Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky, pudgy and short.
Speaker 1: He was far from handsome. If he had one good feature,
Speaker 1: it might have been his striking, pale blue eyes. Some
Speaker 1: thought he was charming, though, and he knew it. Herman
Speaker 1: Drength had immigrated from the Netherlands with his father in
Speaker 1: and they settled into American life as farmers in Iowa.
Speaker 1: But the rural existence wasn't his thing. He had big
Speaker 1: plans and the open roads and growing cities had much
Speaker 1: to offer. As soon as he was able, Herman enlisted
Speaker 1: and ended up serving in World War One. After the war,
Speaker 1: he used his charm for a profession far more lucrative
Speaker 1: than farming. He became an Oklahoma oil stock promoter, while
Speaker 1: a funny one anyway, and a bogus career required a
Speaker 1: new identity to match, So Herman Drength soon became Harry Powers,
Speaker 1: and also a r weaver and Cornelie's pearson. We'll just
Speaker 1: stick with Harry Powers. Maybe the work was too difficult,
Speaker 1: or there just weren't enough people to con especially in
Speaker 1: nine during the Great Depression. Whatever the reason, he switched
Speaker 1: to a more attractive con job, matrimony. Some would say
Speaker 1: that love and personal connection are the fires of the soul.
Speaker 1: People will do anything to find it and even more
Speaker 1: to keep it. For most of us, love is a fundamental,
Speaker 1: basic need. For others, that intimate connection is an opportunity.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're so busy looking into the light in our
Speaker 1: hearts that we ignore what lurks in the shadows of
Speaker 1: a partner's soul. We'll dismiss the signs that ignore the
Speaker 1: red flags. The alternative, after all, is too painful or
Speaker 1: too frightening to accept. But if we're honest, the truth
Speaker 1: is much dark her than would like. Even when it
Speaker 1: comes to romance. Here there may be monsters. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Welcome to American Shadows. Before the era of dating apps,
Speaker 1: people looking for love might place personal ads or lonely
Speaker 1: hearts ads in their local newspaper. But Harry Powers took
Speaker 1: a different route. He chose to seek out a Lonely
Speaker 1: Hearts club, a member's only group where men and women
Speaker 1: found potential partners for a fee, and Harry chose the
Speaker 1: most successful of them all, Detroit's American Friendship Society, which
Speaker 1: had opened for business. In annual membership fees were a
Speaker 1: bit more for the men than the women, four dollars
Speaker 1: and cents as opposed to but he shelled out the
Speaker 1: cash and placed his profile. He exaggerated, of course. His
Speaker 1: profile stated that he was wealthy, worth a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars an income of two thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, that's a net worth of over
Speaker 1: two million dollars today. Powers didn't stop there. No, he
Speaker 1: had studied his audience well. He played the sympathy card,
Speaker 1: enlisting himself as a widow, Knowing that ladies were looking
Speaker 1: for someone smart too. He put down his profession as
Speaker 1: a civil engineer, and next up was security. I own
Speaker 1: a beautiful ten room brick home, his profile read, completely
Speaker 1: furnished with everything that would make a good woman happy.
Speaker 1: My wife would have her own car and plenty of
Speaker 1: spending money, would have nothing to do but enjoy herself.
Speaker 1: But she must be a one man woman. I would
Speaker 1: not tolerate infidelity. Now, if some of the women reading
Speaker 1: that had heard the old adage, if it sounds too
Speaker 1: good to be true, then it probably is, then they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have responded, but they did in droves. In fact,
Speaker 1: soon enough, Powers was receiving twenty letters a day. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing he left out of his profile. His wife,
Speaker 1: his real living wife. You see, Harry Powers was already
Speaker 1: married before he had placed his ad. He had answered
Speaker 1: someone else's a Lonely Hearts ad placed in ninety six
Speaker 1: by a woman named Luella Struthers. She was part owner
Speaker 1: of a small grocery store in Clarksburg, West Virginia, as
Speaker 1: well as a farm in nearby Quiet Dell. After a
Speaker 1: brief courtship, they had married in nine seven and then
Speaker 1: settled down in West Virginia to run the grocery store
Speaker 1: and manage the farm. I know. I said that Harry
Speaker 1: wasn't the farming type, but considering his newly created dating profile,
Speaker 1: he wasn't the monogamous type either. It helped that Harry
Speaker 1: traveled a lot and without his wife too, and all
Speaker 1: the while he continued to receive letters from plenty of women.
Speaker 1: Later on, the Postal Service would report that delivered hundreds
Speaker 1: of letters to another of his aliases, Cornelius Pearson. Harry's
Speaker 1: extracurricular lifestyle carried on without a hitch for a few years,
Speaker 1: right up until late August of ninety one. Then, on
Speaker 1: a hot summer day in Park Ridge, Illinois, one William
Speaker 1: oh Boyle stopped by his former landlady's house to pick
Speaker 1: up his tools, which he had left behind after his eviction.
Speaker 1: The house seemed oddly deserted, though in fact she had
Speaker 1: evicted him specifically so her new fiance could move in.
Speaker 1: And that's when O'Boyle heard the footsteps. As he watched,
Speaker 1: a man slipped out a side door. Oh Boyle gave
Speaker 1: him chase, but the man ran into the nearby garage
Speaker 1: through the door. Oh Boyle asked the stranger where Asta
Speaker 1: and her children were, but the man inside wouldn't answer. Frustrated,
Speaker 1: he tried the door and found it locked from the inside. Suspicious,
Speaker 1: oh Boyle stuck around, attempting to wait the intruder out,
Speaker 1: but after a couple hours it was clear the man
Speaker 1: was neither coming out nor talking. Suit yourself, boil muttered.
Speaker 1: He locked the door from the outside and headed to
Speaker 1: the police department to let them deal with the situation.
Speaker 1: When the police arrived later that day, they discovered a pudgy,
Speaker 1: blue eyed man busily removing for an sings from the house.
Speaker 1: A boil identified him as the man had seen earlier.
Speaker 1: Apparently the man had escaped to the garage's rear window. Naturally,
Speaker 1: the police wanted to know who the man was and
Speaker 1: why he was removing items from the home Cornelius O.
Speaker 1: Pearson of the Fairmont Hotel in Fairmont, West Virginia. The
Speaker 1: man replied, according to him, the ikers had moved to Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he was simply helping them pack up their things.
Speaker 1: It must have sounded a bit strange to the officers,
Speaker 1: but without any real evidence to the contrary, they let
Speaker 1: Piercing go, taking his word that he would show up
Speaker 1: at the police station the next day, and oddly enough,
Speaker 1: he actually kept his word. When he arrived, he repeated
Speaker 1: his story to the officer on duty that he was
Speaker 1: helping sell the house, and then left as quickly as
Speaker 1: had come. Just to be sure, though, the officers sent
Speaker 1: a telegram to the Fairmont Hotel, and wouldn't you know it,
Speaker 1: the manager there had never heard of Cornelius. But by
Speaker 1: then it was too late. Harry Power a k a.
Speaker 1: Cornelius Pearson was gone. The Parkridge police found fifty four
Speaker 1: love letters and asked to Kea's home. All from Cornelius Pearson.
Speaker 1: Every single one of them had been postmarked from Clarksburg, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Let me see you alone. The most recent letter said,
Speaker 1: I will come in the night. Do not let the
Speaker 1: neighbors know I'm coming. Leave all business transactions to me
Speaker 1: till Monday, dear. They also found a receipt on it
Speaker 1: was a new name, Harry Powers. Intrigued police Chief Harold
Speaker 1: John made a call to the authorities over in Clarksburg,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, and, just like at the Fairmont Hotel, Detective
Speaker 1: Southern had never heard of Cornelius, but he had heard
Speaker 1: of Harry Powers. Detective Southern stopped by the local post
Speaker 1: office and quickly discovered that a man named Pearson had
Speaker 1: given his address as one one one Quincy Street, the
Speaker 1: very same address it turned out as that of Harry
Speaker 1: and Luella Powers. We're quickly Southern got a warrant for
Speaker 1: the man's arrest. The detective intercepted Powers during his next
Speaker 1: post office pick up, assert revealed four stamped and addressed
Speaker 1: letters ready to send to unsuspecting women. Harry also had
Speaker 1: a list of names and addresses of over a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty women and a form letter he used when
Speaker 1: contacting them. It seemed Harry Powers was quite the pen pal.
Speaker 1: The police arrested Powers on possible kidnapping charges. Next, they
Speaker 1: searched his residence in Clarksburg, questioning both his wife and
Speaker 1: his sister in law, Ava, who also lived with them.
Speaker 1: They found women's clothing with name tags stitched at them,
Speaker 1: none of which were Luella or Ava. Some of Asda's
Speaker 1: clothing and even her silver flatwear were found there. Luella, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: staunchly told the officers she had no knowledge of the
Speaker 1: other women nor how the items had come to be
Speaker 1: found in her house. Harry also insisted his wife knew
Speaker 1: nothing of his philandering, but they detained his wife and
Speaker 1: her sister anyway. After extensive questioning, they were released. Harry
Speaker 1: refused to talk, not without a lawyer anyway. He never
Speaker 1: denied the affair, but he swore that had last seen
Speaker 1: Asta and the children at the Chicago train station. Had
Speaker 1: the wealthy widow tricked the con man, was she hiding
Speaker 1: in Colorado under an assumed name, waiting for Powers to arrive,
Speaker 1: or had Lluella and her sister discovered Harry's affair and
Speaker 1: sought to eliminate Asta. It took a bit of detective work,
Speaker 1: but slowly the pieces all came together, but not before
Speaker 1: things got just a little weirder. According to the letters found,
Speaker 1: Asta had been only one of the hundreds of women
Speaker 1: responding to Powers ad She was a widow with three children,
Speaker 1: Greta fourteen, Harry twelve, and Annabel nine. After a long
Speaker 1: romance by mail, Powers, under the alias of Cornelius, Pearson
Speaker 1: wrote Asda that final letter that the police had found.
Speaker 1: He had then driven to Asda's home in Park Rid,
Speaker 1: and after spending the night, the lovers departed on a
Speaker 1: trip together, leaving the children with the family nurse, Elizabeth Abernathy.
Speaker 1: Five days later, Abernathy received a letter informing her that
Speaker 1: Pearson would be coming to pick up the children on
Speaker 1: July one. The morning after his arrival, Powers sent one
Speaker 1: of the children to the bank with a note instructing
Speaker 1: the bank clerk to fill in the check with the
Speaker 1: entire bank balance and return it to the child. The
Speaker 1: bank refused, believing the signature had been forged. When the
Speaker 1: child came home without the check, Pearson packed the car,
Speaker 1: gathered the children and left town. Now you might think
Speaker 1: Harry Powers had his hands full, what with the wife
Speaker 1: of fiancee and over a hundred and fifty other women
Speaker 1: to write to, But Powers somehow found time to court
Speaker 1: another woman in person, Dorothy Lemky. Three weeks after leaving Illinois,
Speaker 1: Powers showed up at her Northborough, Massachusetts home, where she
Speaker 1: lived with her sister and brother in law. He and
Speaker 1: Dorothy had been corresponding rather passionately for quite some time,
Speaker 1: and so on the day after his arrival, Dorothy said
Speaker 1: goodbye to her sister and left town with her new fiance,
Speaker 1: the man she believed to be Cornelius Pearson. The couple
Speaker 1: made two stops on their way out of town. The Bank,
Speaker 1: of course, was the first, where Dorothy took out four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars they needed it for their wedding. The second
Speaker 1: stop was a railway station where Powers shipped Dorothy's trunks
Speaker 1: and suit cases not to Iowa, though no Dorothey's belongings
Speaker 1: were shipped to his post office address in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Several days after that, Powers returned home to Clarksburg alone,
Speaker 1: where he picked up Dorothey's belongings and the letters that
Speaker 1: landed him in a jail cell after the arrest, everything snowballed.
Speaker 1: The local paper printed the story, and reader Louise Watson
Speaker 1: couldn't believe her eyes. She immediately called the sheriff's department.
Speaker 1: She had recently been to visit her mother in the
Speaker 1: town of Quiet Dell, where she and her mother noticed
Speaker 1: that a neighbor, Harry Powers, had built a garage his
Speaker 1: wife's property. It was strange, because who would need a
Speaker 1: garage when there wasn't even a house. Quiet Dell's sheriff,
Speaker 1: Wilfred Grimm, thought so too. You see, the Powers home
Speaker 1: in Clarksburg was just twenty five miles away from the
Speaker 1: farm in Quiet Dell. Grim immediately filed for a warrant
Speaker 1: To complicate things, the farmland belonged solely to Luella and
Speaker 1: her sister Ava, but the garage was in Harry's name. Only.
Speaker 1: Not long afterward, Sheriff Grimm, along with the deputy State Police,
Speaker 1: Chief of Police, and Detective Southern all converged on the farm.
Speaker 1: The door was locked, but the deputy found a matic
Speaker 1: farming tools similar in shape to a pickaxe, and after
Speaker 1: a few wax he busted the lock and everyone stepped inside.
Speaker 1: The men, however, weren't prepared for what they found. No
Speaker 1: one was Powers sat across from the investigators. What's the
Speaker 1: juicy love letters? One of the masked just good friends?
Speaker 1: Harry replied, maybe she went off to marry another man.
Speaker 1: Officials had discovered otherwise. At first, the found nothing at
Speaker 1: the garage, no oil spills, no tire marks, not even
Speaker 1: a single tool. Well, almost nothing. They found four hairpins,
Speaker 1: and in a darkened corner they found a trap door
Speaker 1: underneath it. Stairs led to a basement with four rooms.
Speaker 1: In one they found bloody fabric and hair. Another contained
Speaker 1: trunks full of clothing, jewelry, ribbons, and a blood soaked dress.
Speaker 1: In the third a child's bloody footprint. All three of
Speaker 1: those rooms had also been fitted with gas lines, and
Speaker 1: the fourth one had windows looking into the others an
Speaker 1: observation room. Desperate for a confession, police took a handcuffed
Speaker 1: Powers to the scene. When they showed him the bloody footprint,
Speaker 1: he coolly replied, it isn't this horrible. By one pm,
Speaker 1: over three people had arrived to watch the officials comb
Speaker 1: the farm for Asta and her children. While that took place,
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old boy stepped forward and mentioned that
Speaker 1: had recently helped Powers dig a ditch. Officials grabbed shovels
Speaker 1: and began digging. Within minutes, they came across a burlap sack.
Speaker 1: Inside the unearthed the decomposing body of a woman, her
Speaker 1: hands bound in front of her. The crowd, sickened by
Speaker 1: the view in the stench, retreated. Later that day, search
Speaker 1: crews found the bodies of Askeda's daughters, each wrapped in
Speaker 1: a sheet, their hands tied behind their backs. Like their mother,
Speaker 1: they had been strangled. Asked his son suffered a different faith,
Speaker 1: though for him, Powers had used a hammer. A bank
Speaker 1: book from the Merchants Savings Bank of Western Massachusetts was
Speaker 1: retrieved from a fire pit the name Dorothy lem Key
Speaker 1: in it. Lucester Police confirmed that yes, they did have
Speaker 1: a missing person's report for that name. Later, Dorothy's sister
Speaker 1: positively identified the body. Powers smug attitude incensed the good
Speaker 1: citizens of Quiet Dell and Clarksburgh. On September, a mob
Speaker 1: of some five thousand angry people surrounded the jail, demanding
Speaker 1: his release so they could deliver their own brand of justice.
Speaker 1: It took two hours to end the standoff, and eight
Speaker 1: members of the mob were arrested inside the jail Harry
Speaker 1: Power's wept not for his victims, though no. He claimed
Speaker 1: he was worried that the crowd outside might turn their
Speaker 1: rage on his wife. The police continued to interrogate him
Speaker 1: about asked his personal effects, sobbing, Harry placed a hand
Speaker 1: on a nearby bibel, swearing that he knew nothing about
Speaker 1: Asta's belongings. But after several hours and an accidental fall
Speaker 1: down the stairs, a black eyed Powers confessed to the
Speaker 1: murders of Dorothy Lemki. Asked to Iker and asked us
Speaker 1: three children, but the police suspected more, upwards of fifty more. Actually,
Speaker 1: how many? One officer demanded to know how many others
Speaker 1: did you kill? I don't know? Powers replied, you've got
Speaker 1: me on five. What good would another fifty do. While
Speaker 1: Powers refused to discuss other murders, he did agree to
Speaker 1: tell officials the details about asked to Iker and Dorothy Lemki,
Speaker 1: and his accounts were nothing less than chilling. He told
Speaker 1: them he drove Askeda to his farm, where he locked
Speaker 1: her up before returning to Illinois for her children. Then
Speaker 1: he hanged them one by one before turning on the
Speaker 1: gas to finish them off. He didn't say how long
Speaker 1: it took them to die, but he did tell the
Speaker 1: investigators that watching them gave a much pleasure. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the investigative work near the garage, we know what happened
Speaker 1: after that. Powers wrapped his victims up, dragged them to
Speaker 1: the ditch, and then dumped the bodies and murder weapons
Speaker 1: inside it. Dorothy Limkey arrived a day later. He continued.
Speaker 1: He claimed he took his time with her before hanging
Speaker 1: her eight hours, he bragged, and he admitted to depleting
Speaker 1: both women's bank accounts, leaving little doubt about his true motive.
Speaker 1: Authorities did eventually find Dorothy's body, but no one else's. Still.
Speaker 1: Women from all over the country began to step forward,
Speaker 1: and their stories were all the same. He had proposed
Speaker 1: to them, stolen their money, and then disappeared, leaving them heartbroken.
Speaker 1: At this point, all the authorities needed was a written confession,
Speaker 1: but Harry refused to give it. On December seven of
Speaker 1: ninety one, the first day of the trial, a number
Speaker 1: of boys stood on the courthouse steps holding up books
Speaker 1: Love Secrets of West Virginia's blue Beard. The title red
Speaker 1: referencing the long ago folk tale of a woman who
Speaker 1: stumbled upon her husband's grizzly secret of murdering his wives.
Speaker 1: The Clarksburg courtroom couldn't hold the crowds, so the officials
Speaker 1: moved to the trial to the one thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: seat opera house. Their Powers alternated between yawning and chewing
Speaker 1: gum before openly weeping. On the stand, He tearfully told
Speaker 1: the courtroom that his miserable marriage had forced him to
Speaker 1: seek out other women. Then he recanted his previous verbal
Speaker 1: confession and complained that his trial was an unfair spectacle.
Speaker 1: Unswayed by his dramatics, the jury unanimously found him guilty
Speaker 1: and immediately sentenced him to death by hanging no less.
Speaker 1: On March eighteenth, Yo Powers made his way up the
Speaker 1: gallows steps. A deputy placed a noose around his neck
Speaker 1: fitting I suppose he even had a crowd. Do you
Speaker 1: have anything to say, an official asked no. He replied,
Speaker 1: his voice firm as his blue eyes raked over the
Speaker 1: crowd before him. At exactly nine o'clock am, the floor
Speaker 1: he stood on opened up, dropping him through. Eleven minutes later,
Speaker 1: Harry Powers, the blue Beard of West Virginia, was pronounced dead. Hindsight,
Speaker 1: as they say, is today we can look back at
Speaker 1: these events and see the cracks, those red flags that
Speaker 1: we think we had never fall for. But the victims
Speaker 1: of Harry Powers did so. Why didn't they see it?
Speaker 1: A lot of it probably comes down to trust. People
Speaker 1: are hardwired to trust others. Our hearts want to believe
Speaker 1: that the people we love are trustworthy. Even when we're fooled.
Speaker 1: We try to make sense of it. After all, love
Speaker 1: makes us do strange things. Sometimes it's easier to look
Speaker 1: at the light inside of the shadows. We know there
Speaker 1: might be monsters in the dark, but all we occasionally
Speaker 1: peek under the bed and sigh in relief that there's
Speaker 1: nothing there. We rarely look right beside us. Exactly how
Speaker 1: many women Powers killed? As an answer, that he took
Speaker 1: to the grave, and while he said only a single
Speaker 1: word the day he died, he had much more to
Speaker 1: say afterward. Shortly after Power's body had been removed from
Speaker 1: the gallows, Wardens Scroggins received an envelope. Inside was a
Speaker 1: note from the late serial killer that contained eight haunting words.
Speaker 1: There are more in West Virginia than Wisconsin. Another question
Speaker 1: that's lingered is why Powers hadn't killed his wife Luella.
Speaker 1: He claimed their marriage was miserable, and like his other victims,
Speaker 1: she had a bit of wealth, so why not just
Speaker 1: kill her, take the money and move on. Officials had
Speaker 1: a theory. When Luella married Harry, he signed a will
Speaker 1: making Luella his beneficiary. Had also drawn up another document
Speaker 1: giving him exclusive rights to his wife's property, but Luella
Speaker 1: never signed that one, nor would she sign a will.
Speaker 1: Apparently his charm only went so far with her, not
Speaker 1: for lack of trying, though, Luella and her sister inherited
Speaker 1: their property after their mother died from an unknown cause
Speaker 1: two months before Luella's marriage to Powers. Neighbors would later
Speaker 1: mention to the authorities that they suspected Powers had been
Speaker 1: involved in his mother in law's death, but unfortunately, no
Speaker 1: exhamation was possible as the body had been cremated. Convenient
Speaker 1: to say the least. Perhaps Luella remained alive because in
Speaker 1: some twisted way, Powers believed she gave him the perfect cover.
Speaker 1: And while Powers insisted his wife was entirely in the
Speaker 1: dark about his activities, she was the one who paid
Speaker 1: for that garage. Add in the strange hours and frequent trips,
Speaker 1: not to mention items she found throughout their home, and
Speaker 1: it seems odd that she missed so many red flags
Speaker 1: and one last thing before her death in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Luella lived out the remainder of her life as a recluse,
Speaker 1: having been shunned by the community, and although the investigators
Speaker 1: could never prove her involvement, they did discover something interesting.
Speaker 1: Luella had been married once before, to a man accused
Speaker 1: of murder. There's more to this story. Stick around after
Speaker 1: the brief sponsor break to hear all about it. We
Speaker 1: hear about serial killers all the time, movies, books, television shows,
Speaker 1: even the news, so just how common are they well?
Speaker 1: The estimate is that in the United States there are
Speaker 1: roughly fifty to seventy active killers, of whom seven to
Speaker 1: eight are women. It's also interesting to note that, according
Speaker 1: to the statistics, women serial killers in the nineteen and
Speaker 1: twenty centuries rarely killed strangers, and, like Harry Powers, some
Speaker 1: of them prayed on romantic partners. Traditionally, men who kill
Speaker 1: their wives are called bluebeards, a name pulled from the
Speaker 1: dark French folk tale. Women who kill their husbands tend
Speaker 1: to be referred to as black widows, hinting at the
Speaker 1: way a black widow spider sometimes kills her mate, and
Speaker 1: many women serial killers have had one other thing in
Speaker 1: common with the venomous spider. A lot of them killed
Speaker 1: with poison. Meet Nanny Doss, an Oklahoma housewife whose neighbors
Speaker 1: described her as a happy, friendly woman, always smiling, often laughing,
Speaker 1: and like Powers, they said she was charming. In Nanny
Speaker 1: became a widow for the fourth time, she insisted she
Speaker 1: had loved all her husbands, unlike Harry Powers, though she
Speaker 1: didn't always kill for the money. No, it seems that
Speaker 1: she had high expectations for her husband's and the life
Speaker 1: she thought they'd provide. Reality disappointed her, and all her
Speaker 1: men had failed to measure up to those in the
Speaker 1: romance novels she had read, and Nanny had read a
Speaker 1: lot of them. I guess you could say that Nanny
Speaker 1: Doss didn't like how the script had gone so far,
Speaker 1: so she killed her darlings eleven darlings in fact, four husbands,
Speaker 1: two sisters, her mother, a nephew, two of her own children,
Speaker 1: and one grandson. Some think that her fantasy world stemmed
Speaker 1: from her childhood. She was conceived out of wedlock, and
Speaker 1: although her mother had married her father and they had
Speaker 1: had three more children together, Nanny hated the man, which
Speaker 1: was justified. He was abusive to all of them, both
Speaker 1: verbally and emotionally. Nanny married her first husband, Charlie, at
Speaker 1: the age of sixteen, and they went on to have
Speaker 1: four children together. Both suspected the other of infidelity, and
Speaker 1: both were right. Then in ninety seven, two of their
Speaker 1: daughters died of food poisoning, or so Nannie claimed. Charley
Speaker 1: didn't believe her, and soon ran away with one of
Speaker 1: their surviving daughters, while leaving the newborn behind. In addition
Speaker 1: to her penchant for romance novels, Nanny began a habit
Speaker 1: of responding to lonely heart dads. That's how she met
Speaker 1: and married her second husband, Frank, in ninety nine. But
Speaker 1: it turned out Frank had a drinking problem, and one night,
Speaker 1: in a blind rage, he assaulted her. Nannie's solution she
Speaker 1: added rat poison to his whiskey jar. Frank died that
Speaker 1: very same night. After that, she quickly answered another ad
Speaker 1: and married for the third time. This new husband, Arley,
Speaker 1: was also an alcoholic as well as a womanizer. To
Speaker 1: cope Nanny would disappear for days at a time, but
Speaker 1: whenever she was home, she played the part of the
Speaker 1: devoted wife. That is, until Arley died of heart failure. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Nanny Doss joined a lonely hearts club, hoping for better luck.
Speaker 1: There she met Richard, who became husband number four. And
Speaker 1: while Richard wasn't a drunkard or physically abusive, he was
Speaker 1: a cheat, perhaps related. Richard died in April of Ninette.
Speaker 1: Still looking for true love and wasting little time being
Speaker 1: a widow, Doss changed her tactics. Her husband number five,
Speaker 1: she married Samuel. He was clean cut and an avid churchgoer,
Speaker 1: but he's strongly disapproved of her romance novels. If only
Speaker 1: he knew just how important they were to her. Just
Speaker 1: months after their wedding, Samuel was admitted to the hospital
Speaker 1: with flu like symptoms. After diagnosing him with a severe
Speaker 1: digestive infection, he was treated and released. The very same
Speaker 1: evening he returned home, Nanny poisoned him with arsenic using
Speaker 1: twenty times her usual dosage. Samuel's doctor found the sudden
Speaker 1: death suspicious, and after an autopsy, there was enough evidence
Speaker 1: to have Nanny arrested. Not only that, but the bodies
Speaker 1: of our previous husbands, as well as her two children, mother, sisters,
Speaker 1: and nephew were all exhumed, and wouldn't you know it,
Speaker 1: all were found to have been poisoned. When asked if
Speaker 1: money had been the motive for killing her husband's nanny, Doss,
Speaker 1: always cheerful, only laughed at the question. I married those men,
Speaker 1: she said, because I loved them. American Shadows is hosted
Speaker 1: by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto
Speaker 1: with researcher Robin Miniter, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and
Speaker 1: Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit grim
Speaker 1: and Mild dot com. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where
Speaker 1: every you get your podcasts. M