True Crime All The Time - Nannie Doss
Episode Date: March 14, 2022When the crimes of Nannie Doss came to light the press gave her nicknames like "The Giggling Granny" and "The Jolly Widow." This was due to Nannie's behavior towards the police and in the cou...rtroom. She acted like everything was a game. The truth was much more severe because Nannie Doss was a serial killer who police believe may have killed as many as 14 people.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss serial killer Nannie Doss. Nannie killed in a variety of ways but she preferred poison. She murdered many husbands because, as she later said, she was looking for that perfect mate. She used life insurance money from murders to aid her on that journey. But, Nannie Doss also killed some within her own family including her mother and some of her children and grandchildren.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 274 of the True Crime All the Time podcast.
I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime.
Mike Gibson, give me, how are you?
Hey man, I'm doing good.
How about you?
I am doing very well.
Good.
Sitting here drinking a cup of coffee, you know, just trying to get that energy up.
You need that.
I do.
I do.
You know, a couple weeks ago, we did a Patreon episode and you fell asleep four different times.
I did, didn't I?
People have seen it on video.
it's actually very entertaining.
Maybe I was faking it.
Yeah, I'm sure that's what people thought.
So now I have to supply you with some kind of caffeinated beverage before we start because you have had a hard day, right?
You've worked all day.
You drive over here.
We record the episodes.
I get it.
It's rough, man.
It's a rough life.
I get it.
Speaking of Patreon this week, we talked again about the war.
You know, I think it's on everybody's.
mind. It's pretty much the only thing on the news. You know, it is the biggest topic in the world
right now. It's horrific. Some of the images are hard, sure, to watch. And, you know, I think the
hearts of everyone continue to go out to these people in Ukraine. I don't believe Gibbs that anyone
thought they would be able to stand up to Putin and Russia for as long as, you know,
they have. Yeah, they've done well. It's, it's been amazing. And some of the stories coming out of
Poland and what those people are doing to help in other countries, unbelievable. Let's go ahead and
give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Sandy Pendleton. Hey, Sandy. Morgan Page. What's going on,
Morgan? Peter. Peter. Kristen Del. Well, thank you, Kristen. Gary Howard. Hey, Gary. Jenna. What's
going on, Jenna? Mike French. Hey, French. Jenny Joyce. Well, thank you, Joyce. Ralph Martin.
What's going on, Ralph?
Keisha E.
Hey, Keisha.
Crystal P.
Well, thank you, Crystal.
Albert Luna.
What's going on, Albert?
Amanda Goldfine.
Goldfine.
Ella Allen Johnson.
Well, thank you, Ella.
Jaseel Rojas.
What's going on, Rojas?
Sherry Ziegler.
Hey, Sherry.
And last but not least, Diamond B.
Well, thank you, Diamond.
And then if we go into the vault, this week, we selected Tarnia and Ange.
Well, thank you, Tarnia and Ange.
Yeah, so we appreciate it.
that support. We also had some great PayPal donations from Lauren Porter. There's Lauren.
Beverly Dodd. Hey, thank you, Beverly. Holly Cher. What's up, Holly. And Judy Hall.
Thank you, Judy. So thanks to all of you as well. Gives we had a Patreon merch winner for February.
And that was Walker Mock. He wanted me to mention his father, buddy, Mock, who passed away last year.
And Walker and I had a really good email conversation. He said the podcast really has really
helped him through that difficult time. Well, thanks Walker and appreciate you. Gibbs, right now we have
an episode out on Unsolved, where we're talking about the 2003 disappearance of Sophia Juarez.
Yeah, going to go up to Washington State. We're going to be talking about a very young girl
and her disappearance and we'll go down a few rabbit holes, but a sad case for sure. All right,
buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time?
I'm ready.
We're talking about nanny Daws, known as the giggling granny.
It's hard not to laugh when you hear giggling granny.
It is.
I mean, when you think about the monikers, the nicknames that most serial killers get,
you know, they're dark, they're macabre.
They're not smile inducing.
Right.
And this one kind of is in a strange way, the giggling granny.
Okay.
That sounds like some type of fun.
act put on by, you know, somebody's grandma, she makes you laugh. Well, not this grandma.
This was a terrible woman who killed a number of people. You know, a lot of times when we talk about
wives or kids finding out that their husbands or father is this really nasty serial killer,
right? Turns out to be they didn't know, but ultimately they find out, well, what happens gives
when you find out that your dear old grandmother is a serial killer.
Scary.
I think it's very scary.
I mean, you know,
think about grandma,
right?
One minute,
she's handing out candies from her purse as grandmaws are required by law to do.
And then the next,
you're seeing her in this light as a horrible monster.
You know,
you think about some of these other grandmalls that we've talked to.
about on the podcast. And it's just shocking that they can do these things. Yeah, I always go back to
Dorothea Puente, right? Yeah. She was horrible. There's been a number of people,
grandpas, grandmas, together who have done horrible things. Yeah, I even think about that
Italian lady, grandma lady, how she would get rid of her victims in her kitchen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was
horrible as well. I think what it does is it shows you there's really no bounds to evil, right?
We've talked about very young kids who have done some horrific thing. You look at the FBI's
statistics and obviously most serial killers are male. Most of them are between, you know,
the ages of this and this. But we all know that serial killers and killers come in
all shapes, sizes, colors, races, ethnicities. It's just, you know, some people are just evil.
And it's really kind of hard to limit it to a certain type of person. Yeah. Now, they all have one
thing in common, right? They're willing to cross that line, that line that you and I always talk
about that keeps most of us in check, right? There's the legal aspect of it. But then I think even
you know, on top of that, there's the moral aspect.
Yeah.
To most of us, it's morally wrong.
We can't imagine doing it.
These people, they have no problem.
And in this case, to make things even worse, Nanny killed a lot of her immediate family.
So, you know, I want to go ahead and jump right into the episode.
But before we get cranked up, Gibbs, I really have to say, you know, this case goes back to
the 50s.
some of those older cases, as you and I have found out, are harder to research.
So there's no doubt that sources for this case are inconsistent on names and dates.
So really what we had to do was put together the timeline of events by looking at everything
and figuring out, you know, what was referenced the most, right?
old newspaper articles with modern sources and really just trying to choose the most accurate
information across all the sources we found nanny doss was a female serial killer active in
the 1950s her victims were the people she was supposed to love and protect her children
her mother her sister grandchildren a mother-in-law and four husbands and what really
shocked me was that Nanny at one point came out and said, well, you know, I really didn't kill for the
money. I didn't kill out of some type of rage, right, that boiled up inside. She killed because she
was tired of her life and ready to move on to something else to seek what she called the real
romance of life. Now, I think there are going to be parts of this case where
okay, did she get a little bit of insurance money after the deaths of some of her husbands?
Yes.
But that's something that you and I go back to time and time again.
You have to take what comes out of the mouths of a serial killer with a grain of salt,
right?
You can't take all of it at face value.
Was there a monetary component to the killings?
Yeah, maybe partly.
I'm sure it didn't hurt.
Was it the main part of it?
Maybe not.
Not according to her.
It wasn't.
Nanny Doss would go on to earn the notorious nickname the giggling granny because of how happy and nonchalant she seemed after she was arrested for murdering one of her husbands.
Nonchalant.
Happy.
And happy.
Now, I think nonchalant we've heard.
We have.
Right.
I'm not worried.
It really does not.
evoke any type of emotion in me. I don't know how many times you would say a killer seems happy.
She killed 11 people with the motive of obtaining small insurance payouts or to find what she called
this real romance of life. There are some people who believe she killed as many as 14.
Nanny Doss murdered victims for decades from the 1920s all the way up until 1954.
So, you know, we're talking about 30 years or so.
Yeah, that's a lot, man.
Where she was able to kill, get away with it.
Now, we'll get into why all of that was.
And one of the things that came out in all the research, Gibbs, is that this is another
of those individuals that, you know, we'll find out was viewed by most as a pretty normal,
happy wife and mother, right?
I mean, we see this quite a bit.
Killers have to put on a facade while the whole time.
There's something more kind of lurking underneath the surface.
Oh, for sure, for them to do what they do.
Now, in the case of Nanny Doss, lurking within her was a cold-blooded murderer who wiped out almost her entire family single-handedly.
She did this by herself and she was happy about it.
Yeah.
So, giggling.
Giggling.
as she was facing the consequences of her actions.
Nanny Doss was born Nancy Hazel on November 4th, 1905,
in Blue Mountain near Anniston, Alabama.
Her parents were farmers, James and Lou Hazel.
Nancy was nicknamed Nanny by age five,
and she basically used that name for the rest of her life.
Nanny had one brother and three six.
sisters, pretty much universal in the reporting Gibbs, was that everyone in the family hated
the father, James Hazel, including his own wife. He was said to have been very strict,
controlling, at times abusive, and he had a terrible temper. Now, it's possible that James Hazel was
not Nanny's biological father. James and Lou married after 1905, and since his son,
record show that Nanny and Lou lived on their own before the marriage.
Sources don't say who her biological father was. So, you know, this is kind of the trouble
with doing older episodes. Right. With information. Yeah, sometimes the information is spotty.
You can't get to it. Or it's just conflicting based on what source or what article you read.
nanny and her siblings didn't go to school very often because they were expected to work on the farm.
That was big back in the day.
It was.
You know, if you lived on a farm, let's face it, there's a lot of work to do.
Yeah.
I think Gibbs, it's often why some people had very large families.
For sure.
Because there was a lot of work that was needed around the place.
And that work would always come before school because the farm.
was the most important thing. Oh, if the farm fails, we're all done, right? The farm is kind of the center.
If you think of it back then, it was also said that the walk to school was two miles each way.
Uphill? Uphill, both ways. Through snow. Yeah. That's the thing that, you know, our parents used to say,
grandparents used to say. Do you think our kids and the younger generation looks at us that way now?
I don't know. Based on some of the things.
that we say. Probably. Probably. But, you know, that that's the old joke, but people used to say that.
You know, I had to walk to school two miles uphill both ways in the snow. With an old pair of boots or
shoes with a hole in the bottom of it. Because we had to order all of our shoes from the Sears
robot catalog. Once a year. Once a year, like in Coal Miner's daughter. Yeah. One of my favorite
movies. And, you know, my shoes took a long time to get. It's kind of funny when you think about,
it, you know, look back at those times.
Right.
Where, okay, you've got this catalog.
There was a lot in there.
You could buy a whole house out of the Sears catalog.
Yeah.
Right?
They would deliver the whole thing.
You put it together.
But it was going to take a while to get.
I don't know what the delivery times were back then as opposed to now, where my wife can sit
in bed or lay in bed before she goes to sleep and order something.
off of Amazon and it's here the next day. Yeah. Impressive. Well, impressive, but also, you know,
does lead some to compulsive shopping. For sure. Not levying that charge at my wife, although I have
at times in the past. Yeah. Despite not going to school, Nanny was an avid reader. She loved reading
her mother's romance magazines and imagining her future with her husband.
At the age of seven, Nanny suffered a severe head injury that affected her for the rest of her life.
Her family was taking a train to southern Alabama.
All of a sudden, the train came to a sudden stop.
And Nanny fell forward and hit her head on the metal bar in the seat in front of her.
Now, Nanny has told a number of different stories in later interviews.
views according to a 1954 article from the Daily Oklahoma.
She said she was riding in a buggy and the buggy was struck by a train.
She said she hit her head hard enough that it was quote cut wide open.
Okay.
So both stories involve a train.
But I feel like if you're writing a wooden buggy and you get struck by a train,
that's not good.
That's not going to be good.
The first story seems a little more plausible to me, but it obviously could have happened either way, I guess.
But it was after this that she began suffering from severe headaches, blackouts and depression.
She later blamed her mental illness and violent tendencies on the head injury.
And you and I actually haven't talked about head injuries in quite a while.
It's been a while.
We haven't had a story where a killer had experienced a tremendous.
a traumatic head injury as a youth.
I still think there's something to it.
Not saying that every person who, you know,
has something like that happened to them goes on to be a killer.
But there's definitely something there where in certain people,
you know, this kind of massive traumatic head injury causes changes.
Oh, for sure.
They've done scans of brains.
And they can see.
It changes. But I think for some, it causes them to be more violent or have some, you know, darker tendencies.
According to Michael Newton's and encyclopedia of modern serial killers, Nanny was molested by multiple men before the time she reached her middle teen.
As a teenager, James Hazel forbade Nanny from wearing makeup or nice clothes, all the children.
were forbidden from going to any type of social functions, even ones sponsored by the church.
Now, he was apparently doing this Gibbs to protect his daughters from being sexually assaulted,
which had happened before.
But what's been said is that Nanny often snuck out at night to meet men.
What's not known as if any of her sister snuck out with her.
At the age of 16, Nanny married a man named Charles Brad.
This was a man she met while working at the linen thread factory.
Some sources list his name as Charles Bragg.
So here's a spot where there's some discrepancies, right?
In the reporting, Charles Braggs, some sources listed his name as Charles Bragg.
Some even listed his name as George Fraser.
Is there more George Frazier's?
George and George and George and George.
You're going to meet my other son, George?
Yeah.
My other brother, Darrell.
Yeah.
Isn't that funny that he had however many boys and named them all George?
George Foreman.
Yeah, I don't know why he said George Frazier.
I think in Frazier, he was a fighter too.
Joe Frazier.
Joe Fraser, yeah.
I just kind of mix people up like that easy.
You do, but it led us into something that was, you know, fun to talk about.
According to the Alabama heritage, nanny like Charles, because he was dependable, hardworking, and sober.
Well, that's one of the important characteristics to have.
Well, I think three important characteristics to have, right?
If you're going to marry someone, you want someone dependable.
You want someone hardworking who's going to, you know, provide a life, provide an income.
And you'd also like to have someone who's sober.
They married after just four months of dating and moved into a house with Charles's mother.
According to Michael Newton and his encyclopedia.
of modern serial killers. Nanny later wrote, I married as my father wished in 1921 to a boy,
I only knowed about four or five months, who had no family, only a mother, who was unwed,
and who had taken over my life completely when we married. She never seen anything wrong with what
he done, but she would take spells. She would not let my own mother stay all night. So,
You know, this is in her own word, something she later wrote.
Now, I think a lot of women might say this about their mother-in-law, right?
Mother-in-law doesn't see anything wrong with what he does.
They see a lot wrong with what, you know, I do.
Sure.
Then she said that his mother-in-law would take spells, right?
Spells was something that a lot of people used back in the day to kind of,
denote a great number of different things. Headaches, fainting, whatever you want to call it.
Oh, she's having one of her spells, right? You've heard that. Oh, yeah. Before. Sure have.
And really, it's not that many generations removed from, from us. Nanny and Charles had four daughters from
1923 to 1927. Nanny began drinking. She began smoking from what she said was the stress of raising children.
and of her living situation, both she and Charles had affairs.
Charles would disappear for days at a time.
The Alabama Heritage reported that Charles later said,
Danny was a pretty girl and lots of fun.
Our marriage started off pretty well,
but after a couple of years, she started going off.
Gibbs, what do you think he means by that?
She started going off.
I think just running off, you know, running around.
I think it could be that.
You could also maybe make the inference that she started to become belligerent, started to yell at him.
You know, a lot of times when you hear people say, go off.
Today, that's what they mean.
So, no, that sounds reasonable.
Yeah, I think they both do.
We don't know because he didn't explain.
I wish people would better explain what they mean by the words that they're using.
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Nanny's youngest daughter Florence, also called Florine, was born in 1927.
Shortly after her birth, Charles arrived home one day and found his two middle daughters dead on the kitchen floor.
Now, Nanny insisted they died from accidental food poisoning after they ate their breakfast.
She claimed that the girls became sick shortly after eating and they both suffered from convulsions before they died.
Both deaths were declared accidental.
But the police were suspicious.
The family received small insurance payments after the children's deaths.
So, I mean, very tough, right?
As a father, you come home to find out that two of your daughters are dead.
And your wife is saying, okay, accidental food poisoning.
Well, who prepared the breakfast?
Yeah.
I'm assuming she did.
Right.
Should be a red flag.
Well, I think it was to him, right?
I don't believe that Charles believes.
in her story. He and his oldest daughter, Melvina, packed up their things and they left.
Charles would later say he left because he was afraid of nanny. But baby Florine stayed with her mother.
And I could see where you might be a little afraid to stick around in this situation.
Am I going to be the next one to be served a meal? Yeah. And mysteriously die. Is my other
daughter Melvina going to be the next one. Okay, I'm not taking that chance. Right.
I'm packing us up and we're getting the heck out. And I think I've touched on it before,
right? How scary is it when someone has complete control over the food you eat? And you have
suspicions about that person that they have already poisoned someone or multiple people.
Yeah, it's alarming, man. I think you'd lose a lot of weight very, very.
very, very quickly. You would be afraid to eat. I'd be eating dinner before I got home.
I'm just like I'm just really not hungry tonight. And feeding it to the dog. Well, you can't
feed it to the dog. No, the dog would die too. You can't have that. But I'm sure it was a tough
decision to leave his youngest daughter behind. Nanny and her youngest daughter, Floreen, moved to
Cedar Town, Georgia. Nanny got a job in a cotton mill to support herself and her daughter. Charles Braggs
returned to Nanny in the summer of 1928 with his daughter Melvina and another woman.
He wanted a divorce. And Nanny agreed to the divorce, but she kept Melvina with her.
She took her two daughters to her mother's home in Alabama.
Okay. So now we have to analyze the father in this situation. Sure, we do. I get it. You're
trying to move on with your life. You've met another woman. You need this.
divorce, maybe you want to get remarried, how in the world could you willingly leave your oldest
daughter with this woman who you believe poisoned two of your daughters? But that's exactly what
happened. Yeah. Now, maybe he had no choice in the matter. Maybe that was the only way to get the
divorce. I don't know. I think it'd be pretty tough for me to do that. Nanny and her children then
moved to Anniston, Alabama. Gibbs, she spent time each day.
reading the lonely hearts column of romance magazines.
She even paid for her own ad in a magazine.
And this was how Nanny met her second husband, Frank Heraldson,
a 23-year-old factory worker from Jacksonville, Alabama.
Frank answered her ad with a poem and a photograph and Nanny sent him a cake.
So, okay, no tender back in the day.
No.
I mean, not even what they had when you,
you and I were younger, which was like the video dating, remember that?
Yeah.
You make your video.
Everybody else makes their video.
You watch them, see if you're compatible.
I never did that.
Allegedly.
I would love to dig that up.
Pull up a video back in the day.
You know my research skills.
Don't put me on a mission to find your 1980-something dating video.
Right.
Because I'll put it on Patreon.
I'll show the whole world.
But this is how it happened back then.
There have been a lot of lonely hearts killers over the years.
Probably the most famous being Belgones.
You see an ad you like.
You send back a poem and a photograph and you get a cake.
And then it's on.
Nanny and Frank got married in 1929.
They lived in Jacksonville with Nanny's two daughters,
Melvina and Florine,
a few months into the marriage.
Nanny discovered that Frank,
was an alcoholic who had a criminal record of assault.
But Gibbs, they were married for 16 years.
Long time.
That's a long time.
Under the circumstances.
Under the circumstances because it later came out that, according to her, right,
these were her claims.
She suffered physical and emotional abuse throughout the entire marriage.
Now, we know it happens.
We do.
We hear about it all the time.
It's tragic.
We've also heard.
from many of our listeners how difficult it can be to get out of one of these very violent,
abusive relationships. It's not as easy as a lot of people think. It's just not a simple thing.
No, there are sometimes where you just cannot walk away, whether that's because you're too
financially intertwined, or this reason, which I think is probably occurs most often,
the threat is too great to your life, your children's lives. If you leave, something bad
could potentially happen and most likely will. In 1943, Melvina gave birth to her son,
Robert Lee Haynes. Nanny came to visit Melvina in the hospital and Robert died.
within an hour of her arrival. Melvina later said that she thought she saw her mother
stick a hat pin into her baby's head, but she was still on medication and recovering from
giving birth. Just let that sink in for a minute. Oh, I am. You know, giving birth is exhaustive.
I watched my wife do it twice. It took everything she had. And at the end of it, you know,
she was spent add in some of the drugs that a lot of people are given.
Okay, did she really see this?
Did she think she saw this?
But, you know, let's put it into context.
This is a girl, a woman now.
Right.
Who was most likely told by her father that he believed her mother poisoned two of her
sisters.
So, you know, you have to look at it through the lens.
of that. She told a guy named Mosy. I couldn't figure out he was either the husband or the father of
the baby or both. She also told her younger sister Florine and she confronted her mother about it.
But no one believed her story. Doctors couldn't identify Robert's cause of death. Absolutely heartbreaking.
It is. To think that, you know, she carried that baby the entire time. She went through the agony of birth.
Okay. Her baby arrives and the next thing you know is dead and doctors can't figure out why.
But you believe your mom might have had a hand in it. And I think as we go along through this
episode, most people will probably believe she did. But it gets worse for Melvina. She and Mosey eventually
drifted apart. She began dating a soldier. This is a guy who her mother disapproved up. In 19,
45. Melvina left her son Robert. And again, sources are a little fuzzy here. It sounds like she had a
second son and also named him Robert. But she left this boy with her mother after the two got into a
fight. She went to visit a friend to get some space from her mother. Robert died after three days in
his grandmother's care on July 7th, 1945.
His cause of death was later determined to be asphyxia from unknown causes.
But the thing here, Gibbs, is that Nanny collected $500 from a life insurance policy
that she had taken out on Little Robert.
At Robert's funeral, Frank Harrelson allegedly said, I'll be next.
Smart man.
Well, I think Frank is putting a, is putting.
it all together, right? This woman's bad news. And it was almost prophetic because just two months later,
Frank Harrelson died unexpectedly. In September 1945, Frank was celebrating the end of World War II
after an evening of excessive drinking. It was reported that he raped his wife. The next day,
Nanny found a bottle of corn liquor hidden in the kitchen. She topped the jar off with rat
poison. Frank later drank some of the liquor and he died that evening. The coroner ruled his cause of
death to be acute alcoholism. He's just saying he drank way too much. Yeah. When in fact,
he drank rat poison. And, you know, this is going to come back again. You know, she liked rat poison.
And if you think about it, Gibbs, a lot of poisoners have used that over the years. Number one, a lot of
people had that, right? Probably underneath their kitchen sink. Sure. Yeah. Easily available.
Yeah. It was something laying around the house probably back in those days. I carry some with me.
I know. Yeah. Not for rats, but I got it. You thought that was granola earlier today? I feel fine,
but I'm a little worried. But here's the thing. Nanny used Frank's life insurance money to buy 10 acres and a small house outside Jacksonville.
At some point, she moved near Lexington, North Carolina.
She put another ad in a lonely hearts advertisement.
And Nanny soon met her third husband, Arley Lannning, a laborer.
They married in 1947, just three days after they met.
That is what you call a whirlwind romance.
It is.
I know you have several of those a week as the Hugh Hefner playboy that you are.
Never.
Ever.
But, I mean, three days, Gibbs.
Come on.
That's really fast, man.
With someone that you met out of a lonely hearts advertisement.
Yeah.
I'm not saying you can't fall in love in three days.
Okay.
Love at first sight.
Soul may things happen.
Right.
But to say, let's get married two or three days after you just met this person.
This is like hangover type stuff here.
Yeah. Things that you do when you get really, really drunk.
It'd be crazy, man.
You like me coming back and telling you, I'm married now, you know?
After you just went to the Quicky Mart to get a slurpy.
Yeah.
And somehow magically fell in love with a woman behind the counter.
Yeah.
Got married in the time that it took for you to return to my house with the slurpy.
Well, not go over well.
No.
I mean, let's face it, a lot of things you do,
I don't wholeheartedly approve of.
I don't rubber stamp everything you do.
Now, I stick with you through thick and thin,
but I don't think you should marry the first person you see inside the speedway.
No.
It's not a good idea.
It's not a good idea.
Of course, I would never do that because I have a wonderful girlfriend.
Yeah, but you never know who you're going to meet.
Back in the day?
No, now.
You need to stop replying to these lonely hearts, uh, advertisements.
Is that what it is?
Yeah.
These lonely arts, man.
Back in the day.
Now, I'm going to go out on the limb here and say that Nanny didn't have a good picker.
I'm going to agree with you that she probably didn't.
Right.
Lannning was known as an alcoholic and a womanizer.
Of course, how do you use your picker or your, your, your radar, your sense when you've only
known someone for two or three days. You can't pick up everything about them. No, I don't think he can.
And I think that's, you know, that's the problem with these really quick romances. And marriage.
I mean, not just a romance. It's one thing to have, you know, meet somebody and, you know, go off and
and have a romance for two or three days. Right. But to marry someone that quickly, there's no way you can know
what you need to know about them.
And obviously she didn't.
Or maybe she did and she was setting up for something later.
But I know we joked about it, but back in the day, it really did happen pretty quick sometimes.
The courting, all that was pretty fast.
It could be maybe that's because there wasn't a lot to choose from in certain areas or,
you know, whatever.
But, you know, we've talked about it before.
Talking about our grandparents.
Yeah.
met married quickly, married young sometimes.
I know some of my grandparents married very young.
Kind of a different time back then, for sure.
So I mentioned it, right?
Lannning was known as this alcoholic womanizer.
Nanny appeared to be a respectable married woman.
She was an active member of the church.
She had the sympathy of her neighbors because Arley was known for frequently
visiting sex workers. So I mentioned it, right? Was this part of her plan? Did she know going into it that
this guy was kind of how he was because really the whole town viewed her as kind of this doting
housewife and then they supported her after Lanning died of alleged heart failure. He died in
late 1952. So they were married for about five years, give or take.
He died in his home in Lexington, North Carolina.
He had been extremely sick for several days.
He was experiencing vomiting, dizziness, and a few other symptoms.
Now, no one ever suspected nanny of his death,
even after she admitted to people that her husband felt fine
until she gave him some prunes and coffee for breakfast.
Well, prunes and coffee for breakfast, I'm going to tell you,
keep the bathroom clear, buddy.
No, you might as well just take them in with you.
I'm going to say, just go ahead and take a seat right there as you, uh, speaking of generations.
Right.
Right.
I don't eat prunes.
My kids don't eat prunes.
But I remember my grandmother, she had prunes in the house at all times.
Yeah.
Was always trying to get me to eat prunes.
Like prunes were this magical elixir.
Well, prune juice is a magical elixir.
Well, depending on what you want to happen.
Well, that's true.
Not everybody wants that to happen.
You drink one can of that prune juice and you know.
Of course, my grandparents ate pinto beans and cornbread at every meal.
So maybe that's why they needed the prunes or whatever.
So I mentioned that really no one suspected Nanny, except for Arley's relatives.
They suspected there was some type of foul play in his death.
But there wasn't enough evidence to,
warrant an exhumation of his body at the time. Nanny learned that Arley left their house to his sister.
Now, you know, Gibbs, that couldn't have gone over well. No, it did not. But she seemed to accept it,
right? This was written in the will. She left town. She didn't put up a big fuss, but shortly after
she left, the house mysteriously burned down. Coincidence? I don't think so. Probably not. Nanny went to
stay with Arlie Lannings mother, Sarah, in another town while she looked for a place to live.
And I thought that was strange, right? I just said his relative suspected foul play.
But obviously, at the very least, his mother didn't suspect nanny of the foul play or she
wouldn't have allowed her to come and stay at her house. Right. So the house burned down.
The fire insurance check arrived a few weeks later. It was.
made out to Arlie's estate. So based on that, it belonged to Arly's sister, right? He had left the house
to her so that money was hers. But before his sister could collect the check, Arlie's mother
suddenly died in her sleep on January 3rd, 1953, Nanny stole the check, illegally cashed it,
and fled town. So we got a real piece of work on our hands here.
You know, we've got a lonely hearts killer.
Right.
We've got a killer of family members.
Yeah.
Her own children.
She has no limits.
No.
No.
And I mentioned it up front.
Okay, was it all about money?
I mean, it really does seem like a lot of it was.
As it was for Dorothea.
Oh, it was all about money for Dorothea, no doubt.
I think what muddies the waters in this case is that, you know, nanny
came out over the years and said it wasn't for money. So, you know, again, you have to figure out,
is that just her lying and trying to say, no, it wasn't about the money because that seems so cold.
Well, what does it matter? If you murdered X number of people, you still murdered them. Right.
And if it wasn't for money, okay, what was it about? Is that going to make you look any better?
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After all this happened, Nanny traveled to her sister Dovey's house in Alabama to take care
of her. At that time, Dovey was bedridden with an unspecified illness. But sadly,
Dovey died not long after Nanny arrived. She's like the grim Reaper. She really is. I mean, the
minute she shows up, bad things happen. Bad things start to happen. People start to die.
Now, she is traveling around somewhat, right, which I think is by design that helps her out a little
bit, makes it harder for the authorities to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.
Right. If she was doing this all in, in a small town, okay, I think they could probably figure out
what was going on.
Nanny paid $15 to join the Diamond Circle Club.
This was a local dating service.
I know this is one that you have used.
Well, see, I was coming around to say,
You always beat me to the punch.
I was like, you talked about my dating back in the day.
This is your dating service right here, man.
This has got your name written all over at Diamond Circle Club.
But doesn't play because I've already beat you to the punch.
You got to be quicker.
You always beat me through the funds.
So using this, Nanny soon married her fourth husband, Richard Morton, a retired salesman
from Emporia, Kansas.
But like Arley Lannan, Richard was a womanizer.
Nanny was attracted to him because he had money.
He was said to be handsome and he treated her well.
And again, he had money.
That's what she's really sure wanting.
I think so too.
But within two months, Skis.
of getting married to Richard Morton,
Nanny was already scouring the lonely hearts column for a new husband.
Yeah, or as we would call it victim.
Next husband slash victim.
Yeah.
In early 1953,
Nanny's mother, Louisa, announced she was moving in.
Apparently she had broken her hip and she needed around the clock care.
Okay, I've experienced that myself.
my grandmother broke her hip. It's very debilitating. You do need someone to take care of you. I mean,
she was in her 80s. Sure. So obviously she couldn't do much for herself at that time. Just a few days.
After Louisa showed up and moved in, she began to experience severe intestinal pains.
And she died. Now, she was never convicted, but investigators truly believe that Nanny poisoned her.
own mother. Again, she has no limits. And why wouldn't you believe it? Right? After all this stuff is going to come out and obviously
we'll get to it, you know, looking back on it, you're going to see that a lot of people died around her of some type of
illness unexpectedly. Well, not too hard to figure out that it was probably poisoning her method of choice. But I mentioned that
within two months, right? Nanny was back in the lonely hearts column looking for a new husband
slash victim. That was because in April 1953, Richard Morton died in his home in Emporia,
Kansas. Now, this one Nanny later admitted to. She said that she dosed his coffee with rat poison.
And apparently he had five different life insurance policies. She collected a total of about
$1,400 and fled town.
It just doesn't seem like enough money to, you know, but we know people kill for a whole lot
less. Yeah. Now, I thought you were going to say, okay, $1,400 is quite a bit of money in
1953. But again, to just go around killing every man in your life for 500,000, enough to get
you on to the next destination. You know, and that's where I think,
the travel.
She mentioned it, what, the real romance of life, as she called it.
It was just moving on to somewhere else and seeing what was going to happen and who was I
going to meet.
Now, I'm ultimately going to kill them and take their money and take their money, but there's
a journey and I'm enjoying it.
That's scary to think about.
Now, a lot of people enjoy the journey, right?
That's like a saying, enjoy the journey.
Right.
Don't enjoy the journey of getting to the next place where you're going to murder somebody.
Nanny moved back to Alabama for a few months in June, 1954.
She met her fifth husband, Samuel, Daniel, Doss.
Nanny and Samuel got married in July, 1954, in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
So pretty quick.
So, yeah, so there's two things for me.
Number one, she has no trouble attracting men.
Right.
Number two, she has no trouble getting these men to marry her very, very quickly,
which says to me Gibbs, she was probably very charming, for sure, and put on a real good show
to the point where these men thought, you know, this is the perfect woman.
Yeah, and I can't lose her.
No, I got to spend the rest of my life with her.
And if I wait too long, there's probably some pressure, right?
I bet on her part as well.
if I wait too long, I'm going to lose her to someone else.
Because there's a lot of men writing in on this lonely hearts column.
Exactly.
So I've got to jump on it.
But Nanny wasn't happy with Samuel at all.
He disapproved of television, romance novels, in spending excessive money.
Boy, that must have been the early days of television.
Really early days of television, probably.
Yeah.
Probably not a lot of guys back then were sitting around reading romance novels.
but then again, maybe they were.
No, I didn't take it that way.
I took it as he disapproved of her reading romance novels.
And I'll be perfectly honest with you, Gibbs.
I don't disapprove.
You know, if my wife wants to watch 50 Shades of Grey,
you're okay.
I'm okay with it.
Yeah.
Well, I know you guys have that new door that has a special lock on it over here.
Hey, not all rooms in this house are open to the public.
Yeah.
I'm afraid to even try.
Alabama Heritage described Doss as an upright, extremely conservative man who did not hold with wasting time or money.
Nanny claimed he was so controlling over his money that he wouldn't even let her turn on a fan in the middle of summer.
And Gibbs, she didn't like living such a restrictive lifestyle.
So she left him to move back to Alabama.
But Samuel didn't want her to go.
He begged her to return, and he promised to loosen up a little.
But I think the kicker was that he also promised to take out two life insurance policies
and name Nanny as the beneficiary.
Okay.
If that's the kicker, if that's what it takes to get her back, I get it.
This guy really wanted her to come back.
He was probably willing to do anything.
He probably wasn't thinking, had no idea.
about her past, I'm assuming, that he was setting himself up to be killed. Oh, yeah. But it did it,
right? Nanny came back to Tulsa in September 1954. On the night she returned, she made Samuel a homemade
prune cake. And who doesn't love a good homemade prune cake? Well, nothing like a good broom cake.
All right. You stress that word good a little too long. Too long? To the point where it got semi-com.
creepy.
The Miami News record reported that she later said,
he sure did like prunes.
I fixed a whole box and he ate them all.
24 hours later,
Samuel Doss was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and
diagnosed with a severe digestive track infection.
Well,
you eat a whole box of prunes.
I'm just saying they could add to that.
Well,
especially if they might be laced with something else.
He was released from the hospital.
though on October 5th. So Nanny was going to go out, right? Celebrate his homecoming. On October 6,
she made him a meal with arsenic laced coffee on the side. And Samuel Doss died that evening.
So my thought here, Gibbs, is that she tried to murder him the first time with the prunes.
She'd done it before. Right. Apparently it didn't work. He survived.
He's released from the hospital.
She changes it up.
Yeah.
But she kills him the very next day.
Well, he's already weak, right?
Well, that's true.
And maybe you could make the argument that she viewed it as, okay, he was sick.
He was well enough to leave the hospital, but maybe they would think whatever he went in for came back around and killed him.
Yeah, an opportunity.
Yeah.
I think you're right about that, actually.
But Samuel's doctor didn't believe his death was an accident.
You know, back during that time frame in Oklahoma,
a family member had to agree to an autopsy unless a doctor had a court order.
The doctor was surprised when Nanny agreed to an autopsy,
according to the giggling grandma, she allegedly said,
Of course, there should be an autopsy.
It might kill someone else.
What might kill someone else?
else. Whatever he had. Maybe. I mean, she couldn't have been talking about whatever she put in his
food or drink, right? Yeah. She must have thought, okay, they're not going to find that.
Because who in their right mind would agree to an autopsy after they poisoned their husband?
And he died. But that's pretty much exactly what happened. The doctor ordered an autopsy
that found massive doses of arsenic in Dosses.
system. When Nanny learned the autopsy results, she said, how could such a thing happen?
My conscience is clear. And Gibbs, I actually think her conscience was clear. That's probably the
scariest part of the whole thing. Yeah, she didn't think she did anything wrong.
The police spent several weeks gathering evidence to prepare to arrest Nanny. They dug through her
past. And that's when they found the many suspicious deaths tied to her name.
As this was going on, she was already communicating with the new man.
60-year-old James Keel of Goldsboro, North Carolina.
He was a milkman back during the days where we actually had milkmen.
Yeah.
Who would deliver milk right to your door.
They still have milkmen today.
Where?
You have said that before.
My boss gets milk delivered.
I can get anything I want delivered.
That doesn't mean a milkman.
That doesn't mean a milkman is coming to my.
front door in a white suit and a white hat with six glass bottles of milk. They actually have a little
box out by the front door and they decide how many bottles they need for that week and the milk
person puts them in that box. I want this man's address because I'm driving over there. I want to
witness this milk delivered. Yeah. I get milk delivered here all the time. Yeah. But it also comes
with the rest of my groceries. Well, I just go out to the cow and get it direct. I think you should use
bottle, but that's a, that's a discussion that you and I have had many times. I know. I'm learning.
According to the giggling grandma, Keel later told investigators, I'm mighty proud. I didn't meet her
and she didn't come down here. From now on, I am through with these women who make their matches by
male. And I don't know what else you could say. Once you learn who you were about ready to meet,
I think that's the end of your days of responding to the lonely hearts ads.
Yeah.
You're like, you know what?
Close call.
I'm on done.
Yep.
Maybe I'll meet women at church from now on somewhere else, the Rotary Club, whatever
they had back in the day.
Nanny Doss was arrested on November 27th, 1954 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The police found her demeaning surprising.
The Alabama Heritage quoted one officer saying, rather than act with the harsh stoicism of a murderer,
she flirted and giggled with the policeman, possibly demonstrating some of the skills that won her five husbands.
So again, I think this is where you get the giggling grandma moniker.
You know, once you make that statement to the press and they put it.
it out there. She was flirting. She was giggling. Okay. Now you're the giggling grandma.
She laughed with the police. She told them, my conscience is clear. I married these men because I love them.
Now at first, Nanny denied everything. She said, I'd never poisoned anyone. She talked to police about her
favorite romance novels and said, I'm sure I'll find my perfect mate yet. She also described her
head injury. Nanny was interrogated all night and into the early morning hours by teams of two
detectives. The detectives had a hard time getting her to talk because they couldn't get her
to stop reading her romance magazine. And every time they took the magazine away, Gibbs,
she giggled. She tried to flirt with them. You know, this was a woman who knew how to get what she wanted.
Right. She used her charms.
there's no doubt about that. Now, she had been very successful in using those charms to do what she had done up to this point.
So I can only surmise that she thought, I can get out of this, right? I'm charming enough. I'll flirt. I'll giggle. I'll charm these detectives. You know, by the end of it, they're going to know that I didn't do this or they're going to think. Or they're going to think.
that I didn't do this.
You know, how can a grandma with this much charm be a serial killer?
Right.
Newspapers got word that Nanny was being interrogated for murder.
And by the next morning, phones were ringing off the hook at the police station as people
called in to give evidence against her.
And then over the next seven hours, Nanny started making small admissions.
She admitted to lying about knowing Richard Morton.
When detectives called her out on it, she said, well, I guess I wasn't telling the truth.
I was married to him.
Kind of hard to say that you didn't know someone who you were married to.
That's impossible.
Well, now a lot of spouses would say after the fact, you know, I didn't really know that person.
Well, now you can say that.
You can say that, but you can't say that you're not familiar.
You didn't know who the person was.
And then the admissions, you know, they started to flow.
She started with the death of Samuel Doss telling the detectives, I didn't know what I was getting into.
She said that he annoyed her.
She said she felt sorry for herself rather than for him.
He didn't let her have a radio, fan, or even a TV.
He told her, I've been a Christian man all my life and you're going to be a Christian woman.
You don't need a radio.
and television. So again, pretty controlling, pretty demanding. I don't know if we said that Samuel was
abusive. I know a lot of the men in her life were said to have been abusive womanizers. I think this guy was just very
restrictive, right? He felt as though life should be lived a certain way. And he wanted her to conform to that way.
And she didn't want to. Well, if you got to know someone more than,
two or three, four or five days, you'd probably figure that out.
But again, to me, Gibbs, I don't think that was the thing.
I think it was all about the fact that, you know, he had some money.
And she knew what she was going to do anyway.
So she could live with whatever for a little bit.
She calculated it out.
Knowing what she was ultimately going to do,
Nanny said that she put an inch of rat poison in his coffee in September 19,
54. But I guess she overestimated the dose. Samuel vomited so violently that he expelled most of the poison.
That's when he went to the hospital. And I think that's why he was able to recover. Right. He vomited out the
majority of the poison. You know, in those coffee cups, an inch of rat poison would be a lot.
Well, I'm still trying to figure out how you measure rat poison by the inch. You want to explain that to me?
You just sprinkled into the coffee cup, man, and before you pour.
Okay, but how do you get your inch?
Put your finger down, you know, that's about an inch.
Do you know how big an inch is?
Yeah, I felt like that.
You put your finger down and you say that's about an inch.
But then how do you get it back out?
Your finger?
No, the rat poison.
You don't, you leave it in.
You pour the coffee in, you start stirring.
Are you telling me that you pour the coffee into the rat poison box?
No, no, no.
You pour the rat poison into the coffee mug.
About an inch into the mug.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now I get it.
Then you slowly stir.
Okay.
And let it dissolve.
Still confuses the why you need to stick your finger in it, but.
It gets that little foam on top.
You know, you're done to stirr and you got to wait for that foam to settle down.
Too much detail.
Too much detail.
Okay.
So she had to do it again, right?
She wasn't going to let this guy live because he had to die in order for
her to get what she wanted. Sure. The police suspected that she was in a rush to get life insurance
policies on her husband. She told the police that money wasn't the motive. I think this is where this
comes in back from the beginning. She said this quite a bit. She said that she killed Samuel Doss because
she was bored and she was looking for the ideal mate. She was quoted as saying, that's about it.
I was searching for the perfect mate, the real romance of life.
And there were some reports that some of the police officers believed her.
You know, they looked at the insurance payouts.
They weren't all that big.
But man, after so many husbands, you still haven't found the right one.
Nanny signed the confession for Samuel Doss's murder.
The police then began the task of working through all of the other suspected victims.
and she began confessing, but at the end of each confession,
Gibbs, she said, now my conscience is clear.
She had a big thing with this clear conscience.
Right.
And how can it be clear with all of the stuff that you've done?
They really had to work, you know, to get these confessions.
At one point, Nanny promised to talk about her other husbands if she could have her romance magazine back.
and so they gave it to her and after she was allowed to read a little bit, she kept talking.
She said her reason for killing Richard Morton was that he had been making her mad,
shining up to other women.
She told detectives that her reason for killing Arleigh Lannning was that he was a womanizer.
He started running with other women.
As for Frank Harrelson, she said,
I found out that he was a jailbird and a drunkard.
Nanny told the police all about her disappointment in her marriage with Frank and gave them the story of his death.
She said one Sunday I was at my mother's and Frank's brother showed up stating that Frank wanted to see me.
Nanny said she found him passed out at the edge of town.
So she drove him home.
He wanted to get in bed with me, she said, but I refused.
Frank then replied, my God woman, I may not be here until next Sunday.
to go to bed with.
So she said, I went and got the whiskey bottle out of the flour bin in the kitchen,
poured poison into it.
I thought I would just teach him a lesson.
But instead of taking a few sips and throwing it up, she said Frank drank the entire bottle.
He was sick for a week and then died on a Sunday.
Okay, you're going to take the chance on teaching someone a lesson using rat poison.
Yeah.
Well, it didn't take very long, did it?
No.
So, you know, again, do you believe everything she says?
I don't.
I don't think most people do.
But isn't this how it always goes?
Yeah.
You know, when you get to the point where these murderers start confessing,
okay, they're giving you the details.
But they're also bending, twisting the truth, the facts to what?
make them look a little bit better because really that's all they can do at that point.
But after this, Nanny refused to confess anything else.
She told police, you can dig up all the graves in the world, but you won't get anything more
on me.
The officers described her appearance after making the confessions as, quote, fresh as a daisy.
They also said Nanny told them about a meal that she wanted to cook for them, which I'm sure
they were very eager to get in on that, no chance that there would be, you know, anything hinky with
that meal. When she was asked what she thought the police should do with her, she replied,
why anything they like, anything they do is perfectly all right with me. I mean, what kind of
nonsense is that? I mean, there's a little bit of a sexual tone to it. You could take it that way.
could. I don't know if that's what they meant or if she's just saying, you know, at this point,
I don't care what happens to me. I think that's what she was probably saying. Like, you know what?
I'm good with whatever happens. Maybe. But, you know, up to this point, I don't put anything past her.
Now, when it came to her family members, Nanny vehemently denied killing any of them. She told detectives
that she only poisoned people who she found.
felt deserved it. So it was just a coincidental. Did you just say coincidental? I did.
Dental? Yeah. Okay. An error. So it was just a coincidence? Exactly that I said that.
Or that's what you meant. Yeah. The police contacted Charles Braggs after Nanny's arrest.
According to him, Nanny was always running off with this man or another man. He divorced her because of her
affairs. That's what he said. He also said that he was afraid of her and refused to eat or drink
anything she made when she was in a bad mood. I'm be afraid if she was in a good mood or a bad mood.
Well, obviously, this guy knew her well enough to be afraid of her. Nanny was arraigned for the murder
of Samuel Doss on November 29, 1954. Her attorneys attempted Anne and in Sandy plea. But Nanny became a
national sensation, earning herself the nicknames, the giggling granny, and the jolly widow,
due to her happy demeanor in court. She was bubbly. She was lively. On December 6, 1954,
three bodies were exhumed in Jacksonville, Alabama, Frank Harrelson, Robert Higgins, and Dovey Weaver.
Frank and Dovey were found to have died of arsenic poisoning. And Robert,
was determined to have been smothered. A toxicologist then exhumed Lou Hazel's remains and found
arsenic. And Gibbs, she just happened to be buried near Arley Landing, whose body was also found
to have contained arsenic. But Nanny still refused to confess to murdering any of her family
members while awaiting trial. She was ordered to undergo a 90-day psychiatric evaluation.
This was ordered by her attorneys and granted. Nanny told a county attorney, I have told you about my
husband. I also told you before I did not poison any of my blood kin. I dealt strictly with men,
and when the time comes, I can justify every act. She also told a county transport deputy,
now maybe I will get some rest and won't have to answer so many silly questions.
Ybsey's detectives,
they were just silly.
Just silly things they were asking.
But I want to go back to, you know, her point about justifying every act.
I don't think it's a coincidence that she admitted to murdering husbands, but wouldn't confess to murdering family members, right?
You're not going to be able to justify an.
any way murdering your two daughters or, you know, your mother-in-law or any of these other family
members. Right. But you can do that with a husband. You can try, right? You can say this person was
abusive and all kinds of different things. And I think many of them were, according to the daily
Oklahoma. Upon returning to her cell, she said to a guard, I don't understand those big legal words.
They said something about a mental checkup, and I guess I need one.
Maybe those docs at the hospital will teach me how to think straight.
Sounds like something someone might say who's entering Ann and in Sandy.
Plea, plea, plea.
While she was at the mental hospital, Nanny told doctors that she'd been, quote,
thinking crooked since she was about nine years old.
Now, it was said she was a model inmate, very well,
behaved, but she was always asking for romance magazines. This woman really loved romance magazines.
She probably would love the Hallmark channel today. Oh, I bet she would. Yeah, I think you're absolutely
right. But it just goes back to that question, right? Did she kill for money? Or did she kill because
she wanted to get on to the next guy who might be her true soulmate? Or was it a little bit of both, right?
the money will help finance me in my next endeavor. Well, that's true. Four psychiatrists ultimately
found her saying on May 4th, 1955. And I think it surprised everyone when Nanny entered a guilty plea.
On May 17th, 1955, her attorney Quinn Dickison told the Daily Oklahoma, we had pleaded her
insane and had plenty of evidence to prove it. However, a jury found her.
saying. The state has a confession from her. So this was the logical way out. On June 2nd,
a judge sentenced Nanny to life in prison. But she would only serve 10 years because Nanny Doss died of
leukemia on June 2nd, 1965. She spent her final days in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary. The Daily Oklahoman produced an article in 2005 Gibbs that talked about,
how her case led to the creation of Oklahoma's medical examiner system, they said after nanny,
legislators realized that we needed to have a system in place where the law dictates who is
autopsied and we had to give the medical examiner that jurisdiction. It took a little while,
but in 1961, the medical examiner's office was born. So I think, you know, this part of some cases
is always fascinating, right? Horrible what these people do. But it's what they do and what they get away
with and, you know, some of the facets of the case that prompt some type of change, you know,
whether that's the introduction of a new law or in this case, the folks in Oklahoma realized that
she got away with a bunch of murders for a very long time because no autopsies were done.
We need to give somebody the authority to do these autopsies or we're not going to be able to catch
these type of people.
Right.
Never going to happen.
So Gibbs, as we wrap up this case, you know, it seemed to me as though Nanny Doss kind of lived in her own reality.
You know, it really was kind of like a world where she could do what she wanted, when she wanted,
but also a world where human lives were as disposable as the romance magazine she read.
She murdered husbands, her mother, her grandchildren, even her own daughters.
And I don't believe that she felt an ounce of remorse for her actions.
I mean, we just talked about it, right?
She found some ways to justify some of the murders, but she never provided adequate
explanations for the innocent victims whose lives she took, Nanny Doss's case remains a tragic
part of Alabama state history. But there's no doubt that she was one evil woman.
She was, even as she giggled her way through it. Yeah. And I just feel as though she was going to do
whatever she wanted, as long as she could read her romance novels and, you know, meet new men
who might be, you know, the next great romance in her life.
But that's it for our case on Nanny Doss.
We've got some voicemails, Gibbs.
You want to check those out?
Yes, hear them.
Hey, Mike and Giddy.
My name is Ed.
I live in the Bay Area.
Anyway, I'm from the Netherlands originally.
And I was wondering if you guys could do a case about Mark Dutroux.
He's from Belgium.
He's a real piece of work.
This could be an episode.
There's a lot of information.
mentioned out there online, but I haven't really seen many people doing a podcast about this case.
And I'd love to hear your guys take on it.
This could be either in truth crime all the time or in unsolved because there's a lot of
questions after you are done researching what was going on in this case.
This guy is a real POS.
So again, Mark Dutroux, Belgium, and I love you guys' podcasts.
I've been listening for a long time now.
And I don't know, keep it up and keep your own time ticking.
Bye.
All right. We appreciate it. I don't believe that I have that person on the list, but we'll make sure that we add them. Yeah. We've never been to Belgium, have we? I don't think we have been to Belgium. I do like Belgium waffles, man. You would think about Belgium waffles. I can put away some Belgium waffles. Put away anything. Well, I can't. Hi, my name is Kelly. I'm in San Diego, and I've been listening to you guys for a long time. Really enjoy all of your shows, including
the one with the other mic.
Sorry, I can't remember his last name.
Anyway, I've just listened to the episode of Matthew Beck,
and I get that the Second Amendment was created to protect the citizens' rights to bear arms.
However, that was created when it took a minute or two for guns to reload,
and you couldn't kill dozens of people in less than a minute.
I know I'm going to get a lot of grief for this,
but I feel that ordinary citizens do not need to have access to semi-automatic or automatic guns.
I also feel that there should be a limit on how many bullets of magazine can hold for an ordinary citizen.
But, yeah, that's just my thoughts.
I know a lot of people don't agree with that, but that's why we live in America, free speech.
All right, thank you.
Love your show.
Bye.
So I appreciate the voicemail.
And Gibbs, I really wanted to play this voicemail.
You know, this goes back to something that you and I talked about a couple weeks on our Patreon episode.
And it's how we should be able to have differing opinions.
Well, sure.
On subjects like this, right?
Guns, the death penalty.
You know, things like that, we're never going to agree on.
You can't get all people to agree on stuff like that.
But we also shouldn't, you know, call people names and think that.
You know, their opinion is garbage. I don't believe in that. Now, I disagree with some of that. Obviously, I am a gun owner. I would point out that most guns are semi-automatic. You know, if you take all of those out, what you really have is revolvers and some bolt action rifles and single shots and things like that, right? I don't think we should have automatic weapons. I don't think ordinary citizens should be walking around with automatic weapons, but we don't.
You can't walk into a gun store and buy an automatic weapon.
So, but I wanted to play it because I appreciate her stance.
Yes.
And I do think that people have the right to voice their opinion.
And you and I have talked about it many times.
We can listen to that opinion.
We can respect it.
We may or may not wholeheartedly agree with it.
And I think if we have a different opinion, it shouldn't make us bad either.
No.
Everybody's entitled to their own opinion.
Yeah, I absolutely believe that.
So I appreciate her leaving that voicemail.
Hi, Mike and Divy.
My name is a Kathy, and I am a Patreon member.
I love your shows, both of them, unsolved and soft.
I'm relatively new, and I've been going through old episodes,
and I found one that was close to my home,
and that one is a very old episode on Joseph Callender,
the Shoemaker killer.
Anyway, I just didn't.
the neighborhood next to his, my neighborhood was Fishtown.
And he said, I had to laugh when you said that his shop was in Kensington, a suburb of Philadelphia.
Oh, no, you couldn't be more wrong.
Kensington is a neighborhood in Philadelphia.
In fact, Kensington Avenue, where his shop was located in ran, was a street that was
located under the L system in Philadelphia, very close to Center City.
I liked the episode.
I actually was in the shop once as a child and never went back again, but she's scared
the big Jesus out of me.
I don't have a team.
I love you both.
I think it's a wonderful, wonderful podcast.
Thanks so much.
Keep up to good work and keep your own time ticking.
Bye.
Well, thank you so much for leaving that voicemail.
And for educating us a little bit.
Sure.
It's not the first time we've been wrong.
It's not the last time we'll be wrong.
That much I can guarantee.
is a given. But we definitely appreciate it. We had no mailbag this week, Gibbs. So that's it for
another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
