny stepped up to care for her. When Nanny arrived, dovey was in really bad shape already. She was wasting away and exhausted just from short walks from the bed to the bathroom. Nanny came in and began controlling situation right away. Both in just one week Nanny was completely over being a caretaker and Dovey mysteriously passed away after eating some of her sister's famous prunes. At Dovey's funeral, nanny learned of her father, james Hazel's death, and this death would be the only one that really rocked Nanny emotionally. She had always dreamed of getting some kind of revenge on her father for the way that he had treated her growing up. Unfortunately for Lou Hazel, her mother, she was still alive and facing homelessness as a result of James's passing, and Nanny felt some sort of obligation to take care of her mother. Nanny, of course, took over and helped her mother get her affairs in order to move into Nanny's small cottage. Lou was apologetic about the whole situation and having to use her daughter's help and was so thankful to have a caring daughter, but Nanny felt like her life was out of control. She had to care for her mother because it was expected of her. She didn't feel it was a choice. Something I've noticed about Nanny while researching this case is that she has this habit of taking on responsibility and then being upset about the responsibility that she chose to take on. She's creating her own unhappiness and then taking it out on others that she has this burden to take care of when it was her choice in the first place. In step with the established pattern, lou Hazel got sicker and sicker when she lived with her daughter. Eventually she would also pass away, and this was the last time Nanny would interact with her own family. Her siblings and children didn't want anything to do with her. They all were suspicious that Nanny was a killer. Now, at this point in our timeline, nanny is 48 years old. She isn't as young as she always had been and, unlike today, she probably wasn't using retinol and moisturizer and Botox to keep herself looking younger. She was starting to show her age and maybe a little bit older because she had been working so hard outside her whole life. Her dark curls were now gray, she had gained a little bit of weight and she had to wear glasses and she was feeling a little down about how she looked. The Lonely Hearts column that she had always hunted for men was not the right crowd for her age at this point. So for $15, nanny joined the Diamond Circle Club. In this club, you would be added to the list of potential matches and details about you and your picture would be sent to the other members via mail to see if anyone was interested in meeting up. This service actually seems worse than Tinder, but only because Nanny was part of its members. When Nanny joined, she received a good bit of attention from the other members, but of course one unlucky letter caught her attention. The writer of this letter was Richard Morton from Kansas. When Nanny arrived at the train station to meet him, she was pleasantly surprised to see that Richard was kind of hot. He was tall, dark and handsome, with dark hair and piercing eyes. They fell into a pleasant conversation right away and before the trip was over, richard had proposed Within the same month that they met. They were husband and wife Now. Richard and Nanny got along pretty well at first. Richard was always around to spend time with her. They had no children to raise or argue about, and since he was retired he rarely left home, except for trips into town that sometimes lasted a little too long for Nanny's liking. Richard's love language was definitely gift-giving. He spoiled Nanny with jewelry, furs, flowers, chocolates, anything she wanted, and oftentimes things she didn't even want. After a while she was bored of the presence and started to wonder why Richard would spend so long in town when he would leave the house On a trip to the hair salon. She finally found out why Richard would spend so long in town. He had often told her he had been dwaterling or putzing around and lost track of time, but the truth was he had been continuing relationships with other women. Now, when I was researching this case, they weren't sexual relationships, he wasn't having a physical affair, but he would buy gifts for these other women, women that he had met and been talking to before his marriage to Nanny, and I'm not sure why he continued on after he married Nanny because he had her for companionship. He didn't need these younger women. But it really upset Nanny when she heard this. She didn't let any of the other women in the hair salon know that she was upset, but this is obviously kind of shocking news when Richard picked her up from the hair salon that day, she put on the same smile she always did and went back home with him, not confronting him whatsoever. She was playing it cool with Richard and quietly began writing letters to a new group of men across the country and in these letters she mentioned being newly widowed in Kansas. While she was emotionally done with Richard, she was not done with his finances. She began going through his mail and his papers and tallying up his worth and debt. She found out that Richard was in enough debt that his life insurance policies wouldn't cover it, and the more he spent on her and these other women, the worse it was. Getting this pissed her off even more because she felt that Richard was setting her up for failure if he passed before her and he was being inconsiderate by doing so. Now I'm not going to say I disagree with Nanny, because she is right. It's very selfish of him to spend all this money on other women and leave himself in enough debt that his wife would have to pay for it if he passed. But Nanny obviously took it way too far and baked him some sweet prunes mixed with rat poison, I guess, for Nanny, if it's not broken, why fix it? She had killed three husbands, a grandchild, a sister and her own mother with rat poison, not to mention two mother-in-laws which are also suspected to have been murdered with rat poison. After Richard's death the doctor was satisfied he had died of old age, so again, no autopsy was performed. She stayed in Kansas only long enough to collect on her $2,000 from his life insurance. Nanny was starting to get down on herself at this point, not for being a murdering monster, but for not being able to find love, the things she wanted the most in this life. The men she was meeting at this point were all single for very clear reasons for cheating, for drinking, for spending too much money, things like that. So she had kind of given up on finding a true love like her novels. She just wanted a companion at this point who wouldn't betray her like all the others had, just a very normal man. And then she met the last man she would ever be with and the reason she has her last name, dos. This man was Samuel Doss. Now, samuel Doss was a solid man. He didn't drink or smoke or cuss, he was conservative in every way and he was very honest with Nanny about his lifestyle. He was a state highway inspector and on Sundays he was a preacher. Nanny liked what she heard and married him before her last husband had even been buried a month In all her years. It's baffling that Nanny could never learn to slow down and get to know someone. If she had, I would be telling you a different case this week. But they got married very quickly and she learned, just like all the others. Samuel was not the perfect man that Nanny had imagined. He was good and he never became abusive or cheated on her like in other relationships. And he did help her around the house and in the kitchen and he loved his wife. He wanted to be there with her, he wanted to spend time with her. But this was a new problem Nanny had never experienced before. He had impossibly high standards for himself and for his new wife. He's a cheapskate and he liked it that way. To save electricity, nanny wouldn't be allowed to use the fan until it was unbearably hot. Only one light could be used at a time and there was no room in his budget for anything he deemed frivolous. So no treats, no dinners, no luxury furs, anything that Nanny had been accustomed to since she gained her financial independence after Frank's death For Samuel. He believed that not spending a lot of money was one of the only ways to be godly. He didn't want to spend a lot of money, especially when his congregation was often struggling, but he was really uptight about other things as well. Along with his dinners, served at the exact same time every day, so too was their sex life. It was on a calendar in the fridge. Samuel really did believe this was the best way to live his life, and he had done this for years. This is how he was. It was a godly way to live in his eyes, and while I personally couldn't live with him either, there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing here that he deserved to die for, and Nanny actually agreed once. She left him. Instead of killing him, she left him and returned to her cottage in Alabama, but when she arrived there was a letter waiting for her. The letter was from Samuel obviously. In it he gave a kind of apology for being said in his ways and begged Nanny to try and follow his rules, but he could back off a little bit too. He promised to relax and let her have some of her little luxuries in exchange for her coming home. He would also share control of their bank accounts with her, and this pissed Nanny off. She wanted a real apology. And this is when Nanny decided that Samuel would also have to die. Samuel was over the moon when his wife returned the next morning. They went to the bank and filed paperwork to join bank accounts, just as he had promised, and while they were there, he went ahead and took out life insurance policies on himself so that his new wife would be taken care of in the event that he passed before her. Unfortunately, samuel chose the worst fight to pick with Nanny, when she had already decided his fate. He chose to pick a fight with her over her romance books. He thought they were trash and refused to have them in the home at all. He thought that they were graphic and that the covers themselves were disgusting. Samuel believed that reading was to enlighten yourself and to learn. He didn't believe it was for entertainment, and especially not for this type of entertainment. This argument also included why they didn't have a TV. Nanny had assumed that it was because Samuel was thrifty and cheap that he didn't want to own a TV or pay for anything like that. But it was actually because Samuel believed it rotted your brain, he refused to have a TV or those particular books in his home at all. Obviously, this was going to be a huge problem for Nanny. She used those books and TV as an escape. It's what she modeled her life after. She wanted love because of these books. She wanted to watch specific movies because she wanted love. So this was the worst possible fight for them to have. So of course Nanny decided to kill Samuel in her usual way rat poison. But since Samuel was actually helpful in the kitchen, she had to resort to putting it in his coffee instead. Since she wasn't able to put the rat poison in his food, it would be a little bit more detectable if she put it in a large dose in a cup of coffee. So the dose had to be a little more gradual. Samuel didn't die quickly, just as the others had. He actually went to the hospital and was treated for 23 days by a gastroenterologist, dr Schwellbein. Samuel was treated for serious intestinal infection and almost fully recovered before he was sent home to with his doting wife who promised to keep an eye on him. As a surprise, that same evening, nanny had made a beautiful dinner for his first night home a roast pork with all the trimmings and a warm cup of coffee on the side and for dessert, sweetened prune pie. After dinner Nanny thoroughly cleaned the kitchen, especially the coffee pot, and put Samuel to bed. His stomach was upset by this point and he was actually mad at himself for overeating the delicious dinner. After he was in bed, nanny snuck off downstairs to finally read her beloved romance book she had hidden and she ignored his groans from the other room from his stomach pains. By morning Samuel Doss was dead. Dr Schwellbein heard about Samuel's passing and wanted to figure out why the infection Samuel had was so resistant treatment in the hospital. Again, he was a specialist and he had no idea what was going on and he wanted to figure out why. So he decided to approach Nanny and ask if he could do an autopsy on the body. By this time the death had been ruled as natural causes, so there wasn't a legal reason for an autopsy. So the only way to perform the autopsy was for him to go and get permission from his wife, nanny, and luckily Dr Schwellbein had approached Nanny when she was surrounded by mourners in their home at his wake. So she felt there was no way to talk her way out of it without looking suspicious. So she went ahead and signed the papers for the autopsy. When the doctor performed the autopsy he found the undigested dinner that Nanny had cooked the night of Samuel's death and arsenic. He found so much arsenic that it could kill a horse apparently. So only a few hours after his discovery the police took Nanny in for questioning. Nanny Doss is known as the Giggling Granny because when police took her in she kept letting out little laughs from probably discomfort. For the next few hours she gave the investigators nothing. She just played the sweet little old lady card and looked through magazines she had brought from home. It was mentioned in the book I read on this case from Ryan Green that one of the reasons that the investigators weren't getting anything from Nanny was that they didn't want to push her too far. She was a sweet, very polite older woman and they just let her flip through these magazines. If I was brought in for questioning, for example, and I was looking through magazines I had brought from home, within two seconds of sitting down in that interrogation room that magazine would have been snatched out of my hand, but they felt they couldn't do that At this point. Special Agent Ray Page, heading the investigation, signals his own men aside and step forward. I couldn't find a lot on Ray Page. I think I may have found his obituary, so I'm not sure if this was a federal agent or a state agent. I am assuming he's from the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation. But regardless, this was the man in charge. He stepped into that interrogation room lighting a cigarette and he noted with surprise that, unlike himself and his men, she had not wilted at all. He said We've made phone calls, nanny, and we've learned that Mr Doss was your fourth husband to die of the same symptoms. We're putting two and two together, nanny, and it looks like we may have come up with well four Arsenic, nanny. We believe that they all died of arsenic. It'll be easier if you admit what you've done ahead of time, I mean before we have to find out ourselves. Are you saying, young man, that I killed all my husbands? You're a nice-looking young man, but so foolish. And she flipped over a page of the romantic heart's publication before her. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Was she insane or was she the greatest actress who ever lived? It was time to get serious. He reached over and snatched the magazine out of her hands. No more reading, nanny. This isn't the Christian Science Reading Room. You're going to answer us. She looked at him for the first time, not giggling, nanny, he went on. There were others too, weren'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, nanny, in this room. Put them to rest, nanny. Put them to rest. And for a moment their eyes met. A page detected and a breath. Those twinkling granny eyes solidify into something nasty. A devil lurked within and he was going to yank it out. She giggled again, those eyes turning innocent once more. But she began to talk. She confessed to poisoning Samuel, but not out of maliciousness. He wouldn't let me watch my favorite programs on the television and he made me sleep without the fan on on the hottest nights. He was a miser, and well, what's a woman to do under these conditions? The detectives in the room exchanged glances, eyebrows raised. She was serious, wasn't she? Okay, there you have it. She laughed in the same demeanor as a child, admitting she stole her sister's clothes. Can I have a magazine back now? First, tell us about the other husband's Page returned. Nanny thought for a second. If I do, will you give me back my romantic hearts, I promise, he answered. She shrugged and smiled it's a deal. So she told him about Richard Morton, arleigh Lanning, frank Harrelson too All the men she had first admired but turned out to be duds. All she ever wanted was romance. Amanda loved her, but instead she got what she described as dullards Each and every one of them, she said. If their ghosts are in this room with us, they're either drunk or sleeping. The morning after the confessions, ray Page and other detectives from Tulsa found out to Kansas, north Carolina and Alabama to take part in exhumations of her husband's, her mother, her sister Dovey and her mother-in-law, arleigh Lanning's mother. I will note that Nanny never confessed to killing anyone besides her husband's. She would never admit to killing her mother, her sister, her grandchildren, her own children. She would only admit to killing husband's Family, was off limits, at least as far as her confessions go. We know she killed them and evidence is there that she killed them, but she would never confess to those killings. Arsenic traces were heavy in every one of the deceased spouses and in her mother. Bodies of other family members may have been too decomposed and weren't able to trace the arsenic, while not indicating toxic substances. Some of them may have perished from asphyxia, strong suspicion animated that they were probably smothered in their sleep. The state of Oklahoma would be deciding the case, centering its allegations on the death of Samuel Doss only, who died in Tulsa. The states where other victims were uncovered still wanted her for their respective trials, but she was never tried outside of Oklahoma. When reporters finally caught up with Nanny after her indictment, they asked her what she thought should be done with her after poisoning Samuel Doss. Her answer came in the form for familiar giggles Grinning into their cameras. She replied why? Anything? Anything they care to do is all right by me. After psychiatrists diagnosed her mentally sane, her trial date was set for June 2, 1955 in the criminal court of Tulsa, oklahoma. But on May 17th she decided she was over the whole thing and simply because her lawyers did not know what else to tell her, she decided to plead guilty. After a brief hearing, judge Elmer Adams sentenced her to life imprisonment, barring the electric chair, because of her gender. Nanny spent the rest of her days in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary still reading her romance novels, and some of the other inmates started to call her Mama, which I find incredibly ironic considering that she was a terrible mother who killed her own children. But Nanny Doss died of leukemia at age 60 in the prison's hospital ward in 1965. I think the most interesting part of today's case is that Nanny was her own downfall. If it hadn't been for her wanting to appear a certain way, she would have told Dr Schwellbein no to Samuel's autopsy and he would have been buried and she could have gone on killing. It makes me think how often throughout history has someone's death been ruled natural causes, whether it's hurt, failure or an accident or just old age and they were actually murders, probably a lot more than we would like to admit. I find this case to be absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed the book I referenced earlier by Ryan Green. I'll put it in the show notes so that if you want to check it out on Kindle or if you want to buy the actual book, you absolutely can. It is so good. I actually enjoy a lot of his books and maybe I'll turn other books of his into podcast episodes. But if you want more detail, he really goes in depth with her childhood and her marriages. And that is all I have for you, at least for today, because next week, of course, we're going to have another case, and next week's case is very interesting. All the trial footage is available, so I'm actually watching the trial and it's incredibly interesting. I highly recommend you come back and watch it, but I'm a little biased, so maybe you could check out some of our reviews on Spotify and Apple got a few good ones and if, while you're there, you maybe want to leave me five stars, I wouldn't hate it. So, anyway, I will see you all next week and until then, be safe, be kind and, of course, question everything. Bye.