WEBVTT - The First American Female Serial Killer (Pt 3) 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:15.360 Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:19.320 descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:35.000 Please take care in listening. Today's episode is the finale 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.760 of our three part mini series on the first American 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:43.720 female serial killer. If you miss the first two parts, 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.760 I highly recommend that you pause me here, listen to 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.000 those episodes, and then come back once you're caught up, 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:56.120 because that backstory is integral to understanding how Jane's crimes 0:00:56.160 --> 0:01:03.920 got bigger, faster, and way slow. Beer. The town of 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:12.920 catam Massachusetts, didn't really like the Davis family. The davis 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:17.200 Is said they started their hospitality business because they enjoyed 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:21.240 working with strangers, and they lived on the outskirts of 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:27.440 town because they enjoyed it there. That might have been true, 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:34.280 but it wasn't the whole truth. At first, the town 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:38.080 was reluctant to get close to Alden Davis because it 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:44.960 was the eighteen seventies in Massachusetts and Alden Davis had 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:51.320 fought for the Confederacy. There's enough of an aversion already. 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.880 But then there was the religious sect that Alden Davis 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:03.559 was a part of. The Second Advent Church was run 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:08.200 by Charles Freeman. And not only was it a fundamentalist 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.560 Christian sect, the kind of which we still have to 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:16.280 be wary, but it was, as they so often are, 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:25.600 next level fundamentalist and not at all christ like. Charles 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.880 Freeman lived near Katomic with his wife and two young daughters, 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:37.040 four and six years old. His congregation admired him for 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.960 his fervent convictions, and he was always preaching about the 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:49.000 need to prove yourself through sacrifice. In April of eighteen 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:54.480 seventy nine, he told his wife that what they needed 0:02:54.520 --> 0:03:02.000 to sacrifice was their four year old daughter. At two 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:08.440 o'clock in the morning of May first, eighteen seventy nine, 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.320 Freeman woke up and told his wife he was doing it. 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:19.960 He had been called and he would complete the sacrifice. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.280 She said, if it is the Lord's will, then I 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:31.280 am ready for it, as if someone had released a 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:35.920 huge weight. Charles went out to the shed and got 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:40.920 a sharp sheath knife. He came back inside to his 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:46.840 daughter's room. His eldest daughter woke up, and he sent 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:52.360 her into the other room with his wife. Charles knelt 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:56.280 to pray by the crib of the older child. He 0:03:56.360 --> 0:04:00.560 prayed that God would steal his will like he had Abrahams, 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:09.280 even though Abraham did not actually kill his child. Charles 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:17.320 prayed that she didn't wake up, but she did. She 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:21.119 woke up just as he drove the knife down into 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:29.479 her side. The next day, he invited the congregation over 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:35.239 for a long, unhinged sermon before he took them into 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:41.560 his daughter's bedroom to see her body. He claimed that 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:48.760 she would rise again in three days. The community was 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:54.240 gutted and appalled, and Charles Freeman was ultimately sent to 0:04:54.279 --> 0:05:01.279 an asylum for the criminally insane. But at least one 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:09.000 of his neighbors stood by him. Alden Davis showed up 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:14.160 to the four year old's funeral and declared there never 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:23.120 lived a purer man than Charles Freeman. So everyone in 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:29.280 the town took a big self preservationist step back from 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:36.320 the Davis family. That's awful, you might think, But what 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:41.040 does this atrocity have to do with Jane Toppin? Like 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:44.159 I said, the town of Katama didn't really care for 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.400 the Davises. They kept them at arm's length, which I 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.960 think is pretty understandable. So when the Davises started dying, 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.320 one right after the other, and I do mean one 0:05:55.600 --> 0:06:01.760 right after the other. The town kind of thought, well, 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:07.960 whatever happens to that family, happens to that family. It 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.039 was easy to see the demise of the Davises as 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.760 the hand of God delivering punishment, rather than see it 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:20.000 for what it actually was the work of an increasingly 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:38.479 reckless and sloppy serial killer. Jane toppin Welcome to the 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.880 Greatest True Crime Stories Ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.400 I'm a writer of true crime, which means I live 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.880 inside the research wormhole. But I'm not necessarily interested in 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.400 the attention grabbing elements, the blood and the gore all that. 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:59.279 I'm more interested in the people behind these stories and 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:03.640 what we can learn about society by looking at their experiences. 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:07.760 That's what I explore here every week when I dig 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.280 into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.640 She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.360 the criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:27.840 probably already know, women can do anything. Today is the 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.440 last episode of our three part miniseries on the first 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:36.680 American female serial killer. It's a nineteenth century American tale 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:41.600 about how an orphan turned indentured servant bootstrapped herself into 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:46.000 a mad scientist murderer. Her story is the one I 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.440 spent years researching for my book America's First Female serial Killer, 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.720 Jane Toppin and the Making of a Monster, so I'm 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.360 excited to share it with you. In the finale of 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:04.280 this miniseries, Jane's crimes reached new levels of depravity and 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:09.760 recklessness before the law finally catches on. I also have 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.200 a conversation with Harold Scheckter, who wrote his own excellent 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.480 book on Jane Tappin, so stay tuned for that all 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:39.439 after the break. So this is our third of three 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.280 episodes about Jane Tappin. We did a deep dive into 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.480 her early years and now we're moving into her most 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.760 criminal period, right, Yeah, it gets more criminal. And the 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.040 interesting thing here that I want to point out is 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.960 that when I've told this story before at parties or whatever, 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:02.000 there's a point where people get her. I don't know 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:03.920 if I'm just telling the story in a way that 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.040 makes her a sympathetic character or what, but right around 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.840 the point where her favorite patients leave the hospital without 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:13.199 saying goodbye, that's when most people are like, yeah, I 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.479 could see how she would kill someone. They're not excusing 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:18.520 it by any stretch, but they get it, if that 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:22.320 makes sense. The typical refrain goes something like, if all 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:27.680 that shit happened to me, I'd kill someone too, except 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:34.400 for they didn't hurt people. May hurt people, but plenty 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.320 of folks had an upbringing as bad as or worse 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:44.760 than Jane, and they didn't murder thirty people. So what 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:54.000 I don't know that really is the question is it 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:58.920 situational or was it in her all along ye old 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:04.120 nature versus nurture debate, The answer is both, of course 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:09.120 and neither, And there's no one right answer, because really 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.360 there's no answer at all. But because it's the question, 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:19.560 we can't stop trying to answer it. Last episode, we 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.400 found Jane at the bedside of Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister. 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.000 Jane spent the summers recuperating from her round the clock 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:32.120 freelance work as a private nurse, and she had invited 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:36.199 Elizabeth out to the seaside where she slipped her in 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:41.280 overdose of morphia mixed into mineral water, sent her into 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:48.600 a coma, and killed her. After that, Jane kept killing 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.600 her private nursing patients until June of nineteen oh one, 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:58.640 when Mattie Davis, wife of Alden Davis, arrived in Boston 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:05.880 to collect Jane debt. Jane tortured her for seven days 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:14.320 before finally administering the fatal dose of morphine that killed Mattie. 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:18.560 By then, Jane had decided to kill the whole Davis 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:24.440 family and burn their house to the ground. It wasn't 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.920 long after Mattie's funeral that her daughters, Genevieve Gordon and 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:33.120 Minnie Gibbs, invited Jane to move into the Jakin house 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:36.120 to help care for their father, who was always in 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:43.080 erratic personality, and keep the house. Jane was so fun 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:45.760 to be around that they thought she was sure to 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:50.200 lift their spirits. Genevieve hadn't seen her mother in a year, 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:55.400 so her mother's collapse and fairly sudden death afterward struck 0:11:55.440 --> 0:12:00.719 her especially hard. That sadness was what Jane said made 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:05.520 her think Genevieve was better off dead. She would be 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:11.000 first on the list. But before that, Jane had to 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:15.000 start a few fires. It was a new experiment for her, 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:22.040 and you probably remember how she liked to experiment. They'd 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.720 only been settled in the house for a few days before, 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:29.040 the father, Alden, who'd suffered insomnia since his wife's death, 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:34.000 smelled smoke in the middle of the night. He yelled 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:36.839 for Jane to help him extinguish the flames, and she 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:39.480 came running from her room, looking as if she just 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:46.880 woke up. Together, they successfully put out the fire, and 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:53.920 then it happened twice more with the same results. It 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:58.520 seems like people should have grown suspicious, but the only 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.800 people who would have thought to do that, the Davis family, 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:07.840 were suffering with grief far too much to question Jane 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.760 when she claimed to have seen a stranger skulking about 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.520 the property and that stranger was probably the firebug trying 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:21.120 to burn the house down, everyone just went with it, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:32.560 and then they started dying. Jane pulled one of the daughters, Minnie, 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.080 aside one afternoon and told her that the other day 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.960 she saw Minnie's sister, Genevieve in the garden shed eyeing 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:47.800 a box of Paris green rat poison. Jane intimated that 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.280 they should probably keep a close watch on Genevieve given 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:58.360 her recent depression. Within a few days, on July twenty sixth, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:03.840 nineteen oh one, Genevieve started to vomit violently after dinner. 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.000 She threw up until her throat was raw, and when 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.480 she came out of the bathroom Jane was waiting for 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:20.920 her with a glass of mineral water. Genevieve was dead 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:25.920 by morning. The physician listed her cause of death as 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:32.800 heart failure. The neighbors said Genevieve died of grief. Jane 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:39.160 told Genevieve's surviving sister and father that she died by suicide. 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.360 She said that she'd found the syringe that she'd used 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:48.160 to inject herself with rat poison, but to spare their feelings, 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:55.480 she threw it in the outhouse. Genevieve was interred next 0:14:55.480 --> 0:15:02.600 to her mother. Only a few weeks later, it was 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:09.040 Alden Davis's turn. During a heat wave of nineteen oh one, 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.000 he came home from a trip to Boston and all 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:17.240 but collapsed on the sofa from exhaustion. Jane fussed over 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:19.880 him for a few minutes, and then she came back 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:26.400 with a glass of Hunati mineral water. The next morning, 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:31.040 Minnie Gibbs, the surviving elder daughter of Mattie and Alden, 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.720 came over to see her parents with her two young children. 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:38.480 They lived in walking distance of Alden's house, which was 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:42.200 nice when Minnie's husband, Irving, a sea captain, was away 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:49.320 for months at a time. Harry Gordon, Genevieve's widower, was 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:54.720 also there with their daughter. The family gathered around the 0:15:54.720 --> 0:16:01.720 breakfast table with Jane, but Davis didn't come down to 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:07.040 join them. Harry sent his little girl upstairs to wake 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:12.520 up her grandpa, but when she scampered back downstairs a 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:21.040 few minutes later, she said Alden wouldn't wake up. The 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.600 family called the doctor. The doctor took one look at 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:28.320 Alden and knew he was looking at a corpse. He 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.800 thought maybe his heart had given out, but after further examination, 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:39.000 he listed the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage. 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.680 Alden was the third body to be interred in the 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:51.600 family plot in two months, but Jane wasn't finished. Just 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:57.440 four days after Alden's funeral, on August twelfth, the remaining 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.560 family members all went on a joy ride around town. 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.720 Before they left, Jane urged Minnie to have a little 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:11.280 cocoa wine to soothe her nerves. It sounds gross, and 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:15.359 I can only imagine it tasted worse. After Jane dissolved 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:21.760 a tablet of morphia in it. Minnie didn't drink alcohol, 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:26.960 but she gave in to the nurse. Jane was, after all, 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:33.600 their professional, and she started feeling bad immediately. By the 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.439 time they got home that afternoon, she couldn't get up 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.920 the stairs. Jane brought her a glass of mineral water 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.440 into which she had already, of course, dissolved, a tablet 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:53.600 of morphine and a tablet of atropine. Around midnight, Jane 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:57.160 injected Minnie with another dose of morphine, which rendered her 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:06.040 completely still except for a twist leg. Normally, Jane would 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:10.440 pull back the covers and slide into bed alongside her victim, 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:16.679 but this time she did something that was arguably worse. 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.760 Jane had been feeding many lethal medications over the course 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:43.919 of the day, but this time, instead of getting in 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:50.800 her victim's deathbed to experience the pain the way she enjoyed, Instead, 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:55.760 Jane brought Minnie's ten year old son, Jesse, into her bed, 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:04.160 and she cuddled him while his mother died downstairs. Jane 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.760 had never seemed very concerned about getting caught for her crimes. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.359 The atropine helped mask her use of morphine, but that's 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:18.520 about the only precaution She took to hide her behavior. Still, 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.440 murdering four members of the same family in less than 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:30.399 three months was absurdly blatant, even for her. The local 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:35.800 newspaper covered the events with the dramatic headline entire family 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:42.560 wiped out. Oddly, the paper never once mentioned foul play, 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.200 but the hackles of the Davis clan were finally starting 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:54.080 to rise. Captain Paul Gibbs, Minnie Gibbs father in law, 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.960 remembered Jane administering some drug to many while she rested. 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:03.520 He told his son Irving about it when Irving arrived 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:10.680 home from SA Maybe that's why Irving declined when Jane 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:15.600 offered to move in and take care of him. Jane 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.000 just turned her attentions elsewhere. She was done with the 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.640 Davis clan for now, but her time enacting this intimate 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:28.680 familial revenge may have inspired her. Because she actually went 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.440 back to Lowell, back to the house where she'd grown 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:37.080 up and where Oramel Brigham still lived. She wasn't there 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:41.080 to kill for once. She was there to betray in 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:48.280 another way, to marry her foster sister's husband. You might 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:53.639 remember Oramel as the faithful, beloved widower of Jane's foster sister, Elizabeth, 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.760 and while he seems to have been a totally devoted 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.919 husband to Elizabeth, he wasn't you'd call a romantic figure. 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.240 Harold Scheckter says in his book Fatal that Romel was 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.520 a portly gentleman of advanced middle age, with a double chin, 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:16.680 bald dome, and bushy gray mutton chop whiskers. It didn't 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.520 matter what he looked like. When she arrived at his 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:23.879 house on August twenty fourth, nineteen oh one, Jane thought 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.400 she'd have Ormel all to herself because back in January, 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:31.000 the winter before she killed the Davises, Jane had actually 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.920 poisoned Ormel's longtime housekeeper. She thought the housekeeper was her 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:41.439 competition for his affection. Instead of being met by a 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:45.000 new housekeeper, Jane was met at the door by Ormel's 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.359 elder sister, who had come to visit on her way 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:54.119 to the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Jane poisoned and 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.680 killed her four days after arriving. She didn't want eyes 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:01.000 on her while she tried to the widower of her 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:08.720 foster sister that she'd murdered. She did have eyes on her, though, 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.400 Right after many Davis was buried after the entire nuclear 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:29.680 Davis family had died in close succession. It wasn't just 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.080 the Davis's relatives that started to view Jane with suspicion. 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:42.080 She also finally caught the state authority's eyes. This may 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.480 explain why, despite the blatant natures of the crime, the 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:53.280 papers never mentioned the possibility of foul play. Authorities may 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:57.440 have asked them to keep those suspicions quiet to avoid 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:05.000 alerting Jane that she was under scrutiny. State Detective John S. 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:10.399 Patterson was assigned to watch her. He tailed her around 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:14.040 Buzzard's Bay. He was on the train with her when 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.439 she moved back to Lowell, and when Jane arrived to 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:23.240 stay with Oramel Brigham, Detective Patterson booked lodging down the street. 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:29.760 He didn't move fast enough, though. When Jane realized that 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.919 Ormel didn't intend to marry her or keep her on 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:37.480 in any permanent capacity, she decided to try a few 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:42.640 tricks to change his mind. First, she laced his tea 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:47.080 with morphia. She thought that the sudden onset of illness 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:51.760 might convince him that he needed her. When it didn't work, 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:55.320 she told his friends she was pregnant with his child 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:02.399 that had the opposite of the en tended effect. Ormel 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:06.600 ordered her out of his house that very moment. She 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:11.600 didn't go. Instead, she sulked up to her room as 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:15.800 if to pack, and she took an overdose of morphine herself. 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:22.720 By this time, though Ormel had wised up. He went 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:26.040 upstairs to make sure she was packing, and he found 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:30.360 her unconscious. He called the doctor right away, who made 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:35.919 her vomit and revived her. Ormel didn't have the sympathetic 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:40.879 reaction she was trying to induce in him. He assigned 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:44.880 her an in home nurse to watch her, but when 0:24:44.920 --> 0:24:51.720 that nurse went to prepare her lunch, Jane poisoned herself again. Again, 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:57.960 her attempt was foiled. The doctor injected applemorphine into Jane 0:24:58.240 --> 0:25:02.720 and made her vomit again. When she revived again, the 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:09.320 doctor asked her why she was doing this. She answered, 0:25:10.359 --> 0:25:14.119 I'm tired of life. I know people are talking about me. 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:19.960 I just want to die. I just have to tell y'all. No, 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:23.840 she didn't. She didn't want to die. She wanted pity 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:28.320 so she could continue on her rampage. Although to be honest, 0:25:28.520 --> 0:25:30.880 I'm not even sure that that was a conscious thought 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.879 by that time. It's hard to trace the leaps and cognition. 0:25:36.160 --> 0:25:39.120 At first, Jane didn't want her favorite patients to leave, 0:25:39.240 --> 0:25:43.240 so she made them sicker. Then she started experimenting with 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:47.800 counteractive medicines. Then she'd try to push them all the 0:25:47.840 --> 0:25:49.919 way to the brink of death and see if she 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:53.040 could bring them back. I'm thinking this is where the 0:25:53.160 --> 0:25:57.880 power complex escalated big time. But that's also when her 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:01.520 crimes turned sexual. That's when she would get in bed 0:26:01.560 --> 0:26:06.960 with her patients while observing the overdos's effects, and then 0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:11.639 she graduated to killing by poisoning. Her train had so 0:26:11.880 --> 0:26:15.720 clearly jumped the tracks that her thought processes here get 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:20.120 more and more difficult to follow. Maybe by this time 0:26:20.160 --> 0:26:24.000 she knew the detectives were onto her, but probably not. 0:26:25.080 --> 0:26:28.600 She'd gotten away was so much for so long she 0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:31.240 probably didn't realize that. When she was admitted to the 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:36.199 hospital right after her attempts at suicide, the patient just 0:26:36.280 --> 0:27:02.120 down the hall was Detective John Patterson. When the hospital 0:27:02.160 --> 0:27:05.520 discharged Jane, she went to live with a couple of 0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:12.760 friends in Amherst, New Hampshire, and yes, Detective John Patterson 0:27:13.240 --> 0:27:19.240 was still following her. In fact, he was again lodging 0:27:19.359 --> 0:27:23.080 just down the street when three other police officers showed 0:27:23.160 --> 0:27:26.960 up at his door on October twenty ninth, nineteen oh 0:27:27.080 --> 0:27:32.320 one with good news. After Minnie Gibbs was buried, one 0:27:32.359 --> 0:27:37.879 detective approached Minnie's father in law, Captain Paul Gibbs. I 0:27:37.960 --> 0:27:39.639 just have to tell y'all right quick that in my 0:27:39.760 --> 0:27:44.000 narrative nonfiction book about this case, I associated that character 0:27:44.080 --> 0:27:48.560 with my late grandfather, who suffered no fools. He is 0:27:48.720 --> 0:27:54.320 by far my favorite person in this story. After getting 0:27:54.359 --> 0:27:58.440 permission from Minnie's widower, Irving, which I can only imagine 0:27:58.600 --> 0:28:03.400 that his father Paul urged him to give, officials had 0:28:03.520 --> 0:28:09.680 exhumed all four of the Davis' bodies, many gives viscera 0:28:10.200 --> 0:28:16.840 had turned up lethal traces of poison arsenic. This is 0:28:16.880 --> 0:28:20.440 what Detective Patterson needed to move in on his suspect. 0:28:20.840 --> 0:28:28.639 On October thirtieth, nineteen oh one. Jane's arrest made headlines 0:28:28.680 --> 0:28:35.239 the following day on Halloween. People everywhere were stunned that 0:28:35.359 --> 0:28:40.480 someone could brutally murder an entire family. They were even 0:28:40.640 --> 0:28:44.600 more shocked that she was a nurse and a woman. 0:28:47.040 --> 0:28:50.680 But the readers who were most surprised of all were 0:28:50.720 --> 0:28:55.840 the people who knew Jane. They couldn't believe it. They 0:28:55.920 --> 0:28:59.680 didn't believe it, and they later wrote to her in 0:28:59.760 --> 0:29:08.400 Jai telling her so. Jane, though, wasn't really surprised. She 0:29:08.560 --> 0:29:12.080 was too smart not to anticipate that her increasingly blatant 0:29:12.160 --> 0:29:17.240 crimes would call attention. She'd just gotten too far down 0:29:17.280 --> 0:29:21.400 the path of depravity to stop herself, and now her 0:29:21.440 --> 0:29:26.080 most salient emotion was she was irritated that the detective 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:32.160 stood in the room while she packed. At first, she 0:29:32.360 --> 0:29:35.640 was only charged with the murder of Many Gibbs. I'm 0:29:35.680 --> 0:29:38.200 not sure why, but I'm assuming they only tried her 0:29:38.320 --> 0:29:41.040 for the one because they had the most evidence there, 0:29:41.440 --> 0:29:44.200 and because if that case failed, they had more crimes 0:29:44.200 --> 0:29:48.120 to try her on. Later, at the jailhouse, she learned 0:29:48.160 --> 0:29:54.640 that her childhood friend James Murphy would defend her pro bona. 0:29:55.040 --> 0:29:59.160 Murphy was especially thrilled when he realized that the poison 0:29:59.240 --> 0:30:05.160 found in Mean Gibbs was arsenic. Arsenic, you might recall 0:30:05.200 --> 0:30:08.560 from other stories we've covered on this show, was a 0:30:08.640 --> 0:30:15.959 key ingredient in embalming fluid in this era. For exactly 0:30:16.320 --> 0:30:21.880 that reason, even Captain Paul Gibbs, who believed Jane committed 0:30:21.880 --> 0:30:26.560 the crimes, was surprised when he heard the investigators were 0:30:26.600 --> 0:30:31.200 relying on the presence of arsenic to pin her. The 0:30:31.320 --> 0:30:37.240 old Salt said as much in this quote. I suspected 0:30:37.240 --> 0:30:40.800 they had been poisoned, but I didn't think Jenny Toppin 0:30:41.000 --> 0:30:47.600 would use anything as easily detected as arsenic. He went 0:30:47.640 --> 0:30:51.240 on to put the professionals even mortishamee. He thought that 0:30:51.360 --> 0:30:55.720 Davis's quote had been killed by morphia and a tropia. 0:30:56.440 --> 0:30:59.800 A tropia expanded the pupils of the eyes, whereas more 0:31:00.320 --> 0:31:03.200 contracted them, so that if a person had been killed 0:31:03.200 --> 0:31:06.280 by those poisons, the pupils of their eyes would practically 0:31:06.360 --> 0:31:09.280 be in their normal state, and to detect the traces 0:31:09.320 --> 0:31:15.320 of the poison would be very difficult. Officials thought that 0:31:15.520 --> 0:31:19.000 was a good idea, so they tested the bodies for 0:31:19.080 --> 0:31:25.160 those and their findings were positive. No one ever found 0:31:25.200 --> 0:31:30.280 out how Captain Paul Gibbs, the retired fishing boat captain, 0:31:30.840 --> 0:31:37.560 worked it out, but he did. Still, Jane received letters 0:31:37.560 --> 0:31:41.280 of support and gifts from her friends and former patients 0:31:41.280 --> 0:31:46.040 at the jailhouse, where she had what she called a 0:31:46.120 --> 0:31:53.200 nice rest, and at first she pled not guilty until 0:31:53.600 --> 0:32:16.040 abruptly she about faced and confessed. I couldn't find a 0:32:16.080 --> 0:32:20.320 clear reason behind this shift. That's one reason why I 0:32:20.360 --> 0:32:24.200 have a hard time fully accepting the confession that William 0:32:24.280 --> 0:32:29.440 Randolph Hurst published in one of his newspapers. I'm just 0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:32.640 not sure how it came to be, if you paid her, 0:32:33.120 --> 0:32:36.200 if she even wrote it. So I just don't really 0:32:36.200 --> 0:32:41.360 trust it. But rest assured that whole confession question is 0:32:41.440 --> 0:32:45.080 definitely something I'll get Harold Scheckter's take on when I 0:32:45.120 --> 0:32:50.520 interview him. Regardless of the details behind that Hurst confession, though, 0:32:51.400 --> 0:32:55.920 Jane definitely did change her plea to guilty, and she 0:32:56.040 --> 0:33:03.560 started talking from what she said. By this point, Jane 0:33:03.680 --> 0:33:09.760 had lost count of her victims. She recounted it all 0:33:10.000 --> 0:33:14.920 with full calm and composure to Henry R. Steadman at 0:33:14.960 --> 0:33:22.960 the American Medico Psychological Association. The article is long, but 0:33:23.040 --> 0:33:25.160 I think it's important to read to you, at least 0:33:25.320 --> 0:33:41.000 this part of it. When I try to picture it, 0:33:41.480 --> 0:33:46.000 I say to myself, I have poisoned Manny Gibbs, my 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:51.200 dear friend. I have poisoned mister Davis and missus Davis. 0:33:52.040 --> 0:33:56.360 This does not convey anything to me and when I 0:33:56.360 --> 0:34:00.239 try to sense the condition of the children and all 0:34:00.240 --> 0:34:06.000 the consequences, I cannot realize what an awful thing it is. 0:34:08.000 --> 0:34:12.680 Why don't I feel sorry and grieve over it? I 0:34:12.719 --> 0:34:16.759 cannot make sense of it all. Something comes over me. 0:34:18.239 --> 0:34:21.879 I don't know what it is. I seem to have 0:34:21.920 --> 0:34:27.080 a sort of paralysis of thought and reason. I have 0:34:27.200 --> 0:34:33.120 an uncontrollable desire to give poison without regard to consequence. 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:38.840 I have no objection against telling my feelings, but I 0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:42.880 don't know my own mind. I don't know why I 0:34:42.960 --> 0:34:54.640 do these things. Later in court, she wondered how they 0:34:54.680 --> 0:35:00.440 could possibly find her insane. She could not possible be 0:35:00.480 --> 0:35:05.200 insane when she knew full well that she was doing wrong, 0:35:06.160 --> 0:35:10.920 and she went to great links to avoid being caught. 0:35:26.480 --> 0:35:29.360 So when the court ruled her not guilty by reason 0:35:29.400 --> 0:35:33.640 of insanity, Jane thought for sure that the court would 0:35:33.640 --> 0:35:41.240 eventually overturn the sentencing, but they didn't. The court ruled 0:35:41.280 --> 0:35:47.400 that quote her disease being constitutional, she will never recover, 0:35:50.200 --> 0:35:53.799 and then she was committed to Taunton Asylum, where she 0:35:53.880 --> 0:35:59.239 stayed for the remainder of her life. She died August seventeenth, 0:36:00.120 --> 0:36:09.360 nineteen thirty eight. By then she was eighty four. My 0:36:09.400 --> 0:36:12.799 godfather actually gave me a copy of her obituary as 0:36:12.800 --> 0:36:18.160 a book release gift. The obituary refers to her as 0:36:18.200 --> 0:36:22.120