After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Giggling Granny Serial Killer

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Picture a serial killer in your mind’s eye. What do you see... Is it your gran?Today is the story of one of America’s most notorious female serial killers: Nannie Doss, aka the Giggling Granny. She killed 11 people, four of which were husbands. This lead to her also being known as the Lonely Hearts Killer, due to her supposed search for love.This is an episode from our sister-podcast Betwixt the Sheets with host Kate Lister. Kate was joined by Tori Telfer, author of Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History.Produced by Sophie Gee. Mixed by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARKYou can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

I'm Raaza Jaffrey and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Willie Carlin, the spy who sold peace to the IRA. When Carlin quit the British army to return to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, he received an unusual job offer to spy on his own community. He would quickly find himself deep within the Irish Republican movement, having to choose between preserving his cover or his conscience. For 30 years, paramilitary groups from both sides

murdered, maimed, and bombed, while British intelligence waged a dirty war in the shadows. Follow the Spy Who on the Wandery app or wherever you listen to podcasts or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Sold Peace to the IRA early and ad free with Wandery Plus.

You find yourself back on the after dark feed, eh? Well, good, we're glad to have you. And today in the UK, it's a bank holiday, which means Maddie and I are putting our feet up on a beach. Well, more likely we're actually just prowling our way through a cemetery somewhere. But anyway, look, we are going to give you an episode that we know you'll love from our sister podcast, Betwixt the Sheets with Kate Lister.

And by the way, go and vote for Kate in the British Podcast Award. Listener's Choice category. She is currently in the top 20, but we want to make sure that she makes it to the shortlist. So go and vote for Kate and the Bautik's team in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category right now. But the story that we're bringing you today is the story of, I never thought I'd say this, a giggling granny serial killer called Nanny Doss. And I mean, it sounds bizarre, but this is somebody who actually killed 11 people.

Four of them were her husbands. And she killed with poisoned coffee. She killed with poisoned prunes. And she gets her nickname. And this is actually quite chilling because she giggled her way through the police interview. Now, Kate explores this story with the help of her guest, Tory Telford. And we'll let Kate make all those introductions but if you like this episode don't forget to follow the show

to hear more Betwixt the Sheets. We will be back with our usual programming on Thursday with an episode on Corpse Medicine eating Egyptian mummies. So look out for that, it's a really good episode actually. Hello my lovely Betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here once more to make sure that everything is above board and safe and sensible and sane. Because this is your fair do's warning. Fair do's, this podcast contains adulty themes spoken to adults by other adults about adulty subjects and you should be an adult too. And if you continue to listen after that warning then you can't even

get mad. You can't even get mad if you happen to get upset because tough tits you were warned. 1950s America, the peak of the cult of the housewife. So if you happen to be in a kitchen in Oklahoma and there was a pot bubbling away on the stove and lovely smells wafting towards you from the oven, you might be forgiven for thinking you were in for a yummy treat. You might say, what's for dinner, Kate?

Well, you don't want any part of what this housewife is cooking up for you. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Because we are in the kitchen of Nanny Doss, a serial killer who murdered her husband Samuel with arsenic-laced prunes. Prunes that she later put into a cake. And he wasn't the only husband that she killed.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It's thought that she bumped off four out of her five husbands. Why? What was the reason for this? Well, she later told the police she did it because she was looking for the perfect partner. Huh. But it can't have been about romance. It just can't, because as well as partners, it's believed that she killed about 10 people, including her grandson, her daughter, her mother-in-law and her mother. Known as the Giggling Granny, Nanny Doss got her nickname and reputation from a series of interviews that she gave to the police and the

press where she spoke with a smile on her face and a really disturbing twinkle in her eye. on her face and a really disturbing twinkle in her eye. Which of them? Very ugly. Chilling indeed. Today we are betwixt the sheets to find out about her backstory and how she came to be one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. What do you call a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing a button.

E.R.H.! Now! E.R.H.! Now! Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, do you, eh? Close your eyes, dear betwixters, and join me in a thought experiment.

Shut your eyes, do it right now, unless you're driving. Unless you're driving, don't do it if you're driving, but if it's safe, close your eyes. Okay, now, I want you to imagine a serial killer. Don't get too scared if you're too scared open your eyes and just have some sweeties but but if you can do this what do you see in your mind's eye? What does this figure look like? What are they doing? What are they wearing? I'm gonna guess that you're picturing a man right? And it's no wonder that you would be picturing a man when so many of the most well-known infamous serial killers are men. Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper,

John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. Do I have to go on? But they're all men, right? So why wouldn't you be thinking of a man? Now as feminist clauses go I want to be very careful here before suggesting we need more female serial killers. That's a weird cause and I'm not saying that. But doesn't that just show us there are very, very gendered narratives around how we imagine crime? Hmm. And the topic of gendered narratives and female serial killers is fascinating. Today, we are joined by our guest Tori Telfer, author of Ladykillers, Deadly Women Throughout History, to examine all of this through the case of Nanny Dos, aka the

Giggling Granny. Print cakes at the ready, kids. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Tori Telfer. How are you? Hello. I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here. Not as excited as I am because any hint or sniff of true crime history and I am just all about that. And then I sometimes get a bit embarrassed about how excited I am about true crime. And I'm just like, people actually died actually died Kate this is bad. Do you feel like that? Yes, but you should know you're not alone. There are millions of people who feel the exact same way you and I do. Yes, conflicted but fascinated.

You wrote a book about it though so I think that kind of gets you off the hook as like a proper historian and not just like a rubber necked gawker at these crimes which I think that I am. Professional rubbernecked gawker at these crimes, which I think that I am. Professional rubber-necked gawker, maybe. A professional rubber-necked gawker. But it kind of elevates it, doesn't it? I'm fascinated by this, so now I've turned it into a book, so you can't come at me now because I'm a proper academic. I'm assuming it wasn't that that made you want to write your book, which is Lady Killers, Deadly Women Throughout History. What made you want to write that? Well, I had this sense that no one was really writing

about female serial killers. I mean, I don't wanna say I'm the first to ever do it. It has been done before, but I wasn't seeing like the encyclopedias of female killers the way there are about men, at least not ones that went really in depth in each story. Often it was like, this hot chick took an ax to her lover, and then we move on to the next one.

Whereas the male serial killers were getting all this in-depth psychological treatment. And then the stories are just so interesting, despite being horrible. I mean, I don't think I have to justify that part to you. You seem to also be interested. If we're looking for interesting stories about people who have done narratively huge things,

true crime is full of those. You know what I mean? That's the one, isn't it? Yeah. It's so true, when you said there about the female serial killers, like your proper serial killers, not some cross lover that kills somebody in a rage,

then women don't seem to get as much attention as men. And I noticed that this afternoon because I thought, I've heard of Nanny Doss, who we'll talk about today, I'm going to go and just brush up on my Doss information. And I thought, I'll just sit down and I'll put a documentary on. There'll be a documentary. Not really. Like she appears in documentaries about poisoners as like a little bit part. I say, how many documentaries has Ted Bundy got or John Wayne Gacy? Oh, don't even get me started, it's so frustrating.

There's still stuff coming out about Ted Bundy. I know, you wanna be very careful with that, like before getting a feminist cause. I'm like, female serial killers matter too. Yeah, no, I know, it is a weird feminist stance because- It's a weird one, isn't it? It's a weird one. The coverage seems sexist However, we don't want to say we need more female serial killer, you know

We need less of all of the types of murder And I actually i'm gonna just go right ahead and applaud women for not murdering as much as men do I'm very proud of us. That's very good gold stars for us We need to keep on this track as women. We do not need to increase the percentage. But yeah, it is a twisty thing. I get what you're saying. The woman that we're talking about today did not take heed of that particular piece of advice, did she? No. Nanny Doss. Now the first thing I'll say about her is for some reason I thought she was Victorian. Like I've heard the name kind of bandying around. Interesting. I think

it's because I associate mass poisoning with the Victorians. Well they had arsenic even in their wallpaper so I mean the Victorians were just surrounded by arsenic. Too easy to get hold of. Too easy but no she was American. She was American and she lived well into the 20th century. Yes I think of her as quintessentially 1950s Americana, like little string of pearls around her neck, cat-eye glasses, cute little housewife dresses, you know, with a nipped waist. Your classic 1950s housewife in certain ways, and then in other ways not. You can see interviews with her on YouTube because it was obviously in the 20th century and clips of this survive and she's just this really nice older lady who looks like a grandma, she's got a real southern drawl and she's just talking to the interviewer and he's

going, see you murdered all your husbands and she's going, yes sir I did, that's what they say. That's what they say. God. Yes. So set me the scene then, Who was Nanny Dussel? Where did she come from? What's her origin story?

To be frank, I wish we knew more, but she was born in 1906 and she was a farm girl. The legend is that her parents were very strict, especially her father. Some say abusive, at the very least kind of a, you will not date any boys until I say so. And she was boy crazy. So there was tension there. The other important thing to know is that probably the most important thing to know is that she had a head injury at the age of seven. You know this, right? The head injury, serial killer pipeline. Explain for those listening. Well, a lot of serial killers had some sort of a

frontal lobe, front of the head injury in childhood. John Wayne Gacy was hit by a swing, tons of others. And of course having a head injury doesn't mean you're going to be, you know, but I'm not a neuroscientist, but the frontal lobe, you know, controls impulse and things like that. So Nanny Doss was in a train accident at seven. And for the rest of her life, she complained of headaches and a sense that she was sometimes thinking crooked. And the reason she wore the cute little cat eye glasses actually is because of the headache kind of eye issues she got from this accident. So we can't ignore that. So there's the accident, there's the strict dad, and then she gets married really

young. I think she was 15 when she was married for the first time. Yeah, I mean, remember this is 1920. So it's not like getting married today at 15, but of course, it's still young. I mean, could you imagine if you married the person that you fell in love with when you were 15? Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I didn't. So we've got this quite powerful and familiar mix of that she has what seems to be an abusive childhood particularly from her father and there's a head injury.

Yeah, sadly we've seen this story before. So she gets married, she has kids with her first husband Charlie Braggs and a couple of her children die very young and Charlie Braggs was always a little bit suspicious about this. He always kind of had a bad feeling. How are you a little bit suspicious that your partners murdered your children? I know it's weird. My interpretation is Charlie Braggs is kind of like, well, motherhood, giving birth, that's the woman's world. I don't really know. I have some weird feelings. That's my interpretation of his actions because yeah, how are you a little bit suspicious of this? Or maybe it was the type

of thing that in retrospect, he started realizing things were odd. Who was Charlie? Was he a good husband? Was he attentive to his family? Well, this is the ultimate question because there are two narratives. Nanny had five husbands total. And if you listen to her, they were all abusive drunks and womanizers. The last one was a real bore. If you listen to friends and neighbors, they were decent men. I know we generally like to believe the wife. However, I will say in this case, the wife definitely poisoned a lot of people more than just husbands. Spoiler alert. So, and Nanny knew that painting her husbands as bad guys made her look more sympathetic. So that's my long-winded way of saying who's Charlie Bragg's. I feel like Nanny wants you to think he was really bad. I don't want to say he was a saint, but I also don't totally trust Nanny. It doesn't seem like

any red flags were raised at the time, other than whatever Charlie was thinking and later talked about. It wasn't like the whole community was like, child killer. Nanny also seemed disinterested in being a mother. She was always running off for days or weeks. I think she was sometimes jaunting off with other men. And eventually, spoiler alert, the marriage did not last. They got divorced. Was it Charlie survived? Yes, Charlie survived. And the two surviving kids didn't go with Nanny, which is kind of unusual, right? It's usually the mother. So that says something about Nanny.

Can I ask you, what is Nanny short for? It's such a weird name. That can't have been her name. Oh, that's, it's for short for Nancy. Oh, right, of course, right. That's a good question though. For a minute, my mind went totally blank. Makes it sound more ominous somehow. It's Nanny because that's like a Nanny to a child.

It's like, so she's not ideal wife material. Kids that have died weirdly and a husband that goes, yeah, I kind of wondered if she was bumping them off and then they got divorced. Who is the next victim in this? Her second husband is Frank Harrelson and nanny says he's a mean, abusive drunk. And they were married for 15 years, if you can believe it. Really, that's, I don't know why I'm saying that's quite a long time. I have any concept of how long a serial killer would be married for, but that strikes me as a long time. Well, it is a long time. Yeah, she put up with him for a long time. And she says that

one day he came home drunk and he said, if you don't come to bed with me now, I ain't going to be here next week. And then in Nanny's words, I decided I'd teach him and I did. And so she knew where he kept his secret whiskey stash under the floorboards and she poisoned it. So the next time he snuck away to have a drink, he imbibed the arsenic and he died. So that was her first husband to die. Okay. Where is Nanny getting arsenic from? Because if I decided to try and get hold of arsenic today, I think that would be quite difficult. I think that would be more than an eBay late night purchase, right? But even in 1920, how did you get hold of arsenic?

It was easy. I actually have a vintage bottle of rat poison. It's empty now from nanny's era and she could have used that. You could get it at the pharmacy. I don't think you would buy a jar of straight arsenic, but you could buy rat poison or you know, it was in a lot of household products. One of my other cereal, my other cereal fillers, another lady in my book used a soap and arsenic mixture to clean and kill. book used a soap and arsenic mixture to clean and kill. So it was like a household product but before we knew better it was kind of in a lot of stuff. So it wouldn't have been suspicious for Nanny to own arsenic. So she bumps off, I was gonna say poor Frank, but did she accuse him of sexual assault? Is that right? Like she decided to do this after he'd assaulted her. I think that is what that quote is.

Did they have any kids? They did not have kids that I know of. I think she stopped having kids after the first husband. Okay. Was anyone suspicious about Frank just suddenly? Frank had a grandson who died. So Nanny's step-grandson. He died. He had a little grave in the graveyard.

And a friend much later told the press that Frank and the friend were walking past this little grave and Frank just looked at it and said I'll be next. So Frank himself was suspicious. Isn't that chilling? Why are all these people like suspecting? Oh my god. What I take from that is Frank was pretty sure she killed his grandson and Frank knew he was next and he was. I mean I suppose trying to frame that that just seems bonkers to me that you'd be walking around with any kind of suspicion in your head of like, yeah, I think she probably killed

my grandchild or like, I think she probably murdered the kids. But you know, we'll see how this goes. But then if you think about domestic abusive relationships, the psychology that goes in between them is actually powerful. And it's not uncommon for victims of domestic abuse to say, I think he's going to kill me. I think they're going to kill me. Yes, absolutely. She must have had some kind of power and hold on them, right? She did. She was charming. She was smart. She wasn't an educated woman. She was just this country girl who got married at 15, but she definitely had power, especially over men, and she knew how to entice and control. You see that in a lot of these female serial killers. You might see a picture of them and

think what's so special about her or whatever. It was something. There was something. When they were in the room with you there was some power there. So poor old Frank then. He is actually vocalized, I'll be next. And after he's suddenly dropped down dead, did anybody go, oh, hang on. If I know small towns, I would guess people were whispering, but no, there wasn't an inquest. And Nanny's also moving around between husbands, which I think is helpful. You don't want to leave all your bodies in the same town. So that was in Alabama. Now she's popping over to North Carolina to marry Harley Lanning, who was also a drinker according to her. This is husband number three.

She says that when she was away, Harley threw basically an orgy that had to be broken up by the police. So of course he had to die. This story was later undercut by someone who knew about the party and it was just a family visit. The police were like, what's that strange car doing in the driveway? And you know, popped by. But in nannies telling it was an orgy that the police were like, what's that strange car doing in the driveway? And, you know, popped by. But in Nanny's telling, it was an orgy that the police had to interrupt. So she poisoned a plate of his food. The Twix will be back after this short break. In case you haven't heard, in the U.S. it's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of, this is America. No, no, you're all wrong.

This is America. But on American history hit, we're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week, where we look to the past to understand the United States of today with the help of some amazing guests. Let us introduce you to the Founding Fathers, guide you through the West Wing of the White House and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by to find out just how we got here. American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit. How soon after bumping off Frank did she do this?

She poisoned Harley landing in 1952. I think her murders are getting closer together. So she's married to Frank for 15 years and then Harley just for a couple of years. She's not going to give every one of these guys 15 years of her time, especially once she realizes how easy it is. How was she meeting them, by the way? Her first two husbands seem to know each other, which is funny. The guy she's about to meet, husband number four, she signed up for a mail order lonely hearts club. So sort of early online dating almost. She paid a little bit of money and she would get a list of eligible bachelors, which is a serial killer's dream. Isn't it?

Yeah. And she picked one, Richard Morton, a Kansas man. Oh, Richard. Oh, unlucky. Unlucky Richard. He sent a little note back to the Lonely Hearts Club. He said, will you please take our names off your list? We have met and are very happily married. She is a sweet and wonderful woman. I can't help but wonder if Nanny forged that note though, because it would be something she would do. But yeah, Richard honestly seems harmless. Nanny said that she thought he was seeing another woman because he would put on a suit sometimes. That's all the proof that I need, quite frankly.

If I see a man who's wearing anything more than gross dirty pajamas, I assume a fair. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Kill first, ask questions after. So she marries Richard pretty swiftly and then bumps him off swiftly again. And has anybody noticed, has anybody drawn any parallels? Has anybody said, hang on a minute, I knew her back in Alabama or anything at this point? Not yet. At least not that we know about. And think about it, this is pre-internet, no digital footprint. You can't keep track of people like you could now.

The people in Richard's Kansas hometown aren't reading the papers. No. And even if they were, they probably don't have really great photographs in them, do they? Yeah, exactly. And I don't think these deaths are even making the papers yet, because again, no one's thinking that they're poisonings. It's just too easy, isn't it? Just upstix, move to another state and just reinvent yourself. Yeah. And that's what Nanny's learning. She's learning it's so easy, she's killing them faster and faster. She's on husband number four now. She kills him by poisoning his coffee. And then she meets her final husband Sam Doss who she doesn't even bother with the narrative that

he was a drunk or a womanizer. She's just like, he was boring. This is a direct quote from her. He got on my nerves. Poor Sam Doss. He was stingy. He wouldn't let her have a TV. He didn't believe in dancing. He was just a boring guy and Nanny wanted to flirt and dance and smoke her cigarettes. And so she poisoned his prunes, a big pot of boiled prunes, and he ate the whole pot. Wow. As if prunes couldn't get any worse. I know. It's so depressing. He survived the prunes somehow. He comes back from the hospital and she just immediately poisons his coffee and he dies. And this is how Nanny gets caught

because the doctor who treated Sam was like, he was just in the hospital and now he's dead. I think we need an autopsy. Oh, finally. Well done somebody. Okay. And weirdly, Nanny agrees to this. And she's like, absolutely, because we need to make sure whatever killed him won't kill someone else. She's calling that bluff, isn't she? That's a very cool customer. Yeah. I think she's kind of like, hmm, this is some attention for me. Nanny, I think, saw herself as the star of the show. I mean, we all see ourselves as the star of our own show, but Nanny is like, I want the spotlight on me because I look good.

That was her vibe. And so she's like, absolutely, let's do an autopsy. She hangs around for this because the plan might have been for like, absolutely, let's do an autopsy. She hangs around for this because the plan might have been for like, you know, yeah, there's an autopsy. I've just got a taxi that I need to get into. But like she's hangs around. She does it. She hangs around. It is odd. I don't know if she was ready to be caught. If she wanted the attention of an inquest. Maybe she was too confident and she thought whatever, they'll never pin it to me. I think she knew that an autopsy would turn up poison. In fact, he had enough poison inside him to kill 23 men.

Holy shit. Wow. Okay. So she really thoroughly killed him. I suppose it's like when people are guilty of sin, they've committed something and then in America, then somebody says, will you take a lie detector test? And for some reason they say yes and then they fail it. Maybe it's like that. Like I don't really know what they thought was going to happen there but maybe they were just playing for time or something or hoping. Feeling cocky. All right okay so finally somebody has noticed there's an awful lot of arstic in this fella's

system. Too much even if he'd licked the wallpaper by accident. It's a lot. Way too much. Do they pin it on her straight away? Does she get brought in for questioning? Like what happens? Yes, and she gets brought in for an epic night of questioning. And this is where we start to see the Nanny Doss as like Nanny Doss comma serial killer, because she just starts crafting her image right away. She flirts with the police. She is chain smoking all night. She is giggling. Her nickname is eventually the giggling grandma, even though she's only 49 by the way. But you know, she was a grandma actually. And her eyes are sparkling. I mean, she is in her element. She is in this

sweaty little interrogation room surrounded by handsome young police officers. And you can see photos of her with the homicide captain kind of like grinning and I think she charmed him quite frankly. Like he is smiling in these photos too. Yeah, so she does this epic long interrogation and finally she's basically like, you caught me fellas. I've had five husbands and I've killed four of them. She just straight out confessed? She confessed to only her husband killings because then people start digging, figuratively and literally, and realizing, oh, Nanny has had an awful lot of people

around her die, the kids, her mother died when Nanny was there nursing her. All sorts of random relatives. Mother, two sisters, the step-grandson I told you about. So people are like, wait a minute, this woman is surrounded by death. Now Nanny easily confessed to the husband killings. She is offended at the insinuation that she would have killed a mother figure. And I think it's because she knew that her narrative of looking for Mr. Right and killing all these Mr. Wrongs, that was kind of okay. It was palatable in a way. It went down more smoothly

than, oh, I don't know, killing babies or being a matricidal maniac, killing your own mother, who you were supposed to be nursing. Is that what she said? She said that she did this because she was just trying to find the right husband. Yes, she did say that and the media ate it up. I mean, it made for great headlines. She looked so cute and grandmotherly. She got headlines like, Calm Affable Grandmother tells of poisoning four of five spouses. Tulsa Grandma charmed them, poisoned them. like calm, affable grandmother, tells of poisoning four or five spouses. Tulsa grandma charmed them, poisoned them. The mix between the violence and the cuteness

was always there. It is quite staggering. I would urge anyone to go and look at her being interviewed on YouTube. And this is a lady that if she turned upon your doorstep and you'd never met her before and she had a pie, you'd go, thank you. Like she's so sweet looking.

She's so sweet and her pie would be good. She was a good baker. In fact, when she was arrested, she was already seducing husband number six and sent mailing him a cake. And you know that cake was delicious. But it's interesting that there's this kind of like weird moral code almost of like killing the husband. That's okay because I can say that they were all mean, drunks and horrible and I was just in the pursuit of love. But she isn't going to accept this crime of murdering a mother, murdering children, murdering, well anyone that hung around long enough it seems.

Yeah, she knew that there was like a line in the sand, even in serial killing, that she wouldn't cross, that she wouldn't admit to having crossed. And I will say her mother was exhumed and there was arsenic in her mother's body. So I personally will boldly say I think she killed her mother. I will accept that argument. So like the press are already losing their heads around this. They would today as well, wouldn't they? It's just so bizarre what's happened. What was the trial like? Well, there wasn't much of a trial actually. Really? Sadly for the headlines. What happened was there was a lot of debate if she was going to be considered sane or insane. She was sent to an asylum. The doctors loved her. One of the

doctors said in what I find the most chilling quote in my whole book, he said something like, if you had small children, you'd be delighted to have her as a babysitter. But he shouldn't have said that knowing what had happened. That's completely bonkers. It's bonkers, yeah. So she charms the doctors, you know, as usual, she's charming everyone. After much back and forth among psychiatrists, she is declared sane, fit to stand trial. She agrees, she chuckles and tells the journalists, I'm as sane as anybody, fit to stand trial. She agrees. She chuckles and tells the journalist, oh, I'm as sane as anybody. Fit to stand trial. But then she suddenly pleads guilty, kind of surprises everyone. So there's no trial. She pleads out. And maybe she was hoping for a lighter sentence by just admitting to her final husband's murder, Sam Doss's murder.

And then the death penalty is on the table, kind of, but she would have been the first woman in Oklahoma, she's in Oklahoma by then, to get the electric chair. And I think the judge didn't want that on his record. So she gets life in prison. No big splashy trial and her notoriety lasts for a little bit, but it does fade. She's in prison for a while until she dies. Do we have any sense of what she was like in prison? Did anyone else mysteriously die of stomach cramps or anything? No, not that we know, but she made jokes about it. Every now and then a journalist would come by and she would say, I always offer to help

out in the kitchen, but they won't let me. She knew her angles and she got a marriage proposal. She was either in prison or just still in jail during the trial stuff. But yeah, she got at least one marriage proposal. It's weird people do that, isn't it? It's like a proper thing that happens with lots of serial killers is people decide that they love them and want to marry them and then like write them letters in jail. Yeah, I know. It's like, sir, nanny will kill you if you marry her. Like, the track record is not good. Do we have an idea of what her body count might

be then? Somewhere between five and ten, I would say. And how long was she doing this for? This is years, isn't it? It's like decades. This is years. I mean, if we think that she killed some of her children, this is decades. This would be from the 20s to the 50s. I know that CSI wasn't a thing and forensics were still very much in their infancy. But like, how did that happen? How did somebody get away with this for the best part of 30 years? Yeah, good question. Female killers kill for longer than male killers on average. This is not the only time that this has happened where you've had a woman who's you look back and it's like people were dying around her constantly. But okay, the science wasn't great. I think people just don't tend to assume that a wife and mother

and grandma is capable of that. So there's a certain amount of blindness that we all have. Hindsight is a great thing. Hindsight is a great thing. Yeah. So there's that there's her moving around. And I think that just all came together for the perfect storm. This is difficult because we probably need like a forensic psychologist to dig this one out. What was the motivation? I mean, she said that I only killed the husband and it was just somehow quicker than a divorce apparently. And she just was after Mr. Right, but I'm not buying that. What was the motivation? Did she get money for this? Was that part of it?

Nothing significant. No, I don't think it was money. I think she killed people who got in her way, irritated her, crossed her in some way, inconvenienced her like children. I think she probably figured out how easy it was and then it was just like, oh, this is an easy out. And if I find myself in a situation I don't want to be in, I know I can do this. I've done it before. Maybe there was a thrill to it too. Clara Hearn She must have got a kick out of it. Was there life insurance policies that she was collecting? Because I know that there's been cases of

that. They used to call arsenic inheritance powder, didn't they? That's how common that was. Kate Sills Yeah, I think there was some insurance, but she was never wealthy. You know, these men that she was marrying were humble souls. All right, so my final question for you to do on this one, honestly, we could talk to you about this forever and ever, is why do you think the discussion around female serial killers and male serial killers is so markedly different?

It has to be more than just men are more violent statistically than women. The narratives are completely different around them. LW Well, the methods of killing are often really different. So I think that enables a totally different narrative. If Nanny had been hacking her husband's apart with an axe, we don't need to go into the gory details of how men like to kill and what they like to do, but it's just all more bloody and there's often a more sexual component. So I think that colors the narrative a lot. And then just the stereotypes of women as maternal or as like they often kill in the home or around the home because that's where women tend to be or at least back in

the day. So that colours the narrative as opposed to the roving male serial killer who's going about and hunting down his victims. You have the creeper in the kitchen killing those around her. about you and more about your work and more about Nanny. Where can they find you? Well, everything's on torietelfer.com, at least it should be. And my book is Lady Killers. And I have another book, Confident Women, about con women. So if you want a little less murder and a little more swindle, you can buy that one. Tori, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been an absolute treat. This was lovely. Thank you. has been an absolute treat.

This was lovely. Thank you. Well, now wasn't that a treat getting to listen to Kate and Tori? I really enjoyed that. And if you enjoyed Betwixt the Sheets, then go and follow it wherever you get your podcasts. After Dark will return on Thursday. We have episodes, as I said, at the beginning on Corpse Medicine, The Black Death. And I am so excited for this, a special series on Jack the Ripper coming up, and you don't want to miss it. So we'll see you on Thursday.

I'm Ra's Al Jaffrey, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Willie Carlin, the spy who sold peace to the IRA. When Carlin quit the British army to return to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, he received an unusual job offer, to spy on his own community. He would quickly find himself deep within the Irish Republican movement, having to choose between preserving his cover or his conscience. For 30 years, paramilitary groups from both sides murdered, maimed and bombed, while British intelligence waged a dirty war in the shadows. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who sold Peace to the IRA early and ad-free with Wondery Plus.