Welcome back to another deep dive. Today we are
opening a file that is, frankly, just one of
the most unsettling contradictions we've ever
come across. It really is. We're looking at a
stack of sources here about a woman named Manny
Doss. And if you've heard of her, you probably
know her by one of her nicknames. The most famous
one is The Giggling Granny. Which, let's just
be honest, right out of the gate, that sounds
like a character from a children's book, you
know. Right. The sweet old lady in a sitcom who
bakes the best pies and maybe knits slightly
lopsided sweaters for everyone. It just evokes
warmth that evokes safety. It's completely disarming.
Completely. It sounds harmless, sweet, even.
But then you look at the other nicknames in these
documents. The Jolly Black Widow. A little more
pointed. A little. And then Lady Bluebeard. And,
well, suddenly that giggling image takes on a
much, much darker hue. It really does. We are
not talking about a sweet old lady who bakes
cookies for the church social. We are talking
about a woman who, between the years 1927 and
1954, that's a long time. A very long time. And
over that period, she is responsible for a trail
of bodies that spans across the United States.
It's a case of cognitive dissonance in its purest
form. You see the photos, this smiling, bespectacled
woman looking for all the world like everyone's
favorite aunt, and your brain just struggles
to reconcile that visual with the data. And the
data is just staggering. We are talking about
11 confirmed victims. Confirmed. And these weren't
strangers in a dark alley. These were the people
closest to her. That's the part that really chills
me. Let's just list the roster right at the top
so everyone understands the weight of what we're
discussing today. Okay. We are looking at four
husbands. Four? Two of her own children, one
sister, her own mother. Her own mother. Two grandsons,
and a mother -in -law. It's a systematic dismantling
of her entire family tree. It's almost efficient
in a really terrifying way. And that's what we
want to do in this deep dive. We want to move
past the caricature. It's so easy to look at
that giggling granny headline and treat it as
this, you know, macabre curiosity, tabloid oddity.
Right. But... Our mission today is to really
try and understand the psychology and the methodology.
How does a woman in the early 20th century with
very limited education, limited resources, get
away with this for nearly 30 years? And the motive
she gave. Yeah. That is the thread we really
need to pull on. She claimed she was searching
for, and I'm quoting here, the real romance of
life. While simultaneously collecting life insurance
policies on almost everyone she claimed to love.
See, that's it. It's that intersection. It's
a search for true love. This fantasy life and
the cold, hard calculation of financial gain.
That is where the truth of Nanny Doss lies. So
is she a hopeless romantic who just happens to
kill? Or is the romance just a mask for a very
greedy, very cold predator? I think that's the
question we have to try and answer. So let's
unpack this. We need to go all the way back to
the beginning. Because stories like this, they
always start somewhere. And, well, usually it's
not a happy place. No. Our sources take us back
to Blue Mountain, Alabama. The year is 1905.
November 4th, 1905, to be exact. She was born
Nancy Agnes Hazel. And if you are looking for
the seeds of what was to come, the environment
she was born into is a textbook case of repression
and trauma. And you have to understand the context
of rural Alabama at the turn of the century.
Life was hard for everyone, right? Oh, absolutely.
But the Hazel household was something else entirely.
We have her parents, Louisa and James F. Hazel,
and the father, James. Wow. The source material
paints a picture of a man who was not just strict,
but tyrannically controlling. Controlling is,
I think, putting it mildly. He was a railroader
initially, but by the time Nanny was a teenager,
around 1920, he had taken over the family farm.
And the dynamic there was just brutal. How so?
Well, for one, he forced the children to work
the farm instead of attending school. Which explains
her poor academic performance that's mentioned
in the sources. She just wasn't given a chance
to learn anything other than labor. Exactly.
It creates a world that's very, very small. Your
world is the farm. You work, you sleep, you obey.
But it wasn't just the labor that was the problem.
It was the isolation. James Hazel had this deep,
almost paranoid fear of his daughters interacting
with the outside world. He forbade them from
wearing makeup. He forbade attractive clothing,
no dances, no social events of any kind. And
what was his justification for that? The justification
he gave was that he wanted to prevent molestation.
He had this idea that if he kept them locked
down and looking plain, they would be safe from
men. Which is, I mean, the irony is just tragic
and horrible because the sources are pretty clear
that Nanny was, in fact, raped multiple times
as a child. Exactly. And when she tried to tell
her father, the very man who had built this entire
prison to ostensibly protect her, he refused
to believe her. That is just... It's heartbreaking.
It's a complete betrayal. You have the external
control from the father, the internal abuse from
what happened to her, and then the complete denial
of her reality by the one authority figure in
her life. It creates a pressure cooker. Yeah.
You can absolutely see how a deep, deep hatred
toward the father figure would just fester in
that environment. What does that teach a child?
It teaches a very dangerous lesson. It teaches
you that authority figures are not to be trusted,
that your pain doesn't matter, and that you are
completely and utterly on your own. It forces
a person to retreat inward. And for Nanny, that
retreat took a very specific form. But before
we get to her coping mechanisms, we have to talk
about a specific physical trauma. This is something
that comes up in serial killer profiles a lot,
doesn't it? The head injury. It's a recurring
theme, yes. We see it in so many cases where
impulse control becomes an issue later in life.
It's almost a trope, but it's often based in
fact. So what happened in Nanny's case? It happened
when she was just seven years old. The family
was taking a train trip to southern Alabama to
visit some relatives. A train trip, which in
the early 1900s was a huge deal. It's loud. It's
shaky. Huge. A major event. But something went
wrong. The train stopped abruptly, I mean, just
slammed on the brakes. Nanny was thrown forward
and she hit her head hard on the metal bar of
the seat in front of her. Ouch. And we're not
talking about a little bump on the head here.
The sources say she suffered long -term effects
from this. Severe headaches, blackouts, and depression.
These issues plagued her for years and years.
And what's really interesting is Nanny's own
self -assessment later in life. She explicitly
blamed this accident for her mental instability.
She did. She pointed to that exact moment on
the train and basically said, that's where it
all went wrong for me. Now, we have to look at
that critically, right? Okay. Is it a convenient
excuse? Maybe. It's easy to say, the train made
me do it. It creates a simple narrative. We do
know today that traumatic brain injuries, especially
to the frontal lobe, can have a profound effect
on personality, on impulse control, on emotional
regulation. We can't diagnose her from a century
away, obviously. No, of course not. But based
strictly on the text, she believed this was the
turning point. It gave her a narrative for her
own darkness, a reason for why she felt the way
she did. So you have this potential brain trauma,
and you have this incredibly abusive, isolating
home life. She's an escape. She needs to get
out. And since she can't physically leave the
farm, she escapes mentally. How? She starts devouring
her mother's romance magazines. And this is it.
This is the real romance origin story. It is.
She is living in this gritty... abusive, painful
reality. But in her head, she's living in the
pages of these magazines. And she becomes obsessed
with one part in particular, the Lonely Hearts
columns. For those who might not know, you should
probably explain the Lonely Hearts column context
in that era. It's hard to imagine in the age
of swiping right on an app. Right. Think of it
as the Tinder of the early 20th century, but
much, much slower and with much higher stakes.
Men and women would place these little ads in
magazines. and newspapers seeking partnership.
It often led to correspondents writing letters
back and forth and sometimes very quick marriages.
So for a girl like Nanny, isolated on a farm
in Alabama, these columns represented a portal
to a different world. A completely different
world. A world where men were dashing and romantic
and they came and saved you from your miserable
life. So she wasn't just looking for a boyfriend.
She was looking for the fantasy she read about.
She wanted to be the heroine in this story. Precisely.
And that dissociation, that huge gap between
the fantasy she felt she deserved and the brutal
reality she lived in, that is the space where
her crimes eventually took root. She was building
a script for her life. Yes. And when real life
people didn't follow her script, she, well, she
edited them out. So she is desperate to get out.
And at age 16, she sees her chance. Enter her
husband number one, Charlie Braggs. 1921. She
is 16 years old. They work together at a linen
factory, and she'd only known him for, what,
four or five months? And surprisingly, her father
approves of this. The same man who wouldn't let
her wear nice clothes or go to a dance. I think
the sources suggest it was just about getting
another mouth to feed out of the house. It wasn't
about her happiness. It was about economics.
It was a practical decision for him. So she marries
Charlie Braggs. And in her mind, this is it.
This is her freedom. This is the start of the
romance story. But the reality check hits hard
and fast. Because she doesn't just marry Charlie.
She marries into his whole family situation.
Which was? Charlie was the only son of a single
mother. And this mother was, let's say, territorial.
She insisted on living with the newlyweds. Oh
no, the classic monster -in -law scenario. It
seems so. Nanny wrote about this later on. She
said her mother -in -law had taken over my life
completely. She limited Nanny's activities. She
wouldn't let Nanny's own mother visit. It was
just a transfer of control. That has to be just
devastating. You think you've escaped your father's
prison, but you've just walked into a different
one with a different warden. Exactly. And how
does Nanny cope with this new reality? Let me
guess. Not well. No. She starts drinking and
she develops a heavy smoking addiction. The text
describes a stressed out nanny. And on top of
that, the marriage itself was just volatile.
Both of them suspected the other of cheating.
Brags would disappear for days at a time. It
was incredibly toxic. But they did have children
in the midst of all this chaos. They did. Between
1923 and 1927, they had four daughters. And this
brings us to 1927. This is the year everything
changes. This is where the timeline gets really,
really dark. It does. In 1927, the two middle
daughters died suddenly. Just like that. Two
kids. The cause of death that was given at the
time was suspected food poisoning. Okay, let's
pause on that. Suspected food poisoning. In 1927,
how much of a red flag is that? Does that raise
eyebrows? It's tricky. In that era, food poisoning
or acute indigestion was kind of a catch -all.
Forensics were primitive. People really did die
from bad food, from botulism, things like that.
It wasn't entirely uncommon for children to die
suddenly from mysterious illnesses. But looking
back... with what we now know about nanny it
is the first massive flashing red flag it's the
pattern beginning in charlie bragg's He must
have suspected something, right? Because his
reaction is not what you'd expect from a grieving
father. Not at all. His reaction wasn't to mourn
with his wife and comfort her. He took their
firstborn daughter, Melvina, and he ran. He fled
the house. He left the newborn. He left the newborn
Florine behind with Nanny, but he got himself
and the oldest child out of there as fast as
he could. That is a pure survival instinct kicking
in. He looked at his wife, or the situation,
and he saw a threat. He later stated it explicitly.
He said, I left her because I was frightened
of her. Charlie Braggs is this unique figure
in our deep dive today because he is the only
husband who escaped with his life. The one that
got away. He saw something in her eyes or in
the situation that told him to run. He realized
on some level that staying meant death. So Braggs
is gone, but then the source material says he
comes back in 1928. What's that about? It's brief,
and it's messy. He returns with a divorcee and
her child. It seems he just came back to finalize
things. They officially divorce, and Nanny ends
up taking her two surviving daughters and moving
back to her mother's home. Back to the farm.
Back to square one. Back to the abuse, but now
she's a single mother working in a cotton mill,
and she has already crossed a line. Two children
are dead. The taboo against killing has been
broken. The seal is broken. It is. And that sets
the stage for the next chapter. She needs a new
husband. She needs that romance again. Enter
Robert Franklin Harrelson. Husband number two.
1929. She meets and marries Harrelson. And if
she was looking for her Prince Charming from
the magazines, she certainly did not pick him.
No. The source says he was an alcoholic with
a criminal record for assault. He was a violent
man from Jacksonville, Florida. It was another
abusive relationship. But surprisingly, this
marriage lasted 16 years. It was her longest
relationship by far. Why do you think that is?
Why did she stick with him for so long when she
disposed of others so quickly later on? It's
hard to say definitively from the text. I mean,
perhaps the Great Depression was a factor. Maybe
any kind of stability, even violent stability,
was more valuable. Perhaps he was just intimidating
enough to keep her in check for a while. But
the tension was building. And during this long
troubled marriage, we see the focus of her violence
shift to the next generation, the grandchildren.
And this is this is really the part of the research
that gets under your skin. I agree. We're talking
about Melvina, the daughter that Charlie Bragg's
trying to save. She grows up. She gets married.
She has kids of her own. And Nanny becomes the
grandmother from hell. Okay, let's talk about
the hat pin incident, because this sounds like
something out of a horror movie, but it is right
there in the record. It is 1945. Melvina has
just given birth to her second child. She's recovering
in a room, and she's groggy from the ether, which
was used as anesthesia back then. Right, so she's
in and out of consciousness. Exactly. And she
sort of wakes up, and she sees her mother, Nanny,
standing over the newborn baby's crib. And what
does she see? She thought she saw Nanny stick
a hat pin into the baby's head. A hat pin into
a newborn soft spot. That is pure evil. I have
no other word for it. It is just gruesome. Melvina,
from what we can gather, tries to scream or intervene,
but she's too drugged. Later, when she's more
coherent, she asks Nanny and her husband about
it. What do they say? They tell her the baby
is dead. And Nanny and the husband... They kind
of gaslight her. They say, oh, nanny told them
the baby was dead, but they did happen to notice
she was holding a pin. Wait, wait. So they saw
the pin, but they just accepted the story. The
doctors couldn't explain the death. And Melvina
was basically told she was hallucinating from
the ether. You didn't see what you thought you
saw, but the baby was dead. That is terrifying
to doubt your own memory of your child's murder
because your mother tells you you're crazy. And
it didn't stop there. There was Melvina's other
son, Robert Lee Haynes. He was born in 1943.
What happened to him? So by this point, Melvina
had separated from her husband and started dating
a soldier. And Nanny disapproved of this soldier.
She just did not like him. So her motive here
is control. She punishes the daughter for her
choices by hurting the child. It seems that way.
On July 7, 1945, Melvina and Nanny have a nasty
fight. Melvina leaves the house to go visit her
father, Charlie Braggs. And she leaves her son,
Robert. in nanny's care oh no big mistake a fatal
one the boy died that night the official cause
of death was asphyxia from unknown causes suffocation
that is the clear implication and here is where
the financial motive starts to become very very
clear two months after her grandson's death nanny
collected 500 in life insurance she had taken
out on him 500 in 1945 that's not nothing i mean
it's a few thousand in today's money but for
the life of your own grandchild It's just chillingly
low. It shows you the value she placed on human
life. It was a transaction. Nothing more. So
the husband, Harrelson, is still around while
all of this is happening. Yeah. But not for long.
No. 1945 is a pivotal year. The war is ending,
and Nanny's war at home is escalating. One night,
Harrelson comes home drunk, and according to
Nanny, he raped her. And that was the final straw
for him. The very next day, she goes to his secret
stash. He kept a jar of corn whiskey buried out
in the garden or hidden somewhere. She found
it, and she added a special ingredient. Rat poison?
He came home, he drank it that evening, and he
died that evening. And again, no autopsy, no
investigation. He just drops dead, and that's
it. He was a known alcoholic with a history of
violence. In that time and place, people probably
figured he died from bad moonshine, or his heart
just gave out, the community just shrugged. And
Nanny was a grieving widow once again. And this
marks a real shift, doesn't it? Before this,
we had food poisoning and unknown causes, which
are deniable. The hat pin was direct, but maybe
she thought she'd get away with it because Melvina
was drugged. But now we have a very active, calculated
method. Rat poison. She is refining her craft.
She is. And she is entering her most prolific
phase. This is where she truly becomes the lonely
hearts killer. She goes right back to the columns,
her childhood obsession. She's mobile now. She
isn't stuck in Alabama anymore. She travels to
Lexington, North Carolina to meet her next husband,
Arlie Lanning. And how does she meet him? She
answered his lonely heart's ad, traveled to him,
and they were married three days later. Three
days. She really does not waste any time. She's
chasing that fantasy. But of course, the reality
is always the same. Lanning was another alcoholic
womanizer. It's a clear pattern. She picks men
who are troubled, who are unstable. But the dynamic
is a little different this time. The source material
says she was the one who was disappearing for
long periods. Yes. She would vanish for months
at a time. But when she was home, she played
the role perfectly. The doting housewife. She
cooked, she cleaned, she smiled, she put on a
great show. Which makes the betrayal even deeper.
She's playing the part while she's plotting the
final act. And the final act came for Arlie Lanning
in 1952. He died of what was ruled as heart failure.
Which we can now assume was chemically induced
heart failure. Almost certainly. And look at
the community reaction. It's fascinating. The
townspeople supported her. They saw her as this
poor, grieving widow. They had absolutely no
idea she had done this before. And that's the
advantage of moving states, isn't it? There are
no computerized records. No one in North Carolina
knew about the dead kids and the dead husband
back in Alabama. Exactly. To them, she was a
fresh face with a tragic story, and she cashed
in. But then things get even stranger. The house
burns down. The house she lived in with Lanning.
Yes. In his will, the house had been left to
Lanning's sister, but it conveniently burned
to the ground shortly after his death. The insurance
money for the house went to Nanny. Of course
it did. She banks it immediately and then she
starts cleaning house. That's a good way to put
it. Lanning's mother, her new mother -in -law,
died in her sleep around this time. The implication
is very strong there. So she's just eliminating
anyone who's an obstacle or a burden? Then she
moves in with her sister, Dovi. Her own sister,
who is bedridden. Oh, this is her own sister.
Her own sister. Nanny arrives to take care of
her. And soon after Nanny arrives, Dovey dies.
It's relentless. She is like an angel of death.
If she shows up at your door with a suitcase,
your days are numbered. She is clearing the board.
No ties. No burdens. Just the money and the freedom
to find the next romance. Which brings us to
the Diamond Circle Club. Another dating service.
Another lonely hearts column. This time she meets
Richard L. Morton. Husband number four. They
marry in 1952 in Emporia, Kansas. So we've moved
from Alabama to North Carolina. Now to Kansas.
She's moving west. What was Morton like? Was
he another drinker? Interestingly, no. He didn't
drink. But he was adulterous. He cheated on her.
And we know Nanny does not tolerate men who don't
follow the script. No, she doesn't. But before
she deals with him. Her past comes calling. Her
mother, Louisa, the woman who raised her under
that abusive father, needs a place to stay. So
she comes to live with Nanny and Morton in January
1953. And you would think, okay, this is her
mom, the one she used to read the magazines with.
You'd think there might be some sentiment there.
Louisa lasted a matter of days. Nanny poisoned
her own mother. Why? Was it about an insurance
policy? Or was she just tired of caring for people?
The sources suggest it was just, annoyance, the
burden of care. Louisa was old, she needed attention,
and Nanny did not want to give it. That is just
so cold. And Morton followed soon after. He died
three months later on May 19, 1953. So in the
span of just a few months, she kills her own
mother and her fourth husband. The rapidity is
increasing. She isn't waiting 16 years anymore.
She's cycling through them. She's getting more
efficient. And this leads us to the final chapter,
the downfall. Husband number five. Samuel Doss.
June 1953. She's in Tulsa, Oklahoma now, a different
state again. And Samuel Doss was different, wasn't
he? Very different. He was a Nazarene minister.
He had lost his previous family to a tornado
in Arkansas. By all accounts, he was a godly
man. No drinking, no carousing, very devout.
So you would think this is what you wanted. A
good, stable man. The opposite of the others.
You would think. But he had a fatal flaw in Nanny's
eyes. He was boring. And he was controlling,
but in a different way. He disapproved of her
romance novels. He attacked the fantasy itself.
He did. He told her she couldn't read the very
stories that had sustained her since she was
a little girl. He forbade them. That must have
triggered something very deep in her. It's the
father figure saying no all over again. I think
so. And Samuel was also very frugal. He was tight
with money. Nanny wanted to spend the insurance
money she'd collected, and he wouldn't let her.
So the clog starts ticking on Samuel Dawson.
It does. In September of 1954, Samuel is admitted
to the hospital with what they thought were flu
-like symptoms. The doctors diagnosed it as a
severe digestive tract infection. Which is code
for he's been poisoned, but he isn't dead yet.
He was a strong man, and he survived the first
dose. He was treated in the hospital and actually
released on October 5th. So he goes home to the
woman who just tried to kill him. And Nanny realizes
she needs to finish the job. But this is where
she gets sloppy. Or maybe just impatient. What
happened on October 12th? That evening, Samuel
died. But it was the suddenness of it that raised
the alarm. He had just been released from the
hospital. He was supposed to be getting better.
And what did Nanny do? She was in a rush. She
immediately tried to collect on two life insurance
policies she had on him. That's the tell. The
body isn't even cold. She's on the phone with
the insurance company. And the doctor who had
treated Samuel in the hospital was immediately
suspicious. He refused to sign the death certificate
and insisted on an autopsy. And this time, they
looked for poison. They found a huge amount of
arsenic in his system, enough to kill a horse.
She hadn't just sprinkled a little in his food.
She had overloaded his system to make sure it
worked this time. Some of the sources mentioned
it was in a prune cake. Right. Or the coffee.
Coffee and a prune cake are the legends. However
she delivered it, it was a massive undeniable
dose. And because she used so much, the evidence
was incontrovertible. So they arrest her. Yeah.
And this is where the persona of the giggling
granny. really comes into the public eye. Yes.
They bring her in for questioning about Samuel,
and she confesses. But not just to killing Samuel.
She just starts talking. She starts talking.
She confesses to killing four husbands, her mother,
her sister, her grandson, her mother -in -law.
She just lays it all out. But why? Why admit
to all of it if they only had her on the one
murder? It's bizarre. It seemed like she was
proud of it, or at least amused by the whole
thing. This is where the press had an absolute
field day. She would recount these horrific murders,
you know, describing how she put rat poison in
her husband's whiskey, and she would chuckle.
She would giggle. That is so deeply disturbing.
It's a complete and total disconnect. The giggling
granny persona was born in those interrogation
rooms. She seemed like she was just gossiping
about her neighbors, not confessing to being
one of the most prolific female serial killers
in American history. Oh, and they asked her why
she did it all. She gave that famous chilling
line, I was searching for the real romance of
life. It's incredible. She killed them because
they didn't measure up to the fictional characters
in the magazines. And because she wanted the
insurance money. We can never forget that. Almost
every single death came with a payout. Maybe
not a fortune each time, but it was enough to
keep her going, to fund the search for the next
victim. So the trial. Or, I guess, the lack of
a full trial. Right. The state of Oklahoma decided
to center the case only on Samuel Doss. They
had the hard physical evidence. It was an absolute
slam dunk. And the prosecutor was J. Howard Edmondson,
a big name. A very ambitious one who would later
become governor of Oklahoma. He wanted a clean,
simple conviction, and that's what he got. So
what was the sentence? She pled guilty on May
17, 1955, and she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Wait, life? Why not the death penalty? She confessed
to killing 11 people. The state did not pursue
it, and the sources are explicit about this,
due to her sex. In the 1950s, they were very
reluctant to execute a woman, especially a grandmotherly
figure, even if she was a monster. So she goes
to prison. And she dies there. She developed
leukemia and died on June 2, 1965, in the hospital
ward of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Ten
years in prison. It doesn't seem like much justice
for 11 lives. No, it all ends very quietly, but
the legacy is just huge. So let's zoom out. What
does this all mean? We've got this tragic origin
story, this decades -long brutal spree, and this
bizarre giggling conclusion. For our listener,
the learner, what is the real takeaway here?
I think the first big takeaway is a warning about
stereotypes. We are conditioned, even today,
to see older women, mothers, grandmothers, as
nurturers, as safe. Nanny Doss used that biological
camouflage to kill for decades. It's the caretaker
blind spot. No one ever suspects the person who's
making the soup. Exactly. And secondly, it really
highlights the importance of communication in
law enforcement or the lack thereof back then.
She got away with this for so long because she
moved. Alabama didn't talk to North Carolina.
North Carolina didn't talk to Kansas. She exploited
the gaps in the system. It was the era before
databases. If she had tried this today, the second
husband's sudden death would have hopefully flagged
her instantly. One would hope. But her ability
to play the grieving widow was her greatest weapon.
She weaponized society's empathy. And finally,
that motive. That search for real romance. It
raises a really provocative question to end on.
Nanny claimed she wanted love. But every single
time she got close to a real long -term relationship,
she ended it with murder. So was the romance
just a story she told herself to justify the
greed? Yeah. A cover for the insurance money?
Or, and this is the darker thought, was the killing
the only part of the relationship she actually
controlled? Maybe the romance was never about
the man. Maybe the romance for her was about
having the ultimate power over life and death,
the very power that her father had taken away
from her all those years ago. That is a dark
thought to leave on. The idea that murder was
her only true form of agency. It's a real possibility.
Well, on that note, thanks for taking this deep
dive with us. Sleep tight. And maybe check your
life insurance policy. And who's cooking your
dinner? See you next time.