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After all, Nannie has no way of getting to know the village children on her own, as her father refuses both her and her sisters to speak to them. He also refuses to wear makeup and what he thinks is too challenging clothing.
Going to dance is completely ruled out because the father is scared.
– I’m afraid you are being raped, she explains.
Don’t move together
When Nannie turns 16, she starts working at the Linen Thread Company linen factory. She meets Charley Braggs.
He is just like the men he has read about in his mother’s magazines: erect, broad-shouldered, attentive, and kind.
After Nannie’s father approves, Charley asks.
Just four months after they met, Nannie and Charley have become husband and wife.
Charley’s mother is single and single, and requires the newly married couple to move in with her to help her.
Nannie reacts strongly. Not that she imagined a marriage.
In a memoir she wrote in Life magazine just before she died, Nannie described her mother-in-law as “a demanding hypochondriac from a mother” and told her mother-in-law that the couple was home every night.
Nannie feels that the new mother-in-law is at least as dominant as her own father, and decides to take control of her own life.
While Charley and her mother are sitting at home, she leaves the house more and more often. She goes to bars alone, is unfaithful, drinks large amounts of alcohol and smokes chain.
Charley is also unfaithful, and then explains this with her fear.
– Nannie was a beautiful and incredibly funny girl. Our marriage got off to a good start, but after a few years it completely lost track, according to Alabama Heritage, Charlie has stated afterwards.
The mother-in-law controlled everything
“I married, as my father wished, in 1921 to a boy who I had only known for four or five months. He had no family, except for a mother who was not married and took over my life when we married,” Nannie wrote in Life magazine.
Even though Nannie feels that marriage is not something she dreamed of as a child, she and Charley have four daughters in just four years.
In 1927, two of the girls suddenly die after breakfast. Doctors find no other explanation other than that they have been food poisoned.
At the funeral, Nannie, who has raised large sums due to the girls’ life insurance, appears bankrupt.
Charley has been convinced that the wife has something to do with the deaths. He runs away with his eldest daughter, Melvina.
She does it very well, as she will be the only husband who survived Nannie.
Refused to eat and drink when Nannie was angry
As a consequence, Charley tells the police that he was terrified while married to Nannie.
– At the time, I didn’t know about poison. Those who cared for the bodies said the girls had been poisoned. Some of my friends warned me against Nannie. When I was angry, I refused to eat or drink anything she did. She was moody and rude, she says.
He says he believes the only reason she didn’t kill him was because he had no life insurance.
Back to magazines and books.
Now Nannie is left alone with her newborn daughter Florine and her mother-in-law.
Every second he has, he spends on True Romance, and dreams of finding a new man who is as handsome and affectionate as the men he reads about.
In 1928 Charley Braggs and Melvina suddenly return to town, and with them they have Charley’s new girlfriend and son.
Charley demands a divorce. Nannie wants the same.
Braggs and Nannie complete the divorce, and she retrieves her daughter Melvina.
Lonely and cashless, Nannie carries her two surviving daughters and moves in with her parents.
Enchanted by love poems
In 1929, he meets a contact in True Romance, where Frank Harrelson is looking for a woman to marry.
Nannie writes him a letter and he responds with an image of himself and several love poems. Nannie is delighted at the sink and is convinced that this time she has met her soul mate.
She does not know that he has been an alcoholic all his adult life, and that he has been arrested several times for prowling and drunkenness.
Storm mistress Nannie marries Frank as soon as possible, and they move to Jacksonville, Florida with Melvina and Florine.
Nannie crushes when she realizes that Robert is also not the man of dreams.
Every week he finds liquor bottles hidden in the house and buried in his rose garden.
He also discovers that Frank has a huge debt and has also been convicted of violence multiple times.
She still chooses to stay with him.
Dream or reality?
Nannie’s daughter Melvina grew up and in 1943 she gave birth to her son Robert. Nannie is often a babysitter and can often be photographed with him on her lap.
He has big eyes and cheekbones, and Nannie smiles from ear to ear with her arms around him.
When Melvina is about to give birth to her second child, a girl, Nannie is in the hospital to help.
While Melvina gives birth, Nannie runs from side to side to collect juices and cold cloths for her.
The newborn girl screams and screams when she is born, but dies soon after birth.
Doctors do not understand anything.
Melvina, who is very carefree after a long and difficult delivery, tells the man and mother-in-law that she thought she saw, or perhaps had nightmares about, her mother sticking a pin into the girl’s head in the hospital.
I think she saw visions
Melvina’s husband and mother-in-law say they both saw Nannie holding a pin in her hand the day the girl was born and twisted it into her fingers.
However, Melvina rejects the idea that her own mother has killed the girl, thinking that she is probably only dealing with heavy labor.
When Nannie, on July 7, 1945, cares for her two-year-old son Robert, Melvina, he also dies.
Doctors believe the boy died of oxygen deficiency, but this time they can’t understand why either.
Melvina is devastated after losing both children, but she does not dare to think that it was her own mother who killed them.
When Nannie is charged with murder, Melvina settles in the courtroom and hugs her mother as the lanterns shine.
The examiner returns
Nannie’s troubled marriage to Frank Harrelson lasts 16 years.
When he comes home late one night after partying with comrades who were sent out during World War II, he rapes Nannie.
The day after the rape, Nannie finds a bottle of homemade liquor that Robert has buried in the rose garden.
It is trembling. On the contrary, this life is the opposite of what she had dreamed of as a child, and now she wants him to suffer.
He pours rat poison and arsenic into the bottle and digs it up again, knowing that at some point Harrelson will dig it up and drink what it contains.
The next day he unearths it and empties the contents.
The same night, Harrelson suffers from cramps and abdominal pain, suffering a painful death in bed while Nannie lies down next to him and strokes her head.
Once again, the doctors are free, but nobody suspects Nannie. They conclude that Frank has also been food poisoned.
Meet a new husband through a contact announcement
Nannie continues the search for great love and inserts several personal ads in the local newspaper.
She becomes a friendly letter to Arlie Lanning, whom she is convinced is the dreamer.
Just three days after Nannie and Arlie first meet, they get married and move to North Carolina.
Like Harrelson, Lanning is also an alcoholic. When Nannie discovers this, she begins to go out into town again. Sometimes she disappears for several months at a time.
When at home, she is the perfect housewife who cares for children, prepares dinner, hangs clothes to dry in the garden, makes cakes for neighbors, and keeps the house spotless.
When she leaves, Harrelson has to look after the children while she goes to a hotel, drinks at home, chain smokes and is unfaithful.
“Nannie, it must have been the coffee”
Suddenly, Lanning also dies of what doctors believe is heart failure, and a few days later his house burns down.
The neighbors are shocked and Nannie, with tears in her eyes, explains:
– He only sat down one morning to have a cup of coffee and eat a plate of prunes that he had made for her. Until then, he was in good shape. Then two days later he was dead. I took care of it, you believe me, but I failed,
she says.
He takes a handkerchief out of his apron pocket and wipes a tear from his cheek.
– Poor, poor Arlie. Do you know what he said to me when he took his last breath? “Nannie, it must have been the coffee,” she says.
Nannie moves in with her mother-in-law, but only a few days later she also dies.
Nannie and the children move in with their sister, Dovie. Alarms do not go off when Dovie also dies after a short time.
club date
In search of a new husband, Nannie joins the single Diamond Circle Club. There he meets retired salesman Richard L. Morton.
Morton falls in love with Nannie’s smile and sends a letter to the individual club to unsubscribe.
– Thanks for meeting the sweetest and most amazing woman in the world, write.
In 1952 Nannie and Morton get married in Emporia, Kansas.
Storm’s love fails, and Morton begins a secret relationship with a woman he met just before he met Nannie.
Lock in the bathroom
Nannie has not disconnected from the individual club and is secretly starting to write letters with other men.
She ensures that she is always the one to collect the mail.
She closes the bathroom door and reads all the letters she receives. She responds to many and asks if they are ready for marriage.
In the early morning, she pours rat poison and arsenic into the thermos that Morton always carries.
At night he has cramps, increased abdominal pain, and dies.
– I found out he was planning to run away with another woman, Nannie explains later.
Morton has five life insurance policies, which Nannie collects shortly after death.
When Nannie’s father dies of natural causes, his mother Louise moves to Nannie. It won’t be long before Louise also suffers from severe abdominal pain and dies mysteriously.
No one suspects that good and kind Nannie has anything to do with all the deaths around her. But, soon after, she reveals herself by chance.
Criticizing Nanny’s romantic magazines
Nannie falls in love with conservative priest Samuel Doss. He just lost his family in a tornado that devastated Arkansas.
They get married, but they argue constantly. Nannie thinks Samuel is stingy and boring. Samuel thinks she is lazy and overly fond of money.
Samuel likes to be cold and dark around the house to save electricity, and he only has a small reading lamp when he reads the newspaper on the old, worn chair he has had all year.
Nannie has almost no money, and is frustrated that her husband is holding her wallet.
Samuel Doss does not think about television, which has just revolutionized the world, and cannot claim Nanny’s love for television shows, romance magazines, and books.
“Christian women don’t need television and romantic magazines to be happy,” he tells Nannie.
Nannie stays, saying she won’t be back until she is so tight-fisted, and at least not until she puts her name on her bank account so she can use it too.
It also requires Samuel to order two life insurance policies that will allow him to receive large sums if he dies.
Samuel pleads with Nannie to return. It will be the biggest mistake of all your life.
Killed because he couldn’t watch television
In September 1954, Samuel is hospitalized with cramps and enormous abdominal pain. With anguish and scarcity, he survives and is sent back to Nannie.
He can’t handle food, and he lies in bed while Nannie strokes his head, serves him pretzels, and tells him that he will soon recover. Samuel believes her.
But, just seven days later, he suffers from cramps and abdominal pain, and falls dead.
Nannie is about to earn her life insurance income.
The bank account is emptied.
– He wouldn’t let me watch my favorite show on TV, and forced me to sleep without the fan on one of the hottest nights we’ve ever had! He was hell. What woman can live in such conditions? Nannie asks when will it be later
murder suspect.
The caring doctor changes everything
It was Dr. Schwelbein who treated Samuel when he entered September with cramps and abdominal pain.
Schwelbein learns that Samuel is dead and understands nothing.
He wants to know how Samuel really died, and orders an autopsy of the body.
The autopsy shows that Samuel has large amounts of arsenic in his body.
“The crowd could have killed a horse,” Schwelbein writes in his report.
Nannie is arrested and subjected to lengthy and heavy interrogations.
Who else could have poisoned him than she?
Nannie disputes a True Romance theme in the interrogation room and confesses to the arrest.
– Poisoning? I, she asks, bursting out laughing.
The researchers have no doubts.
They let her take True Romance to the interrogation, hoping she would feel safer then.
– Nannie, we’ve been here for many hours. Are you not tired You killed him. We know you killed him. You know you killed him, says one of them.
– Oh, boys, come on. I have not killed anyone. I don’t know why you think that, she replies, smiling.
– We take some phones
In the book on Nannie Doss and other serial killer women, “Deadlier Than Male,” author Terry Manners has replayed a conversation from the interrogation room:
Chief Investigator Ray Page lights a cigarette and takes a step toward Nannie, and she shakes her head and says she doesn’t understand why he’s there.
– We took some phones, Nannie, and found out that Mr. Doss was her fourth husband who died with the same symptoms. We put two and two together, Nannie, and it looks like we’ve hit, well, four, he says.
and:
– Arsenic, Nannie. We believe that they all died of arsenic. It is easier if you admit what you have done before we discover it ourselves, he says.
Dispenser on his sword
Nannie laughs and hits her knees. While keeping her eyes fixed on a True Romance page, she answers this:
– Young man, are you saying that I killed all my husbands? You are a great man, but so stupid, she says, turning around.
Ray Page demands that he leave the magazine.
– Nannie, so are others, right? Many people around him have died in recent decades, and his ghosts are returning. They are here, Nannie, in this room. Let them rest, he says.
“Okay, okay,” says Nannie, straightening her back.
She takes a deep breath.
As he smiles, he happily says that he not only killed Samuel Doss, but also three other husbands.
Look at True Romance, now lying on the table in front of her, and take a deep breath.
– So there you have it. Can I get my magazine back now? She asks, laughing.
The police surrender
The police examine Nanny’s life and try to find answers to how almost all of Nanny’s relatives, such as her mother, sister, grandchildren and mother-in-law, died suddenly.
Nannie refuses to kill them, and the police cannot find sufficient evidence that she can be charged with more than one murder.
“I can’t kill anyone I share blood with,” she says.
Be declared crazy
At the age of 49, Nannie Doss is charged with the murder of Samuel Doss, and she risks becoming the first woman in Oklahoma to receive the death penalty.
Two years after she was arrested, Judge Elmer Adams declares her insane.
This saves you the electric chair.
“I don’t want to set a bad precedent by killing a woman, and especially a woman with mental illness,” he says in court.
In June 1955, Nannie Doss is sentenced to life in prison and smiles broadly when sentenced.
Lose the spark of life.
After two years in prison, she is interviewed by the local Sarasota Herald Tribune.
So she is not as smiling and happy as before.
She says she wanted to be sentenced to death.
“I have lost the spark of life,” she says, saying time is slow in prison.
He also explains that the smile for which he is so famous is false.
– Behind my big smile there is a heavy heart. I’ve always let people think I’m happy, even if I am not, she says.
– Maybe God is kind
Nannie says she is only allowed to work in the prison laundry, even though she would rather work in the kitchen.
– When they lack people in the kitchen, I have always offered to help, but they never let me work there, she says.
Nannie says she has had two small heart attacks since she was jailed.
“Perhaps God is kind and will take me soon,” she says.
Ten years after she was sentenced to life in prison, Nannie has leukemia.
After a short period of sick leave, she falls asleep in a hospital with her hands crossed.
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