EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) (31 page)

He said that by this time she was rich. He estimated she had murdered forty-two men and each of them had brought with him at least a couple of thousand dollars. By the time she disappeared, he reckoned that she had saved around $250,000.

Belle Gunness became an American Lord Lucan. Sightings were reported for decades. She was seen in Chicago, San Francisco, New York. She was reported to be living in Mississippi as a wealthy landowner. Nothing was proved, however.

Interest grew in her case once again, in 1931, when a woman named Esther Carlson was arrested in Los Angeles for poisoning a suitor, August Lindstrom, for money. Some said she looked like Belle, but before they could confirm whether or not it was her, up to her old tricks, she died while awaiting trial.

In November, 2007, the body of Belle Gunness was exhumed. Tests are being undertaken to prove once and for all whether it was her body that was found without a head in the basement in Indiana all those years ago.

Mary Ann Cotton

How did she get away with it? A bit of stomach pain and an unexpectedly sudden death. She did it twenty times. Husbands, children, it did not matter. If they got in her way, she would dispatch them without a second thought.

Of course, in those times – the late nineteenth century – poison was easy to come by. They used arsenic, for instance, for all kinds of things, including, when mixed with soap, for killing bed-bugs. All you had to do was extract it from the soap in which it was mixed and it was so easily confused with gastric fever. The symptoms – violent sickness and diarrhoea – were exactly the same and who would suspect arsenic to be the culprit? She killed very young babies and in those times, one form of baby food was flour mixed with water which often upset the baby’s stomach. So, when one of Mary Ann Cotton’s babies was sick, a doctor would not think it unusual or suspicious. Infant mortality was a huge problem in Victorian times. Therefore, no one thought there was anything wrong when Mary Ann’s babies died. After all, twenty-five per cent of all babies did not live beyond their first year. She was just unlucky, they thought, if they thought about it at all. Also complicating matters was the fact that she moved around a great deal and married several times, taking a different name each time. No one linked Mary Ann Cotton with Mary Ann Mowbray, Mary Ann Ward or Mary Ann Robinson.

She was born the daughter of a miner in 1832, in the village of Low Moorsley in County Durham and her father died before she was fifteen. It was a tough life. Her father, staunchly religious and a rigid disciplinarian, had barely been able to earn enough to feed his family. When she was eight, they moved to the village of Murton. She went to a new school but suffered greatly from being unable to make friends. The family was then devastated by the death of her father in a tragic accident when he fell 150 feet down a mineshaft.

A few years later, her mother re-married but Mary Ann did not get on with her step-father. The family was better off, however, and although she did not like him, she liked the things that his money could buy. Nonetheless, aged sixteen, she moved out, finding work as a nurse in a nearby village. Three years later, she returned home to train as a dress-maker.

She met and married William Mowbray, and they moved to Plymouth in Devon. They had five children, four of them dying from gastric fever. Moving back to the Newcastle area of the northeast, Mary Ann gave birth to three more children, all of whom died. William worked as a foreman at South Hetton Colliery and then got a job as a fireman on a steam ship. Not long after, though, he also died of gastric fever. Some said that Mary Ann was not terribly upset about it, especially when she received the £35 she had insured him for with the British and Prudential Insurance Company.

Finally, out of eight children born to her from her first marriage, only one was left alive.

She moved to Seaham Harbour in County Durham where she began a relationship with a man called Joseph Nattrass. Unfortunately, however, Nattrass was engaged to another woman and Mary Ann left Seaham when she realised that her relationship with him was doomed. Meanwhile, another of her children died, aged three.

Returning to Sunderland, she became a nurse at the Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society. Her one surviving child, Isabella, was sent to be looked after by Mary Ann’s mother while she worked there. Soon, she had fallen in love with one of her patients, George Ward. They married in August 1865, but George did not survive long, dying following a long illness characterised by the intestinal pains that seemed to dog everyone associated with Mary Ann Cotton. Once again, she collected on an insurance policy she had taken out on her husband. She was thirty-three years old and had murdered ten people.

James Robinson was a widower, a shipwright and the father of five children with whom she obtained a position as housekeeper. When she had been there only a month, his youngest child died of gastric fever. He was heartbroken and she comforted him. She comforted him so well, in fact, that she became pregnant. When her mother became ill and looked like she might need looking after, Mary Ann paid her a quick visit and after nine days her illness became terminal. Nothing and no one was allowed to get in the way of Mary Ann’s happiness.

Next, her nine year-old daughter, whom she had brought back to live with her and Robinson, died, but she was not alone. Another two of her new paramour’s children also passed away suddenly, all of the same painful condition – gastric fever. They buried three children in the month of April 1867. Four months later, a child she had with Robinson lasted only two weeks before dying.

Now married to Robinson, she tried to persuade him that he needed insurance. So ardent was she in her efforts to get him to insure himself that he became suspicious. When he heard that she had tried to insure him herself and when he realised that she was spending his money faster than he could earn it, he threw her out.

She became a prostitute and was getting desperate but it was not long before another sucker turned up – Frederick Cotton, another recent widower with two sons, a pitman who lived in Walbottle in Northumberland. Mary Ann was introduced to him by Margaret, his sister. Unfortunately, Margaret, who had helped bring up Cotton’s children, died of an undetermined stomach ailment shortly after. Mary Ann moved in and comforted Cotton. Soon she was pregnant again, for the eleventh time. The fact that she was still married to James Robinson did not prevent her from marrying Cotton in September 1870. A son, Robert, was born in early 1871.

When Mary learned that her former lover, Joseph Nattrass, was living nearby and that his marriage was over, she persuaded her husband to move closer to him. Then she got rid of him altogether in December of that year in the customary manner. The insurance money came in very handy.

Nattrass moved in with her immediately and she found work as a nurse to John Quick-Manning, an Excise Officer who was recovering from smallpox and who was the next man to take her fancy. First, of course, she had to dispose of the baggage she had brought with her. Cotton’s oldest son and the baby she had with him were in the ground within a few weeks. Joseph Nattrass also became surplus to requirements. Gastric fever again – a terrible illness. She was now left with just two children – seven-year-old Charlie Cotton and a baby she had with Quick-Manning.

When Charlie came down with a painful gastrointestinal illness, suspicions were raised. She had been asked by a parish official to nurse a woman who was suffering from smallpox. However, she complained that she could not as she had to look after Charlie. She suggested to the parish official that Charlie be committed to the parish workhouse. He told her that was impossible – she would have to accompany the boy to the workhouse. Undaunted, she told him that it would not be a problem for very long, suggesting that ‘he’ll go like the rest of the Cottons.’ Five days later, Charlie, who had been a healthy boy, had died of what looked like gastric fever. The parish official went to the police and an autopsy was held. The doctor found signs of malnutrition and then the contents of Charlie’s stomach were re-tested. They found arsenic.

Mary Ann, meanwhile, had paid a visit to the insurance office to claim on the policy she had taken out on her son.

The newspapers latched on to the story and began to investigate Mary Ann Cotton. They uncovered her movements around northern England and learned how she had lost three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother and a dozen children. They had all, it seemed, died of the same thing – gastric fever.

Finally, the game was up for Mary Ann. She was arrested shortly before taking John Quick-Manning as her fifth husband.

Even under arrest, she gave birth. This daughter would be out of her reach and would survive. She was tried only for her last murder, that of Charlie, but the other murders soon became apparent and the verdict was inevitable. She was found guilty and sentenced to death.
The Times
reported, ‘After conviction the wretched woman exhibited strong emotion but this gave place in a few hours to her habitual cold, reserved demeanour and while she harbours a strong conviction that the royal clemency will be extended towards her, she staunchly asserts her innocence of the crime that she has been convicted of.’ She had claimed that Charlie had arsenic in his body because he had inhaled it from wallpaper in which it was used as a dye.

No pardon materialised, despite several petitions and on 24 March 1873, she felt the hood being placed over her head, followed by the rough texture of the noose. Hers was not an easy death, however, somewhat like the deaths she had inflicted on her victims. The hangman botched it, getting the length of the drop wrong and after the trapdoor on the gallows was opened, she struggled for a full three minutes before her neck snapped.

Nannie Doss

If you were invited to dine at her table, best not to choose the prunes. Arsenic Annie, as they would later call her, was partial to sprinkling a little rat poison or arsenic on them to give you a little kick. If the flavour was too strong she would just add a little more sugar. She poisoned eleven people and giggled all the way

to prison.

Born Nancy Hazle in 1905, her childhood was harsh. Her parents were poor farmers in a tiny town called Blue Mountain in the hill country in northeast Alabama. Her father, James, was an angry man who ruled his family with a rod of iron. The kids were forced to work in the fields from an early age, missing school to do so and if they cut up rough, they would suffer the pain of a beating. By the age of five, she was clearing and ploughing fields and cutting wood. None of the children was allowed, or indeed had time to have friends.

When she was young, Nannie received a serious head injury while visiting a relative. She was on a train which had to make a sudden stop. Nannie jolted forward and banged her head on the iron frame of the seat in front of her. She experienced blackouts and pain for months afterwards and had headaches for the rest of her life as a result. Some suggest that this might have been the cause of what happened later, but others claim that she was just bad from the start.

Her only relief as a child was the romantic story magazines her mother bought. Nannie loved to leaf through them during any spare time she got. However, she had no opportunity for romance in her own life. Her father prohibited his daughters from attending social events such as barn dances in the area. They were not allowed to wear make-up, silk stockings or tight dresses. It did not stop Nannie from having a good time, however. She would often sneak away to enjoy the company of boys in haylofts or corncribs.

James Hazle had always said that he would find husbands for his girls and he found one for Nannie. Charlie Braggs was a co-worker at the Linen Thread Company where she worked from the age of sixteen. He was tall and good-looking and he seemed to dote on Nannie. James liked the fact that Charlie was devoted to his mother and not as footloose as most of the young men in the area. Four months after they met for the first time, Nannie and Charlie were married. She barely knew him.

Charlie’s mother was not unlike her father – domineering and demanding. However, they got on with married life and Nannie had four daughters in four years. However, the pressures of family life and, in particular, of sharing a home with her mother-in-law, drove Nannie to drink. She also developed a smoking habit that would have been extreme in a man. She began to find her amusement elsewhere, consorting with men in the gin palaces of Blue Mountain. As for Charlie, he was too drunk himself, to even notice that she was not at home. At other times, he was out chasing women in another part

of town.

In early 1927, the two middle daughters of the Braggs family mysteriously died. They sat down to breakfast, perfectly well, and by noon they were dead. The doctor described their deaths as accidental, but Charlie was not so sure. He fled the marital home, taking his eldest daughter, Melvina, with him, but leaving the youngest, Florine, behind.

Braggs later described how afraid he was of his wife. Her mood swings were extreme and he refused to eat or drink anything she had prepared when she was in a bad mood. He was gone for a long time, almost a year, finally turning up again in summer 1928 but in the amorous company of a divorcee and her child. Nannie got the message and left. Charlie remained behind, the only one of her husbands to survive marriage to her.

She moved back in with her parents and found work at a cotton mill in Anniston, not far from Blue Mountain. She still enjoyed the romantic magazines and decided to try her luck in the lonely hearts column she liked so much. She wrote to a number of men who had advertised, but one stood out for her. Frank Harrelson was a handsome, twenty-three-year-old factory worker who lived in Jacksonville. He fell for her and they were married in 1929. Unfortunately, Frank was an alcoholic who had also served a jail term for assault. He was not quite what he said he was and the regular visits from the Jacksonville police to let her know that her husband was in jail for drunkenness again confirmed this fact. He was abusive, just like her father, but she persevered with the marriage for sixteen years.

Her daughter, Melvina, had one child, Robert, and was pregnant again in 1945. Nannie was present for the birth and nursed the baby when it finally arrived. However, Melvina later told how, as she lay semi-conscious from the anaesthetic in bed, she saw Nannie with the newborn baby cradled in her arms. She then thought she saw Nannie produce a long and very sharp hatpin and drive it into the child’s head. The doctors, however, were astonished and could not discover what the baby girl had died of. Six months later, Robert, Melvina’s son, died while in Nannie’s care. The doctors diagnosed asphyxia from unknown causes. Nannie, meanwhile, seemed distraught at the graveside, but was less distraught when she picked up a cheque for $500 from an insurance policy she had taken out on her grandson.

In August 1945, it was the turn of her husband Frank. On 15 September, he went out celebrating the end of the war, welcoming home some friends who had been fighting overseas. He came home drunk and insisted on having sex. She was furious and determined to take action. The next day, she found his corn-liquor jar hidden in the garden, poured out some of its contents, filled it with rat poison and replaced it where she had found it. That same evening, Frank Harrelson had a drink, was suddenly consumed with excruciating stomach pains and died, aged thirty-eight. Naturally, she rinsed out the jar shortly afterwards.

Her life for a short while after this incident is vague. She seems to have travelled extensively and some suggest that she was married to a man called Hendrix. Whether he survived the marriage is unknown.

In Lexington, in 1947, within two days of meeting him, she married a man called Arlie Lanning that she had met through a lonely hearts column. He was another philanderer and drinker but when it got too much, Nannie would take off, sometimes for months on end. Whenever she returned home, he would promise to stop the womanising and the drinking but his promises did not last long. When she was there, however, she presented to the world a picture of a devoted wife. Her absences were explained as visits to her sister who had cancer or to look after Arlie’s eighty-five-year-old mother. Neighbours gossiped, however, about Arlie who could often be seen in Lexington’s red light district.

Arlie died suddenly of heart failure, or, at least, that is what the doctor concluded. No autopsy was carried out due to the fact that he was a heavy drinker and that it was thought that he had been suffering from the virulent flu bug that was rampaging across the state.

Nannie said, ‘He just sat down one morning to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bowl of prunes I especially prepared for him.’

Curiously, the house that Nannie and Arlie had shared, burned to the ground not long after his death. It had been left to his sister in his will, but Nannie got the insurance money. She had also managed to get her beloved television out of the house before the fire, ostensibly to take it to be mended. Nannie had moved in with Arlie’s mother but left suddenly after Mrs Lanning died in her sleep.

She went to her sister’s house but Dovie’s condition seemed to deteriorate from the moment that Nannie arrived. She died on 30 June in her sleep.

For $15 a year, you could be a member of the Diamond Circle Club, a lonely hearts organisation that sent out a monthly newsletter. In 1952, she used this group to find another husband. She was forty-seven years old now and beginning to lose her looks. Therefore, it seemed sensible to look for a more mature sort of man. Richard L. Morton of Emporia, Kansas, was just such a man. He had been a salesman but was looking for a woman and Diamond Circle provided him with Nannie. She moved to Emporia where they were married in October 1952.

He was a handsome older man, half Native American and he treated her well at first, buying her presents and jewellery. Eventually, however, she realised that it was all being done on credit. He owed everyone. Not only that – he was also dallying with other women in town. Marrying him, she realised, had been a big mistake. But for Nannie, of course, that was no problem. His demise was delayed, however, by a visit from her mother following the death of her father. Time, of course, was money, and Nannie could not wait. Her mother died, suffering chronic stomach pains not long after arriving at her house. Morton followed a short while later.

Her fifth husband was fifty-nine-year-old state highway inspector, Samuel Doss, a God-fearing individual who, unlike her other husbands, did not drink, smoke or chase women. He was thrifty and loathed frivolity. Unfortunately, he was also deadly boring. The couple married in June 1953 but she was soon fed up. Sex was pre-scheduled and the romance novels and stories she adored were banned. The electric fan was only switched on when temperatures were extreme and lights had to be religiously switched off when leaving a room. She was fed up but delighted to discover that he had made a couple of fundamental mistakes. Firstly, he had given her equal access to his bank account. Secondly, he had taken out two insurance policies of which she was the beneficiary.

If only he had known about the prunes. One evening, following a delicious prune cake, he experienced severe stomach pains. He was taken to hospital where he stayed for twenty-three days to recover. They said he had suffered a severe infection to the digestive tract. On being released from hospital, Nannie served him up a cup of coffee and a pork roast. Unfortunately for him, the coffee was laced with arsenic. By midnight he was dead.

This time, however, the doctor was perturbed. He ordered an autopsy and arsenic, in horse-killing quantities, was discovered.

Nannie was arrested and police began to look back at her history, learning that four of her husbands had died suspiciously. She confessed all, giggling all the while and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

She died in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary of leukemia in 1965, still looking for eternal love, by all reports.