True Crime Campfire - The Poisoned Chalice: The Crimes of Blanche Taylor Moore

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

On the surface, Blanche Taylor Moore looked like a model of small-town virtue: a devoted caregiver, a churchgoing woman, a trusted neighbor. But behind that carefully maintained image lay a wild heart with few limits on what it was capable of. Murder certainly wasn’t beyond her, and those closest to her were in the most danger, consuming their own deaths with every bite of Blanche’s carefully prepared dinners. She turned domestic intimacy into a lethal weapon.Sources:Jim Schutze, Preacher’s Girl Court papers: https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/1994/556a90-0.html https://abc11.com/post/black-widow-killer-is-north-carolinas-oldest-woman-on-death-row/5137961/ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-08-22-vw-1071-story.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/15/us/suspected-of-poisoning-her-mates-woman-is-guilty-in-friend-s-death.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. On the surface, Blanche Taylor Moore looked like a model of small town virtue, a devoted caregiver, a churchgoing woman, a trusted neighbor.

But behind that carefully maintained image lay a wild heart with few limits on what it was capable of. Murder certainly wasn't beyond her, and those closest to her were in the most danger, consuming their own deaths with every bite of Blanche's carefully prepared dinners. She turned domestic intimacy into a lethal weapon. This is the poisoned chalice, the crimes of Blanche Taylor Moore. So, campers, we're starting this week's story in hell. At least, that's what it felt like to James Taylor, late at night on October 1st, 1973. He'd been really sick for a couple of weeks with flu-like symptoms and terrible diarrhea. He'd gone to the doctor a few times, but was just told to take things easy and have some Tylenol. He'd started to feel better, but still didn't

feel like having a full meal with his family. His wife Blanche gave him some ice cream to help with his sore throat. Blanche was often spiky and sharp-tonged, but she was always sweet when James got sick. By bedtime, James' symptoms had started coming back. He was sweaty and nervous, fidgeting with his keys or the change in his pockets, distracted and confused. Blanche decided she was going to sleep out on the couch, but she put James to bed first, wiped his forehead with a damp cloth, hummed hymns to him, and then she went out and fell asleep. An hour later, James sat straight up and vomited with such force that it splattered against the far wall. God, bless his heart.

Diarrhea just exploded out of him. He fell back, convulsing, his abdomen swelling and contracting. In unbearable pain, he moaned and yelled, thrashing uncontrollably on the bed. For the first hour of his death, he was probably fully conscious, but had no control at all over his body. Then the red cells in his blood began to collapse, and James slowly started to suffocate, his face darkening to purple. For the last hour of his death, there's every chance that the lack of oxygen to his brain sent James into a hallucinatory state, divorced from the torment of his body as it shook and quivered. At five in the morning, Blanche called Dot, James's older sister. I can't wake James

up. Will you come on down here? When Dot got there, Blanche was in the living room with their two daughters who were 14 and 20 years old. They were trying to comfort their mother, who was completely dry-eyed and didn't look upset at all. He's in there, was all Blanche said. Dot went into the bedroom. Blanche obviously knew James was already dead. This wasn't a case of not being able to wake somebody up. James's eyes were wide open. His lips pulled back so that it looked like he had a crazy grin on his face. His face was a deep purple, and his hands twisted into claws. And his hands twisted into claws were raised above him like they were grabbing at the air. James had had a heart attack four years before, and despite the bizarre horror of his death, that was the cause of death the coroner in

Burlington, North Carolina, decided on, a heart attack brought on by the physical stress of the flu. That's certainly a combination that can kill people, but it would have only taken a little curiosity and physical testing to reveal the truth. James Taylor had been murdered, poisoned with massive doses of arsenic. James had been 24 years old in 1952 when he'd come home with a new girlfriend, 19-year-old Blanche Kaiser. They'd seemed like a good match, a good-looking couple, both funny, outgoing, and a little wild. They quickly got married. James worked refinishing fine furniture, and Blanche got a job at the new Kroger supermarket.

Kroger was a big deal, all shiny and clean, and it was the 1950s. All the management jobs went to men. Female employees like Blanche worked as checkers or in customer service. She was a popular checker. Always remembered customers, was friendly with the women and flirty with the men. She was flirty with the guys who worked at Kroger, too. Soon she was a lot more than just flirty. If what they have in common is being kind of fucked up, it's not great when like attracts like. James drank a lot, and when he drank, he liked to gamble, which is a combo that can lose you a lot of money real fast. And Blanche, you know, obviously like to screw around. One of our main sources for this case was the book Preachers Girl by Jim Shoots. And as we've noticed before, with true crime authors

of a certain vintage, he really tries to hammer home Blanche's physical attractiveness. And I'm just going to drop a quote on you, prepare. Long, lithe, with generous breasts and a sleek round bottom perched on slender, perfectly shaped legs. I don't know how you have a sleek bottom. Just, holy shit. Blanche was definitely good looking, but she wasn't some kind of bombshell. The vibe here wasn't so much Sophia Loren as it was like, what if Peggy Hill was a horny psychopath? Okay, I know some of y'all just got a boner settle down. We know Peggy's an S-tier, babe. Plus, Blanche was a cool girl. She preferred hanging out with men, where she liked to drink beer and talk about sports in the stock market.

She was just one of the guys, a guy who happened to be an attractive woman who liked casual sex. Oh, brother. For some dudes, this is the female ideal, which is something that should really inspire a little bit of self-reflection. Blanche's conversation was weird. She mainly liked to talk about church in the Bible, but she'd almost always managed to turn things around to sex. Sometimes just by implication, sometimes not. Like, James was interested in photography, and he was always tinkering with the cameras. One time, Blanche told his mom, he fuses with those things so much you'd think they were pretty girls.

Another time at Kroger, she'd been talking with a coworker about religion when a new delivery driver walked in, and Blanche just said in the middle of her Jesus talk, man, I'd love that. to see the dick on that guy. What the hell? Wow. Like, this is like one of those like alternate universes where women sexually harassed men. This is that. Blanche's catcalling delivery drivers like,

let me see your package. Anyway, I've got the Bible study scheduled on Sunday morning. Hey, sweet cheeks. So strange. And this is like in the 60s. Oh, yeah. In the 50s, I think. Yeah, early 60s.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great. Yeah. In 1962, Kroger got a new assistant manager, Raymond Reed. He was a young, good-looking guy who took his job very seriously. Everything had to be done strictly by Kroger company policy. And that included no hanky-panky between management and staff. So when James Taylor showed up drunk one day and started yelling at him,

Are you fucking my wife? Raymond may have been the only assistant manager who could honestly say no. Everyone else was, though. But he and Blanche got along great and were soon good friends. And when Raymond was promoted to manager, Blanche was determined to become more than friends. Her usual method of going after a guy was to make lots of jokes about blow jobs and let nature take its course, naturally. But that got her nowhere with Raymond. So she switched to another side of her personality and had long talks with him about religion.

By 1969, James Taylor had at least started to get his life together. He stopped drinking and gambling, but his marriage to Blanche was a train wreck. And inside, he seethed at her infidelity, which was becoming more and more blatant. One Sunday, after Blanche had come home at 4 in the morning, from God knows where, he tried to force her to go to church with him. James shoved her in the car, but she squirmed out in her car. coat got caught in the door. He drove down the whole block anyway, pulling her along the asphalt. Yikes, James, that is not great. Not long after this incident, James got sick. He was short of breath and cheating sweat. He ran to the bathroom and had an awful bout of vomiting and diarrhea. The next day,

his doctor said he'd had a significant heart attack and needed to slow down. Hmm. You know, apropos of nothing, by the way, did you know arsenic poisoning causes severe cardiovascular symptoms and that doctors often mistake it for a heart attack? Oh, wow, interesting. Meanwhile, Raymond Reed's marriage was in trouble too. He wasn't all that different at home than he was at work. Everything had to be done just right. He controlled the finances and made all the important decisions.

He was the manager of the house just like he was the manager of the store. Of course, this wasn't unusual for marriages that started in the 50s, but it also wasn't unusual but that by the time the 70s rolled around, his wife Linda was sick of it. They got divorced in 1971. Raymond moved into an apartment and his good friend Blanche was always there to counsel and look after him in his difficult time. They were banging almost immediately. Blanche was always hurrying away from home to look after Raymond. That poor man is just helpless by himself, she told her husband.

James knew it was going on and just stewed about it. His supposed heart attack had scared the shit out of him, just striking him out of the blue. Now he worried that if he let himself get too angry, other one would hit him. The truth was, James was in the way. Blanche told a friend, I'm strong. I just always have been. I can't help it. But men can't handle that. They can't handle a strong woman. They're too weak themselves. I hate a weak man. A strong woman like me needs a very strong man who ain't afraid of it. Ain't afraid to take the lead of a strong woman. I think Raymond's like that. Blanche Taylor, feminist theorist. She sounds like one of those TikTok therapists that like says shit like

a strong man will get you into your feminine energy. You're in your masculine energy right now. You're too independent. Yeah, the whole divine feminine, divine masculine thing. Just, I mean, I'm not judging, but that was one of the key points in the Twin Flames cult, just saying that was like central to their whole philosophy. And in the fall of 1973, wouldn't you know it, James Taylor got sick and died? Blanche had been a close part of the Taylor family for 21 years, but once James was, was gone, she just immediately cut them off and had nothing whatsoever to do with him. Can you freaking imagine? Like, what? Where's Blanche? Just, she's gone all of a sudden. Both newly single. She and Raymond had a lot of fun, although this wasn't like a grand romance. They worked together

and banged like bunnies, but other than that, they just kind of each did their own thing. Raymond was very much a creature of routine. His idea of a perfect day was to work hard all day long, eat dinner off a tray in front of the TV, have sex with Blanche, and go to bed. They carried on this way for years. In 1983, Kroger built a big new store in Greensboro, which would also serve as a new regional headquarters. Raymond and Blanche both moved there, where they worked under the regional manager, Robert Hutton. Hutton was, how do I put this delicately?

A complete piece of shit. A jokey, back-slapping, good old boy who treated his Kroger job as a chance to sexually assault as many women as possible. He was constantly grabbing asses and boobs and coercing women into sex using the authority of his position. His favorite trick was to invite female employees up to his office for a private meeting. When they came in, he'd have his back to them.

And once the door was closed, he'd turn around with his dick in his hand, laughing like an idiot. Ugh. Of course, he and Blanche got along great, always flirting and joking, although it didn't go any further than that. One day Hutton asked what was going on with her and Raymond.

Raymond, she said, he ain't my boyfriend anymore, if that's what you mean. He's too short and he let himself get too fat. Blunt, she's blunt, our Blanche. She and Raymond were in fact still seeing each other, so she was lying. He had put on quite a bit of weight in the decade or so they'd been together because his life was still mostly just Kroger, TV dinners, and going to bed with Blanche. He wanted them to get married, although most of his mind remained preoccupied with Kroger. As someone who worked for a Kroger grocery store, I cannot fathom how you let that place consume your day to day.

But you know what? It takes all kinds. He kept detailed personnel files, kept records of every official interaction he had with superiors, and even took to carrying a voice-activated tape recorder hidden in his pocket so he'd have a record of all conversations he had at work. Jesus, dude, calm down. You manage a grocery store. You're not in the freaking NSA. Hey, it's how he's treating it. Good Lord.

One night, in January of 1985, Raymond got a panicky call from Blanche. Her house was on fire. He rushed over and found her standing on the lawn as firefighters battled the blaze. When the fire was out and the house was all wet and scorched, she and Raymond wandered through the mess to her bedroom. And there, Blanche's bras and panties and sexy lingerie were strewn all around the room, blackened and soaking wet. It was a pervert done this, Raymond, Blanche said. She sounded weird and monotone. I saw him out in the yard. He was a man. He was in my yard today. I asked him what he wanted.

He said he was driving a three-wheeler up in the woods with his son and lost his wallet. He kept looking at me. He's the one done this, I'm sure. But no mysterious perverts turned up in the brief investigation of the fire. With the insurance payout, Blanche bought a trailer to live in and sold the charred house as is. She was determined to make a home of the new place and pressured her daughters to come over regularly with their husbands. One weekend, her son-in-law brought a buddy along for Sunday lunch. Over the meal, Blanche chatted about church and Jimmy Swaggart, and I can't emphasize enough how much she came across as a boilerplate church lady. Okay, big glasses, that helmet hair with a little bit of gray in it, neatly put together, kind of prim and proper looking.

after lunch the friend was in the kitchen helping blanche with the dishes and just out of the blue she looks over and just casually says you know what you really need you really need a blow job can you fucking imagine oh my god this poor guy so he managed to stutter something out like pardon me ma'am you heard me right honey these young girls you run with they don't have no idea how to give a man a good blow job if i went down on you it'd probably kill you. You probably couldn't handle it. God. Great. Googly-moogly. You got to love a confident lady, though,

am I right? As is probably the case with lots of real life scenarios that could be like dear penthouse stories. The poor guy just turned and just fled, ran right out of the trailer, and I do not blame him. It's run, man, run, run. Good God.

Blanche was obviously restless and not just in her sex life. gone on sick leave after the fire for stress-related diarrhea, supposedly. I suspect she chose that story so no one would want to ask too many questions because, yuck. When Raymond picked her up to go to an evening church service, as he drove away, Raymond glanced in the rearview mirror and slammed on the brakes. He said, Blanche, your trailer's on fire. No, it's not. Blanche said. She hadn't even turned around to look. There's flames coming out of the bedroom window, Raymond's. said.

Blanche looked back and said, no, I think that's just the sun reflected on it. Let's get going and we'll be late. This is so crazy. He's like, nice try, but holy shit. Raymond swung the car around and raced back to the trailer. Oh, damn it, Blanche said, must have been that pervert again. I just, I love the idea that there are just roaming perverts in North Carolina that just set your skivis on fire and leave.

Arsonist perverts. Woods are crawling with them. There's a great spotted woodpecker. There's a wood check. And oh, look, one of those god dang arsonous perverts again. They're just like crawling around going, with like a little match in one hand

and the fox and matches in the other. Yeah. And they're all wearing those like old-timey burglar masks. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Smoke was billowing, and the trailer was already significantly damaged. But Raymond was able to go in, grab the fire extinguisher, and put out the fire that had been started in Blanche's bedroom.

A big candle had had Blanche's underwear piled all around it to start the blaze. Must have been that pervert again. From fire number two, Blanche got more insurance money and moved into a brand-new trailer. Must have been the claims adjuster's first day on the job. Seriously. Like, I wonder what happened here. Raymond knew that Blanche had started the second fire and he assumed she'd started the first one too, but he couldn't bring it up with her. There were a few things in her life that Blanche angrily refused to talk about, big secrets. And the fires were in that category. Raymond did talk about them with a friend at work who told him to watch out for Blanche. Raymond shrugged

off the warning. Blanche just needs to settle down and quit being so nervous and high-strung, he said. Oh, okay. So she just needs to be an entirely different person. I'm sure that'll work out great. Here's the thing is, like, he's just like that is for someone that likes to keep to himself, right? She's just like that is not for, like, people that repeatedly set their dwellings on fire. Insurance fraud.

Fire setters. Like, that's just how she is. It's just her with a fucking lighter. Poor Raymond. Blanche was 53 years old, and although she was still a raked tomato, her focus was more on her bank account than her bedroom. She wanted money. She was almost certainly a psychopath,

and when psychopaths want a thing they don't have, it's usually bad news for someone else. Kroger cut off her sick leave and she went back to work. As soon as she got back, she went to find Robert Hutton. Oh, Mr. Hutton, she said, I tell you, I just feel so sexy today. I can't stand it. I don't know what's wrong with me lately. I just feel so horny all the time.

I swear, I feel like if I was a man, I'd have a hard on. Hutton, a moron as well as a creep, Grandin said, maybe I better check and see if you do. He shoved his hand between her legs and rubbed. up and down. That feels too soft to me to be a hard on, he said. Blanche giggled and said, oh, Mr. Hutton, you shouldn't ought to be carrying on like this. Broken clock is right twice a day, I guess. A couple days later, she went downtown and had a meeting with a law firm. She gave them a long list of incidents where Hutton had sexually harassed her, often while making comments about her job

security and whether she'd be able to retire. Sometimes bad people target other bad people. And we don't really have to feel sympathy for those targets. Blanche was setting Hutton up for a lawsuit, but she was setting him up over things he absolutely had done, just not necessarily aimed at her. Absolutely. And our new attorneys were stoked. They wouldn't just be suing an individual, but the nation's largest grocery store chain,

chink, chink, ching. they took the case on contingency, meaning they'd only get paid if they won the case. The attorneys wanted to keep things quiet for now so that Blanche could see a psychiatrist for a few months and establish a record of the emotional injuries done to her by Robert Hutton, which is so sad because this is what should have been offered to the women he actually traumatized and sexually harassed. Yeah. Not the scheming little asshole who's like, I'm going to set him up and, you know. Our girl was bored of friend with Benny's Raymond by now, and on Easter Sunday of 19.

a new man came into her life, Pastor Dwight Moore. Dwight was a pastor for the United Church of Christ, a reasonably progressive church, but that progressive attitude only stretched so far. Dwight was the same age as Blanche, and his previous church had been up in Newport, Newark, Virginia. Up there, he had a secret of his own, a 16-year-long affair with the church secretary, Elaine. They weren't found out. They just decided to come clean with their respective families and make a new

life together. But not long after they shocked their spouses and children with the announcement, Dwight panicked. He tried to go back to his wife, Lorene, but she didn't want him. So he went to Elaine, and now she didn't want him either, accusing him of making her his second choice. She reconciled with her husband, but Lorraine still wanted nothing to do with Dwight. It was all very messy, too messy for the church board, who politely told Dwight that they had no further need of his services. Before long, he had a new position in the little North Carolina town of Carolina Mill. At the Easter service, he was introduced to Blanche and her sister, and evidently Blanche made quite an impression,

because the next Tuesday, Dwight went to her house to make an unannounced pastoral call. This was apparently not an unusual thing for a new minister in a small town, but you have to wonder if attractive single women maybe got more of those visits than everybody else. Blanche wasn't home, but Dwight left his card. She wouldn't call for a week. Can't seem too eager. In fact, she called the day after Raymond kind of sort of proposed to her. He gave her an expensive ring, but emphasized that it came with no pressure for her to do anything.

Blanche picked Pastor Dwight up after church one Sunday and went out for a dinner date, where Blanche managed to stick to the religious side of her usual conversation. No dick jokes this time. At work, she told people, you know, I think I'll probably get married within the next couple years. To Raymond, one of the checkers asked, no, I don't think so, Blanche said. I might marry me a preacher man if I find the right one. But before then, she wanted some more evidence against Robert Hutton for her lawsuit. One afternoon, she went up to clean the Kroger conference room, knowing that Hutton would soon be there.

When he came in, Blanche was tidying up some women's Kroger uniforms, and Hutton, champ that he he was commented that they had to make the pants that big because most of the women working at Kroger had such huge asses. You think you could fit in him? Blanche said. Now understand he didn't know yet that she was going to sue him. He didn't know. It was all hush-hush. Hutton was a playful creep. He kicked off his own pants, then pulled on the uniform ones, and then minced around pretending he was a woman. Hilarious. Then he kicked off the pants, pulled off his underwear, and stood there with his wangle-dangle in his hand. I am so sorry for what I'm about to say to you guys.

This is a direct quote. Just brace yourself. Don't you want some of this white stuff, he said? Oh, no. Much as I can get, Blanche said. Oh, my God. That was the story real. But then she grabbed Hutton's pants in underwear as well as the uniform pants,

flipped off the lights, and ran for the. door. You've treated me like a damn whore all you're going to, she yelled and was out of there, slamming the door behind her and leaving Hutton in the dark naked. Serves him right. It's delightful. She ran for the front of the store yelling, Call someone, I've got his pants. Mr. Hutton's up there naked. She ran out to the parking lot and drove to her lawyer's office with Hutton's pants and underwear as evidence. Hutton stumbled to the door of the darkened conference room, then crept, naked from the waist down, down to the back of the store butchers, where he yelled for a smock to cover himself.

Talk about a walk of shame. Yeah. And don't you know that that was so delightful for the female employees that he'd harassed? Like, uh-huh, yeah, who's humiliated now? Shit-stain. Oh, yeah. He tied the smock as tightly as he could, but when he left the store, customers still saw his bare ass a jiggling. A $14 million lawsuit soon landed. Kroger made Robert Hutton a deal. If he resigned, rather than be fired, they would handle the defense.

They were confident and correct that Blanche had set him up, but Hutton gave a disastrous deposition where he essentially admitted to every piece of creepy behavior he was accused of, just not with Blanche. That was not a firm foundation for a defense in a case like this, as you can imagine. Yeah. Well, it wasn't her, so it's fine. I just get it to everybody else but her. Yeah. She actually wants it.

It's like the worst defense against sexual harassment I've ever heard. It's like, no, she's into it. The other ones. God, it's so awful. Everyone else is like, oh, well, in that case. Blanche and Dwight started seeing each other more often. She was still seeing Raymond, too, but told Dwight that he was just a dear friend. Her dear friend bought Blanche a new hon.

Acord, and Dwight, sensing competition, pursued her even more strongly. They were soon in bed together, but had to keep everything on the hush-hush. Part of Blanche's suit against Kroger claimed she'd been unable to date or enjoy sex since the incidents with Robert Hutton. Raymond Reed was under a lot of pressure. His habit of taping conversations was well-known at Kroger, and Blanche's lawyer said they had some of those tapes. His bosses were furious with him.

He called Blanche, and they argued. When Raymond got after her about this preacher man he'd heard she'd been seeing, Blanche said, Oh, Raymond, you sit up there by yourself in that trailer and you think up all these things. Can you just come down here and see me? I'll cook you a decent dinner. Come on down after work tomorrow. Giving him a good old country gaslighting.

Two weeks later, Raymond felt stinging pain in his limbs and broke out in a horrible rash. His primary care doc, Dr. Garrett, thought he had shingles, which was a reasonable diagnosis. arsenic poisoning in the nerves looks a lot like shingles. It's usually quite a bit more painful, but individual pain levels are a hard thing for a doctor to gauge. Cortone helped Raymond's symptoms, and he took some time off work to stay home and recover. Blanche never came to see him.

When Dwight came over to her trailer, Blanche held a small, empty bottle. I need some of this stuff, she said. I can't find it over here. They'll have it at the mini mart over by you. The bottle was from, an ant poison called anti-ant. Great name, by the way. It gets right to it. It was a clear odorless liquid, a 2% solution of arsenic. The bottle Dwight brought over for Blanche the next time he visited

had enough arsenic to kill 10 people. Jeez, our ants that strong? Good God. Yes. Yes. Their their reaction to pesticides is way different than humans. They laugh as a face of arsenic. Geez. True. As the lawsuit moved forward, Blanche's lawyers asked her if she was sure about Raymond. Was he under control? Would he say anything to hurt the case? Blanche told them not to worry. She called Raymond up and told them she was going to bring over a nice, hot dinner.

Raymond went back to Dr. Garrett in terrible shape, suffering diarrhea, projectile vomiting, an awful abdominal pain. The doctor sent him to Wesley Long Hospital in Greensboro and prescribed suppositories of the anti-nage drug Fennergan. He told Raymond he'd feel better soon and he'd be able to go home, but the symptoms just got worse. Dr. Garrett treated him with antibiotics, but they didn't seem to help. Raymond's white blood cell count was alarmingly low. Over the next week, he became even more seriously ill. His digestive system froze, his heart raced, his kidney started failing, and his whole body started to swell.

No one knew what was happening. They transferred him to North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, which was was much better equipped to handle difficult internal medicine cases. But Raymond kept getting worse. Lesions opened up on his chest and legs. Patches of his body were startlingly white. He was confused, asking around his swollen tongue, where is this?

Where am I? Where's Blanche? Bless his heart. Test after test was done. Expert after expert came in. Almost everything that could fail in a human body was failing with Raymond, and no one could figure out why. Blanche came in on the second day, perfectly put together,

and set about befriending the most important people in the ICU, the nurses. She came every day, always with cookies or eclaires, always with funny little stories to share. They liked her. Raymond started to feel better. He'd had a nasogastric tube put in, which went in through his nose and directly down to his stomach, so that he could be fed without triggering a vomit response. Now the doctors had the tube pulled out. They wanted to see how he did, taking in food by mouth.

Blanche asked one of her new nurse friends, Can I feed him? I just know he'll do better for me. Raymond's real funny about food, and he just loves my cooking. Raymond had to have a specially prepared diet, basically a bland gruel. But the nurses let Blanche spoon it into his mouth

and say comforting words, You'll be okay, baby, you're going to get better now. He did not get better. Later that night, he had the first of what would be a series of relapses. He vomited violent, He twisted in pain until they got him sedated. The tubes went back in, and more of his blood went to the lab. Blanche brought food every morning, treats for the nurses and clear Tupperware containers,

banana pudding for Raymond and orange containers. She also brought him peanut butter milkshakes. Raymond's two sons, both in their 20s, came from out of state to see him, but Blanche persuaded them to stay away. You have your studies, Steve and Ray, you can't just leave a job and expect it to always be waiting for you. I'm here, boys. She promised to keep them informed about whatever happened. They'd known her most of their lives and had no reason to not trust her. But the nurses heard Blanche give Raymond a different version as she fed him her banana pudding. Them boys never come to see you, Raymond. I think that's terrible. They're your only flesh and blood. They should be here every day. Good God, that's evil. Just digest the

evil of that. This poor man, and he thinks his sons don't want to come see him, and she's keeping them away. I just cannot with this bitch. He let Blanche bring in a lawyer and make a new will, equally dividing his inheritance three ways, a third each to the two boys and Blanche. Raymond crashed in the middle of the night. Alarm sounded in his room. It was a cold blue. He'd stopped breathing. The nurses managed to hook him up to a ventilator, which was now keeping him alive. When she came in the next morning, the doctors told Blanche what had happened. She listened carefully and suggested, as she had several times before, that Raymond might be suffering from Guillaume syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that attacked the nervous

system. The symptoms of this illness were close to what Raymond was experiencing. Gianbarre was the most common misdiagnosis in cases of arsenic poisoning. But it didn't result in the serious mental confusion Raymond was now exhibited. he often didn't know where he was or what was happening. That confusion was a potential symptom of heavy metal intoxication, poisoning by something like lead or mercury or arsenic. So they ordered testing for heavy metals, which would be conducted by a lab down in Atlanta.

They almost saved Raymond Reed's life. If arsenic had been identified as the cause of his illness, there were treatments that could have rapidly stabilized him. The tests showed Raymond had six and a half times, the normal levels of arsenic in his body at the time of the tests. That was too much to be caused by skin contact. It had to have been ingested. And it was enough to indicate that Raymond had been dosed with arsenic after being admitted to the hospital. The computer at the hospital printed out the lab report on July 3, 1986,

which just so happened to be right in the middle of a resident rotation. Residents are doctors who have recently graduated from med school and are sent to hospital, to continue their education. They might spend a year in one and then get rotated to a new hospital. The new resident at North Carolina Baptist received the lab report, looked it over,

and completely failed to understand what it meant. Oh, my God. Yeah. He added it to Raymond Reed's thick medical chart where it was soon covered up by other documents and wouldn't be seen again for years. Oh, God. Oh, my God.

It's so awful. it just kills me. It was the residence first day on the job. Raymond started to feel better again and was taken out of the ICU. Friends from Kroger came to visit him again. And there was Blanche, with Eclaires for the nurses and banana pudding for Raymond. A few hours later, he sat up and threw up so hard it hit the TV on the opposite wall. He was gasping for air, his eyes wide and terrified, every one of his vital signs going

crazy. Help me, he whispered to the first nurse to rush in. Please help me or I'm going to die. Raymond went back to the ICU with a feeding tube in his nose once again. This was the worse yet. His mouth and his eyes started to blister. His face turned purple. His body retained fluids and swelled up horribly. A few evenings later, the alarms went off. Raymond's heartbeat monitor showed a flat line. As Blanche stood calmly and watched, nurses rushed in with a crash car and a defibrillator. They managed to get his heart started again, but it clearly wouldn't be long now. The next day, Raymond's sons and ex-wife came to see him. He looked horrific.

His blood vessels were failing, and the only way the hospital could maintain blood pressure was to pump in IV fluids at increasingly higher pressure. 60 pounds of fluids had been pumped into Raymond over 24 hours, almost all of which leaked out of his veins and into his body, causing it to swell grotesquely so that his family could barely make out his nose and mouth and his bulging face. His skin had started to split. with fluids seeping out of fissures all over his body.

Oh, my God, that is so awful. Oh, this poor dude. Raymond died two days later. His sons were in shock, so Blanche took charge. The doctors wanted to do an autopsy. No, Blanche said angrily. The boys don't want an autopsy. Their daddy's been cut on enough.

The doctors argued, but Blanche waved her finger at them and blamed them for not giving Raymond the care he needed. Again, broken clock twice a day. She got her way, and Raymond's body went to the funeral home the next day. Kroger offered Blanche a settlement $275,000, and she took it. The jury in the lawsuit said they'd be willing to give her millions after hearing from Robert Hutton, but Blanche's lawyers warned her that there was a good chance that that would be lost upon appeal. With the lawsuit out of the way, Blanche and Pastor Dwight were able to date openly.

They went for a little vacation up in the mountains and talked seriously about marriage. On the drive home, Dwight decided that they were getting close enough that he needed to come clean about his past. so he awkwardly told Blanche about his divorce and the long affair that had caused it. Blanche stared at him perfectly still and unblinking as he spoke. When he was done, she said, have he seen her again? My wife, Dwight said. The woman, Blanche said. In fact, Dwight had seen her again.

Elaine, his former church secretary, had come to visit him after he first moved to North Carolina, before he'd ever met Blanche. Elaine had stayed in a motel for a week or so, and she and Dwight saw each other every day. They'd had an affair for 16 years. They'd had a lot to talk about, and Dwight insisted that talking was all they did. That may well have been the truth,

but Blanche didn't believe it for a second. She stared straight ahead, not saying a word until Dwight asked her for her thoughts. Sinner, she said quietly. What? Dwight said. Blanche finally turned to look at him, her pupils huge and black.

You are a preacher, she said in a weird. sing-song voice. You are a vessel for the Lord, but you have sinned. You sinned a vile sin against the Lord and against your wife. You betrayed your holy trust. She turned away and started getting weirder. Oh no, oh no, oh no, she said. Oh, no, you must not. You must never. She started sobbing. My daddy was a preacher, she said. He was a very wicked man, cruel and wicked man. He did things so wicked, so wicked. Lynch's father, P. D. Kaiser had indeed been both wicked and a preacher. He'd been a particular kind of roaming preacher who would arrive in a small town and deliver sermons full of blood and thunder, sometimes moving people

enough that they'd build a new church. Then after a little while, he'd start drinking again, then start gambling and screwing around until he was run out of one town and moved on to the next. Blanche said he'd sexually abused her from a young age and also pimped her out as payment for his gambling debts. Now, did that happen? There can certainly be a connection between childhood sexual abuse and psychopathy and also with the kind of hypersexuality that Blanche often displayed, although obviously not, I mean, not everybody who loves sex has been abused or anything, but there has, you know, been identified some connection. Like if you experience that as a child, then sometimes it becomes almost an kind of obsessive focus. But psychopaths are also liars. We'll never know the truth for certain, but although she seemed to get over her initial shock,

there was always a little edge in her relationship with Dwight after she found out about his affair. He talked her into agreeing to get married right after Thanksgiving. You know, if you have to talk somebody into marrying you, I think maybe you should just not do it at all. If you're not both all in, then what is the point? With her settlement money, Blanchet helped her daughters open a tanning salon in Burlington, which she helped run. One of their regular customers was a woman who ran a convenience store close to Blanche's trailer. When she got back from tanning one day, her husband asked if they had an ant problem up there. Blanche had been in asking for ante-a-ant.

A month before the wedding, Dwight suddenly suffered vomiting, diarrhea, pain in his arms and legs, and a bad rash. Sounds familiar, right? His doctor said he had shingles. The next week, he and Blanche went out to eat, and that evening he had another attack. Blanche made him some potato soup and glass after glass of iced tea. He felt worse and worse. You've got that 24-hour flu, Blanche said, brightly. The next morning, the first thing Dwight said was,

take me to the hospital. The doctors thought Dwight might have a bowel obstruction, and the x-rays showed a mass halfway down his small intestine, or they seemed to show that anyway. What they actually saw was a massive glob of arsenic, which is impenetrable to air. x-rays. They had to wait a couple days until Dwight was healthy enough for surgery, then operated to remove the mass, which had completely vanished. They were utterly baffled. They told

Dwight he'd had a kink in his intestines, which they'd straightened out, but really they had no clue what had happened. They sent Dwight home. Just before the wedding was supposed to happen, Dwight had another attack and had to be hospitalized again. The wedding was canceled. Another x-ray showed another mass in Dwight's intestines, which again had vanished by the time they cut him open. He recovered and went home. Dwight and Blanche were married in April, and shortly after, drove up to New Jersey to visit Dwight's son Doug, who had just become a father. It was a pleasant visit, surrounded by Dwight's family. You see what you miss Dwight? Blanche said, by getting divorced from Lorene and losing your family

like you have. You should be enjoying all these moments like this, but you can't on account of what you did. Dwight laughed it off. This was just Blanche being weird. Like, AKA just being cruel for no reason. Yeah. Oh, that's just how she is.

She's a huge bitch. That's how she is. It's so bizarre. Like, she's obviously when we talk about it, she just sounds awful. But there had to have been a flip side. And,

you know, we know this about people with psychopathic traits that they can be incredibly charming, incredibly engaging. So there had to be that side of her as well. people just put up with all of this stuff a hundred percent because like just imagine like if someone like if you came up to me and was like yeah this is karma for everything you did and I'd be like what the fuck like what do you mean by that?

I'm going to heck off out of my sight none of your damn business and like the gall of this woman who's just murdered a number of people to say you're a sinner like really look in the mirror blanche obviously what happened with, I think what happened with Dwight was like projection for her father. Yeah, very possibly. It's just there was, first of all, she got him. So she should be glad that he cheated on Lorraine. Yeah, it's weird, right? Like, because they wouldn't be together if he hadn't.

Yeah. She obviously really enjoyed having something that she could pummel him about. It's interesting. Oh, sure. It's so creepy to me, by the way, that they found globs of course. arsenic. Like, oh my God, that's so creepy. Like to think that it globs up like that and just sits in your body. Oh, that's so gross. And that she was giving him enough that it could glob up. Yeah. And we're going to find out about Dwight. He's like an ex-man or something. We're going to get to that in a minute.

Headed back south, Blanche got Dwight a pastry to eat while they were on the Cape May Ferry. At first, Dwight thought he was just getting seasick, but then he felt fear in the pit of his stomach. He recognized these sensations. his illness was back. But he soon felt better. Back at the parsonage where they lived, he decided to take care of the dandelions on the lawn and mixed up some weed killer.

Later, Blanche went out and got them chicken sandwiches from Hardee's, handing Dwight's over to him. He was halfway through the sandwich when he felt bad, half rose up from the chair, and threw up. He collapsed onto the floor and threw up again. Blanche helped him to the bathroom. He felt better the next day,

Blanche made him some potato soup. He was ill again almost immediately. He went to the local ER where the doctor gave him a shot of Fennergan and wanted to send him home. Dwight begged him to send him to another hospital to see if they could help him. But the ER doc was at the end of his shift and didn't want to take the time to get Dwight's chart together for a referral. Fuck you! He sent Dwight home. Blanche made him dinner and Dwight was again overcome with pain and nausea.

He begged Blanche to take him to North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. She did, but they refused to admit him without a referral. He got another shot of Fennergan and was sent home. Oh, that's so awful. The next morning, he was close to death. His kidneys had mostly shut down, and his body was swollen with fluid. The pain was awful. The pressure on his brain made him confused and incoherent.

His daughter Debbie knew he was sick and called. How's my father doing? she said. Oh, he's going to be all right, Blanche said. It's this bowel thing acting up again. He's been real sick, but they've been giving him Finnergan, and that seems to help. Don't you worry, Deb. I'm taking care of him. You sure are. She hung up and told Dwight, that was Deborah. She said she's too busy to come see you. I was just so hurt. I couldn't believe it. Oh, I hate this bitch. All Dwight could do was mutter the word hospital again and again.

She took him to the ER and this time they admitted him to the ICU and quickly transferred him to North Carolina Memorial. This might have played up just like Raymond Reed's death, but this time Blanche made a mistake. She told the doctors she thought Dwight might have been poisoned by weed killer. So one of the first notes that ICU nurses got was an instruction for a talk screen. Oh, that was real dumb. Wow. She just talked. I think that was like her MO.

She just talks. And then that got her into trouble. Yeah. This time the system worked and the test results got to the right people, although they had to be double-checked. There can be a lot of random variation in the makeup of different human beings. And Dwight Moore happened to be bizarrely resistant to arsenic. The test showed he had 20 times what was considered a lethal dose in his system. Good Lord.

The treatment for severe heavy metal poisoning was rough. administering an agent that bonded with the metal and left the body via urine or diarrhea. To the patient, the therapy felt very much like another round of arsenic poisoning itself. Oh, God. The doctors talked to Dwight to check if he was willing to go through it. They also wanted to gauge whether he might be suicidal and had poisoned himself, but quickly decided that that wasn't the case. The amount of arsenic and Dwight's system could only come through ingestion.

If Dwight hadn't taken it on purpose, somebody had been. poisoned him. Somebody had tried to murder him. Lots of Dwight's family were right there in the hospital to be with him. There was every chance one of them had tried to kill him. So the doctors put a sitter, actually a guard, in Dwight's room, so that no one would be in there alone with him, and they called the cops. It didn't take him long to get around to Blanche. They asked Dwight about everybody close to him, whether he'd fought with any of them, whether any of them had someone close to them die recently. Dwight told them about Blanche's good friend Raymond Reed, who had died a couple of years ago from Guillain Barre syndrome. That got the cop's attention. For some reason, North Carolina

is kind of a hub of arsenic poisonings. They'd seen cases before, and they knew it could be mistaken for Gian Barre. They sent someone to go through Raymond Reed's medical chart and discovered the positive test for arsenic. After examining the circumstances surrounding the previous deaths of people in Blanche's life, they exhumed the bodies of her first husband, James Taylor, as well as, get this, James's mother, and Blanche's father. All the bodies showed clear evidence of arsenic poisoning. When the investigators questioned Blanche, she told them both James Taylor and Raymond had been horribly depressed, even suicidal. Maybe they'd both killed themselves. When they asked her how likely she thought it was that two men in her life would both choose to end

their lives horribly through arsenic poisoning, Blanche clammed up. She was arrested in July. Dwight initially refused to even consider the possibility that Blanche had tried to kill him. He only turned his back on her when the detectives told him that Raymond Reed had been much more than her dear friend and that she'd been seeing him at the same time she'd been dating Dwight, which is such a freaking guy thing. We have irrefutable evidence that your wife tried to murder you. I don't believe you.

She would never. She also cheated on you. That bitch is dead to me. That slut. It's like, dude, she tried to murder you. That's not the worst one of the two. To Dwight. When Raymond's family learned about the missed toxicology report that might have saved his life,

they understandably sued North Carolina Baptist Hospital. The case was settled, and as is normal, the amount was never made public. But I would guess it was several, if not many, millions of dollars. I hope so. So anyway, not that anything was going to bring Raymond back, but we have to hit these hospitals where it hurts for this kind of negligence. Like, I get it's a resident, it's his first day. That's why you have to have oversight.

That's why a more senior doctor should have been checking that stuff. What the hell? You know, it makes me so mad I could spit nails. The family had achieved some measure of civil justice, but what about criminal justice? A high-powered law firm on a huge case like that has resources beyond what state investigators can usually find, and after the settlement, they turned everything they'd found over to the state.

Blanche was charged with the murders of James Taylor and Raymond Reed and the attempted murder of Dwight Moore, who is apparently a superhero whose mutant power is the ability to take on an absolutely insane amount of arsenic and survive. Like what the, and that's a damn good flex. Like, if you ask me, I would bring that shit up all the time if I were him. Hey, guess what? Just at a party, you know, I survived more arsenic than any human on earth ever has. You know, like that's holy moly. Dwight made a partial recovery from his poisoning, although never recovered the full use of his hands and feet, bless him.

He found a new church in rural Virginia, where he married again and lived quietly until he died in 2013. The trial for Raymond's murder came first, and I mean, come on, do we need to build any suspense here? Planch's goose was pretty much cooked. She was found guilty and sentenced to death, after which the state dropped the other charges. And that tends to happen in cases like this, just because the prosecutors are like, well, we got her, we might as well call it a day. It can be really frustrating for the other victim's

families, but it happens a lot. But it is obvious, in my opinion, that she is guilty as hell of the other murders, too. A classic female serial killer, murdering people close to her. And I don't think she benefited much financially from all of these. Some of them, yes. Like she would get some inheritance or whatever, but it wasn't to the point where, like, she made way more money suing that guy. Yeah. And my guess is she enjoyed killing. She enjoyed the power it gave her. The people that she, other people, she murdered her dad and her mother-in-law, she hated both of them, apparently. And I think she did it, at least partially, because she liked it. And the thing about that is that is vanishing.

rare with female killers. It's really rare. So she is a museum piece in a way. Like, it's so rare for women to actually enjoy the killing. It's so freaking creepy. Blanche remains on death row to this day. She's 92 now, the oldest death row inmate in America. And it's hard to imagine North Carolina going ahead and executing her now. And if you ask me, she got exactly what she deserved, a long, gray life in a prison cell. And, I mean, she's older. dirt now, so Blanche is a problem that should probably solve itself pretty soon. Don't let the door hit you in that sleek assy yours on the way out, Blanche. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week.

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