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Nannie Doss | |
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.png) Mugshot, October 1954 | |
| Born | Nancy Agnes Hazel (1905-11-04)November 4, 1905 Blue Mountain, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | June 2, 1965(1965-06-02) (aged 59) |
| Resting place | Oak Hill Memorial Park |
| Other names |
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| Spouse | |
| Motive | Life insurance money Search for "the real romance of life" |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
| Details | |
| Victims | 11 |
Span of crimes | 1927–1954 |
| Country | United States |
| States | |
Date apprehended | October 1954 |
Nannie Doss (bornNancy Agnes Hazel, November 4, 1905 – June 2, 1965) was an Americanserial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people between 1927 and 1954.[1] Doss was also referred to as theGiggling Granny, theLonely Hearts Killer,[2] theBlack Widow, andLadyBlue Beard.[3]
Doss finally confessed to the murders in October 1954, after her fifth husband died in a small hospital inTulsa,Oklahoma. In all, it was revealed that she had killed four husbands, two children, one of her sisters, her mother, two grandsons, and a mother-in-law.
Nannie was born on November 4, 1905[4] inBlue Mountain, Alabama, now part ofAnniston.She was born to Louisa "Lou" (née Holder) and James F. Hazel. She had one brother and three sisters. Doss’ father worked as arailroader, but in 1920 when Doss was in her teens he took over the family farm.[5]
Both Nannie and her mother hated James, who was a controlling and abusive father and husband. James would force his children to work on the family farm,[5] refusing to let them attend school, which resulted in Nannie's poor academic performance.
Nannie was 7 and taking a train with her family to visit relatives in southern Alabama when the train abruptly stopped and she hit her head on a metal bar on the seat in front of her. For years after, she suffered severe headaches,blackouts, anddepression. She blamed these and her mental instability on that accident.
During childhood, her favorite hobby was reading her mother's romance magazines and dreaming of her own romantic future. Furthermore, her favorite part was thelonely hearts column. Nannie's father forbade his daughters to wear makeup and attractive clothing as he believed it would prevent them from beingmolested by men. He also forbade them to go to dances and other social events.
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Nannie was first married at age 16 to Charley Braggs, her co-worker at a linen factory. With her father's approval they married after four months of dating. Braggs was the only son of a single mother who insisted on continuing to live with him after he married. Nannie later wrote:
I married, as my father wished, in 1921 to a boy I only knew 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 were married. She never seen anything wrong with what she done, but she would take spells. She would not let my own mother stay all night...
Braggs' mother took up a lot of his attention and limited Nannie's activities. The marriage produced four daughters from 1923 to 1927. The stressed-out Nannie started drinking, and her casual smoking habit became a heavy addiction. Both unhappy partners correctly suspected each other of infidelity, and Braggs often disappeared for days on end.
In 1927, the couple lost their two middle girls to suspectedfood poisoning. Soon after, Braggs took firstborn daughter Melvina and fled, leaving newborn Florine behind. Braggs' mother died not much later and Nannie took a job in a cotton mill to support Florine and herself. Braggs brought Melvina back in the summer of 1928, accompanied by a divorcée with her own child. Braggs and Nannie soon divorced, and Nannie took her two girls back to her mother's home. Braggs always maintained he left her because he was frightened of her.
Her second husband was Robert Franklin Harrelson. They met and married in 1929. They lived in Jacksonville with Melvina and Florine. After a few months, she discovered that he was analcoholic and had a criminal record for assault. Despite this, the marriage lasted 16 years.
Melvina gave birth to Robert Lee Haynes in 1943. Another baby followed two years later but died soon afterward. Exhausted from labor and groggy fromether, Melvina thought she saw her visiting mother stick ahatpin into the baby's head. When she asked her husband and sister for clarification, they said Nannie had told them the baby was dead—and they noticed that she was holding a pin. The doctors, however, could not give a positive explanation.
The grieving parents drifted apart and Melvina started dating a soldier. Nannie disapproved of him, and while Melvina was visiting her father after a particularly nasty fight with her mother, her son Robert died mysteriously under Nannie's care on July 7, 1945. The death was diagnosed asasphyxia from unknown causes, and two months later Nannie collected the $500life insurance she had taken out on Robert.
In 1945, Harrelson allegedlyraped Nannie. The next day, she put rat poison in Harrelson'scorn whiskey jar, and he died that evening.
Nannie met her third husband, Arlie Lanning, through another lonely-hearts column while travelling inLexington,North Carolina, and married him three days later. Like Harrelson, Lanning was an alcoholic womanizer. However, in this marriage it was Nannie who often disappeared—and for months on end. But when she was home, she played the doting housewife, and when he died of what was said to be heart failure, the townspeople supported her at his funeral.
Soon after, the couple's house, which had been left to Lanning's sister, burned down. The insurance money went to Nannie, who quickly banked it, and after Lanning's mother died in her sleep, Nannie left North Carolina and ended up at her sister Dovie's home. Dovie was bedridden and soon after Nannie's arrival she died.
Looking for yet another husband, Nannie joined a dating service called the Diamond Circle Club and soon met Richard L. Morton ofJamestown, North Carolina. They married in 1952 in Emporia, Kansas. He did not have a drinking problem, but he was adulterous. Before she poisoned him, she poisoned her mother, Louisa, in January 1953 when she came to live with them. Morton died three months later on May 19, 1953.
Nannie married Samuel Doss ofTulsa,Oklahoma, in June 1953. Doss was aNazarene minister who had lost his family to a tornado inCarroll County, Arkansas. Samuel disapproved of the romance novels and stories that his wife adored. In September, Samuel was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms. The hospital diagnosed a severe digestive tract infection. He was treated and released on October 5. Samuel died on October 12, 1954. Nannie killed him that evening in her rush to collect the two life-insurance policies she had taken out on him. This sudden death alerted his doctor, who ordered anautopsy. The autopsy revealed a huge amount ofarsenic in his system. Nannie was promptly arrested.
Doss confessed to killing four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, and her mother-in-law. The state of Oklahoma centered its case only on Samuel Doss. Nannie Doss was prosecuted byJ. Howard Edmondson, who later becamegovernor of Oklahoma. She pled guilty on May 17, 1955, and was sentenced tolife imprisonment; the state did not pursue thedeath penalty due to her sex. Doss was never charged with the other deaths. She died fromleukemia in the hospital ward of theOklahoma State Penitentiary in 1965.[6] She is buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park in McAlester, Oklahoma.[7]
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