Speaker 1: Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Speaker 1: Please take care and listening. Today's episode is part two
Speaker 1: of our three part mini series about the first American
Speaker 1: female serial killer. If you miss part one, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend that you pause me here, listen to that episode,
Speaker 1: and then come back once you're caught up. You can
Speaker 1: even listen to it on warp speed. But I promise
Speaker 1: that backstory is integral to understanding Jane Toppin's criminal escalations,
Speaker 1: which are going to get into in this episode. Missus
Speaker 1: Amelia Finny was thirty six years old when her husband
Speaker 1: finally convinced her to go to the hospital for her pain.
Speaker 1: She was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital for a uterine ulcer.
Speaker 1: In the operating theater, physicians rendered her unconscious with morphine
Speaker 1: in front of an audience of nursing students. They demonstrated
Speaker 1: to the students how to treat an ulcer by burning
Speaker 1: it with silver nitrate. They closed Amelia's abdomen and returned
Speaker 1: her to the recovery wing. Pain from the procedure woke
Speaker 1: Amelia in the middle of the night into her relief,
Speaker 1: she saw a nurse immediately by her side, asking her
Speaker 1: how she was feeling. Amelia tried to explain that she
Speaker 1: couldn't bear the pain, and she was relieved when the
Speaker 1: nurse brought a cool glass of water to her lips,
Speaker 1: but it tasted bitter. Her vision fogged and the nurse
Speaker 1: blurred above her. She was surprised to feel the mattress
Speaker 1: sag as the nurse sat on the bed beside her.
Speaker 1: Then the nurse's arm was under her neck and her
Speaker 1: other hand was smoothing her hair back from her face
Speaker 1: like a lover would do. Amelia tried to say as much,
Speaker 1: but she found herself paralyzed. The light from a lamp
Speaker 1: flashed first in one eye as the nurse held back
Speaker 1: the lid, and then the other. She brought the bitter
Speaker 1: water back to Amelia's lips, and Amelia willed her jaw
Speaker 1: to clamp shut, but she still couldn't move. She felt
Speaker 1: the cup against her lips. At that moment, footsteps sounded
Speaker 1: in the hallway and the nurse disappeared. Amelia would try
Speaker 1: for years to remember that nightmare as only a dream,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a dream. Welcome to the greatest true
Speaker 1: crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. I'm a
Speaker 1: writer of true crime, which means I live inside their
Speaker 1: research wormhole and I'm constantly reading about crime. But I'm
Speaker 1: not necessarily interested in the attention grabbing elements like blood
Speaker 1: and gore. I'm more interested in the people behind these
Speaker 1: stories and what we can learn about society by looking
Speaker 1: at their experiences. That's what I explore here every week
Speaker 1: when I dig into crimes where a woman is not
Speaker 1: just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer,
Speaker 1: the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or a combination of
Speaker 1: these roles. As you probably already know, women can do anything. Today,
Speaker 1: we're continuing our three part mini series on the first
Speaker 1: American female serial killer. It's a nineteenth century American tale
Speaker 1: about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into
Speaker 1: a mad scientist murderer, one of the most prolific murderers
Speaker 1: in history. I spent years researching her story for my book,
Speaker 1: America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Toppin and the Making
Speaker 1: of a Monster, so I'm excited to share her story
Speaker 1: with you in this episode. Jane's extracurricular medical experiments start
Speaker 1: to escalate, and what violent warp speed escalations. They were
Speaker 1: more about those after the break. One thing that kept
Speaker 1: anyone from suspecting Jane Toppin is that she really didn't
Speaker 1: have a single victim profile. They were different ages, genders,
Speaker 1: and abilities. When most serial murderers have a pretty specific type.
Speaker 1: For example, Ted Bundy liked small white women with dark
Speaker 1: hair parted down the middle. The ones who don't have
Speaker 1: a type, like Richard Ramirez, the original Nightstalker, are much
Speaker 1: harder to find. She did start off with a type,
Speaker 1: they were her patients, but her patients didn't have much
Speaker 1: in common on paper. In our last episode, we followed
Speaker 1: Jane from the Boston Female Asylum basically an orphanage, to
Speaker 1: indentured servitude with the Tappin family. When Auntie Toppin died
Speaker 1: and failed to leave Jane anything in her will, Jane
Speaker 1: was hurt and shocked, given she was all Jane knew
Speaker 1: of her mother, and to add insult to injury, her
Speaker 1: foster sister, Elizabeth Briga, told her that she could stay
Speaker 1: on at their house for as long as she wanted
Speaker 1: if she continued being her servant. Jane took all that
Speaker 1: as a kind of challenge. She applied and got into
Speaker 1: the most prestigious nursing school of the time at Cambridge Hospital.
Speaker 1: All of this is pretty remarkable on its own. She's
Speaker 1: setting herself up with main character energy. At the very least,
Speaker 1: this has all the trappings of an underdog success story,
Speaker 1: if only the work at the hospital was grueling and
Speaker 1: Jane was awesome at it. She was a good bit
Speaker 1: older than most of her fellow students at thirty one.
Speaker 1: Her patients loved her. They often told other nurses they
Speaker 1: preferred Jane's care, and that made the other girls jealous,
Speaker 1: so they snitched on Jane for staying out past curfew
Speaker 1: and drinking alcohol, two things that were unforgivable in the
Speaker 1: administration's eyes. Granted, Jane did do those things. She also
Speaker 1: swiped any cash left unguarded and spent it on whatever
Speaker 1: she wanted, usually food or booze. When she heard that
Speaker 1: the other nurses tattled on her, she went to the
Speaker 1: head nurse herself and reported a few things that they'd done. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: they were all untrue for some reason, maybe because Jane
Speaker 1: was indispensable, or maybe because Jane was a very skilled liar.
Speaker 1: The administration believed Jane, and they expelled the other nurses.
Speaker 1: Jane watched and giggled from her upstairs window as her
Speaker 1: enemies dragged out their belongings before she dressed for the
Speaker 1: morning meal and prayers. With the snitches out of the way,
Speaker 1: Jane was free to do as she pleased. Almost She
Speaker 1: still had to actually do her job, but she was
Speaker 1: great at that. Doctors adored Jane. She anticipated things they
Speaker 1: never thought of, and having her at their elbow made
Speaker 1: everything go so smoothly. And her patients loved her too,
Speaker 1: at least most of them did, especially the ones whom
Speaker 1: she liked. But occasionally the other nurses would hear that
Speaker 1: a patient was scared of Jane. Still, now that these
Speaker 1: nurses had seen everyone that tattled on Jane get fired,
Speaker 1: they were reluctant to speak up, which was really useful
Speaker 1: for Jane because the patient's concerns were warranted. Jane was
Speaker 1: becoming scary. She hated how her favorite patients would leave
Speaker 1: her without a second thought, abandoning her, so she started
Speaker 1: doing a little research. Harold Scheckter, an incredible writer who
Speaker 1: covered Jane's story in his book Fatal, describes how her
Speaker 1: textbook started to naturally fall open to the page's detailing opiates.
Speaker 1: She had cracked the spine there. That was how often
Speaker 1: she studied these drugs, particularly morphine. By the way, I
Speaker 1: get to interview Scheckter in the next episode of this
Speaker 1: mini series, so be sure to follow the greatest true
Speaker 1: crime stories ever told and make sure you come back
Speaker 1: for that. But let me explain why Jane was obsessed
Speaker 1: with morphine. But at the time, it was pretty popular
Speaker 1: as a surgical anesthesia and painkiller, so there was plenty
Speaker 1: of it around the hospital and it was easy for
Speaker 1: Jane to access, and it did exactly what she needed
Speaker 1: it to do. Administered at the right dose, it would
Speaker 1: send a patient right into a coma, so Jane started
Speaker 1: administering that dose. If her patients were in comas, they
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't leave her. And the thing is, once Jane
Speaker 1: started experimenting on her patients, she liked how it made
Speaker 1: her feel. After administering the injection, she would stand by
Speaker 1: their bedsides to observe the effects. She watched their pupils
Speaker 1: contract heard their breathing become louder, and touch their skin
Speaker 1: as they broke into a cold sweat. They would go
Speaker 1: into a coma almost immediately. A few hours later, they
Speaker 1: would die. But Jane found that didn't seem to bother
Speaker 1: her at all. After all, her patients were already sick
Speaker 1: in a hospital. Maybe death by her side was the
Speaker 1: best way to go. In fact, the only thing about
Speaker 1: this process that Jane didn't like was how straightforward it was.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, she knew these overdose deaths were easily identifiable.
Speaker 1: She had to improve her experiments, so she started adding
Speaker 1: atropine to her morphine injections. This drug complicated and sometimes
Speaker 1: even directly countered signs of a morphine overdose. For example,
Speaker 1: it dilated the pupils while morphine turned them into pinpoints.
Speaker 1: Doctors would see the patients having fits and diagnosed them
Speaker 1: with epilepsy or stroke. The drugs Jane used in tandem
Speaker 1: were a perfect combination for generating misdiagnosis and masking her crimes.
Speaker 1: But there was more to Jane's choice in atropine. Atropinees
Speaker 1: effects are extreme when victims are given in overdose, parched mouths,
Speaker 1: loss of motor function, and the grotesque picking at non
Speaker 1: existent things like a tick, and as it turned out,
Speaker 1: Jane's favorite way to watch her patients die was not
Speaker 1: peacefully in a coma, but rather with violent convulsions that
Speaker 1: multiple overdoses rendered. She started playing with the timing of
Speaker 1: the two drugs, first overdosing her patient with morphine and
Speaker 1: then giving them atropine. Sometimes she would give morphine and
Speaker 1: then dissolve atropine and water and let her patient drink it, immediately,
Speaker 1: setting off all the side effects at once. Sometimes she
Speaker 1: let all the morphine symptoms happen and then rolled her
Speaker 1: patient over and administered the atropine via enema. It was
Speaker 1: a totally different show. Jane liked to see how the
Speaker 1: timing affected the symptoms. If experimenting on your patients isn't
Speaker 1: macab enough, the most interesting, I mean fucked up thing
Speaker 1: is that Jane wasn't always trying to kill them as
Speaker 1: she experimented. Jane developed a death fetish. Not only was
Speaker 1: she poisoning people to watch them suffer. As if that
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, rescuing patients whom she had poisoned from the
Speaker 1: brink of death became her thing. She liked the power
Speaker 1: of controlling death, of torturing people who were already sick
Speaker 1: of watching and feeling them spasm and suffocate and die
Speaker 1: from in their beds. With them, she loved to overdose
Speaker 1: them on morphine to the very brink of death and
Speaker 1: see if she could nurse them back to health. It
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, sloppy, but james coworkers actually overheard her saying
Speaker 1: there was quote no point in keeping old people alive,
Speaker 1: and if her coworkers heard her, so did her patience.
Speaker 1: In fact, the complaints about Jane got so bad that
Speaker 1: the doctors couldn't ignore them anymore, and they really tried
Speaker 1: to ignore them. After all, to them, Jane was a godsend,
Speaker 1: one of their all time best nurses. They really hated
Speaker 1: to lose her. That's why, after four years of escalating violence,
Speaker 1: they finally did let her go, and they let her
Speaker 1: go with raving references. That's how she left the most
Speaker 1: prestigious nursing school in disgrace, only to be immediately admitted
Speaker 1: to the second most prestigious nursing school. The head nurse
Speaker 1: fought against admitting Jane to Massachusetts General Hospital, but not
Speaker 1: because of the rumors about her. She didn't want to
Speaker 1: hire Jane because she was Irish. Author Harold Scheckter says
Speaker 1: very eloquently that the head nurse was quote an unreconstructed
Speaker 1: bigot who didn't want to admit Jane because of her
Speaker 1: low origins. References from some of the most prestigious doctors
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts, though, convinced even the head nurse that Jane
Speaker 1: deserved a spot. In fact, Jane passed her probationary period
Speaker 1: with such proficiency that when the same head nurse went
Speaker 1: on leave the next year, Jane took her position. That's
Speaker 1: where Jane experimented on Amelia Finnie, who we started this
Speaker 1: episode with. And although missus Finny would never forget that
Speaker 1: experience and another nurse, McCutcheon was sure that Jane had
Speaker 1: done something untoward and she really tried to get the
Speaker 1: story out of Amelia. Amelia didn't say anything until years later.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, these are the victorians. They don't talk
Speaker 1: about things as bass as, like their own bodies and
Speaker 1: experiences and I am being flipped, but really, Amelia relaying
Speaker 1: that story would ruin her own reputation, even if it
Speaker 1: was true, and even if she was an incapacitated victim.
Speaker 1: As a culture, even now we have it quite moved
Speaker 1: all the way past that mentality. So it wasn't that
Speaker 1: gross misconduct with he her patient, Amelia Finny, that got
Speaker 1: Jane in trouble. But Amelia wasn't Jane's only victim at
Speaker 1: Massachusetts General Hospital. The habits that Jane started at her
Speaker 1: previous hospital carried over into her new job almost immediately.
Speaker 1: The other nurses suspected Jane of hurting her patients. They
Speaker 1: didn't like her at all. She regularly disparaged their work
Speaker 1: and took credit for their accomplishments. She tampered with their
Speaker 1: fever charts and medical records, and she stole She also
Speaker 1: administered medication with wild disregards her protocol, which is really
Speaker 1: saying something. I mean, this is a time when you
Speaker 1: could buy cocaine over the counter. You could buy chocolate
Speaker 1: covered strych nine tablets at the drug store to treat
Speaker 1: a stomach ache. And I know there's a sort of
Speaker 1: bell curve with a lot of medicine where too little
Speaker 1: does nothing, the right amount treats the issue, and too
Speaker 1: much becomes an issue on its own. You have to
Speaker 1: hit the sweet spot or almost any medicine becomes poison.
Speaker 1: Absolutely true, But we know now that strychnine is overall
Speaker 1: a very strong poison. I mean, treat your stomach ache
Speaker 1: with strychnine candy and it could very possibly be your
Speaker 1: last stomach ache. So Jane's flagrant disregard for protocol was
Speaker 1: really extreme if it caught the attention of the other nurses,
Speaker 1: and they suspected more than just that. They noticed how
Speaker 1: Jane's patience often seemed to die in strange, difficult to
Speaker 1: diagnose fits. The rumors facts really about Jane flew all
Speaker 1: over Massachusetts General Hospital, but the thing that eventually got
Speaker 1: her kicked out was something small. She just left the
Speaker 1: ward without permission. It's not clear whether she was off
Speaker 1: for the evening and forgot to tell someone she was
Speaker 1: popping out, or if she was on duty and just
Speaker 1: walked off the job. But the rumors about Jane were
Speaker 1: no longer ignorable. It seems like this was the one
Speaker 1: rule they could actually confirm Jane was breaking, so they
Speaker 1: dismissed her. By this time, Jane had basically earned her
Speaker 1: nursing degree twice, but she was nothing if not tenacious.
Speaker 1: She worked as a private nurse for a year to
Speaker 1: build her references, and then she reapplied and was readmitted
Speaker 1: to Cambridge Hospital. Pretty unbelievable if you ask me, but
Speaker 1: it's true. As they say, old habits die hard. So
Speaker 1: back at Cambridge Hospital, when a nurse trainee ill, Jane
Speaker 1: was assigned to take care of her. After that, the
Speaker 1: trainee had two seizures back to back when she'd never
Speaker 1: had them before and was overall in good health. Unlike
Speaker 1: many of the elderly patients Jane worked with. Doctors weren't
Speaker 1: sure what exactly had happened, but at that point they
Speaker 1: couldn't ignore the rumors that Jane was not administering drugs correctly,
Speaker 1: so they dismissed her again. You'd think that finally Jane
Speaker 1: would have to stop killing, if not because she was
Speaker 1: ruining her chance at a career by murdering people, at
Speaker 1: the very least because she was simply out of options,
Speaker 1: Except this is Jane Toppin, so she wasn't out of options.
Speaker 1: She just found a different way. She said about being fired,
Speaker 1: I didn't care because I had made up my mind
Speaker 1: that I could make more money and have an easier
Speaker 1: time by going out by the day in families. Jane
Speaker 1: had made some connections in her years at Massachusetts' most
Speaker 1: prestigious hospitals, and she decided it was time to use them,
Speaker 1: she would go into private nursing where she could make
Speaker 1: a lot more money. That's exactly what she did. While
Speaker 1: the patient load of private nursing was lower, it was
Speaker 1: still very demanding. A nurse kept round the clock bedside vigils,
Speaker 1: and according to author Harold Scheckter, she was quote expected
Speaker 1: to anticipate the patients every need, to obey the doctors
Speaker 1: every direction, and to carry out the wishes of the
Speaker 1: family without question. While performing her duties, she was required
Speaker 1: to be a constant but unobtrusive presence, an unwaveringly cheerful disposition,
Speaker 1: and a docile manner, never displaying the slightest trace of discourtesy, fatigue,
Speaker 1: or irritation. Just reading that list makes me tired and earlier.
Speaker 1: When I said Jane made more money in private nursing,
Speaker 1: she made maybe six hundred dollars per year. That's about
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars today, Still significantly more than she would
Speaker 1: have made at the hospital. But it's not a lot,
Speaker 1: especially given that fucking list. And as any freelancer will
Speaker 1: tell you, it is either feast or famine. You either
Speaker 1: have so much work you don't have time to breathe,
Speaker 1: or you are hunting down jobs and pinching your pennies.
Speaker 1: A lot of our world has changed since the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: but not that that was the same for Jane as
Speaker 1: it is for us. So, as you might know, you
Speaker 1: have to get creative when it comes to making money.
Speaker 1: For a lot of us, that means like opening a
Speaker 1: high yield savings account and scheduling payments to our checking
Speaker 1: so that we seldom feel the gap. Jane did not
Speaker 1: go that route. It could have been a personality thing,
Speaker 1: but honestly, she might not have been educated on how
Speaker 1: to do that. Plus sometimes even her patients who could
Speaker 1: afford it didn't pay what they'd agreed simply because they
Speaker 1: didn't have to. Back then, there was no real way
Speaker 1: for a normal person to take a freelance contract to
Speaker 1: small claims court, you know. I mean, yeah, you could,
Speaker 1: but who has time for that? Who wants to risk
Speaker 1: their reputation? So Jane ran up some debt, and she
Speaker 1: had the habit of borrowing money from her employers, not
Speaker 1: a lot, or at least not a lot in one
Speaker 1: place at one time, But she'd never pay it back.
Speaker 1: I know that's dishonest, it is, but I'm also like shrug.
Speaker 1: They might not have paid her at all. But as
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've surmised, that's far from the worst thing
Speaker 1: Jane did. After going into private practice, she was still experimenting. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we can call it experimenting anymore. Jane
Speaker 1: knew exactly what she was doing. When she got tired
Speaker 1: of nursing a patient, she'd offer them some mineral water.
Speaker 1: Hunyati was her brand. It was Hungarian and it was
Speaker 1: very popular, despite its bitter taste. She'd drop in the
Speaker 1: combination of morphine and atropine and serve it to her patient.
Speaker 1: Now she knew just what to expect, and yes, she
Speaker 1: still had her mad scientist sexual fetish. Every time she could,
Speaker 1: she got into bed with her victims and held them
Speaker 1: close while they shuddered and spasmed and struggled to breathe. Later,
Speaker 1: she recalled that thrill in disturbing descriptions voluptuous delight, delirious enjoyment,
Speaker 1: greatest conceivable pleasure. After all that work, in the intense
Speaker 1: release of her sick pleasure, Jane needed time to recuperate.
Speaker 1: She liked to spend the summers at the Jacin House,
Speaker 1: a boarding house outside Boston at a place they called
Speaker 1: Buzzard's Bay. Jane spent her summers at a cottage on
Speaker 1: the resort like property called the Jakin House in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a complete vacation. She didn't give round
Speaker 1: the clock care, but she bartered with the proprietors, the
Speaker 1: Davis family. In exchange for being the sort of resident nurse,
Speaker 1: she got a reduced rate. Jane was at this cottage
Speaker 1: when she reached back out to her foster sister, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: Jane had kept in contact with Elizabeth and her husband Ramel.
Speaker 1: What a wild name, right, But Jane and Elizabeth weren't
Speaker 1: exactly close. The Brighams were glad to let Jane stay
Speaker 1: in her old room in their house for a few
Speaker 1: days whenever she was in town, which was nice enough.
Speaker 1: There was a pretty big age gap between Elizabeth and Jane.
Speaker 1: But aside from that, Elizabeth experienced all of the advantages
Speaker 1: in life that Jane had not. She did not have
Speaker 1: to work, she had a family, and she was able
Speaker 1: to marry. At best, it was the relationship between a
Speaker 1: well treated menial and her boss. Elizabeth May not have
Speaker 1: recognized it that way, but Jane certainly did yet. In
Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen ninety nine, after years of working
Speaker 1: as a private nurse, Jane invited Elizabeth out to Buzzard's Bay.
Speaker 1: When Elizabeth told about the invitation, he encouraged her to go.
Speaker 1: She had recently experienced some melancholia, which is more or
Speaker 1: less the old timey term for depression, and he thought
Speaker 1: it would help. He sent her out from Lowell on
Speaker 1: the train with a steamer trunk and fifty dollars on Saturday,
Speaker 1: August twenty sixth, eighteen ninety nine. The day after Elizabeth arrived,
Speaker 1: she and Jane had what sounds like a lovely day.
Speaker 1: They dressed in white summer dresses and carried a picnic
Speaker 1: of cold corn, beef and saltwater taffy down to the pier,
Speaker 1: and they chatted in the sunshine for several hours before
Speaker 1: Elizabeth turned in for bed. Later, Jane would admit to
Speaker 1: what happened next. Jane said that this was her chance
Speaker 1: to exact revenge on Elizabeth. She was the only victim
Speaker 1: who quote I actually hated and poisoned with a vindictive purpose.
Speaker 1: I let her die slowly with gripping torture. I fixed
Speaker 1: mineral water so it would do that, and then I
Speaker 1: added morphia to it. I held her in my arms
Speaker 1: and watched with delight as she gasped out her life.
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, Jane went to her landlords, Mattie and Alden Davis.
Speaker 1: She said that her sister hadn't responded when Jane called
Speaker 1: her down to breakfast. She was very sick. They should
Speaker 1: call a doctor, and they did. Jane also sent a
Speaker 1: telegraph to Aroml back in Lowell, saying that Elizabeth was
Speaker 1: dangerously ill. By the time he could get out there.
Speaker 1: The following morning, Elizabeth was in a coma. The physician
Speaker 1: whom the Davises had summoned said that she had apoplexy
Speaker 1: or what today we call a stroke. Ormel was at
Speaker 1: her bedside all night until she died the following morning.
Speaker 1: You might have noticed that the confession I quoted said
Speaker 1: that Jane held Elizabeth while she died in the grotesque
Speaker 1: sexual way that she had held her other victims. But
Speaker 1: Ramel said he was there when Elizabeth died. To me,
Speaker 1: that means something doesn't add up. I'm not saying Jane
Speaker 1: didn't do it. She is for sure, beyond a shadow
Speaker 1: of a doubt, a total monster, absolutely capable of the
Speaker 1: story she gave. And I still don't think she actually
Speaker 1: said everything her confession in the hers papers she said.
Speaker 1: While I was researching, I was never quite able to
Speaker 1: reconcile what she said with some of the facts, so
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to talking to author Harold Scheckter about it.
Speaker 1: But back to the story, Ormel was crushed. He truly
Speaker 1: loved his wife, and his overwhelming grief was probably the
Speaker 1: reason that it took him a long time to realize
Speaker 1: when he went through Elizabeth's possessions that there was money
Speaker 1: missing from her purse, at least fifty dollars gone. Before
Speaker 1: Ormel left. The following morning, Jane asked to talk to him.
Speaker 1: Jane said that in one of her dying breaths, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: had asked that he makes sure her gold watch went
Speaker 1: to Jane if she died. Ormel gave it over right away,
Speaker 1: Even in her last breath. He thought his wife was
Speaker 1: so kind that she made sure to care for others,
Speaker 1: and it lifted his heart, if only a little. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't learn until much later, when the police were going
Speaker 1: through receipts and documents that Jane had pawned that watch
Speaker 1: right away. At the end of the summer, Jane didn't
Speaker 1: settle up her tab at the Jacin House she hadn't
Speaker 1: in years. Instead, she just left, moved back to Boston
Speaker 1: and into an apartment, and started searching out new nursing gigs.
Speaker 1: That's when Jane reconnected with her friend Myra Connors from Lowell.
Speaker 1: Myra was a forty year old widow. The origins and
Speaker 1: nature of their relationship are still unknown. What we do
Speaker 1: know is that Myra fell ill with peritonidis and Jane
Speaker 1: went home to Lowell to help her friend out. Within
Speaker 1: a few months, Myra died of strychnine poisoning. Jane went
Speaker 1: back to her standby private nursing. She took on several
Speaker 1: private nursing clients, whom she helped and then when they
Speaker 1: got to quote her to fussy, she murdered them. By
Speaker 1: nineteen oh one, she was living in the Boston home
Speaker 1: of her clients, Eliza and Edward Beadle. That's when Mattie Davis,
Speaker 1: the landlady at the Jakin House, came down from Buzzard's
Speaker 1: Bay to collect on Jane's debts from the previous summer.
Speaker 1: Mattie was fed up. Yes, they had agreed over five
Speaker 1: years ago that Jane would get a discounted rate in
Speaker 1: exchange for being the sort of resident nurse at the property,
Speaker 1: but discounted didn't mean free. Jane's bill kept climbing and
Speaker 1: she never did anything about it. There was no payment
Speaker 1: plan in place, so in June nineteen oh one, Maddie
Speaker 1: got a train ticket to Boston. She climbed into her
Speaker 1: seat on the train and stewed, Imagine for a second
Speaker 1: that you own a bed and breakfast and you're balancing
Speaker 1: your checkbook or okay, looking at your p and L
Speaker 1: if you want to really update the situation. You realize
Speaker 1: then that this woman who's been coming to stay there
Speaker 1: for years on end hasn't paid you a cent. I
Speaker 1: would be boiling. And because that's not how you do business,
Speaker 1: taking people's word that they're good for their debts. You
Speaker 1: know it was your husband who let it slide. So
Speaker 1: now here you go in your best dress, because you're
Speaker 1: not to be trifled with on this long ass, hot
Speaker 1: ass train across the state to get your money. If
Speaker 1: that was me, I would be really playing out the
Speaker 1: possible situations, working up the decision tree of if she
Speaker 1: says this, then I'll do this, just so she couldn't
Speaker 1: catch me off guard, like I was going to face
Speaker 1: off with a bully. I would stare out the window
Speaker 1: and scheme. I can only imagine that's what Mattie Davis's
Speaker 1: brain was doing the whole way to Boston. So imagine
Speaker 1: Mattie's surprise when she arrives at the Beatles' home and
Speaker 1: Jane answers the door, thrilled to see her. Still, Maddie
Speaker 1: stood her ground. She said she was there to collect
Speaker 1: what Jane owed them, and Jane said, sure, of course,
Speaker 1: let's go to the bank and get your money. Mattie
Speaker 1: had to have been shocked, and she probably looked shocked.
Speaker 1: And then Jane said, why don't you come in for
Speaker 1: a second and have a glass of water first, and
Speaker 1: you may as well stay for lunch. So Mattie stayed
Speaker 1: for the meal, talked with the Beatles for a while,
Speaker 1: and then she and Jane set out on foot to
Speaker 1: the bank, but they didn't get far before Mattie fainted.
Speaker 1: Jane brought her back to the house and set her
Speaker 1: up in bed. She hung ice sheets all around the
Speaker 1: room to keep it cool, and she called Mattie's daughter
Speaker 1: Genevieve to come stay while her mother recovered. But Mattie
Speaker 1: didn't recover. Jane tortured her for a long time. She
Speaker 1: was at the Beatles Home for seven days while Jane
Speaker 1: alternated her doses of morphine and atropine. She even brought
Speaker 1: Mattie into full state of lucidity before sending her back
Speaker 1: into a coma and eventually killing her with a final
Speaker 1: dose of morphine. She wanted to make it look like
Speaker 1: Maddie had died of natural causes, and that's what the
Speaker 1: doctor claimed. Jane attended the funeral at the Jakin House
Speaker 1: on July fifth, and that's when she decided she was
Speaker 1: ready for a new kind of challenge. She decided she
Speaker 1: would wipe out the whole Davis family one by one. Actually,
Speaker 1: she didn't want to just take out the family. She
Speaker 1: wanted to burn their whole house to the ground. Join
Speaker 1: me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told.
Speaker 1: For the finale of our three part mini series on
Speaker 1: Jane Tappin, you'll get to hear how Jane's crimes escalated
Speaker 1: even more before the law finally caught up with her.
Speaker 1: I also have a conversation with Harold Scheckter, author of
Speaker 1: the book on Jane called Fatal. My research on this
Speaker 1: story goes really deep, and a lot of my sources
Speaker 1: were primary sources I looked at while writing my book,
Speaker 1: America's First Female serial Killer, Jane Tappin and the Making
Speaker 1: of a Monster. Those sources included interviews, news articles, and
Speaker 1: documents from the trial I'll talk about in the upcoming finale.
Speaker 1: For more of the details that I don't have the
Speaker 1: space to include in this mini series, check out the
Speaker 1: full book, and for more information about this case and
Speaker 1: others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com.
Speaker 1: Sign up for Diversion's newsletter and be among the first
Speaker 1: to hear about special behind the scenes features with the
Speaker 1: hosts and actors from Diversion's podcasts, more shows you'll love
Speaker 1: from Diversion and our partners, and other exclusive tidbits you
Speaker 1: can't get anywhere else. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever
Speaker 1: Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbrair.
Speaker 1: I wrote this episode and our editorial director is Nora Bateel.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our
Speaker 1: development team is Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music
Speaker 1: by Tyler Kash. Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and
Speaker 1: Scott Waxman. Diversion Audio