Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Anjette Lyles -Wife, Mother, Restaurant Owner, SERIAL KILLER

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

Anjette and Ben Lyles are a young married couple with two children. Ben is a WW2 veteran and together he and Anjette work in his family restaurant in Macon, Georgia.  When Ben sells the restaurant for below market value to settle a gambling debt, Anjette is furious.  A few months after selling the restaurant, Ben gets very sick, very fast, and dies without doctors figuring out what killed him. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the death of Ben Lyles as well as Anjette's new husband, Buddy Gabbert, Anjette's first mother-in-law, Julia Lyles, and Anjette's daughter, Marcia.   Joe explains how Anjette Lyles got away with murder, at first, and what led to her ultimate arrest, conviction, and death sentence.   Transcript Highlights 00:00.21 Introduction 02:09.23 Eating at Hospital cafeteria 05:02.11 Ben Lyles sells restaurant to settle gambling debt, Anjette is furious 06:45.30 Ben Lyles dies, doctors don't know why 09:21.66 Diagnosis by symptoms 14:43.53 Ben's mother worked at Restaurant 18:26.54 Anjette buys the restaurant 20:01.78 Anjette marries Buddy Gabbert 25:07.03 Doctors not looking for arsenic 30:08.42 Symptoms were miserable, Buddy dies 35:32.05 Anjette seen lighting black candle and talking to it 40:00.01 Coroner's Inquest 44:51.91 Coroner gets anonymous letter about Anjette using arsenic ant poison to kill 50:09.65 One month after Marcia dies, Anjette is arrested, charged with murder 51:25.26 Sentenced to death. Sentence commuted to life in prison     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body bags with Joseph Scott Moore. Being a Southerner, people will say, well, why do you continue to live in the South? Oh, there's a number of reasons. Climate. I love the people. I've had opportunities to live elsewhere. But one of the things that I think kind of anchors, not just myself, but many of us down here, is food. And it's the food that's before you when you're eating, but it's also the fact that so much of our life is tied up in food. I guess many people could say that, but we make a, I don't know, a big deal out of just

the preparation. We're not big on excluding people from our kitchens while we're preparing things. Being from Louisiana in particular, you're taught from a young age how to cook. And in my opinion, I probably make one of the best gumbos around. I take a lot of pride in my roux. But you know, food is a pathway. It's a pathway to deliver nutrition. It's a pathway to fellowship with those that you love.

But many times, it can be a pathway to death. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags. is body bags. Dave, unfortunately you and I over the past I guess 14 months have spent more time than we care to mention at hospitals and there was a time, and I remember from my childhood, where after church on Sundays, we would go to eat at the hospital in the cafeteria. And there was, it sounds weird, but in our town, the food at the hospital cafeteria was

fantastic. But, yeah, I know, right? But it's weird. It is weird. And I can't say that for all hospitals, but I think hospital food is notorious for being really bad, particularly if you're a patient. And if you're in a room with somebody that you're sitting by their bedside for hours and they're not eating their food, you begin to pick at their tray because you know, you don't have time to leave and all those sorts of things.

And it's absolutely horrible. I don't know if too many ways you can actually improve it because they tell you they're feeding you food in order for you to feel better. I never really felt better after I ate the food. See, I thought you were going to go with the after church going to the hospital for visitation. I didn't know it was because that was the nice restaurant. You know, very cool place you grew up. My family wasn't big on visiting.

I'm sick. Well, you know, it's interesting how as you and I were looking at this story and it brought about other stories that we were talking about, which we will now include into our list of upcoming shows. But today's story of Ann Jett, is that how you pronounce her name? Ann Jett Lyles? Yeah, Ann Jett, yeah.

Okay, I'd never seen that name before. Yeah. And anyway, Ann Jett Lyles is a woman who, born in 1925, into an middle-class family in Georgia, the Macon area and grows up normal, you know, whatever we pass for normal in the South. And she's about 22 years old when she meets and marries Ben Lyles. 22 years old when she meets and marries, uh, Ben Liles. Ben is a world war two veteran.

They get married in 1947 and the Liles family owns a restaurant in downtown Macon, very popular family restaurant. And so Ben is there and he's now the head, you know, he's in charge of the restaurant and he's been known to toss a few back adult beverages and to gamble a little bit. Now Ann Jett and Ben have not been married that long and I know that back then things were a little different in how we went about getting married and having children at the ages, you know. Now we would look at somebody in their early twenties having children as, wow, they're young. But back then, it was not that uncommon. And so very early on in the relationship,

they have children. Their first daughter is born shortly after they get married. And after she is, I'm guessing potty trained. I don't know, but she, uh, and jet ends up working in the restaurant with Ben, with her husband. And so they're working together, married a couple of years. And right as and jet has their second child, Marsha, Ben decides to sell the restaurant and Ben sells it for below market value and doesn't consult with Anjet before he does that. And the reason he does is because he's in hawk to the, uh, to the sharks.

He's made some bad gambling decisions apparently, and we're not casting aspersions on the man's character. It's just the reality of what happened apparently. gambling decisions apparently, and we're not casting aspersions on the man's character. It's just the reality of what happened apparently. Yep. So Ben sells the family-style restaurant, pays the gambling debt, and Jed is mad. And so here we go. It is now December 1951.

Ben starts to get very, very sick, very fast. He ends up in the hospital. Doctors don't know what's going on. Can't figure out why is this man sick. A month or so after he's in the hospital, January 25th, 1952, Ben Lyles dies. Now Joe, you're a history guy, and I feel confident asking you this. was it an uncommon occurrence for somebody to die in the hospital in the early 50s and

Have doctors not be able to figure out what killed them. I don't know how common it was I don't think that and listen this The information we're about to get off into is when you begin to think about the diagnostic testing that we have today compared to what they had back then, and this is what has always fascinated me about the Lyles cases. It doesn't require you to even draw blood or to take urine to run through a toxicology screen. There is symptomology that manifests itself externally on these people's bodies. And so you look at an individual as a physician and pretty quickly you begin to kind of try

to understand, well, first off, why are they having this gastrointestinal discomfort. Can't keep any food down and they're having severe diarrhea, terrible abdominal pain. They've got these very non-specific rashes all over their body. There's change in their pallor which is a term, it's kind of an old term, but physicians, even pathologists will use it and it's the color of the skin. The kind of current turned like a gray color.

You'll have people that are in, talk about historic perspective, there's an old term and I love this term, they'd say they were addled addled means that you're kind of acting like a lunatic and it's It's all part of the symptomology of a bigger picture particularly when you begin to get these in clusters One person though I can see early on because this man died in the early 50s and he would only be the first in a succession of deaths. You don't know what's coming.

Just in an isolated incident, you've got a fairly young man and married, a couple of kids and all of a fairly young man. Yeah. And you know, married, a couple of kids, and all of a sudden, very quick illness. I mean, dies in DC, goes into the hospital in December with this, as you mentioned, a lot of different symptoms and is dead a month later. It's not a long time to really diagnose what's going on because don't, in the hospital, when you're dealing with this, I mean, we're looking at it with hindsight. Would they be looking at each symptom alone and saying, well, this can bring on

this type of gastrointestinal distress, and this can bring on a rash, this can bring on a fever. I mean, is that how they're looking at this then, or are they looking at it in totality? Yeah, they're trying to you know, they're what they're doing is they're checking off a list and they have a list that you know, they kind of cluster these things together and they'll say well he's having these I think one of the most striking things is probably going to be the skin responses. When you begin to see this

bloody rash that comes up all over people, sometimes you'll even see changes in the palms And skin will begin to present with some people that have these presentations on their skin, Dave in a clinical perspective, they'll have to be strapped to the bed so they don't scratch themselves. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's a horrific kind of presentation. Is that something that still goes on now? Yeah, yeah. And you know, I'll be very specific here. I don't feel like I'm bearing the lead, but we're talking about arsenic. And arsenic has been known to man, you know, for, I don't know, three, four thousand years. And it's a naturally occurring standalone element. It's on the elemental chart.

It's something that has been mined. And as a matter of fact, I think it may have been the Romans that used it to blend it with copper in order to strengthen copper. And because they could mine it in one of their territories, you know, as they came across it. But even back then, Dave, they recognized the people that were working in the mines were presenting with symptomology, and they would die they would die and even the Romans you know we think of them in a very brutal sense they shut the minds

now they were like that we've got to find something else in order to blend with copper to make it stronger and so they walked away from it. It has been known to be a toxic substance forever. And it's not just in like the Near East or Europe. I'm always fascinated by this because from, you know, you've taken a long view of this. The stuff is, the same thing is happening in the Far East as well. The Chinese knew about it. And they have, you know, the Chinese are very impressive with their written history. It goes back much further, I think, than even Western history in many circumstances as far as how they wrote things down. And they've got examples of arsenic poisoning going back a thousand years, thousands of

years. So it's been around for a long time. And it's something that has been used in industry over the years, but primarily, primarily arsenic has been used in the most recent sense as a pesticide. David, I think that probably if someone wanted to kill somebody in the most stealthy way possible so that they could try to get away with it, poison for many I think is at the top of the list. You know, poisoners are interesting compared to all other killers out there. There was a there was something I read not too long ago talking about the personality of someone

that prefers to poison. And one of the lines in it was, they come to you with a smile, but they leave death in their wake. And you never see them coming. And it's the stealth nature of it. The trick, I think, is how do you get access to an individual to apply something that's going to be toxic in their system and with Anjette Lyle's even though Ben had sold this restaurant and by the way Ben's mama worked there as well in the wake of of Ben's death

and Anjette kept working at the restaurant. And by all accounts, she was a real floor show, if you will. She's, she's kind of bombastic. Yeah. And you've got a big personality and likes to flirt. Big, big personality likes to flirt. She's got platinum blonde hair. Think of kind of a heavier set Marilyn Monroe, you know, how the women would kind of, I think they called it bobbing their hair and it was short but it was like when you saw her, it was striking. You know, she was striking and they talked about her where she would warmly greet everybody that came into the restaurant, throw their arms, throw arms around them and hug them and sit and just engage, engage with people.

You know what's really fascinating about the Lyles Restaurant, Dave, is that if you ever go to Macon, Macon's kind of an interesting little town. I'm a fan of it because of Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers, but Macon in and of itself aside from its musical heritage, it's an interesting little town that's tried to rebound several times. But going down the Main Street and literally the Main Street is the name of one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books when when I was little is Mulberry Street. I think the name of the book is called I Can't

Believe It or it happened on Mulberry Street or something like that. But on Mulberry Street sat the Lyle's restaurant and guess take a guess where it was positioned across the street from. No clue. The County courthouse. So back then, during the fifties, there was no such thing as drive-through food. McDonald's was at some point in time was just starting up in some place that was far, far away from Macon, Georgia. So if you were going to go out to eat, and back then going out to eat was a big deal. Across the street from the courthouse, when they'd go

on break, the judges, the lawyers, probably even defendants, would come in to Anjet's restaurant and they would eat. We've got a couple of these places around where we live, Dave. They're generally called- The courthouse cafe. Yeah. Well, they're called, what's the term? I'm probably going to get a meat and three. I think that's what it's called.

Where you get a meat of some kind, whether it's cube steak, country fried steak, mashed potatoes, lima beans, and black eyed peas or collards or something like that. So you get one big hunk of fried protein and then you get vegetables along with it. And these are still prevalent around these parts. I can't speak to the recipe. And I still put those vegetables on the side of my plate next to the napkins so nobody can see I didn't eat them. Hate those things. But you know you mentioned that that Ann-Jette continued working you know at the restaurant after Ben's passing and she's there with her mother-in-law. And by the way, remember now her mother-in-law, Julia Lyles, Ben's mom.

Well, that's the grandmother to, um, the, to Ann Jett's little girls, you know, so there's a real connection here. Now, Ann Jett, after the death of Ben and Jett moves in with her parents for a couple of years while she continues working and saving her money. Now remember Ben sold the restaurant and sold it for under market value and jet was very clever in that she saved money and learned all she could about the restaurant business and After a couple of years she buys it back

business and after a couple of years she buys it back and yet buys back this. This is not a common thing to have happen with women in the South in the 50s. This is not your normal thing. And she's very cagey in that as soon as she does, you know, the first thing she hires back Ben's mom, her mother-in-law, Julia, because she wanted to attract some of the old Lyles restaurant crowd that remembered Julia. So she brings her back and there they are. Now Ann Jett and Julia working together in the restaurant and everything's going fine. People really like her.

You mentioned that she's got that big personality, always hugging people when they come in and saying hello. And after and jet is in control of the restaurant, she meets a guy named Buddy Gabbard. Now, buddy was a pilot and he'd been going there for a while to the restaurant. And he and and jet strike up a friendship and end up, you know, I guess casually dating, I'm sure she was very busy with work and the girls, but she announces and jet does they're going on vacation.

She and buddy are going to take a vacation. And when she comes back, wait, hang on back during that time too. She's not married to him. This would be very scandalous. By the way, I was going to ask you how that, how you thought that played out, you know, because I didn't want to blow past it, but I thought, am I the one thinking it's a big deal?

No. How did they position this? Yeah. They're not married. They're going to, yeah, I can tell you the board of deacons going to be talking about this. Well, they go on this vacation and I can hear the pre the preamble is, well, we're, we've got

separate hotel rooms and separate everything, you know, but we're going together. But anyway, you look at it when they came back from vacation, they announced, Hey, we got married. So now buddy and, and yet are married. So here we are. We're now in 1955. Now remember, um, her husband, Ben sold the restaurant to settle a gambling debt in 1951.

He then dies after a month-long illness between December and January in 1952. So we're a couple of years down the road. She's bought the restaurant back and her mom, her mother-in-law works there with her. She gets married to Buddy Gabbard. Well, that's in July of 1955 when they go on vacation and return married. A couple of months later, October 1955, Buddy has minor surgery. I need to add this, Buddy is a pilot and he's gone a lot.

He travels a lot. There were some rumors flying around town about and jet and her Florida personality, okay I'll leave it at that you guys fill in the blanks But he comes back and he has his minor surgery in October and when he goes home to Rick to convalesce after the surgery He develops a fever and then a rash that covers his entire body Joe This is October 1955 and doctors They can't figure out what's going on I'm gonna ask you a very specific question sure in

1955 what would they have been testing for with those types of symptoms fever and rash? Yeah fever and rash back then They would have thought the first thing they would have thought about is probably exposure to something. Something that is going to present with, I don't know, for lack of a better term, some kind of dermatitis. Now, the trick is to try to understand, is this something like, most people have heard of a, there's a term called contact dermatitis.

Like if you touch something, okay, with your hand or you brush up against something, you'll get kind of a focal area of your body that will be impacted by whatever agent it is you've come in contact with. And sometimes it can spread. That's the first thing, you know, because I still, this is a pluralism, my grandmother, one of her favorite things to say back then is if you had a rash or, you know, you would, you know, there was something

going on with you, she'd say, boy, what are you gotten into? And so that's one of the things, you know, you're kind of thinking about here as from a diagnostic standpoint, but you have to account for the fever. All right, just because you have a contact dermatitis doesn't mean that you're going to be presenting in a fibral state. It's just, it's not going to, not going to, those two things don't match up. So then you turn to, well, is this some kind of internal, internal thing that's going on and it's manifesting externally.

Now along with this, if I'm not mistaken, he again, like his predecessor, the first husband had horrible gastrointestinal discomfort. They would have diagnosed it as gastroenteritis back then. Again, it's very kind of non-specific. A lot of the symptomology with this is non-specific. But when you're maintaining in that state and you're declining and they're hanging IVs on you and they've got everybody and their brother coming in to take a look at you, it's not surprising that they would miss common signs that might

be associated with arson. Well, they're not thinking that, right? I mean, you're not thinking. I mean, nobody's thinking that. When it's always, I try to cut medical staff a lot of slack because there are people that present at hospitals all the time and they will suddenly die. Clinicians are not looking at a patient and thinking with a forensic mind.

They're thinking with a clinician's mind, with a healer's mind. What do I have to do to get this person from point A to point B? And so they're going down a checklist. Trust me, arsenic is not popping up on the radar. That's just not something that you think. It's the old adage about, you know, you might have that one person that when they hear hoofbeats, they think camel as opposed to horses, but they're an outlier to say the very least from a diagnostic standpoint.

One of the interesting things about Ann Jett is that she made a fuss over everybody in her family that gets sick. And when you kind of dig into the mind of someone that might be poisoning someone, you want to get that kind of, and particularly if you're going for the sympathy vote, I'll look at her. They just have gotten married. They're just starting their life. She's got these, she's a widow. She's got these two little girls that lost their daddy.

She's taking care of her former husband's mother-in-law. This lady, this lady is, she's going to be declared a saint. And so every day when any of these family members wind up presenting with any kind of symptomology, she's there. She's there at their bedside, Dave. Now when you put that in perspective, that's chilling because at the end of the day, having an Anjet and Lyles adjacent to your bedside was kind of the equivalent of having the specter of death with their scythees hanging over their shoulders sitting there. You know, when you read the Bible, there's one... when you read the Bible, there's one individual in the Bible that always comes to mind when you're going through hard times, and that's Job.

You don't want to sit there and say, I'm just like Job. Nobody can be just like Job. You would not wish that. Well, I don't know. Some folks might wish that on their worst enemy. I wouldn't. When you think about, and it's part of our vernacular, we say the trials, I'm going through the trials of Job.

A lot of people don't understand that, but when you're surrounded by family members that are dying left and right, and you're still trying to struggle, I think spiritual standpoint, many folks will look up to the heavens and shake their fist and say, you know, why are you allowing this to happen to me? That wasn't the case with Anjette Liles, though.

She continued to Sally Forth, Dave, and, you know, put on the face of being a strong, independent woman, running the restaurant, taking face of being a strong, independent woman, running the restaurant, taking care of her family. And now you've got a second second husband that's, you know, one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel. Well, you know, it's interesting that as we look at this, you know, it's a very condensed period of time, you know, from getting married in 1947 to having children, the restaurant, selling the restaurant, husband dies.

I mean, there's a lot going on in this woman's life in a very, very short window of time. And I think about those two girls being raised in that environment of what it must have been like. But after the death, I mean, y'all know that. I mean, obviously buddy dies, um, after a very brief illness. Now he had that surgery in October of 1955 and he was home convalescing by the end of the month. So he's sick in November and on December 2nd, buddy dies. So he's got a five or six week, um, recovery period in death.

So let me just interject to Buddy's death was miserable. It was miserable. And this is, you remember Dave Howell saying a second ago, being tied to the bed. That in his particular instance, they had to help restrain his arms. Can you imagine because of the rash? Yeah. yeah. And you know, it's bad enough, you know, if you're, if you've got stomach discomfort, which he would have had tremendous stomach discomfort coming out, as they say, coming out of both ends, anything that you ingest, you would, and plus your itching all over your body. What a horrible way.

And this misery lasted for this particular period of time. But my understanding that Ann Jett was the one constant in this universe. She was always coming to take care of him. And it's kind of a portent of things to come. Buddy didn't eat hospital food. He ate food from the restaurant. Right.

Well, you know, 90 days after they get married, think about that, Joe, you're talking about, they go on a vacation and come back married in July. And 90 days later, buddy, you know, has this minor surgery that turns into death by December 2nd. That's a, that is a whirlwind of highs and lows. So after Buddy's death, Ann Jett changes her name back to Lyles. That was kind of interesting to me. It really did make me wonder. That was kind of interesting to me. It really did make me wonder. Well, any way you look at it, she did it.

And she also collected some insurance money. And in town the size of Macon, when you're running a restaurant in downtown where you meet everybody and talk to everybody, well, Ann Jett bought herself a brand new Cadillac and bought a new house and moved her mother-in-law, Julia, into the home with her. My Lord, she's a saint. Yes. Look at this woman.

She's taking care of everybody. And now Julia, the grandma, gets to be there to help take care of the children. This is what we just need to go ahead and make a statue of Anjette right now and put it downtown and, you know. On Mulberry Street. Yeah, right there. And well, the thing is, is that after Julia, the mother-in-law moves in with Anjet, they didn't get along. And I'm thinking now, I mean, here we are, it's a lot much different time than it was in the 1950s. Not getting along with your mother-in-law seems like there could be a fix, you know,

move her out. But she doesn't. Instead of trying to rectify the situation, Ann Jett tries to get Julia to write out a new will. You need a will, Julia. You need a will. Now, I'm going to be honest with you, Joe. Somebody who's got a couple of dead people in their recent past is telling you to get a will. I'm thinking there's got to be an apartment somewhere I can rent. Or maybe you have a pause and say, wow, Ann Jett's really proactive. It all depends on how you look at it.

Wow. Well, there was also, you know, there were a couple of things being talked about, about Ann Jett at the hospital, at the restaurant. The worker said that, you know, they were a little weirded out by her, some black magic voodoo type stuff. And in a town the size of Macon, Georgia, if you're talking to black candles when nobody,

you think nobody's looking, that's going to get around. I mean, it will. And let me tell you one more thing about that. The employees, and this really plays a big, big part in this, the employees at this restaurant that work behind the counter, we're all African American. Okay. So generationally, generationally, better than, let's say, the white folks out there. They understood kind of this ominous thing that's going on with her and black candles

because they've seen it. They've seen it. They talk about it. It's not something that the white community necessarily talks about. In the African American community though, this is something that's real. And I've experienced this in New Orleans because down there you actually do have a voodoo culture that is real. It doesn't matter if you believe in it or not, they believe in it. You also have Santa Ria as well. And a lot of the stuff comes up out of the Caribbean. It goes back generations, even during the slave era and this sort of thing, when things

are brought over and practiced. All you have to do is just go to the east of Macon and wind up in Savannah and midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Voodoo played a large part in that case and someday we're going to cover that case. It actually had something to do with the Salem witch trial. You know, the Salem witch trials had Tichba. Yeah, exactly.

And she was from the islands, I think is the way they refer to her as, and she was a servant. So you know, if you're an African American and it's in the 50s in the deep south, because you are in the deep south and you are dependent upon the white folks to provide your living, you're going to keep your mouth shut because you never know how it's going to wind up for you. You know, you're going to be out on the bricks and you're not going to have a job anymore. But can you imagine you're sitting there and this, this woman, this bombastic woman with the blonde hair who's driving a caddy is in the back room and she's got a black candle and she lights it and they'll see her whispering to the candle and that's

enough to terrify anybody and let me tell you one more thing they have proof in their eyes because she's driving a big white Cadillac through town you might not know this Dave about making but making but Macon, Macon, Georgia, the main industry in Macon, Georgia back then were textile mills and cotton. And so people that lived in Macon, you had very few people that were really wealthy. Most people, if they had a car would come to town and they would be driving an old truck or an old beat up car. You've got this bombastic woman with stark white hair that's riding around in a caddy. She's going to draw attention.

The people that knew about kind of the voodoo element here that are watching her, can you imagine it's real easy to put two and two together? You think that because of her whispering to the candle, because of her involvement in this, she's now experiencing wealth. She's able to, this is a woman in the 50s that is recovering from the loss of a husband, two husbands, and all of a sudden, these great riches fall into her lap. Well, you know, to me, this is like being at the crossroads in Mississippi and somebody signed a deal with the devil.

Wow. I actually did look up Little Richard, a pinnerman, came from making Georgia and worked at a restaurant and nightclub there. It was called a tick tocks, I think, or tick tack. But anyway, I was, I was in my back of my head when you were talking about how, um, and jet actually had employed African-Americans, you know, I thought, well, I wonder if little Richard was there, you know, he wasn't, but I was looking it up just in case. But Joe, after the death of her second husband and moving in her mother-in-law, Julia, into her home, they don't get along.

And all of a sudden Julia becomes sick. It's now 1957. She went, uh, and jet did the entire year of 1956 without anyone close to her dying that we're aware of. And I'm sure she was celebrating, oh, bad times are over. Well, maybe that's what people thought. Because in 1957, Julia becomes ill,

she's hospitalized and dies September 29th, and nobody knows why. Don't know what happened. She got sick and died, holy moly. So Joe, as they're doing what they had done previously, doctors, I mean, they're got to think at some point somebody's going to look at this and go, hey man, we got three adults dead in what, a five, six year period of time. What's the common denominator? I mean, is nobody looking at this? Well, they did.

When Marsha got sick, little Marsha is nine years old. It's March, 1958 and Ann Jett's daughter gets sick in the restaurant. It is so sad. She's hospitalized with hallucinations and her kidneys shutting down. What does that tell a doctor at that point in time, Joe? Well, it didn't tell them arsenic for whatever reason. I can't understand, I think, from when, and again, you don't know how many of these physicians had the history to rely upon to. We're kind of looking at this in our rear view mirror.

So you've got this succession of husbands, you've got a mother-in-law, was it the same clinical staff that had treated the other people to put two and two together? The one central figure though, Dave, in this that I still cannot wrap my brain around is coroner. How could the coroner make a determination? Because they did a coroner, what they used to refer to as a coroner's inquest. What actually is that? I've heard the term used many times. What does that mean? It's kind of a formalized term to mean that the coroner is doing an investigation. I think that it's kind of a media thing that they used to do. Oh, the coroner's involved.

Well, yeah, anybody that dies, particularly acutely, there's going to be an inquest by the coroner. But, you know, coroners also, many people don't understand this, they can impanel a coroner's jury. They actually impanel a coroner's jury with Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, I know, right? Didn't know that. For those who didn't know that, I just saw the expression on Dave's face. And you have a jury of people that are impaneled because corner does have judicial authority.

And so going back, that's another story for another time. They're very powerful. People really don't understand that next to the sheriff. Matter of fact, in many places, if the sheriff is removed from office, the corner replaces the sheriff. You know what? Quick, funny story. Alabama, several years ago in Walker County, Alabama, home city of Jasper. You know how we get those calls that come in, scam calls and where somebody

would there was a scam for a while where people, somebody would call you and say, uh, you know, you've got a warrant for your arrest and you have to pay $500 or whatever and do it right now. Or we're going to, we're knocking on your door. We're coming to get you. If or whatever and do it right now or we're gonna we're knocking on your door. We're coming to get you. If you don't do it right now, we're going to arrest you." And the flim-flammers actually made the mistake of calling the county sheriff, the Walker County Sheriff. And he gets on the phone and he says, well, I'll tell you what son, go ahead and pick up the county coroner because he's the only one that

can arrest me. Yep. That's right. Yeah, we, and I don't, again, going far afield, in New Orleans, the sheriff who has to be served with papers cannot serve themselves. Coroner investigator would go over and serve the sheriff papers in civil things and all that sort of thing. So, yeah. Wow. In civil things and all that sort of thing. Wow. Yeah, but the one common denominator is that the Bibb County coroner, because this is in Macon, is located in Bibb County, Georgia.

One famous person we know in common that is from Bibb County is Nancy Grace, by the way. And so they, he would rule these that it was just some kind of non-specific natural disease that had gotten them. And I think like gastroenteritis was at the top of the list, you know, throughout all this. And I think back to the husband, the second husband being tied to the bed. And I'm thinking, dude, how can you look at this and not want to delve further? For no other reason, not necessarily you're thinking homicide, you're thinking, my God, is this guy a public health risk? Because I'm thinking if he's exposed to something and I'm a servant of the people, I don't want everybody else to be exposed to this as well.

And then you have the mother-in-law that dies again pretty quickly. And one of the things with arsenic, Dave, is that it screws up the rhythm of your heart as well. And so you've got someone like Julia, who's an advanced age by this point in time. It's not necessarily surprising that she died. If she is exposed to arsenic, then in her world, her death might happen relatively quicker because she's already compromised physically

just simply based on age. Okay. But when you get to Marsha and this precious little girl, how do you actually explain that, man? Well, it was actually an anonymous letter. They didn't have it explained. They didn't have an answer. All the medical people I'm sure were talking about it, but it actually came down to an anonymous letter

from an employee of the restaurant that actually had his or her fill and actually sent a letter to the coroner. And in that letter, the employee noted that Ann Jett kept poison at the restaurant. Not uncommon to have ant poison in a restaurant. However, there's arsenic in this ant poison. And so that was what the employee wrote to the coroner. And the coroner then went, Hey, wait a minute. Now would that be like, and I'm not, I'm not knocking anyone. I don't know what it would take, I mean, to come to that conclusion independently. But at that point, it was the anonymous letter that actually went ding,

ding, ding, light is on. Yeah. Well, you begin to string these together. And here's another little insight, you know, and I'd kind of mentioned this earlier. The person that wrote this letter was an African American lady that worked in the restaurant. She didn't sign her name to it. And here's why. Because if she had, if she had, then they would have dismissed her because she's an African American lady in the 1950s making these accusations toward a prominent white lady. So this is a brilliant move on the part. I can only imagine how terrified she was

because she's born witness to the black candle thing. She's actually knows that the, she understands the kind of the timeline here. She's born witness to all of these people dying. You begin to think about those kids too. You know, it's not one of my favorite restaurants that I've was actually here in Jacksonville. It's no longer open. It was owned by a Greek family and it had been around for years and years. It was on the square in Jacksonville and it was a pizza joint, but they also served meat and three. The thing that was so charming to me about the restaurant is that they brought all of

their children to work with them. They even had playpens in there with toys. It didn't bother me at all. As a matter of fact, it was kind of endearing. The grandmother was always in the restaurant and she was speaking in Greek and they were just really sweet people. I miss that restaurant. They're always there. They're part of the fabric of this environment. So these kitchen workers would have seen those two little girls in this environment. You know, they get out of school, they come to the restaurant. Julia is there in the restaurant every single day.

So they have a different perspective than somebody that's just kind of come and go and even if the coroner, which he probably did, had come in to eat meals there. And they, what this led to was they had to get orders of exhumation and go back and disinter these bodies. And that's not an easy thing to do, is it? No, it's not. Yeah. And judges are notorious for not wanting to crack open graves. If you've never been involved in it, folks, it is you're moving heaven and hell in order to convince this judge that is in the community's best interest and the legal system's best interest to crack open a grave and take out a body. First off, most people that are not around the dead like I am, they find it abhorrent.

And it's something that's not done. You think about, again, going back in time, you think about Tammy Daybell. They had to have her exhumed. And we've had a number of cases like this. But Dave, the thing about it is with arsenic poisoning, the one thing that you look for in arsenic poisoning is you're going to do sampling from multiple locations in the body. Even after a body has been embalmed, you can still pick up on it because it's a heavy metal. It will actually go into, you'll find it in the hair, you'll find it in the nails, and one of the interesting things...

You're going to ask her on the fingernail test. Yeah, yeah. And so you look at the... and the nails themselves develop these weird kind of horizontal lines on them. And if you're a clinician, you don't think about that. I've been in the hospital a couple of times in my life. I don't ever remember a physician or a nurse saying, let me see your fingernails. It's just like, well, here, here, Doc, look at my finger.

It's not something they commonly do. But Dave, as a result of the exhumation, You know, here doc, look at my finger. It's not something they commonly do. But Dave, as a result of the exhumation, they were able to go to Ann Jett's home and not only did they have this, and it's called tarot ant poisoning, a company still in existence today. Back then, they were putting arsenic in the ant poisoning. And for 50 years now, arsenic is forbidden. But back then, it was everywhere, Dave. It was everywhere.

It was part of pest control. You had rats in the barn, you put out arsenic. You had ants, you just sprinkled the taro around. They come and eat it, put a little sugar with it, and you got dead ants at this point in time. And so they went to her home. Not only did they find more of the ant poison at home, guess what else they found? Well, they found all kinds of objects connected with voodoo there as well inside of her home. The way this case kind of spun out was it was a real show in the

courtroom. Dave, you had multiple people in this case because of Lyle's restaurant that had to recuse themselves because they knew Ann Jinn. They knew her and they couldn't involve themselves in the case. I mean, the sheriff ate regularly there. The DA ate regularly there. The judges, one of whom was distantly related to Ann Jett, had to recuse themselves. He was a state district judge and said, I can't be a part of this because she's kin to me, Dave.

Right. That's just unbelievable. But when everything is said and done, Joe, um, I'm still shocked that Marsha at nine years old was dead. And a month after that, when they, it took a month, and this is kind of quick in my book because after Marsha's passing, the letter, anonymous letter arrives, they get the exhumation. And when Ann Jett is actually in the hospital being treated for varicose veins, which I don't know what they did back then to treat varicose veins, but she was in the hospital for that. And that's where they arrested her.

They arrested Ann Jett at the hospital and charged her with murder. And, uh, I think she made one of her initial court appearances in a wheelchair. Did she? You talk about trying to get the, trying to get the sympathy vote here. Yeah. But, but here's what's fascinating, Dave. Ann Jett was actually tried by a jury of her peers and she was found guilty. She had the death penalty imposed upon her.

And I think back to those workers in that restaurant. If one of them had committed a crime like this, and I'm thinking one of these African-American women that worked there, the local constabulary, the judicial system, and the governor himself would not have given it a second thought of putting them on death row. But the governor famously said that he's not going to be a part of a white woman being executed. Be a part of a white woman being executed because I got to tell you Regardless of how you feel about the death penalty She deserved it I mean when you think about the pain and suffering that people went through and the exposure as well when

Can you imagine the chill that would go up and down your spine? You're thinking I ate there on a regular basis This woman is poisoning the food. She's taken to the hospital to continue with the poisoning. How many other people were exposed? Well, in her world, she winds up going to prison. And at some point in time, Dave, and this is fascinating, they declare her to be insane. And Georgia had this infamous hospital for the criminally insane that was located in Milledgeville.

In Milledgeville, Georgia, it's like the main industry there used to be prisons. There were multiple prisons in the town. And they had this place that was notorious to treat the criminally insane. As a matter of fact, when we were kids, you know, a slur that you could direct at somebody as a child would be, man, you need to be in Milledgeville. And you just kind of understood that.

In Louisiana, it was, you need to be in Jackson. And so, you know, those things creep up. But Ann Jett wound up dying in this place in Milledge Hill, Georgia in 1977. Interestingly enough, the last prison job she had, she worked in the kitchen. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Bags.