Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 18 - Jane Toppan - The Angel of Death

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

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No one helps more homeowners than Any Hour Services. So let's do this as always. Hello everybody and welcome to Chilluminati Podcast, episode 18 and worthy of the noises episode 18. I'm excited. I'm excited for this one. Me too. We are diving back into the world of the late 1800s, early 1900s and tackling the lady

we spoke about last episode just a little bit, Jane Toppin, also known as the Angel of Death or an Angel of Mercy in some people's unminds, a devil in disguise, one of the most prolific female serial killers to ever exist and probably one of the most prolific serial killers to exist in that time period in general. While we don't have a very specific number of how many she's killed, the estimates are somewhere around 100. Both delighted and horrified to be back on a similar theme. Yes, yes, we're going to cover this one and then next episode we go into the paranormal

world again. We got to get like a breath of air. This is why people don't trust doctors. A body count of 100? Somewhere over 100. The reason we'll never know and we'll talk a little bit about it, we'll talk a lot about it obviously, but after she was convicted, the hospitals that she worked at refused to release the records of her old patients because they were too worried about their own lawsuits

and shit. Well, it was less lawsuits, but more of their, what do you call it? Reputation? Reputation. There's a word. For some reason, reputation was not coming to my brain. Yeah, we don't worry about that, so we're good. Yeah, exactly.

The thing that gets me is that that other one, it's like there's no idea how many people she killed or she was working for that doctor. I would love to just hear from somebody out there who has some more insight into that. There has to be somebody, right? I think that's the point is that the reason they become nurses or doctors or whatever the case may be is because you can kill people who are technically already dying of something. Yeah. She would actually use that as an excuse a lot of the time.

She killed because they were already going to die anyway, so who cares? Who cares? Well, yeah, obviously, but that's, you know, she's a psychopath. That's the point. Does that work with any jury and anywhere? Who cares? No. No.

Who cares? I didn't know that person. That's why in the eyes of a killer, you're an angel of mercy because you're like, I'm putting them out of their misery. Exactly. You do it to a dog. Why not a man? Like that kind of crazy stuff, but you just secretly, you just, you know, you want to

kill them and you're killing them, right? But a lot of killers have to justify why they kill because they don't want to look at themselves like they're monsters. They don't see themselves that way. Right. Diet Coke with my, with my hat, with my like Big Mac meal. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. No, you're eating healthy because it's a diet thing. Diet Coke is the, they're going to die of a disease anyway of drink choices at a fast rate. What's like a Coke zero then? Yeah. Diet Coke is the chain topic of drinks. A Coke zero is just taking care of them, you know, helping them, helping them back

down, being a, being a nurse, being the nurse. Uh, well, Jane Toppin's a little different than a lot of female serial killers. We're going to actually go over a few statistics before we get down there, but before we do, as always, a big shout out to assistant researchers, um, both Nathan Leonard and Deanna Davis. Uh, they, they went real deep on this one for, for me and, uh, pulled up quite a few references, uh, outside of the book that, uh, all of us actually ended up reading, uh, the researchers and myself fatal by Harold Schechter. Great little book.

Also other things is, um, that we pulled some statistics from is a study, uh, in a study of serial killers from since 1846 up into 1950s, um, by, in a book called serial murders and their victims, as well as lethal ladies revisiting what we know about female serial killer, the journal of forensic psychiatry and psychology and the journal of forensic psychiatry and psychology, 26, 3, 30 numbers referencing the actual document. Um, there's a lot of things to talk about, uh, when it comes to Jane Toppin, specifically her, her motive, her drive. So a lot of, um, a lot of serial killers, as we talked about last episode, they're

product killers, right? They, they, they kill because they want the end product, whether that be money, whether that be the body itself or, or whatever, the, the actual act of, of the murders, not what they want. Yeah. It means to an end. Um, whereas Jane Toppin is actually a, what we would call like a process killer. She enjoyed the process of the actual killing.

That is what she got off on. Um, and she was one of the very, very few, uh, female serial serial killers who killed for sexual pleasure. She was, uh, in, in a study that, uh, Jane Toppin, Jane Toppin was a sexual serial killer. Whoa. I didn't know that at like element of this. Yeah.

Uh, so for females specifically, um, usually the reason that they kill is material money or games. So product killing, um, and usually the, the statistic for them is around 74%. So 74% of female serial killers do it for the end goal. Um, 24% do it for miscellaneous reasons. Drugs, cult involvement, cover up feelings of inadequacy. Kind of, it's a smorgasbord of things that. That is a smorgasbord that went on.

Yeah. Drugs, cult. Yeah, cult. Which means it's like, you know, somebody who was doing this study, like ran across like two ladies who were cult killers for whatever reason. He's like, cult. This is a Wheel of Fortune category that is at one, at one thing, a list of, a list of things that a serial killer might be motivated by, but also my Netflix search history.

13% of female serial killers usually kill because of the control it brings, uh, just the power, which Jane definitely dips a couple of toes in there. Um, also 11% do it out of just the sheer enjoyment of it. And then 10, the last 10% do it for the sexual gratification that they get out of it. Jane kind of dips her toes in a control and enjoyment, but she is firmly, the rest of her body sits in the sex part. And that we'll, uh, we'll talk about that after. As a comparison, male serial killers, 55% of male serial killers kill for a sexual

gratification, almost all of them in Jordan. Yep. 55%. Yeah. Yeah. That makes, that makes a lot of sense compared to lead to women and makes sense. Yep. Uh, men then following that control right under sex at 29% money under that

enjoyment under that. And then after that, it's like racism, hatred, mental issues, cult inspired at the very bottom and then just for attention, 2% for attention. Yeah. 2% of males do it for attention. What is like, Oh, like the Zodiac killer. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, the last single cover, uh, statistics. Basically, just so you understand where Jane sits, the methods female serial killers almost always kill with poison, 80% use poison, followed by 20% shootings, 16% bludgeoning and then 16% suffocation followed by 11% of stabbing and 5% drowning compared to males, which 41% and the majority of them use firearms who shortly like right underneath at 37% suffocation, uh, 34% stabbing, then bludgeoning firearms, poison, drowning. And then other at 2% other.

Yeah. Don't know what other laser gun other. Yeah. Laser gun, a bond, a villain styled concoctions with fricking laser guns on their heads. Exactly. That you didn't even try. You didn't even try.

No, I don't have, I don't have a Dr. Evil. What do you guys expect from me? What do you want? Apparently more than that. More is the answer. Give me sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads. No, no, you know what?

It's even a bad reference. It's like a 20 year old reference. This is washed up. I wonder where did the time go? This is the black and white version of Logan right now. Thank God we got you at like your twilight years in your career for this show. Just before I died. Yeah, they got me the last interviews, the last tapes.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about Jane Toppin, shall we? Or should we say born? Her actual birth name was Onara Kelly. She was born. Whoa, whoa, Onara Kelly. Yeah. She was born in 1857.

Onara H-O-N-O-R-A. That's one of those. Unless you say Hanara in the 1800s. Yeah, late, like 1800s. 1857. Yeah, Nora, Nora seems better. Yep. She was born to a father by the name of Peter Kelly and the wife Bridget Kelly

and had a couple of sisters, Delilah Kelly and Nellie Kelly. Not much is known about her mother. She did not have a sister named Nellie Kelly. Yes, she did. That sucks. The name or just having a sister named Nellie. Both, both, both. It would be like a thing you had to apologize for your whole life.

Right? I guess. So not much is like I said, not much is known about her mother. Her mother died when she was very young of consumption or the consumption. Or who knows, arsenic poisoning. God knows at this point, could be either one. Could have been the other one. And Peter Kelly was a horrible father.

He did not keep custody of his children for very long. He was a tailor, a chronic drunk, prone to violent outbursts. Allegedly institutionalized at some point for trying to sew his eyes shut, which was after he gave up his children. Yeah. And then in 1863, he gave six year old Jane, who was on her at the time, an eight year old Delilah to the Boston Female Asylum, which is where really our story picks up.

So if you don't know the Boston Female Asylum is, it was a building set up in the very early 1800s, I think it was like 1803. And it was for, you know, parents or orphaned young girls to go and get refuge more or less. It seems like it was probably a awful building. Honestly, for the time, it did a great service. It did more good than bad. It was run by a board of all females, so it was only women who ran the building.

And even to get accepted, they actually, the parents who were trying to give up their children had to basically fill out paperwork and apply. And they in early on in its career, they were very picky and choosy. But as time went on, they they they were a little bit more open about to who they were take, who they take in. In 1910, the organization was named was changed from that to the Boston Society for the Care of Girls instead of the Boston Female Asylum. Sure. OK. That's crazy.

Yeah. So she was actually dropped off in and given to the Boston Female Asylum in 1863, putting her at just like seven or eight years old, as well as her sister Delilah, who would stay there as well. Nellie Kelly did not end up going there. And the reason is to be believed that she was too old, that she could not be bundled with the other two sisters. And they wouldn't take her because she was ended up to being too old. And she can she was committed to an institution at the age of 20

later on for violent outbursts. Can I ask like a crazy question? Kind of off topic. But I feel like the two of you know exactly like you will have answers for me. And maybe people listening to our perception and idea of what a air quotes modern family, what that is only exists in the fifties. And then we just kind of imagine the fifties being like peak because every time you look back at the past,

every time we do anything, it's like man meets women or like man meets woman. They have like 16 kids, woman dies. Man leaves the kids because he doesn't care. And then half the kids are dead and then they move on. That's like the story of everyone from the 1800s. And before that, it's even crazier. And then all of a sudden you have this sort of like even in the 20s, it wasn't like this.

And then suddenly the 40s, 50s, you have this like, hey, everyone, welcome to Perfect America. Would you say it's a result of would you say that that kind of lifestyle as a result of post World War Two, like a post World War Two World? It definitely is part of that. It's part of the whole baby boom and them being like, have kids, GIs, when they come back. But I also think it has to do with that was the first time there was like real

television propaganda and they kept showing you what the perfect family was. So I think people just were too big. We're too big like at the time, you know, originally we had democracy because we needed to vote based on our needs as people. But like now we have to simplify everything. So there has to be like a standard family. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy because I get all the different reasons in the past while you would have like eight kids because half those kids would be dead.

Like I get the reasoning behind everything hedging your bets. Yeah, that's truly what it was. It was, you know, you had to make sure that you had kids to rate. It was also kids would raise other kids and kids would go work. And it was a different it was a different world. But it also seems like the idea that when everyone's like, there's a family has always been a family and it's always been. No, no, no, it actually not.

Hard false. That is the idea. The idea that there is a family unit like that is like probably part of why there are serial killers in like the time when all those people that were born in the fifties like became like twenty two years old. Yeah, right. Sixties, seventies hit. I yeah, I can imagine like again, I think you have a point where like that's

the time where television radio and all that stuff could put forth these idyllic lifestyles. How many of those perfect families had like a father who was a massive violent alcoholic? Oh, most of the families of the fifties were fake. Yeah, exactly. The idea was like dad was an asshole and mom was just drinking because she didn't want to handle it.

And the kids ended up becoming, you know, assholes, too. John, what is it about? Yeah, that's the actual plot of Mad Men. Yeah. So while Delilah and Jane did stay in the the Boston women, Boston female asylum. God, that's such like a gross name, even thinking about it. It's like very, very kind of straight forward in a way that it's run

completely by women at this time. That is yeah, that is that is worth noting. Well, let's also be very clear that the word asylum has a different connotation now. Also true. Yeah, also true. Yeah, asylums back in, you know, the 1800s were literally a place where you'd go for asylum.

Like, yeah, that's very true. Yeah, it wasn't like a place we now associate it with like the asylum for that criminally insane. Like it's a Batman villain locale. But way back when asylums existed, literally just where people could go to be safe. It was a refuge. Yeah.

So in this case, they set the girls there because you can't keep the girls with that dad and it's a place run by women. They're going to try and look out for them. It's just the idea. Well, maybe this family was just doomed from the start as well. With the mother dying so early, the father being a violent alcoholic who then kind of went nuts himself. Nelly, like I said, didn't even get to get go to the asylum and she died.

She was committed to an institution for violence at 20 years old. Bridget would also rather sorry, Delilah rather or Delia is her name would actually be in the asylum until 1868. When she until she would eventually placed as a servant in Aethol, New York at the age of 12, later she turned to prostitution and eventually died a destitute alcoholic in squalid conditions. Jesus Christ. Yeah, not not great, not great.

So for those who don't know as well, what this asylum would do is they take the girls in, they would teach them basic life lessons for females at the time, sewing, cooking, that kind of thing. And then eventually what they would hopefully do is is quote unquote lend them out or hire them out to families that would then take the children in and basically use them as indentured servants. Yeah, yeah, that's not cool. Yeah, that's that's kind of what happened, especially a 12 year old.

You're going to set a 12 year old out to go work. Yeah, no, I get why she was like, we don't have to share easier. Yeah, easier and probably safer than where she like. Can you imagine being a 12 year old servant that right? Yeah. No, it's insane. I feel bad for her. Yeah. Well, it would happen to probably like five success stories ever. Yeah, there's there's like there's there's success stories. And obviously those are the ones that are more talked about by by the actual

asylum at the time. But yeah, them being loaned out to where they would be abused by the family, whether it be physically or sexually was always happened. But when they were done with their servitude and they became an adult, the Boston Female Assignment then give them fifty dollars as their stipend as they would as they would go out into the world and be adults now. Good luck kind of out out there. For for Jane, she actually only spent a year there

before she would be put out into the world. And this time she's still on. She's like she's she's still on her until she goes to the family that renames her. Gotcha. OK. So during this time at the asylum straight up changed her damn name. Yes. They're like, you're you're not this kid anymore and now you're our kid. Yeah, she would take the last name of the family that would take her and then she would have a new a new first name.

Um, the reason is to this is important as well is her and her whole family were Irish at this time and at the time they were looked down on, made fun of. And yeah, exactly. And Jane, while at the asylum, garnered a reputation for being a very, a very big storyteller, lots of lies, fantastic fantasies as her father being like a captain at sea and doing all these wonderful things and what an amazing family she had before she had to be put here because her family had to go on and do great things.

Typical childhood ways of dealing with trauma and making it look like she's not as poor off as she actually is. But she also was a big gossip person. She would spread lies and get people into trouble. But she was always conniving enough to never get the blame so much so that the teachers adored Jane because she was a tattletale. She would rat everybody out. And it was impossible to determine whether the things she was saying

were true or false because most of the time it was true. But then she started sprinkling falsehoods and lies because it made her feel good and empowered in the boundaries. Yeah. Well, it's also an attention thing, right? She got like rewarded positively for ratting out friends or like other people that were there. And then she would just keep doing it and she could just make up stuff because she wanted that same feeling of like positive attention.

Yeah. Yep. And that that was that would that would stick with Jane for the rest of her life. That that is something that she would always do, even into her adulthood. But in 1863 and into 1864 is where Jane would be put into the care of the Toppin family. Whoa, hold on. Seven years old. So 1857 to 181864.

Yes. Seven. Yep. Seven years old. She was she was out. She got put out, made a servant at seven. Seven. Y'all, that is. That's how serial killers born. That's right there. Seven years old, you're a servant.

Yep. And wait, hold on. And then at seven, they just decide like, hey, we're going to change your name. That's crazy. You don't even do that to a dog. Like you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do that. It's like the dog will not do well. She actually willingly changed her name supposedly.

Again, she's seven years old. So, you know, what kind of judgment called can she really make? But yeah, she was indentured to Anne C. Toppin, where despite no formal adoption, she changed her name to Jane Toppin. There are theories as to why she did it, but the biggest one is to try and ditch the Irish heritage, because during her time with this family, not only did her tall tales and lies continue,

she started making jokes and making fun of Irish people. People from her heritage looked down on them and basically kind of took the position that her foster family did while her foster family continued to look down on her. But then Jane looked down on the Irish. It was another coping mechanism for her. Maybe her family was super racist. So it's interesting because the as we move into her teen years here,

it's interesting because Jane. There's a little bit of conflicting information. Some sources say that Jane was abused by her foster mother physically and verbally. There are other sources that say she was not abused, but she was just kind of treated like a servant, just kind of ignored, but well taken care of, fed, had a bed. Which one is real?

Me personally, I would probably err on the side of an abusive foster mother. Seems to be the norm back then, but there is a little bit of conflicting information there in case that that's important for people out there. But from 1864 to 1873, Jane served. She would lie about her heritage, blamed wrongdoings on other children in school that she was still going to at the time,

becoming popular with some and called outrageous and liar by others. She is a storyteller. And in in in 1874, she would be released from her duties in the Toppin family and given $50 as agreed, but continued to work for the Toppins for the next decade. Like paid. She stayed with them, not paid, but taken care of, had a room, had food, had board, that kind of thing.

I see. Yeah. All the while, the Toppins did have their own daughter, Elizabeth. And through that, Toppin would watch. Jane would watch Elizabeth and Elizabeth would get the treatment she so desperately would want from the family. You know, true love, taken care of, treated like a proper daughter. And all those years, almost two decades worth of watching Elizabeth be treated like an actual daughter of theirs

would sit and stew with Jane forever because she desperately wanted what she believes she deserved but was un unrightfully taken away from her over the kind of agree with her. Yeah, of course. It's a little girl. There's always that moment. There's always those years when you're looking back at a monster and you really go through their history and their childhood is usually the point where you're like, man, if things had gone a little different.

Yeah. What would have happened if she's a sociopath? That doesn't mean she would have become a psychopath serial killer, you know? But you look at this, you're like, man, if she had just been taken care of even a little bit, what would it have been like for her? Reach out, people. Yeah, always reach out. Absolutely. That's a good, a good lesson to take away. But that's where the conflicting information is interesting,

because there are just information. There's other reports out there that say Jane was not necessarily loved like Elizabeth, but not also like neglected and ignored. But, you know, at that point at seven years old, that we don't know what happened in those first six years of Jane's childhood with her father. We have no idea what life was like. It could have been too late. She could have been beyond destroyed at that point mentally.

But then in adulthood, things would, we'd start to see the Jane that we're going to talk the most about, the Jane that would kill, the Jane that did not actually favor arsenic, but instead favored a nice concoction of morphine and atropine. I don't know. Yeah, I think we all know what morphine is, but atropine is a horrible little drug that when poisoned can cause massive stomach problems,

a closed throat, coma induced kind of mixed with morphine. You'd basically be in a coma where you'd be dying slowly, because the atropine would be killing you and the morphine would keep you under. It was kind of a rough combo. And that was that was what she used for the most part. Wow. Yeah. But between 1874 and 1885,

Jane did continue to work for the Toppins, working for Elizabeth when Mrs. Toppin eventually died. And Elizabeth. She just going on this. She hasn't killed anyone yet. Not yet. She is working for this. The mom dies.

Yeah. She's working for the girl she was jealous of. Oh, yeah. And now she's like 30. Yep. We're in 1885. She's like in her late 20s. 28 in 1885.

Yep. Maybe a late 20s pair. Yeah. Yeah. So she's just been working for these people the entire time. This is a strange origin story, but okay. Yeah. It's very weird.

It's very weird. All the while. Of course. Of course this person is a serial killer. Kind of. All the while as well, she was described as portly and plain. Plain Jane.

Jane was not a looker to a lot of people. It is alleged she was being courted by someone for a few years while she lived with Elizabeth. And then that person ran off and ended up marrying somebody a few states away during one of his job excursions. That's how it happens. But there's no evidence that that man existed. And we don't know if that's a story Jane made up.

Oh, I like that even better. You don't know him. He's in a different state. It's the 1860s version of my girlfriend from Canada. Yeah. You don't know him. He's from Ohio. She's real.

She's real. She's real. She's real. She's real. She's real. See this picture? Don't Google it. She's real.

She's real. She's real. She's real. Elizabeth, the sister would eventually marry a man by Oremel Brigham, who was a deacon. It was also definitely born in the 1800s. And he looked at the pictures of him in this book. However you imagine Oremel Brigham to look,

you're probably right. Like halfway between Abraham Lincoln and Ahobo. Oh, definitely Harry. Oremel Brigham is Harry. There's no doubt in my mind. Yeah, that thick stash. Everybody in the 1860s, if you were a man at all, you had a beard.

Here he is right here. Sideburns. I knew it. Sideburns balled on top. Oh, yeah, that's nice. And here's Jane, early in her career. So this is her in her 20s. And this is her when she got caught.

Interesting. Yeah, there you go. A little picture. If you want to look it up, everybody, you can just look up Jane Toppin 1880 and then 1900, if you want to see what she looked like at those times. She looks so wise. Well, she was an incredibly intelligent woman.

And we'll get to that as we move on into her more professional career. So like I said, she lived with Elizabeth for a while, and who Elizabeth eventually married a man by the name of Oremel Brigham. He was a deacon. And in 1885, Jane moved out of the Brigham household. Why?

Well, people imagine that her sister getting married was the impetus for her getting out. Because now- I guess it sucked ass, too. Yeah, well, Elizabeth, even when Jane moved out, Elizabeth gave her a wonderful letter that says, you always have a place to stay here. If you ever need anything, you talk to me,

and I'll always be there for you. Meanwhile, Jane hated Elizabeth to her very core. So she moved out, lived on her own for a while, doing some odds and ends jobs. Until eventually 1887, she began nursing school at Boston Cambridge Hospital. Nursing school at this time was hell. I don't know if we talked about it last episode.

I can't remember. But it was a rigorous two-year thing. Now, in order to become a nurse now, it's a lot longer than two years. But this was a up at five, bed by like 11 p.m. You're up all day, up late into the night, taking care of patients, following the head nurse around. It's ruthless.

It is constant. And very few people made it through to get their actual license and degree. But Jane did. Almost. She almost did it. It's at this point where we believe that the murders actually started

while she was in the Boston Cambridge school. This is the place where she ended up getting the name Jolly Jane, actually, because the doctors and the patients friggin loved her. She was outgoing, outrageous, funny, big bubbly personality. Again, love to tell stories in the patients

that helped them when they were in bed in pain. She was a wonderful nurse to be around. But the other nurses in training friggin hated her because much like she did in school, that whole mischievous lifestyle she brought over into nursing school. She would get to tell tall tales about her life. There were theories that she was actually stealing

a little petty theft from people. Obnoxious things would go missing while she was around. Moreover, if she didn't like you, she would sneakily start spreading a nasty, nasty rumor about you among other trainees that would catch fire. And then she would use that to approach the head nurse and doctors

and get them kicked out of nursing school if she didn't like them. So she held power over them like a puppet master. And again, with the doctors loving her, they were never going to question her. She continued to lie about her background, known as the DVS gossip. She was suspected of ceiling was never caught,

speculated to have killed dozens while in Cambridge, though we will never know because there's no records and the Cambridge would never release those records at the time. But the way it would usually go for Jane, and here's how the killing started. If she liked you. This is awful. Oh, my God.

I'm sorry. I know there's not a lot of break to have a breath, but we'll get to that here in a minute. But if she liked you as a patient, if she really enjoyed you, she would falsify your charts and then give them a dose of medication to make them stay. Oh, so this is much like her past

when it comes to family and love and attention. It's very similar to the idea of like ratting out other people for the attention of teachers. This is like, if I like you, I don't want you to leave because you make my life better. So stay with me forever. Hello there, Chilluminati podcast listeners. Before we continue with today's show,

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That's exactly it. She liked you, she dosed you with meds, keep you there for like another week and then bring you back to health and then send you out on your way. It's fucked up. This is also where she began what is labeled as her science experiments.

She would begin to alternate morphine and atropine to examine the effects on patients, which is why the doctors truly liked her in a sense, not because she was experimenting, they had no idea about that, but these experimentations taught her a load of stuff. She would know the precise measurements where she'd keep certain types of patients

in and out of consciousness right at the bridge of death and then bring them back again. She would constantly play with the different drugs to see what they did. And when she was arrested and all of her belongings were grabbed, she had a very well-worn book that she was given during a nursing school with all kinds of notes about the different kinds of drugs and poisons

and what they do and how much is required. She studied it voraciously, more so than any other student that she was training with. She loved it, but we wouldn't really know what Jane did for a while. We didn't know what she would do with the patients or how she, if she did anything with them or she would just kind of keep them there

just to keep them company, it would be years until under testimony in court we would get a small sneak peek into what Jane did, at least to those of her victims that she partially enjoyed thanks to a woman by the name of Amelia Finney, who was suffering from at the time, during the time of her training, uterine ulcer.

The night prior, doctors had treated it as was common back then by burning it with nitrate of silver, which is how they handled the uterine ulcer, which sounds- That does not sound pleasant at all. Nitrate of silver? Yeah. What the fuck? Well, it looks like you have a uterine ulcer.

Let me get this nitrate of silver. Hold on, like uterine as in uterus? Yeah. Yeah, I'd imagine so. Yeah, no, that just sounds unpleasant. It sounds- Yeah, they imagine it does. I can only think of a few entryways

and all of them sound unpleasant when it comes to nitrate of silver. They're pretty- Uterine ulcers are common, but like that is- Yeah, that is barbaric. This is also a time where people still bled people, you know, to deal with fevers. Nitrate is-

I was, I forget what I was reading, but it was like something about every baby, they put nickel acid in their eyes, just to make sure that they didn't get any diseases. They just do one drop in each eye of pure burning acid. Just like- Same. Like it actually like-

My god. I can't even, whatever. All right. Yeah, I digress. I'm sitting here just thinking about acid being dropped into my eyes. I digress. It was a fucked up time, mentally.

That's another reason why it was probably so stressful being a nurse. It's because there's not even any real fucking shit. You're like, you're doing what you think. You're learning how to do what they think is a good thing that like 50 years later, they were like, whoa, we fucked up. We shouldn't do that anymore.

Now if you just want to just make a baby read YouTube comments. Same effect, man. Same effect. So what happened the night of after that surgery where she or she got that treatment? Amelia Finney was up writhing in pain all night long. Eventually, as she was in the middle of the night writhing, she claims to have woken up during her fits of sleep to see

Jane topping looming over her bed. And she asked Jane what was going on. And Jane asked if she's feeling okay. And Amelia said, no, can you please go get a physician? And Jane said, don't worry about it. I'll take care of you. We don't need a physician here. So she put her arm under Amelia to sit her up

and gave her a, as you know, like Lydia Sherman, gave her a drink. It was a type of mineral water that came from a different country. It's high you plane mineral water. It basically had a weird bitter taste and had her drink the whole thing. And within minutes, Amelia started to fall to in and out of unconsciousness.

It was at that point that Amelia claims, and I'll verbatim say in court, after surgery, Jane administered some bitter tasting medicine to Amelia to help with her pain. As she was slipping in unconsciousness, she realized that Jane had gotten into bed with her and began kissing her and began to kiss her all over her face. At one point, actually during this,

she would pry open Amelia's eyes and check them with a flashlight, realizing that she wasn't completely unconscious. She tried to have her drink more, but Amelia was cognizant enough to push that away. And something, nobody knows what, but luckily for Mrs. Finney, Jane was startled by someone and hastily ended up leaving the room.

As Amelia gained consciousness the next day, she thought the incident had been a dream induced by the surgery and the drugs that she had been taking, and she checked out of the hospital without saying anything. She only confessed to the event in 1901 when Jane had already been arrested. Does she do that all the time? Get in bed with them and kiss them and shit?

Yep. That is something we are going to see through... I had no idea that there was that element to this. Yeah, so what her modus operandi would be, poison them in unconsciousness, climb into bed with them, do sexual things with them, and then as they took their dying last gasps of breath, she would hold them and cuddle them until they died.

Yeesh. Yes, rough stuff. So, we're still in her nursing school. So that was in early 1887, during the first year or so, to be believed. In 1888, despite the dislike of her colleagues, she gained the favor of enough doctors to get a recommendation to the Massachusetts General Hospital,

which was a big, big step up. Though the head nurse was a bigot and looked down on Jane's low origins as an Irish person. Man, why gotta be hating on the Irish? Why gotta be doing that? So she was still like, yes, I'm Irish? Or was she like... Yeah, she hated them and spoke down on them,

but for some reason... She owned the Irishness. Yeah, it was something that it was looked down on. The only reason, actually, the head nurse at Massachusetts General took her was because of the insane glowing recommendations of the doctors. During this entire time, Jane was the hardest worker of all the trainees.

She was always where she needed to be, taking care of the patients she needed to be, and a lot of her patients, if not most of them, left healthy and were taken care of. And when she took her tests, she would almost ace them every single time. She knew her shit inside and out. That's why it sucks.

So the doctors loved her. That's why it's so creepy, because she's like such a good nurse that you would never suspect. She's a Jekyll and Hyde, because the patients love her. She's this jolly woman taking care of you, you know, and then the minute you're unconscious,

she's looming over your bed, drugging you so that she can kill you and derive sexual pleasure from it. Good lord. So she got accepted in 1888. And in 1889, Jane was named temporary representative during the head nurse's leave of absent,

nearly one year after Jane had joined the hospital due to how prolific and good she was at her job. The very same head nurse that almost took her, like said no to her, she ended up replacing when she went for a leave of absence. For a year, she was the head nurse in that hospital, while still technically training,

because she was still completing her courses and stuff at Massachusetts General. What the hell? But much like in the other hospital, her colleagues disliked her, suspected that she was blatantly disregarding patients' medication dosages, but had no evidence stealing,

telling high stories, and more patients are suspected to have died under her care during this period that we'll never know about. In 1890, however, Jane is discharged for leaving the ward without permission, despite passing her final

and her diploma being signed. This was the year she was going to graduate. She was doing incredibly well, but during those couple of years, she was building an intense hatred of her among those she worked with, including actually some of the doctors, because the other students had brought up the worries

that she was disregarding patients' medical dosages, and everybody's eyes were on her. They all hate her? At this point, in 1890, most of her colleague students hated her, and all the doctors above her had been suspicious of her at this point because people were ratting her out.

But the patients still love her? The patients still loved her, as far as they knew, because she took great care of them when people had eyes on her and she wasn't allowed to kill them. I can't believe she was able to keep her job that long. They were basically looking for a reason

to get rid of her, and they couldn't pin her for anything. So in the summer, like I said, of 1890, she left the ward without permission, and that was it. They didn't even give her her diploma. She didn't graduate, even though she had her diploma had been signed already.

She just got kicked out. And she then spent that fall and then the subsequent year as a private nurse before returning to Cambridge Hospital. The place where it all started. She got rehired? Yeah, she got brought back to Cambridge.

She never got to go back to Massachusetts General, but where she started, which was Cambridge, she got brought back there because the doctors still, you know, saw her fondly. And she spent a year making very good money as a private nurse

because of the recommendations of the people in Cambridge Hospital were still valid and they were still saying what a great doctor, or what a great nurse she was. She was making some pretty good money, but she wanted her diploma more than anything.

So she went back in 1891. Before, in the spring, being dismissed from Cambridge Hospital due to the suspicion that she was administering opiates recklessly. People noticed that something was up. They just didn't know the extent of what she was actually doing. The real suspicion started in Massachusetts General

and then presumably the rumors or whatever went back to Cambridge. So when she was at Cambridge, eyes were on her already. Sure. But during her first two years at Cambridge, the doctors had no suspicions other than her tall tales

and kind of obnoxious personality. So she was only there for like a few months, right? Yeah. She was only at Cambridge back to Cambridge for a few months before being kicked out. God, that's so crazy. Yep.

But then, in that summer, she began her career as a private nurse, which would be the beginnings of all of her verified kills. All that time, she's likely killed a ton, but we don't know any of it. It's now we know where the verified kills came from.

Verified kills. Yeah, this is called verified kills. So in that fall of 1891, she became regarded as one of the most successful private nurses in Cambridge, though her employers, much like her colleagues, disliked her lies in petty theft.

In her free time, she liked to guzzle beer, tell lies, and spread rumors, according to those who knew her. I used to date someone like that. I used to be friends with plenty of people like that. But her first verified kill, identified by Jane herself,

was May 26th in 1895. At that point, she was living, she was boarding with two people, Israel Dunham, and his wife, Lovey Dunham. They were in their 80s, pretty old.

Lovey Dunham? Dunham, yep. Lovey Dunham. Lovey Dunham. Lovey Dunham. It's the 1800s, man. We're about to cross over. At 83?

You definitely, you can definitely have Lovey as a name if you were born in like 1818. The fact that you made it to 18, the fact that you made it to the age 83 in 1895, is a high five worthy like, God damn, you got a, you got a great role in the dice when you were born.

Lovey Dunham. Get me, give me a break. But she would first kill the husband, Israel Dunham. Her, her, the reasoning she said was, he was feeble and fussy, and he was old anyway, and he was getting in the way. And then eventually,

in September 19th of 1897, a couple of years later, she killed Lovey Dunham, Israel's wife, as she became quote, old and cranky. She was 87 years old when she, she got killed by Jane.

There's no, we're not sure what she did with the bodies during that time, like, you know, physically while she was poisoning them, but then she lived in the house by herself for a while. You mean like the method,

like the actual chemicals? The method, we don't know what the method like, we don't know what she used, we just know that she killed them. But everything else is just like, oh, they're dead, the doctor, take them away.

Yeah, pretty much. Because at that time, much like we talked about Lydia Sherman in the last episode, if they don't know what killed her, it was disease of the stomach, disease of the head, disease of the whatever,

they didn't know, but she was super stealthy, morphine atropine, keep in mind, this is not the Lydia Sherman version of up all night with a writhing stomach screaming in pain, they were slipping in and out of

consciousness the entire time. She was making out with them and stuff. Yeah, she was being fucking gross. Then in August of 29th of 1899, Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister, Yo, she went back. She went back.

She killed her? She went back. She killed Elizabeth Brigham. What she ended up doing was writing a letter to Elizabeth, asking her to come to a little bit of a beach vacation. It was at this point,

she had already decided that she was going to kill Brigham. And according to Jane's own confession, this was the only person she ever killed out of pure hatred. So she's what, like 65 years old at this point? 1899.

So born 1857. Yeah. So Elizabeth has to be like an old lady. 42? Something like that. 42 is how old Jane is. She's only a little older. I don't know how old Elizabeth is,

but yeah, 42, right? Yep. That's the right. That's old Jane was. Yep. 57 to 99. 57, 99 should be about. This was the only one she,

like I said, she admitted she killed, she killed her sister slowly and claimed this was the first one that she did because of pure hatred. And she was killed with striking, strike nine. Which we want to Google that. Strike nine?

Strike nine. That? Strike nine, strike nine. I don't know. That's not a good, that's not a good poison. No, no, it is not. So she invited her sister out to a beach

because her sister had been suffering from quote, melancholia. She had been having a rough, however long, being kind of down. And her husband actually urged Elizabeth to go. Said you should go, the beach will do you some good for a few days. Go be with Jane.

And she went out. Two days after Jane came back and said her she was super sick and that she was gonna go get a physician. And then she went back and finished the job before coming back to her husband, letting her know, letting him know that she had died and saying

that her final wishes of her sister was that she got the family heirloom golden pocket watch that had belonged to Elizabeth all that while. Damn. The husband said he never saw her with that pocket watch but assumed that she was just keeping it safe

because it meant so much to her. When after she was arrested, it was found out that she ponded the next day. Oh my God. Yeah. So she loathed Elizabeth. And again, the reason she loathed Elizabeth because she perceived her to have everything

she deserved and never got. And in December 28th, 1899, would move on merely to the next patient, Mary McNear. Patient took care of her based on Mary's doctor's recommendation. Mary McNear was an older woman who ended up coming to visit

one of her family members, got sick along the road, got cold. And the doctor that saw her knew of Jane and what an amazing nurse she was recommended Jane to her and doomed her in the process as Jane killed her over the course of time with poisons. It is thought that afterward,

Jane stole some of her clothing and she found this one. Everybody finds this one strange because it's the first and only victim that we know of that she did not know. All of her patients that she killed, she killed after taking care of them for a while and getting to know them

and liking them for as best she can. This is the only one that we know that she killed because she was recommended. Do you think she did it because she was her size? She's like, I love these clothes. She was like, oh, shit. She's taking care of them. She's taking care of them.

She's like, my, where'd you get this dress? I think it makes sense if she'd stole all her clothes. She was like, I want these clothes, but I don't want you, I just killed her. She's like, well, you're sick, so you're dying anyway. Yeah, I think she just did it. She took the clothes. That makes sense.

But again, anytime you think like Jane does it to only the people she cares about, this shows the shallowness of her character. She has it in her to kill someone she doesn't know and take their shit. Then in January, now keep in mind, this is all happening very, very quickly. In January 15th, 1900, just a month later,

she killed Elizabeth, who was Elizabeth's housekeeper, Florence Colkins, her sister's old housekeeper. Like some mafia shit? Yeah, she just killed her. Theories being that she took care of Elizabeth and she should have been taking care of her. There are other theories that she was in the way of her trying to get closer to her sister's ex-husband,

but she took them out. And then a week and a half later, she killed William Ingram, a patient of hers that she had been taking care of for a while. What the fuck? It makes me... Three weeks after that, she killed Sarah Meyer Connors. Sarah Connors, she killed Sarah Connors.

Unreal. Terminated. She probably... She probably just was killing people all the time and nobody knows. Well, that's a thing, right? Yeah, that's probably what she was doing. For Mary, or for Sarah, rather,

the reason she killed Sarah, she killed her with Strike 9 again, as opposed to morphine and atropine, which is usually her go-to. Mind you, that's what she used to kill her sister. In this one, she claimed to have killed her for the position as the theological school's dining matron, given the job by the dean

based on Meyer's posthumous recommendation. So she killed her friend to get her job. To get her job, and then she was dismissed in November. Which is why I think she killed that one lady to get her clothes. For the clothes, right. She was like, finding clothes on my side is very hard. And then... She just murdered her.

She just murdered her for those clothes, I'm telling you. Oh my God, dude. And in Sarah, she considered a friend, but she just wanted her job. So off you go, I'll take care of it. But she was dismissed from that job in November, apparently during that time, killing nobody while she was there. How did they know?

I mean, that's a good question. But she was the dining matron, so she wouldn't have any access to stuff. She wasn't doing private nursing things at that point. The dining matron? Yeah, she loved kids. She loved kids. Jane adored children.

And she claimed to never kill a child. That's... All right, whatever. So maybe she was happy. Maybe she was surrounded by those. I can't claim to know what goes on in her head. Right. It's at this point, and I...

My God, we're already running that close to an hour here. It's at this point, this next set of victims would be the undoing of our dear Jane Toppin. Of course. Because between the July 4th and August 13th of 1901, a little over a month, Jane Toppin would go on to kill the entire Davis family. Davis!

Aw, Davis! Poor Davis. And we all love Davis here. Luckily he didn't die. Maybe he's related to them. Or ghost. Or ghost. Right.

That would be a twist. This, the murdering of this entire family, which would be what brought suspicion down into Jane Toppin, and likely would lead to her arrest. Surprise, surprise. July 4th or 5th in 1901, Mary Maddie Davis, landlord of the cottage where Jane had,

where it was vacationing, ended up coming to collect the 500 that Jane owed her. Jane gave her doctored Hunyadi mineral water, that's the water that I was saying has a bitter, bitter taste, when she came to collect and mixed in morphine while she drank it so that she would fall ill and not have to collect that 500 dollars. Hunyadi is actually a laxative.

Like while she was there, while she was there, when she came to collect the 500 dollars from Jane, Jane immediately poisoned her with morphine in the water, to say, no, no, no, no, no. What? She was just like ready to go with some poison? Yep.

She, she had, it's again, this is a time where this shit is so easily accessible. You can walk down the street and spend 10 cents and get a ton of it. That's crazy. It's insane. A Hunyadi is actually a laxative as well with prominent ingredients of sodium sulfate

and magnesium sulfate. So it worked through her body pretty quickly. And during that week, she took care of Maddie. She would kill her, bringing her in and out of lucidity, only to plunge her back into a coma while she took care of her.

That was another weird thing that Jane loved to do. She would love to bring you out of a coma, take care of you, be loving, and then put you back into the coma and then do all of her terrible, terrible psychopathic deeds. God damn, this is, this is insane. Yep. It's crazy.

Jane afterward would then move in with Maddie's husband, Alden Davis. Where then she would attempt to burn the house down three times. And each time the fire would be extinguished. Can we just, can we just, for the record? For the record. How much time has passed, like a month? A month and all this has gone, she killed the woman,

moved in with the husband, tried to burn the place down in a month. Three times. That's crazy. This is, this is, no, this, this particular moment is, is three weeks. She killed them, moved in, and tried to burn the house down three freaking times

in three weeks. She's moving very, very fast. And this is actually typical of a serial killer as well. If she truly has been killing all these years, we're starting to see the end game, like the end part of serial killers. She has to keep killing. Yeah, she's killing and killing and killing and killing.

It's the only way to keep her sated. And at the same time, there's probably a point of her like, I can get away with it. Nobody's catching me. Who cares? And she's starting to get lazy. Moved in, tried to burn down the house three times, killed everyone else in the family.

This is only after she killed the, the Mary, the, the, the, the mother. So then after she tried to burn the house down three times, in July, on July 31st, 1901, Genevieve Gordon, which was their youngest daughter, Alden and Maddie's youngest daughter, would be the next victim. She was distraught over her mother's death.

Jane passed off and then she killed Ann, which is her nickname, Genevieve, and passed it off as suicide to this day or to this day. Even in court, she claimed that it was suicide. Can we take a minute, just, can we ever talk about just nicknames in the 18th century? Oh, please, thank you God, because it confuses me too. Let's go back through this,

through this delightful story we have here. So every time that we've seen someone with a nickname, it has been someone that has a name like John, John Smith, and his nicknames like Joey Burt. Yeah, like, like, I'm trying to go back through and see some of the ones. So there were, first off, there was Sarah Mira Connors, or Myra Connors.

So Myra? That's not even Sarah. I was saying Mira, but I'm maybe Myra. It could be Myra. Mary, Maddie Davis. Michael Davis. Jenny, Annie Gordon. Why are these, it's like they're odd things.

They just want another name. It's so weird. Yeah, it's like these, what's a nickname for Genevieve? Just Jen, right? Jenny. Yes. Jenny. Veeve.

Yeah, Veeve. Annie makes no sense. It's crazy to me. I wonder if there's a story behind it. I wonder if there's a story as to why that that's her nickname. I figure, like I said, it's like a mob name. Like, Johnny Big Tuna Scaramucci.

I miss the mob story, man. Johnny Scaramucci. Johnny Big Tuna Scaramucci. Johnny Big Tuna Scaramucci. Scaramucci. Yeah. So, yeah, it's weird. It's very, very weird.

It's just something I notice this entire time, and I'm like, who, what? So, yeah, July 31st, 1901, their daughter died. She was very distraught over her mother's death, and Jane claims it was suicide. Okay, look, July 30th. July 31st, 1901, baby. Within the span of a month, she kills the wife,

moves in, tries to burn down the house three separate times. Kills the daughter. Kills the older daughter, yeah. Kills the daughter. Youngest daughter. Youngest daughter. Older daughter still to come. She kills Genevieve, the youngest daughter.

Yep, all in a matter of like four weeks. Then, a week after that, August 8th, 1901, there was a husband's turn. Morpheine Atropine, in his sleep, held him until his dying breath, she claims, very closely, and made sure he passed peacefully according to her. And then, a week after that, she would then kill Minnie Gibbs,

all Dean and Maddie's oldest daughter. Minnie left behind a 10-year-old son, whom Jane brought to her bedside to cuddle his mother as she died. Oh my God. Yep. And this, it was Minnie's father-in-law, Captain Gibbs, who was police and military,

thought that first brought attention to Jane Toppin, and he would end up being Jane's downfall. I hate this. Oh my God. Because she was just knocking out the entire family. I can't imagine doing that. Like, I can't imagine just picturing it movie style. You know, she's dying in bed and Jane comes in,

you have this camera angle down at the child's level, looking up at, like, an ominous Jane, and the kid's really close to the camera, and you just hear Jane in the background, go, go say goodbye to your mother. That's fucked up. Yeah, it's fucked, it's fucked. She's orchestrating the entire situation.

This is why I think she had a toe dipped into control, and just excitement. While clearly most of it was sexual, these little moments where she has power and control over these people, she clearly is leveraging it every time for the clothes, or for the job, or just to watch a young kid say goodbye to his mother. Like, that's all other aspects of being a serial killer.

It's insane that she would do this. And so on August 26th, 1901, Edna Bannister, Elizabeth's husband, Oramel Brigham's sister, wouldn't be the next one to die. After murdering the Davis family, Jane returned to her hometown to try and marry her late foster sister's husband, Oramel, and killed his sister because she was, quote,

getting in the way. Okay, so she killed the Davises, went back to the hometown, tried to get with her Elizabeth's husband, then killed Elizabeth's husband's sister because she was in the way of that shit. Yep. That's exactly correct. You've got it, Jesse.

Perfect. That's insane. So much time has passed, too. So much time, and she's still on this. That's an obsession. She's obsessed with that time in her life that she's like 40 something now, and she can't let go of what happened when she was 12.

Yep. That's it. It's all, it really does all connect back to her childhood. I still, after I've read the book and really just delving into Jane's life, I want to know what happened to her in those first seven years of her life. What did her father do? Was she beyond saving at the point where we started

to keep track of Jane? Who knows? It's insane. But that would be the last kill she would get before the good old Captain Gibbs would start to put things into motion to get Jane under arrest. August 29th, 1901, Captain Gibbs reached out to the leading toxicologist in Massachusetts,

a man by the name of Leonard Wood, wanting to exhume the Davis family in its entirety to prove that they were poisoned by Jane. Jane ends up seeing this in a paper, as it made news in the city because of Captain Gibbs' position in the police force and what he used to do to serve. Then she left an outline of dust in the shape of her body behind as she ran away from where she was standing.

She was like, I'm dead, yeah. It is poof. She's gone. Looney Tunes style. When the bodies were exhumed, Officer James Patterson was assigned to keep an eye on Jane the whole while. This is before he became a famous novelist? That's a very, a few,

quite a few many years before. And no, no, I'll indulge you, Jess. Alex, I liked that job. Officer James Patterson. Author of that superhero kids book series. Is that what superhero kid? I don't underpants. Captain underpants.

No, no, no. No, what? I don't know who James Patterson is. James Patterson is like the author of so many books that it's like. They're all like. He's the Alex Cross guy. Yeah. Like along with Spider.

That sounds familiar. He's a women's murder club. He's he's he's just like whatever. Doesn't matter. Yeah, that's fine. I'm glad I know now. Feeling the walls closing in on her on September 29th of that year, Jane attempts suicide by overdosing on morphine,

which is weird because she fails and frustrated by her attempts to court Oramel. She attempted suicide again and once again back on her feet. Oramel kicked her out. She just didn't actually want to kill herself. She was like being dramatic, probably. Well, yeah, that's how I believe because she spent how many years learning the perfect dosages for murder and killing and she fails to poison herself. She didn't have the stones.

She couldn't do it. Yeah. It was clearly kind of like a desperate attention kind of thing, at least in my mind. If you're gonna if you're gonna sit there and tell me over the course of however many years, you can perfect your poison dosages and kill whoever you want whenever you want and you can't do it to yourself. I don't believe you for a goddamn second. Right.

It is out even alleged that at that time she tried to poison Oramel and then nursed him back to health to show that she was indispensable when he tried to kick her out. So it's on it's on record that he got sick around that time. Yeah. Oh my god. So, you know, she tried, but she didn't kill him because she wanted to marry him. She wanted love. She wanted to be taken care of and looked after just like Elizabeth did.

And Oramel is a literal living embodiment of everything Elizabeth used to have. And she wanted it. She didn't get it. She got kicked out. One month later, October 29th, Jane is then arrested for the murder of Minnie Gibbs. All the the toxicology reports had come back. All of them had said, oh, yeah, poison. Absolutely.

And they were put out for her arrest and she was taken pretty quickly because she had been being watched by James Patterson this entire time. And used and he used her to as fuel to write and many and a lot like Lydia Sherman in the last one as well. An entire news carnival circus went up around this this this angel of death killing an entire family and all these other people and possibly killing hundreds more the nurse that killed those she cared for in the newspapers, everywhere, the rumor of the towns. People gathered the courts on October 30th when she October 31st, two days after she

arrested to see the woman to see the woman who had killed everybody. And what they saw was an incredibly plain, boring, slightly overweight woman that people were just purely confused that this is somebody who could kill so willingly and meaning every detail of this case that came out probably just drove everyone insane. Like the sex thing, like murder, families. She's a nurse, like all this shit. Like, oh my God, it would be I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. And of course, you know, people are putting in their their own like, oh, she was possessed

by the devil. No one who have their right mind, not possessed, you know, not cursed by God or whatever would climb into bed and do the things that she supposedly did and blah, blah, blah. But really, it's just a she was a broken human being. There was nothing up there that that really could connect to humanity. God, that is fucking crazy, man. Yep. And on October 31, 1901, Jane pleads not guilty at arraignment Halloween.

Yep, Halloween. Very fitting, isn't it? That's crazy fitting. The state posited that Jane used arsenic, but it was found to have been in the embalming fluid. It was Captain Gibbs that suggested morphine and atropine. Because again, if it was arsenic, I think she would have been caught a little bit quicker, especially in the hospitals. But she was given access to everything there and she was like experimenting.

Yeah. She was truly experimenting on humans, living, breathing people, using them as nothing but science experiments. That's great. In November 21st, a little less than a month later, the bodies of Alden and Matty were exhumed. And on December 6, 1901, Jane is officially charged with the four murders of the Davis family and, once again, pleads not guilty. Some time passes and on March 31, 1902, papers reported that Jane had undergone evaluation

by a panel of psychiatrists and was found to be insane. How the fuck did she explain this that she's like, not guilty? I didn't do it. No. Insanity. Not guilty by reason of insanity. Sure. She admitted to 11 murders and a sexual impulse to kill.

That was kind of what she clutched to. Good Lord. And so in June of 1902, the true trial began. June 23, 1902, the trial of Jane Toppin took a total of eight hours with only 20 minutes. 11 murder victims in eight hours. Right? Just all the evidence had been there. With only 20 minutes of jury deliberation thereafter to find her not guilty by reason

of insanity. Now, you might freak out and say, oh my god, how could you? But if she had been found guilty, it would have been death penalty and killing a woman just wasn't at that time was not looked on very well, even by government. Most like Lydia Sherman, she didn't get the debt. She didn't get killed either. She would have been hung, but she didn't. So she was sentenced to life in the Taunton State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic

Hospital at Taunton and Taunton Lunatic Asylum. Lizzie Borden said she did time there, though her claims were disproven. Fun fact, Lizzie Borden claimed that she went there. Any place that has the word lunatic in the title, you can't. That's not good. That's not good. It's here where Jane would spend the rest of her life. June 24, 1902, she is delivered to Taunton Hospital and she dies of an old age in the

Asylum in August 17, 1930. Oh my god, she spent another 36 years there? Yeah. She probably ran that place. Yeah. Well, yeah, apparently while she was there, her personality really calmed down, whether it be because of the meds they were giving her or what have you, but she truly apparently just really the edge came off and she had no impulse to kill apparently while she was there.

So she says in her confession, she said she was glad to have been found not guilty by insanity and she felt smug at having duped the panel, likely because she assumed the hospital would find her sane and release her soon after. That did not happen. What? Yeah. And as Jesse had been speculating before, the correlation between Jane leaving the top and home and her sister's marriage is kind of undeniable in a lot of ways, but there is no

hard evidence that she left for that reason. In her later confession, she blamed being jilted by a lover as the root of her problems and she may not have killed if she had been married. That's what she claims. That's the person I talked about early on in the episode that supposedly ran off and married somebody else. The system just did not fucking work for Jane Toppin. No, not even a little bit.

But the system at the time was probably already very fucked up. Yeah, right. Yeah. Related or not related, her mental state did deteriorate at the asylum making her docile until death and ironically, she refused to eat the hospital food because she had been afraid it would be poisoned. So she wouldn't eat it. And to quote her herself, Jane Toppin, the serial killer, said,

Most of the people I killed were old enough to die. Anyway, or else had some disease that might cause death. I never killed children. I loved them. And that is the life story of Jane Toppin. He's kind of a blast through, but I didn't want to make a Jane Toppin episode. I didn't want to make two Jane Toppin episodes because unlike Tommy Paterra, you know, his life murdering was not her life murdering was not nearly as interesting as

his life murdering. She basically personal nurse killed them, messed around with them sexually, took their shit, moved on. That was her modus. That was kind of her operation standard at the point. But she is a fascinating person. Her whole early life truly, in my opinion, dictated what she eventually became. And she got away with it as long as she did because of the time.

It wouldn't get, you know, it wouldn't happen nearly as much. It wouldn't happen at all. I don't think this time around. I just find her very interesting as a killer, as an individual. And hope everybody listening and they both of you did as well. Yeah. It's it's one of those things that it's so at the time kind of thing, right? Very much could never happen nowadays.

There's too many stop gaps and too many things that. But with that said, it's fascinating that during big transitions in urbanization and things like that, where there aren't really rules like in the wild west, right? That whole thing. It's fascinating to see what people could get away with doing. That now you're like, what the hell? How that happened? Yeah, it's insane.

I mean, even Lydia, show me anything back. Remember, she she did something similar. She fucking knocked out an entire family and got away with it and moved away and killed a bunch more people. Just no suspicion whatsoever. Obviously a little bit of a darker topic, clearly than some of the other things we've covered, but I genuinely have a fascination in this kind of stuff and mixed with history. It's interesting.

I think that's fucking me up about it the most is like putting myself in the situation. It's impossible to. Yeah, it's just so fucking weird like thinking about people murdering people this way because it's so much less about like the like murder, like the murder being like the release that it is for most like in movies. That's like all it ever is is like the release. And it's well, yeah. I mean, you look you, you know, you look at all the serial killers out of the most famous

during the 60s, all the male ones, and they're all they're all violent killers because that's their release. Like that's how that ends up. But this is what it was for Jane. Side note, I think Alex's name would be Oremel Brigham in the 1800s. Alex, you look like an Oremel. Yeah, you look like an Oremel. Alex, you definitely look like an I got that Amish guy thing going on.

Oremel Alex Brigham was what you would have been. Well, if you it doesn't look it doesn't look as Amish with the headphones off. Well, you got to shave your head just like he was bald. Yeah, right. You got to you got to keep only the chops. Get rid of the chin hair. And yeah, just the chop to the stash. You just get rid of this.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now that is a look run for president. Get shot by my opponent. Yeah, I got that. Also, very, very common that you start a railroad or train company. Yeah, damn.

Yeah, probably a bad thing to start in 2018. But no, but not in 1864. Well, but I'm definitely feeling the vibe at the very least. Got to get that red dead going. We'll be stepping away next episode from the super dark serial killers. And we're going to be for those who are excited, we're going to be talking about the Fengdu ghost city in China that dates back over 2000 years. And according to legend, two Eastern Han Dynasty imperial officials used Taoist practices

to become immortal over there. And they're there now. How fun. They're still there to this very day. From super dark to supernatural. I'm excited. Oh, yeah. We got a season two of the Chiluminati.

Oh, I'm excited. No line. We are. We are almost at year two. February is year two for us. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, I think we dove too deep.

We got to come up for some air. Let's talk about some insane shit. Still waiting for that Jesse run episode. And Alex, if you're looking up something insane, let's do it. I've got I've got some baby notes on a couple of things. But as per my custom, I will not share them. I have some notes on a baby. So.

Oh, is it is it Dodger's baby? Is she super cute? Oh, I'm not even sure that baby's real. Could be a hologram. You that I'm on. I'm digging in deep. It could be a hologram. This is whole thing.

It goes all the way to the top. Just like your friend's house, like in in the neighborhood where you live. That's where makers. That's where all makers left over money way. Yeah. Project Dodger 2.0. Project Dodger 2.0. They were looking for a replacement host.

That's on Fox. Shout out to everyone who has no idea who Dodger is listening right now. That's very true. We have a ton of people who listen only to this. Yeah. Uh, anyway, let's wrap this up then. Thank you everybody for listening as always. Hey, we have products.

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