The woman who will become known as one of
the world’s worst black widows is sitting on her porch on a blustery day at the start
of Fall. She places a glass of lemonade down on the
newspaper and runs her index finger over the lonely hearts column. Her finger suddenly stops and she smiles. “This is the one,” she thinks, her thoughts
animated with pictures of her and this other lonely heart living out the romance she’s
always dreamed of. Except she will murder this man in cold blood. She will kill him, and people close to him. She will commit unspeakable horrors throughout
her deranged life, and she will do it with a great big grin on her face. Welcome to the world of the giggling granny,
a woman who turned being widowed into a profession. She was born with the name Nancy Hazel on
November 4, 1905, in a small town in rural Alabama. There she and her four siblings did not have
a happy childhood, with school and friendships being out of the question because the stern,
hardworking father made them labor on his farm. Then when she was seven years old something
happened to Nancy that may explain why in later life she became a very serious serial
killer. She hit her head while riding a train and
for years after experienced debilitating depression as well as the occasional blackout. It could have been the injury that caused
her to do such horrific things, but young Nancy had more than just head trauma to deal
with as a kid. Her father, a man of few words with a frightening
hair-trigger temper, wasn’t just strict, he was puritanical. All the young girl wanted was a life like
the other girls had, going out on dates and one day having that first kiss down by the
river. It never happened, because the father didn’t
allow her or her sisters near any boys. In fact, he told them that they weren’t
even allowed to wear dresses or skirts. They had to dress like boys or at least dress
in a way that looked entirely unattractive. He told them he was doing them a favor, saving
them from the lustful little scoundrels that would knock them up and ruin their lives. But that didn’t stop her from dreaming. When her father and mother were out of the
house, Nancy would go into her mother’s closet and pull out the stacks of romance
magazines. She read for a while and then looked in the
air as if seeing herself all dolled-up and out with some savior who’d rescued her from
her life of loveless gloom. Then she’d get the newspaper and read the
lonely hearts column. Little did she know that one day she’d be
picking her victims from one. She met her knight in shining armor when she
was just 16. His name was Charley Braggs and he worked
in the linen factory with her. They dated for around four months and then
decided it was time to get hitched. Nancy’s father was actually content with
the decision. Not one to embrace casual dating, he told
Nancy that if she wanted to be with the guy then marriage was the only way. The couple had four kids over a period of
just four years. She smoked heavily, he drank heavily. She was sure he was cheating on her, but then
during drunken fights, he accused her of doing the same. Nancy’s vision of romance was shattered,
so, what did she do about that? Well, the answer is she did what she’d end
up doing lots of times: killing. When she was just 22 and had been married
for six years, two of the children mysteriously died. They were healthy, lovely kids, and then just
like that, they were gone. It was believed they died of accidental food
poisoning, but the real reason you could say was their mother wanted a quieter household. The serial killer was out of the gates. As for the husband, she scared the hell out
of him. That’s why he left her. He actually took one of the kids with him,
but later returned and gave the kid to her. We’ll come back to him later and the crazy
things he had to say about Nancy. Now she was lonely again with two kids on
her hands. There was a solution to her misery, and that
was the newspaper and the lonely hearts column. There she read a wonderful little ad by a
guy named Robert Franklin Harrelson. As often happens in life, the perfect prince
charming was anything but. He had a criminal record for assault and drank
his way to the tune of a whisky bottle every day of the week. Still, she and her two kids stayed with him
for many years, despite the regular beatings and the continual verbal abuses. Then, when Nancy was 37, her daughter Melvina
had a child of her own. His name was Robert Lee Haynes. Now Nancy was a grandmother, but it seems
she wasn’t exactly made up about that. We know this because of what happened to Melvina’s
second child. She was still in the hospital, absolutely
exhausted after experiencing a grueling labor and still half-zonked from all the ether that
doctors had given her. In this haze, she opened her eyes and she
could swear that she saw her mother in the corner of the hospital room holding her newborn. Blinking her eyes, with her vision blurred,
she watched in horror as her mom took out a hatpin and shoved it into the baby’s soft
head, right into the brain. Melvina passed out again from exhaustion,
and when she came to she thought that what she’d witnessed had been some kind of nightmare. She called out to her husband. With his head down he entered the room. He had bad news. Their baby had died. It was a mystery to the doctors. Still, it seems that Melvina didn’t blame
her mom. Maybe she really did think that she’d had
a nightmare, perhaps a premonition of a natural death. After that happened, though, she and her husband
just drifted apart. But Nancy was by no means done with killing. Melvina met another guy. World War II was raging and this man was a
soldier. For Melvina, it was a match made in heaven,
but for Nancy, it was a disastrous coupling. Nancy was now not just fighting with her abusive
husband, but she was battling with her own daughter. One day the two of them had a fight, and guess
what…someone died. On July 7, 1945, Melvina’s second daughter
passed away. It was thought to be from asphyxiation from
unknown causes, but when you hear that Nancy later picked up a five hundred bucks life
insurance policy on the kid, well, it was likely another murder. 1945 was coming to an end and one day the
American public became jubilant. That was the day it was announced that Japan
had surrendered to the Allied Powers. Great big parties were thrown from one side
of the US to the other. Nancy’s husband, not one to miss out on
an excuse to get out of his mind on booze, joined in the fun. When he got home from the party he tried to
force her into bed. The last thing he said to her was, “If you
don't listen to me, woman, I ain't gonna be here next week.” The next day she was in the garden tending
to some roses, when what did she find but her husband’s secret stash of corn whisky. Without so much as blinking an eye she calmly
walked back into the house. She opened a cupboard and put her hand up
to the top shelf. That’s where the rat poison was kept. She then returned to the whisky bottle. Her violent husband didn’t survive the night. Now she was 40, perhaps getting on in years
to start another family. But with hope in her black heart, she again
took to going through the lonely columns of newspapers. It wasn’t long until she met another guy,
but as luck would have it, he turned out to be another man fond of whisky and spending
nights in the beds of other women. His name was Arlie Lanning. The two got married, but yet again it was
an unhappy marriage. Inside the house, the two argued, but outside
their relationship looked like a dream to the other townsfolk. So, when this guy died mysteriously, they
came out in support of Nancy. With tears in her eyes, the well-liked churchgoing
Nancy told them, “He just sat down one morning to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bowl of
prunes I especially prepared for him.” When standing over the coffin, she wept and
said, “He looked in fine shape. Then...well...two days later...dead. I nursed him, believe me, I nursed him, but
I failed… Poor, poor Arlie. You know what he said to me before he breathed
his last? 'Nannie,' he said, 'Nannie, it must have been
the coffee.'” When her house burned to the ground, they
wished her well again, although she was made up after collecting on the insurance. With cash in her pocket, she decided it was
time to go and find one of her sisters. She did just that, but her poor sister was
so sick she spent most of her days in bed. She died just after Nancy moved in with her. Now she was in her mid-forties and single
again, but instead of going through the lonely hearts columns she decided to join a dating
service called the “Diamond Circle Club.” It was through that service that she met a
man called Richard L. Morton. He was immediately taken in by her charms
and the fact she always had a smile on her face. It was 1952 and the couple got hitched in
Emporia, Kansas. This time her husband didn’t have a problem
with whisky, but he did enjoy forming short-term relationships with other women. Nonetheless, the couple seemed to live a pretty
normal life. That’s what it looked like when Nancy’s
mom went to live with the newlyweds. She needed looking after, after falling and
breaking her hip. A few months later the mother was six feet
under after unknowingly drinking one of Nancy’s poison cocktails. Just three months later and her husband was
in the ground too. During this time one of Nancy’s other sisters
also died in mysterious circumstances after getting too close to her. Ok, so you might be wondering right now why
no one questioned the fact that most people who came into contact with this woman died. It’s a good question, and no doubt someone
should have been suspicious. But, the fact is, no one expected a jovial,
charming, and always bubbly middle-aged woman to be a killer. Just months after she murdered her mother
and her husband, she met another man. His name was Samuel Doss. Now, this guy was the salt of the Earth type,
so Nancy didn’t really have any reason to shorten his life considerably. Not only was he a minister in the Church of
Nazarene but he deserved some sympathy. Prior to meeting Nancy, he’d lost a wife
and nine children in a tornado in Arkansas. Well, in Nancy’s eyes, he was far from perfect. This guy was a strict Christian, and he espoused
a lot of conservative ideals. He might not have cheated or even as much
as looked at a bottle of hooch, but he waved a disapproving finger at Nancy when she was
enthralled while reading one of her beloved romance novels. He was also controlling with the couple’s
finances and demanded the two were in bed by 9.30 pm. One day she was watching TV when he walked
into the room and angrily turned it off. He looked at her and said, “I’ve been
a Christian man all my life and you’re going to be a Christian woman. You don’t need a radio and television.” That was a bad move on his part. Just three months after the couple was married,
he ended up in the hospital. He told the doctors that he felt had some
kind of flu bug, but after some time the doctor said that he had a very bad infection in his
digestive tract. He was released, but seven days later was
found dead in an armchair. Nancy wasn’t at all put out by this since
she’d taken two life insurance policies out on him. Still, this time someone did get suspicious. That doctor that had treated Doss couldn’t
believe that the earlier sickness could have killed him. For that reason, he ordered an autopsy. The result of that was clear: poisoning by
arsenic, enough of it to drop an elephant. It soon became clear that this was the reason
he’d been admitted to the hospital the first time. Nancy later admitted that she’d first given
him rat poison in a cup of coffee, but she’d gotten the dose wrong and given him too little. The next time she gave him a bigger dose,
although it was hidden in a large bowl of stewed prunes. During her interrogation, she giggled all
the time. After a while, she admitted to the investigators
that she’d laced sweet potato pies with arsenic. When she referred to her past husbands, she’d
produce a large smile and call them her “sweet potato pies.” That’s why she got the name Giggling Granny
and also the Jolly Black Widow. When asked why she killed her last husband
she replied, “He wouldn't let me watch my favorite programs on the television, and he
made me sleep without the fan on the hottest nights. He was a miser and...well, what's a woman
to do under those conditions?” She confessed to killing four of her five
husbands but didn’t confess to the other murders. At times she just said some of those guys
“got on her nerves”, but remained cheerful throughout the interviews. She told them money was never the reason why
she killed, saying, “I was searching for the perfect mate, the real romance of life.” In fact, after she killed her last husband
she was already writing love letters to another man. The first husband was described as the one
that got away. The media caught up with him after she was
arrested and this is what he said, “When she got mad, I wouldn’t eat anything she
fixed or drink anything around the house.” He said he only lived as long as he did because
there was no life insurance policy on him. “I was afraid of Nannie, deathly afraid,”
he said. As the trial came to an end, the judge looked
down at her and said, “You understand that all that is left is for the court to decide
between a life or death sentence?” She responded in the positive. He gave her life in prison, saying that giving
her a death sentence would “be poor precedent” – meaning, because she was a woman. As she left the court, reporters flocked to
see her. Laughing and smiling she told them that she
wasn’t at all upset about spending the rest of her days in prison. In that prison, she was described as a “jokester”
who got along with everyone. When a reporter went to see her one time,
she told him, “When they get shorthanded in the kitchen here, I always offer to help
out, but they never do let me.” In 1965, after serving ten years of her sentence,
she died from leukemia. She was 59 years old. It’s thought she murdered 11 people in total. Now you need to watch, “Insane Story of
Cannibal Clan that Terrorized Europe.” Or, have a look at...
