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[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: so while being interviewed She had this air as if like she had nothing to worry about literally saying I have nothing to hide My conscience is clear and she says that she married these men because she loved them So, obviously, she is denying everything at this stage. Even going as far as denying being married to Richard.
[00:00:22] Adam Cox: Richard. Which one was Yeah, which one was he again?
[00:00:24] Kyle Risi: So, if you've lost track, he is the husband she killed before her mother came to live with them, after The mother broke her hip.
[00:00:31] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think there should be a rhyme with this one. You know, like with Henry VIII's wives, where it's like, what was it? Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, died. This one's poisoned, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned. Poisoned.
[00:00:43] Kyle Risi: Poisoned.
[00:00:44] Adam Cox: Poisoned.
[00:00:44] Kyle Risi: Really helps.
[00:00:45] Kyle Risi: Very helpful. Thanks Adam.
[00:00:47] Adam Cox: You're welcome. [00:01:00]
[00:01:14] Kyle Risi: Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're that weekly writer podcast where each week I tell Adam Cox all about a topic I think you'll find both fascinating and intriguing. We dive into stories pulled from the darker corners of true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people.
[00:01:35] Kyle Risi: We always give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. I'm your host this week, Kyle Risi.
[00:01:43] Adam Cox: And I'm your co host Adam Cox.
[00:01:45] Kyle Risi: And in today's compendium, we're diving into an assembly of warm hugs and cold blooded murder. What?
[00:01:55] Adam Cox: I can't imagine any, any murder containing warm hugs.
[00:01:58] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, you haven't been murdered by [00:02:00] this person, that's for sure.
[00:02:01] Adam Cox: That's true. Of all the people I've been murdered by, not this person. Doesn't sound like I've been murdered by this one.
[00:02:04] Kyle Risi: Would you like a warm hug before you get murdered?
[00:02:06] Adam Cox: That's really dark.
[00:02:07] Kyle Risi: It might ease you, it might kind of calm you down, you
[00:02:10] Adam Cox: know?
[00:02:11] Adam Cox: Yeah, I'd rather not be murdered.
[00:02:12] Kyle Risi: Hey, that's still to be decided. Right, okay. So, Adam, when you think about grandmothers, Right? The image that comes to mind is one of a doting caregiver with a cheerful, infectious character. Someone that you can go to to share a few kind words, maybe even a bacon sandwich, yeah?
[00:02:31] Kyle Risi: And even maybe, if you're lucky, a shiny 1 coin to spend at the sweet shop, yeah?
[00:02:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, hang on a second.
[00:02:38] Kyle Risi: Mm?
[00:02:39] Adam Cox: Are you saying that grandmothers are killing people?
[00:02:42] Kyle Risi: I'm saying that we should be very careful. about the people and the facades that they wear in ordinary society. Oh. Because they could turn out to be ruthless, merciless kidders.
[00:02:56] Adam Cox: Oh, wow. I mean, I'm intrigued. But like, think of all the kids that might be [00:03:00] listening to this and then might being like
[00:03:01] Kyle Risi: A granny is a bit Yeah, what's
[00:03:05] Adam Cox: she up to? Yeah,
[00:03:06] Kyle Risi: she never gives me a pound coin. Well, that's exactly what today's serial killer is. Well, that's exactly what today's serial killer is. Well, that's exactly what today's serial killer was.
[00:03:11] Kyle Risi: Her name was, her name was Nannie infamously known as the Giggling Granny.
[00:03:16] Adam Cox: The Giggling Granny? I know.
[00:03:18] Kyle Risi: I don't think I've heard of her. Have you never? No. Well, I mean, that was going to be my next question. What do you know of this story? As we always do, but clearly you know nothing. So her name was Nannie Doss and she was an active serial killer from the 1920s till around 1954.
[00:03:33] Kyle Risi: And her victims were her children, her mother, her sister, her grandchildren, her mother in law, and four husbands. So she's pretty much wiped out that family. Oh my god, she's ruthless! And these are the very people that she's supposed to love and protect, right? And Dos, is that her last name?
[00:03:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's the name of her last husband that she knocked off. So her real name was, Nancy [00:04:00] Hazel,
[00:04:00] Adam Cox: Nancy Hazel.
[00:04:02] Nannie? Was short for Nancy.
[00:04:04] Adam Cox: Is that not the same number of characters in that word? I guess so.
[00:04:08] Adam Cox: That doesn't add up.
[00:04:10] Kyle Risi: And like, while the moniker The Giggling Granny might seem unsuspecting and cheerful on the outside, Almost comical. Right?
[00:04:18] Kyle Risi: In my opinion, it actually makes us even more frightening because with a name like Jack the Ripper or the Boston Strangler, at least you know where you stand. When you go, Oh, hi, nice to meet you. I'm Kyle. Yeah. I'm the Boston Strangler. You're like, get me out of here. Yeah. You know what I mean? But when someone goes, Oh, hi.
[00:04:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I'm the giggling granny. You're like, give me a pound coin.
[00:04:38] Adam Cox: Yeah, but now you should be worried if she's passing you some trifle at the next Christmas dinner.
[00:04:41] Kyle Risi: Oh, yeah, you got to be careful man. That was her MO though.
[00:04:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, we'll get into that. What, trifle? Well, we'll see.
[00:04:48] Kyle Risi: No, putting shit in the trifle.
[00:04:50] Adam Cox: Ah, sneaky. Yeah, that's, if I was a Nannie, that's how I'd do it, I think.
[00:04:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so because of course Nannie Doss was doting, because she was infectious, because she was caring, [00:05:00] until she wasn't, A name like the Giggling Granny is just even more frightening, right? So it also just adds to that profound deception and the betrayal at the heart of the story calling to question whether or not we can trust the facades people choose to wear living in our homes and in our communities.
[00:05:19] Adam Cox: Well, I've always wondered about you.
[00:05:21] Kyle Risi: You've got nothing to worry about, right? Who you need to worry about is Keith. He was in a fight this morning, and he is looking for blood. Keith's our cat, by the way. For those freaks of the show that, like
[00:05:33] Adam Cox: No, our uncle doesn't live with us. What? Keith. It's like an uncle's name.
[00:05:37] Kyle Risi: I guess it is, yeah, Uncle Gigg. Such a ridiculous name.
[00:05:41] Kyle Risi: And so, yeah, like, Nannie Doss earned the notorious nickname the Giggling Granny because of how happy and nonchalant she was after being arrested for murdering one of her husbands. And in total, Nannie murdered 11 of her nearest and dearest with the motive of obtaining small insurance payouts and to find what she called the [00:06:00] real romance of life after getting really bored with her situation. So like, it's scary. One day you can just be like, fine, everything's okay, I'm happy, I'm content, and then go, yeah, do you know what, I want something better. Rather than just leaving you fucking kill your husband.
[00:06:15] Kyle Risi: So it's really scary. So I'm really excited about today's story because it's like this Excited I am because Adam it underscores this really weird and scary profound deception and betrayal that can exist amongst The closest people to us, right? To the degree that it makes you sleep with one eye open.
[00:06:34] Kyle Risi: Great. Which I would recommend for you.
[00:06:35] Adam Cox: Right. Um, so you can, so everyone, so everyone listening to this is going to feel real anxious about their whole family after this.
[00:06:40] Kyle Risi: You've got to see things through different lenses sometimes. And this is us just putting on that new monocle. Okay. Allowing you to see things differently.
[00:06:47] Kyle Risi: All right. But of course, before we kick off, shall we do all the latest things? Let's do it.
[00:06:52] Kyle Risi: So this is the segment of our show where we catch up on all the week's happenings and [00:07:00] share a quick tidbit, strange fact, or laugh at a bit of weird news from the past week. This week is Adam's turn to go first, so Adam, what have you got for us?
[00:07:08] Kyle Risi: So, Kyle, when you die Okay, when I die. Is this, is this in response to, like, the Nannie Doss thing?
[00:07:15] Kyle Risi: I told you you need to sleep with one eye open. You're now going to be like, So, Kyle, when I kill you later
[00:07:20] Adam Cox: Uh, no, no. But, um, yeah, serious question. When you die, um, what would you like to happen to your body or organs?
[00:07:27] Kyle Risi: All my organs? Well, I mean, I'd like to donate them to someone who, who potentially needs them.
[00:07:31] Kyle Risi: My corneas can go to some kind of like blind kid. Um, my heart, well, I mean, that's going straight to hell. Straight in the bin. My penis, that could go in a museum. Can you write to the penis museum and say, I have a really tiny penis that you can display as the pièce de résistance of your museum in Iceland?
[00:07:52] Kyle Risi: You
[00:07:52] Adam Cox: Okay.
[00:07:52] Kyle Risi: I mean, Jimi Hendrix did it.
[00:07:54] Adam Cox: Yeah, he's in there. Um, that's for sure. Yeah.
[00:07:56] Kyle Risi: Okay. So tell me, what is this, the story [00:08:00] about,
[00:08:00] Adam Cox: what's happening
[00:08:00] Kyle Risi: to people's bodies? I
[00:08:01] Adam Cox: think a lot of people say like, if they can donate their organs, then, you know, they would do that. But then if you couldn't donate your organs, because perhaps you've had liver disease from being an alcoholic or something like that, or maybe cancer.
[00:08:12] Adam Cox: You wouldn't be able to maybe do that. And so what some people do is say, Hey, I'll, I'll donate my body to science. And that's kind of what happened to this couple. So this woman, her husband died from cirrhosis of the liver. And, um, they couldn't donate his organs. And so the next option was well donate it to science, the body.
[00:08:33] Adam Cox: And she thought, actually this is probably a good idea. Maybe they can study, maybe they can study, um, what causes alcoholism or something like that. Basically, I mean,
[00:08:39] Kyle Risi: what causes alcoholism is um, a lot of drinking. Is a lot of drinking.
[00:08:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess trying to, I dunno. Maybe they can like look into help.
[00:08:45] Adam Cox: Treat it. Treat it, yeah. For future. So try and get some good, I guess to come of this.
[00:08:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah,
[00:08:51] Adam Cox: so that's what she thought she was thought she had donated her husband's body to science so it turns out in America, if you donate your body to medical research or [00:09:00] education, um, that's kind of a vague term. And actually what could be happening is that your body could be then sold to, I don't know, the military? For example.
[00:09:09] Adam Cox: And so this woman found out that her husband was basically used as a crash dummy.
[00:09:14] Adam Cox: A real crash dummy. Like a crash test dummy. Yeah.
[00:09:17] Kyle Risi: In some kind of fighter jet plane or something.
[00:09:18] Adam Cox: Yeah, I don't know exactly what it was, but his, her husband's body was blown up.
[00:09:24] Kyle Risi: Shit. Like, guys, you gotta read the terms and conditions, man. You gotta read them.
[00:09:28] Adam Cox: Yeah, and I think there's this, there's this whole kind of investigation going on in terms of what actually happens when people donate their bodies to science.
[00:09:35] Adam Cox: Uh huh. And I think the, the, the facility that did this to her husband, I think, actually got found out was doing things wrong and he got put in prison. But it just goes to show that, yeah, really do your research because, um, make sure you know exactly what's going to happen.
[00:09:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's freaky man.
[00:09:49] Adam Cox: So it's really scary.
[00:09:50] Kyle Risi: Well, I was listening to a podcast only this week, bizarrely and they say that rather than selling your body, um, as a whole selling it by its individual parts, you can [00:10:00] make a lot of money and they were going through like the going prices for certain body parts.
[00:10:04] Kyle Risi: Okay, like your eyes will reach like 200, um, for your, your knee apparently. Uh, you can get quite a lot for them, like up to a thousand dollars, I think. Wow. Like a car.
[00:10:13] Adam Cox: It's a very morbid thought, isn't it, when you know that, oh, I can get a thousand dollars for my knee.
[00:10:18] Kyle Risi: That's true. But you always expect, them to be treating your body with a certain degree of respect. Yes. And they're not. They're just, they're sticking it inside a bloody tank and they're like, let's see what happens if we crash this tank.
[00:10:31] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah, and I understand, but then why couldn't they have just done that with a regular crash dummy?
[00:10:37] Adam Cox: They probably
[00:10:37] Kyle Risi: have, and this is probably the next stage, right?
[00:10:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. And now what happens? I think they just need to, like, be honest about it. We're gonna do this to the body.
[00:10:44] Kyle Risi: But at the same time, they probably also don't know what they're gonna do with it just yet, right? They just have, like, a stockpile of bodies.
[00:10:50] Kyle Risi: And they go, okay, yeah, we need a body for this. Maybe they can't specifically say what they're gonna use your body for, because it probably doesn't work like that, right?
[00:10:57] Adam Cox: Shoot into space. Um, well, I imagine they have [00:11:00] some sort of plan. I don't think they're just sitting around there on a Monday going, right, we've got a hundred bodies. What should we do this week? God, that's morbid. Yeah, so, um, have you got anything lighter for us this week?
[00:11:11] Kyle Risi: Well, actually, I do actually.
[00:11:13] Kyle Risi: So, you're gonna, this is gonna blow your mind. So, in an online survey by illicitencounters. com, who are apparently the best online dating site for married people, so for affairs and things like that, They did a survey with 2, 000 women, and they presented them with a list of 50 of the most culturally relevant British celebrities from the past year, and asked them to rate them on a scale of attractiveness between 1 and 10.
[00:11:39] Kyle Risi: And this was designed to work out who the sexiest male in the UK is. Right. And the results are in for 2024. Okay.
[00:11:49] Adam Cox: Okay, are we going to be surprised by this?
[00:11:51] Kyle Risi: You are going to be so shook. You're going to be disgusted. So we'll just go through some of the items on the list. Coming in at number 10 was our [00:12:00] man, Dermot O'Leary.
[00:12:01] Kyle Risi: Okay, yeah. So if you don't know who Dermot O'Leary is, he is a presenter in the UK. He, uh, presents X Factor and he's also a BBC Radio 2 presenter as well. So I'd say that's a pretty fair assessment, right? Like, he's an attractive guy. He's getting on a bit, but he's still fit.
[00:12:17] Kyle Risi: He's like, keeps himself in check. He's got a flat belly. Yeah. Apparently he's shorter
[00:12:21] Adam Cox: than you realize. Yeah.
[00:12:22] Kyle Risi: He's really short. He's a shorty.
[00:12:24] Adam Cox: Yeah.
[00:12:24] Kyle Risi: Okay. So actually bear that in mind though, because this is the thing. We have this understanding that women have all of a sudden. Grow knees really huge high expectations of what they're looking for it as a man Okay, and don't know Leary doesn't hit that bracket of being over six foot, right?
[00:12:39] Kyle Risi: Which is notorious at the moment where women are like men are criticizing women for only looking for men over six foot, right? And that's like discounting so many men. So don't know Leary ten sexiest man in the world and he's like five foot five Right. Okay. So next was a guy called Russ Cook. He's a British, uh, endurance athlete. Ginger, big ginger beard. All right. Big ginger beard. Ninth [00:13:00] ginger beard. Okay. Next we have Sam Thompson. He is from Made in Chelsea. Blonde hair guy, quite short as well. Then we've got Romesh Raganathan.
[00:13:09] Adam Cox: A comedian.
[00:13:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Uh, Sri Lankan comedian. I believe he's Sri Lankan. Sri Lankan comedian. Wonky eye. All right, and not to be disrespectful, but we're talking about the UK's sexiest men.
[00:13:18] Adam Cox: Okay.
[00:13:19] Kyle Risi: Top four. We have Prince William. Yeah, I think he Have you seen Prince William? Now? I can get it. Nineties Prince William. Heartthrob. Hang him on your wall. Future king though. Future king, but baldy. That's, that's mean.
[00:13:36] Kyle Risi: It is mean. It is mean. What I'm saying though, and there's nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with being bald. What I'm saying is this is the top 10 sexiest men in the UK and I'm calling into question female standards. All right. Right. What is happening? Next we have Gareth Southgate. So fair. He's a footballer.
[00:13:56] Kyle Risi: Okay. Right. So what we've come to know, like women are attracted to [00:14:00] athletes, people are successful, et cetera. Second place. Do you want to have a guess at who might be second and first?
[00:14:06] Adam Cox: I don't know, Antle deck? Antle deck.
[00:14:08] Kyle Risi: Antle deck. Wonky donkey! Um, so no, coming in second was Tom Holland, obviously Spider Man.
[00:14:14] Adam Cox: Okay, yeah, fine. So,
[00:14:15] Kyle Risi: yeah, I get it, he's an attractive guy, but he's really small, he's really short, he's not this like the six foot seven, kind of athlete, big ripped guy. So he came in second. Number one, the sexiest male in the UK. Two years running, by the way. Uh huh. Yeah. Jeremy Clarkson. So for our listeners who don't know, tell us
[00:14:39] Adam Cox: who Jeremy Clarkson is.
[00:14:40] Adam Cox: He is a, probably slightly above middle aged now.
[00:14:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah,
[00:14:44] Adam Cox: he's, he must be in his 60s. Um, TV presenter known for like, fast cars. His farm. Yeah,
[00:14:51] Kyle Risi: he did his farm. Notoriously controversial topics of I believe in immigration and race and things like that and Brexit.
[00:14:59] Adam Cox: He used to [00:15:00] be famous for wearing like these Levi's, this particular 501s or 511 Levi's jeans, and he made them so unpopular in the UK for young, I'm pretty sure in the nineties, he made them pretty unpopular.
[00:15:12] Adam Cox: So yeah.
[00:15:13] Kyle Risi: Man, and the thing is though, like, how, how has Jeremy Clarkson done this? And he is now the sexist man. And what, and this, like I said, this makes me question women. Like, something has happened to an entire generation of women. Like, ladies, like, who's hurt you? What's happened? Tell Uncle Kyle and Uncle Adam.
[00:15:30] Kyle Risi: Who have they surveyed there? So just 2, 000 ordinary women on this dating website, and I'm assuming they're just attracting just an ordinary kind of sample of UK women, but they voted him the sexiest male in the UK two years and running and also I mean the plus side is this gives us a lot of hope I just need to stop wearing some chore jackets, like, let my hair thin out, and probably just need a bunch of money too, but technicality, I can potentially be the sexiest male on the, on the planet.
[00:15:57] Adam Cox: Yeah, well, maybe, I mean, I understand everyone [00:16:00] that's in the, you know, everyone's got their own sort of, uh, type, and I can understand why Not
[00:16:03] Kyle Risi: everyone! This is the vast majority of people of this survey who've said, Mm, do you know what, Jeremy Clarkson, Mm, yeah, put that sports car in my tunnel.
[00:16:14] Adam Cox: I just think, maybe he's one of those, like, secret crushes that people don't want to admit in person. Oh, like Tony
[00:16:19] Kyle Risi: Blair was for a lot of women at one point, wasn't he? Was he? Yeah.
[00:16:23] Adam Cox: My mum, mum did, mum did vote Labour. I wonder why.
[00:16:25] Kyle Risi: Anyway, so yeah, that's all my latest things for this week, but I do have a couple updates so Pedro from our certified freaks and i'll come on to that in a second. He asks, um when we were in australia Did we actually manage? to stick our hands in a kangaroo pouch.
[00:16:41] Kyle Risi: So Adam, tell us, did I do it?
[00:16:44] Adam Cox: You didn't. You disappointed us all, and you didn't do it.
[00:16:47] Kyle Risi: I was, I mean, I was all raring to go, but actually when I see these kangaroos, I was like, I was quite terrified. That big red one that we saw in that, uh, enclosure. it was massive and I could have jumped over that fence, no problem, because they're allowed to roam free and stick my hand in there.
[00:16:59] Kyle Risi: But it was [00:17:00] ferocious and down there, down there, it was really red and it looked really angry. I just didn't want to get near it. So I didn't do it, unfortunately. So, Pedro, no, I didn't.
[00:17:09] Adam Cox: The closest I got to it was when we saw the rock wallabies and I flicked a foot that was sticking out from of a baby's.
[00:17:16] Kyle Risi: That's it. When I was playing with him, I did think, oh, let me do it. But. It was occupied. We had a baby in it.
[00:17:22] Adam Cox: So couldn't do that, but um, it's probably for the best.
[00:17:25] Kyle Risi: No. No. One day though. One
[00:17:27] Adam Cox: day.
[00:17:27] Kyle Risi: So also, Minnie Hendoo, she asked us for a quick update on Kissgate. So for those of you who are underwear, last year we hosted Eurovision and asked our mates to bring one thing from the house that they absolutely hated as a booby prize for whoever lost the games for that evening.
[00:17:43] Kyle Risi: We ended up losing, and we got everyone's boobie prizes. Yeah. One of which was this monstrous canvas of The Kiss, which is this enormous 60 by 60 centimetre kind of canvas, and it's just horrendous, and it sat in our living room for like, four months.
[00:17:56] Kyle Risi: So since then, on the 20th of [00:18:00] September, we decided that enough was enough, and I decided to kind of just give it back. And we just dumped it into their garden, but of course, this just got dumped back into our garden. And this kicks off kind of this hot potato kind of game of back and forth with this painting.
[00:18:14] Kyle Risi: So, we couldn't just dump back into the garden, we had to be a little more inventive. So, I managed to recruit another teacher who works at Jess's school. Who And arranged for it to be hanging in her classroom one day when she arrived back at school. And it was amazing because she just had no idea how this could have even happened.
[00:18:30] Kyle Risi: I don't think she knows fully today, the lengths, the lengths that we went to to get that picture inside her school. But then a few weeks back, the kids actually made it back to us. And when we arrived home, they had bike locked the painting. To the front of our guttering, like four meters up.
[00:18:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Halfway up the house. It was in front of a house for everyone to see. And because it was bike block, there was just no way that we could get down without the key. But on our doorstep was a lock box and inside that box, we [00:19:00] assumed was the key. So along with the box, it was a scroll with a clue to the combination of the lock.
[00:19:04] Kyle Risi: And it took us hours but eventually we got it open and all that was in there was a jar of pickles. But it took us ages to realize that actually the key was in the jar.
[00:19:15] Adam Cox: Of pickles, we had to like fish them out. And they were stinky.
[00:19:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They didn't smell too good. But yeah, so now we have the kiss and it's just sitting in our garage and we need to start working out how to get it back into their possession.
[00:19:25] Kyle Risi: So Mini Hendry, there's the update. so the goal is to get it back into the house and we can't just dump it to the garden, it has to be inventable. We want to get it into the house. That's the goal. So we need your ideas.
[00:19:36] Adam Cox: Right in.
[00:19:37] Kyle Risi: Right in. So lastly, for those of you who are out of the loop, we randomly launched a Patreon last week and we have all this, we have this huge backlog of episodes that we haven't released yet.
[00:19:48] Kyle Risi: So we thought we would release Next week's episode early to our free subscribers If you want so we thought that we released next week's episode early to all our free subscribers So if you want to get access to next week's episode pop over to our patreon There's a link to it in our bio on our instagram Go [00:20:00] there, click that link, join up for free, and we will give you access to next week's episode if you need that compendium freak kind of.
[00:20:08] Adam Cox: Fix. Fix. Yeah.
[00:20:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Compendium fix.
[00:20:11] Kyle Risi: But if you also want access to all of our backlog episodes, like there's usually like four or five episodes in that backlog, then you can subscribe as a certified freak. That's what we're calling it. Oh, we're calling you guys a certified.
[00:20:23] Adam Cox: Oh, I just thought we were insulting our listeners now.
[00:20:25] Kyle Risi: No, no. What do you think?
[00:20:27] Kyle Risi: Do you think certified freaks is it? it's
[00:20:29] Adam Cox: Endearing.
[00:20:29] Kyle Risi: We were going to call them big tops. But then I just makes all of our listeners sound like. huge massive bear homosexuals that really like to bear back people. So Big Tops is out, Certified Freaks is in.
[00:20:39] Adam Cox: Okay.
[00:20:40] Kyle Risi: And yeah, you can go, you can enjoy them all if you subscribe.
[00:20:44] Kyle Risi: And also come and have a chat with us, find out what we're working on next. The Patreon is still evolving, um, it will only get better. Come tell us what you want to see more of and we'll make it happen. Great.
[00:20:54] Kyle Risi: Also, I'll get Adam to post the whole story about the Kiss painting on [00:21:00] there. Give you access to pictures and things like that.
[00:21:02] Kyle Risi: Just give you a sense of the entire story. We'll make that free, available to everyone. All free subscribers. Are you giving me more work to do? Yeah, yeah. You need to do something. But yeah, time's running out. We need to get that painting back. But that's all my latest things for this week. Should we get on with the show?
[00:21:16] Adam Cox: Let's do it.
[00:21:17] Kyle Risi: So Adam,Nannienny Doss was born Nancy Hazel on the 4th of November 1905 in Blue Mountain near Anniston in Alabama. So we've got a right real country chick here. So her parents were humble farmers James and Lou Hazel. And ever since the age of 5, She was given the nickname Nannie, which she would use for the rest of her life.
[00:21:42] Kyle Risi: Now, Nannie had one brother and three sisters and growing up, they endured a strict upbringing enforced by their father, which created a real deep rooted hatred towards him, including his wife. He was said to have been extremely controlling over all aspects of their life. [00:22:00] Sometimes he was abusive and he had a terrible, terrible temper as well.
[00:22:03] Kyle Risi: Nannie and her siblings rarely went to school. They were forbidden from socializing with other children completely. So growing up, all they had was each other. And instead of school, all the children were expected to work on the farm. And at the time, of course, this is quite normal.
[00:22:18] Kyle Risi: And was often the reason why many parents in rural areas opted to have large families, because like, the farm was the most important kind of part of the family, right? It was their, it was their lifeblood, essentially. And growing up, Nannie was an avid reader. She especially loved reading her mother's romance magazines.
[00:22:36] Kyle Risi: So she was like not even a teenager yet and she was like really getting into these saucy raunchy novels.
[00:22:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's what I thought it was, a romance. It's like
[00:22:44] Kyle Risi: a romance novel but in a magazine form.
[00:22:47] Adam Cox: Okay, and it's a dirty romance novel?
[00:22:50] Kyle Risi: Well, I guess dirty for about 1905.
[00:22:53] Adam Cox: Oh, so like ankle and everything?
[00:22:55] Kyle Risi: Mm, ooh, ooh, a bit of ankle.
[00:22:57] Kyle Risi: I showed him a bit of ankle. I wooed him [00:23:00] with my chubby ankles. That would get me hot and bothered in 1920. Yeah, of course. So through these magazines, this is how she dreamed about escaping her current life on like horseback with Prince Charming, if you will. In fact, her search for Prince Charming and the perfect happy ending was something that Nani was desperate for and something that she pursued for her entire life.
[00:23:22] Kyle Risi: And this will star consistently throughout this entire story. So, Nani would often sneak out at night to meet other men, and as a result, she encountered several unsavory characters who ended up assaulting her really badly.
[00:23:34] Kyle Risi: Like, she wasn't raped, but she was pretty much, like, pretty much beat up pretty bad. And this is partly why her father was so controlling in an attempt to kind of protect his children from such things happening in the future. Yeah, that makes sense. So from a very early age, Nani started suffering from chronic headaches and blackouts and severe depression.
[00:23:52] Kyle Risi: And this would go on to profoundly impact her entire life. And it's said that this was a result of a traumatic head injury that she [00:24:00] sustained when she was just 7 years old. So basically one day, while her family were taking a train to southern Alabama, The train had come to like a sudden stop had fallen forward and hit her head against the metal seat in front of her.
[00:24:12] Kyle Risi: And this resulted in a real severe, deep, like, laceration across her head. And later Nani. When she's arrested, she would often kind of attribute kind of her mental illness and her violent tendencies to this particular incident. So this is really interesting because this is one of the very few stories where a serial killer has experienced a traumatic head injury as a child and is directly attributing this to the reason why they behave in the way that they do.
[00:24:40] Adam Cox: Do you know what? I think there's another one that we covered from the, um, the, um, Cecile Hotel, where that murderer, I can't remember his name now. Night Stalker? The Night Stalker. I'm pretty sure when I, we covered that, he had a head injury as a child. Which they then said that that could have possibly influenced his behaviour.
[00:24:58] Kyle Risi: So I'm not saying that everyone who [00:25:00] experiences something like that goes on to become a killer. But, I mean, there's definitely something there to consider, right? In certain instances, a traumatic head injury obviously could have a lasting negative impact on behavior. So it's interesting to see this being well documented and alluded to in this case.
[00:25:16] Kyle Risi: So at the age of 16, Nannie married a man called Charles Bragg, or at least that's what we think his name was. The record is a little bit sketchy. And they met while Nannie was working at a linen thread factory. And according to the Alabama She was really drawn to Charles because he seemed to be dependable, he was hard working, but above all he was sober.
[00:25:36] Kyle Risi: And it's really telling about the time that you live in when the thing you appreciate about had about a man.
[00:25:44] Adam Cox: Was this during a prohibition as well? So would that have been a big deal?
[00:25:47] Kyle Risi: This would have been around about 1916, 1920.
[00:25:51] Kyle Risi: When was prohibition?
[00:25:52] Adam Cox: I don't know. It feels like it was the turn of the century, but I can't remember exactly.
[00:25:56] Kyle Risi: But I just find that fascinating that this was really important to her that [00:26:00] she was dating someone that was sober. But also Nannie, since her childhood, had been searching for this idea of Prince Charming that she fantasized about ever since.
[00:26:08] Kyle Risi: So, of course, this just didn't fit with that checklist that she had those standards, right? He's no jeremy clarkson at him
[00:26:15] Kyle Risi: So while they dated Nannie's father pressurized her to kind of push charles for a marriage proposal So I get because I guess he's got a lot of kids that he needs to support. So he's trying to kind of just Palmer off onto the next guy, right?
[00:26:27] Kyle Risi: So he doesn't have to kind of fund her
[00:26:29] Adam Cox: funder Okay
[00:26:30] Kyle Risi: fund her kind of sexy romance novel habits,
[00:26:33] Adam Cox: right? Okay
[00:26:34] Kyle Risi: So charles does eventually propose and the pair get married in 1921 Just after four months of dating so it's pretty damn quick They move into a house of charles's mother and almost immediately charles's mother is extremely critical of everything that Nannie does And in her eyes just charles can do no wrong which often kind of just drives a wedge between the couple
[00:26:54] Kyle Risi: And charles's mother is also extremely controlling over the household. She dictates what they eat What time they go to [00:27:00] bed how they spend their free? Uh how they spend their free time and Nannie says that her own mother was just never allowed to visit past a certain time, which just ended up breeding a lot of resentment for Charles's mother.
[00:27:10] Adam Cox: Sounds like she's got an insufferable mother in law.
[00:27:12] Kyle Risi: I mean, most people don't see eye to eye with their mother in laws like me and your mother. We don't get along at all. And just like Charles's mother, in your mother's eyes, you can do no wrong.
[00:27:22] Adam Cox: Right, okay.
[00:27:23] Kyle Risi: So I can relate to Nannie at this point.
[00:27:25] Adam Cox: That's a nice little story you made up, but carry on.
[00:27:27] Kyle Risi: It's true! It's the passive aggressive comments, you know? So between 1923 and 1927, Nannie and Charles have four daughters. And motherhood initially is, well, I mean, for her entire life. And motherhood is really difficult for Nannie, leading her to begin drinking and smoking heavily just to relieve that stress of having to deal with those damn kids.
[00:27:44] Kyle Risi: And of course, her living situation with her mother in law. Eventually both Charles and Nannie start having affairs. Nannie is chasing this fantasy of Prince Charming and the romance of life that she just isn't getting from Charles. And Charles would kind of just often just [00:28:00] disappear for days and days and days hooking up with various women and stuff.
[00:28:03] Kyle Risi: So Nannie becomes deeply unhappy in a marriage and can't settle for how things currently are. So shortly after the birth of their youngest child, Florine, Charles receives word that his that he should come home immediately because there's an emergency at the house. And when he arrives, he finds both his middle daughters dead on the kitchen floor.
[00:28:24] Kyle Risi: Oh my god. So Nannie claims that they both just started acting strangely shortly after having their breakfast before then convulsing and then dying on the kitchen floor. Okay.
[00:28:35] Kyle Risi: Nannie insists it was an accidental poisoning and both deaths end up being declared just an accident. However, the police are a little bit suspicious, especially since the family ends up receiving a small insurance payout since after receiving a small insurance payout soon after their deaths, which It's weird that the police are only, like, a little suspicious.
[00:28:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.
[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: Like, not enough to carry out an investigation. It's like, should we, like, investigate this further? Yeah, like, who takes out an insurance policy on a child? Like, [00:29:00] yeah.
[00:29:00] Adam Cox: like, I'm sure it's fine.
[00:29:01] Kyle Risi: But with that said, I looked into this and it turns out that it was relatively common for ordinary children to have life insurance policies in the 1920s and the 30s.
[00:29:10] Kyle Risi: Especially through what they call an industrial life insurance policy. That's specifically targeted at low income families. Right. And these were apparently popular because child mortality rates were a lot higher back then due to diseases like diphtheria, scarlet fever, and polio, and of course, murder.
[00:29:27] Adam Cox: Yeah, and I guess, would families have to have relied on their kids for income? Is that what we're sort of saying? And that's why they took out insurance? It's kind of more
[00:29:33] Kyle Risi: of the burden of what happens when they die, right? So, it's So having a small life insurance policy helped families cover funeral costs and kind of give them that financial protection So it was a big financial instrument at the time for a lot of insurance companies to sell and get more money
[00:29:46] Adam Cox: Yeah, and why is Nannie saying how did poison get in their cereal or wherever it was?
[00:29:51] Adam Cox: Well, that's the thing like
[00:29:51] Kyle Risi: so even
[00:29:51] Kyle Risi: Well, that's the thing like you've got to ask the question who prepared their breakfast, right? The kids are young no older than five. So I doubt they accidentally mistook the [00:30:00] milk for bleach You know, I mean, so I assume Nannie made their breakfast.
[00:30:03] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so that's the thing by 1919 over 51 million industrial policies were out in force for children So it was common enough to not raise a huge amount of suspicion even so, like, I feel really bad for Charles. It must have been tough. Imagine just coming home, finding out that your two daughters are just dead, and your wife is saying, oh, they must have eaten some dodgy Cheerios.
[00:30:27] Kyle Risi: Awful.
[00:30:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. I wonder what, how she behaved. Like, it makes me think, like, did she put on this big act to kind of, like, was she, like, you know, supposedly But beside herself? Beside herself, or anything, yeah. I
[00:30:32] Kyle Risi: I imagine she was. Like, because she comes across as this very caring, charismatic, charming person.
[00:30:38] Kyle Risi: So I guess she put on the entire show, you know? So, either way, it's thought that Charles doesn't really believe this story of accidental death. Because soon after, he and his eldest daughter, Melvina, they pack up and they leave. And Charles later And Charles later says that he leaves because he was afraid, and the sad thing is, because Florine, that's the youngest kid, she's still a baby, [00:31:00] he isn't equipped to care for her, so she has to stay with Nannie.
[00:31:04] Kyle Risi: Really? Isn't that heartbreaking? But I mean, I get, I get why he left, like, you suspect your wife has killed your kids, why would, why would you want to stay? Because, of course, you would just be questioning every single meal. Yeah. that she serves you for the rest of your life.
[00:31:18] Kyle Risi: Like every day you'll be questioning like, Is this Mel's meal? Exactly. Will I be next? Or possibly even Melvina? So I guess he just isn't willing to take that chance. But then he does leave baby Florine.
[00:31:29] Adam Cox: Yeah, like you could have, I don't understand why he couldn't care. Maybe he's got work and therefore can't look after a child.
[00:31:35] Adam Cox: But could he have like given up that baby to adoption or whatever? Knowing that, okay, at least they're going to be safe. I guess he
[00:31:42] Kyle Risi: could have done more. So
[00:31:45] Kyle Risi: after their separation, Nani and Florine, they moved to Cedartown in Georgia where Nani gets a job in a cotton mill to support them. Now a year later, Charles returns with Malvina and another woman that he wants to marry and because of course he needs a [00:32:00] divorce from Nani, which she agrees to, he can then go off and live his best life, right?
[00:32:05] Kyle Risi: But Charles ends up leaving Melvina with So now I've completely changed my mind about Charles completely because when he leaves, he leaves Melvina with her murderous mother while he goes off. to marry little miss new boobs.
[00:32:13] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, like he clearly can't care enough about his kids.
[00:32:19] Kyle Risi: No, he doesn't.
[00:32:20] Kyle Risi: And I guess like, as soon as something better came along, then yeah, he was like, okay, yeah, sorry, Malvina, you're on your own. Poor kids. So following their divorce, Nannie up sticks with her daughters, and she moves back to her hometown in Anniston, Alabama, and she moves in with her mother. Now, Now Nannie spends her days kind of just reading romance magazines and browsing the Lonely Hearts column.
[00:32:39] Kyle Risi: She's kind of still looking for that romance of life that she's always been reading about, right? Charles and Cut the Mustard. So she's back on the game. She's looking for someone special to spend the rest of her life with. So she submits a personal ad to meet some guys. And one of the men that writes back to Nannie is a 23 year old factory worker from Jacksonville called Frank Halston.
[00:32:59] Kyle Risi: Halston? Not Halston. There's no T in there. It's Harlson. [00:33:00] Okay. So he writes back with a poem and a photograph to which Nannie responds with a letter and a cake. A cake? I know! Does she
[00:33:07] Adam Cox: not send a photo? But, um, I'll just send him some cake.
[00:33:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah, like,
[00:33:09] Kyle Risi: and wait, has she
[00:33:10] Adam Cox: poisoned the cake?
[00:33:11] Kyle Risi: No! No, she hasn't. So, by the way, I can completely understand why she picks Frank, because in Nannie's world the poem is the ultimate symbol. that underpins many of these romance stories and fantasies that she's read about, right? Yeah. And because she's looking for that idyllic fantasy of the romantic Prince Charming, she's just like really taken by him, right?
[00:33:32] Kyle Risi: Okay. What
[00:33:33] Adam Cox: would woo you? What would woo me?
[00:33:35] Kyle Risi: A dick pic?
[00:33:36] Adam Cox: Um, probably food. So
[00:33:39] Kyle Risi: you're, so you're like Frank, right? I send you a cake and you're like, Ooh, he can bake. Savory or sweet? Yeah.
[00:33:45] Adam Cox: I would want a three course.
[00:33:47] Kyle Risi: You want me to post you a three course meal?
[00:33:51] Adam Cox: Yes, please.
[00:33:54] Kyle Risi: So I think that's a good time to take a quick break. And when we get back, I'll tell you how all of this transpired following. I'll tell you what transpired. I'll tell you what transpired in the time following her [00:34:00] meeting Frank.
[00:34:01] Adam Cox: Can't wait.
[00:34:02] Kyle Risi: So a new thing I just need to read out.
[00:34:02] Kyle Risi: Hey freaks, Kyle here. If you aren't following us in, if you aren't following us on Instagram, A, why the hell not? And B, you probably don't know that we're now releasing our next episode a whole week early on Patreon and it's completely free to listen to. No strings. All you need to do is sign up for a free account and enjoy more from your favorite duo.
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[00:35:02] Kyle Risi: So we're back.
[00:35:06] Kyle Risi: Adam,
[00:35:07] Kyle Risi: has just met Frank.
[00:35:09] Adam Cox: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Kyle Risi: And she sent him off a little package.
[00:35:12] Adam Cox: With some cake. Nice cherry bagel.
[00:35:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So this goes on for about a year. And after which they end up getting married. So they end up moving back to Jacksonville with the kids.
[00:35:22] Kyle Risi: Jacksonville is where Frank is actually from. And for a long time, Married Life with Frank is just a fairy tale. He is this idyllic figure of the man that she's always dreamt about. So she's happy for a long time. But as the years go on, Annie discovers discovers that Frank is actually discovers that Frank actually has a criminal record for assault, which really gives her the ick.
[00:35:41] Kyle Risi: It doesn't kind of like fit with the fantasy that she's developed over all these years. On top of this, Frank has developed a really severe problem with alcohol, which leads her, which leads to physical and emotional abuse. So for years, which leads her, which leads to physical and emotional abuse.
[00:35:53] Kyle Risi: So for the years that followed, Nannie becomes more and more unhappy with her situation.
[00:35:58] Adam Cox: Right. That's sad. It
[00:35:59] Kyle Risi: sounded
[00:35:59] Adam Cox: like it was [00:36:00] going so well.
[00:36:00] Kyle Risi: It was. So fast forward 14 years. 14 years? Yeah, they were married for like 16 years then.
[00:36:06] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.
[00:36:06] Kyle Risi: So it's not, not bad innings, right? She did well. Yeah. Probably the longest serving marriage that she's got.
[00:36:11] Kyle Risi: It's a good stint. So in 1943, Nannie's daughter, Melvina, she's now flourished, bloomed into a voluptuous woman. So she gives birth to a baby boy called Robert. And when Nannie visits Melvina in the hospital, Within one hour of her arrival, Robert dies. Oh my god. And Malvina later says that she thinks that she sees Nannie stick a hat pin into Robert's head.
[00:36:35] Kyle Risi: Isn't that awful? Why? God knows why. Sick. But we don't know whether or not she's done it because this is dismissed as like delirium. Like she's still coming down from all the pain medication that she was given during Robert's birth. So let, let that just sink in for a second. Right, okay. Malvina's just given birth.
[00:36:54] Kyle Risi: She's tired, she's exhausted, she's still coming down from the drugs that's been administered to her. Like, [00:37:00] did she really see this? Or did she just think she saw it? But when you put this into context, this is a girl who most likely told by her father that he believes her mother poisoned her two sisters.
[00:37:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, okay. So you could potentially see how this allegation, is a consequence of what she said, May have believed to be true about her mother, like, was this, like, so you can, so you can probably see how this allegation as a, so you can probably see this allegation as a consequence of what she may have believed to be true about her mother, really.
[00:37:20] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess so, but then I was thinking, well, I don't know, it's been 16 years, she has survived this time, she hasn't been bumped off by her mother, but then I guess the, the common thing here was that her sisters were very young children. Yeah. And so maybe that's what makes her think, oh, it's my
[00:37:36] Kyle Risi: So the question is, was this accusation just a grieving mother's attempt at rationalizing why a son just randomly died?
[00:37:44] Kyle Risi: 'cause you don't expect kids to just randomly die.
[00:37:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. Was that what was the cause of death or on the death certificate?
[00:37:50] Kyle Risi: Well, the doctors didn't really find anything really to kind of give like an indication of what happened. Yeah. They probably just think it was SIDS or. Yeah, I was just thinking if it was some
[00:37:58] Adam Cox: sort of hat pin, [00:38:00] then wouldn't there be a mark?
[00:38:01] Adam Cox: Exactly.
[00:38:01] Kyle Risi: You would think so. But they didn't find anything. I didn't see anything in the notes that I read.
[00:38:05] Kyle Risi: So this allegation of Nannie's involvement starts to circulate around the family, and when Melvina's younger sister, Florine, hears about this, she actually confronts Annie, she actually confronts Nannie about it, and of course, Nannie just completely denies everything, and what ends up happening is no one believes Florine's story at all, it just ends up getting kind of brushed under the rug, and you've got this grieving mother who genuinely believes that someone's killed her son, Is now having to kind of live with this, this idea that no one believes the story.
[00:38:34] Kyle Risi: So it's really sad. Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:36] Kyle Risi: So years later, so this is weird. So years later, Melvina has another child and she also calls him Robert. So it's strange to me why you would name your next child the same name.
[00:38:45] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess that's a bit, I mean, I don't know how common that is. But unless it's maybe a family name, like it was a dad, or not dad, but maybe grandfather that just wanted to keep that name in the family.
[00:38:54] Adam Cox: I
[00:38:54] Kyle Risi: guess so, I guess that makes sense. Like, Uncle, Uncle Robert's like really insistent that he gets his name passed [00:39:00] down.
[00:39:00] Adam Cox: Maybe.
[00:39:01] Kyle Risi: If you don't name your son after me, how's my name gonna be passed on?
[00:39:04] Adam Cox: Yeah, unless he's called like Robert the Second. Sometimes they do that.
[00:39:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's not Robert the second though. That would be Robert jr. Okay.
[00:39:12] Adam Cox: Robert jr.
[00:39:13] Kyle Risi: jr. That's Robert the third. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, anyway. One day after an argument with Nannie, Melvina leaves the house to get some peace from her mother and ends up staying with a friend. And while she's away, she leaves Robert with Nannie, and Nannie ends up dying in.
[00:39:20] Kyle Risi: So one day after an argument with Nannie, Melvina leaves the house to get some space from her mother and stays with a friend. And while she's away, Robert dies in Nannie's care, and later his cause of death is determined to be asphyxia from unknown causes.
[00:39:35] Adam Cox: Unknown causes? Yeah. So she's been strangled to death in some way, or suffocated in some way? Yeah. Um, I kind of question, um, the daughter though, because if she even had a hunch that her mother had killed her first child, Why the hell is she leaving her second child?
[00:39:49] Kyle Risi: I guess you just leave your guard, you let your guard down for a small amount of time, right?
[00:39:54] Kyle Risi: But yeah, you're right, like, why would she leave her son with her? Yeah,
[00:39:57] Adam Cox: well if people genuinely believe that her, um, Nannie is a [00:40:00] murderer, I just don't understand why people would just Yeah, let their guard down.
[00:40:04] Kyle Risi: I guess time is a factor here as well, right?
[00:40:06] Kyle Risi: A few years have gone by as well. Also, um, Melvina isn't with the same husband that she was with, with Robert 1. Okay. Right, so they've since divorced. She's been forced to move in with her mother.
[00:40:17] Adam Cox: No choice, maybe.
[00:40:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah, and so yeah, probably had no choice.
[00:40:20] Adam Cox: But yeah, so how did Nannie get out of this one or explain this?
[00:40:24] Kyle Risi: Well, guess what? collects 500 from a life insurance policy that she had taken out on Robert a short while before.
[00:40:32] Adam Cox: Why is she taking out a policy? Exactly!
[00:40:34] Kyle Risi: What a bitch! So later at the funeral, Frank allegedly says, I'll be next. Because even though Robert's death is determined to be asphyxia, I think Frank is now starting to put all this stuff together.
[00:40:47] Adam Cox: Right, okay.
[00:40:48] Kyle Risi: And Frank is right, because just two months later, he dies unexpectedly.
[00:40:52] Adam Cox: Okay, people with these hunches around Nannie, why are they not doing more about her? Exactly, it's
[00:40:56] Kyle Risi: because of the way that she comes across, and we'll talk about that in just a minute, about [00:41:00] how she kind of is seen by people.
[00:41:01] Kyle Risi: the local community. But just to tell you what happened to Frank. So in September of that year, Frank was out celebrating the end of World War II with some of his buddies. When he came home in the middle of the night, Nannie says that he raped her. So the following morning, Nannie grabs some rat poison that she'd hidden in the kitchen.
[00:41:19] Kyle Risi: She tops off his bottle of liquor. And then later that evening, Frank dies again, convulsing in his chair before passing away. Sound familiar? But again, the coroner fails to identify the rat poison and instead rules his death alcoholism based on his history.
[00:41:38] Adam Cox: Right, okay. So
[00:41:39] Kyle Risi: that's
[00:41:40] Adam Cox: smart, what she's doing.
[00:41:41] Adam Cox: She is quite clever in playing into that. Yeah. Although I would have thought rat poison would have been detectable in some way, but I guess maybe back then it wasn't.
[00:41:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah, they didn't do an autopsy, she just said, Well, do you know he's an alcoholic?
[00:41:51] Kyle Risi: He drinks a lot. God. And he's known as an alcoholic around town and stuff, so, yeah. Must have been
[00:41:55] Adam Cox: easy being a coroner back then.
[00:41:57] Kyle Risi: Must have been easy being a killer back then.
[00:41:59] Adam Cox: Yeah, that [00:42:00] too.
[00:42:01] Kyle Risi: Of course, Frank has a life insurance policy and when this is paid out without question, Nannie again upsticks and she buys a 10 acre property out somewhere else.
[00:42:10] Adam Cox: Oh nice, that's good for her.
[00:42:11] Kyle Risi: At some point she moves to North Carolina where she places another ad in a Lonely Hearts column and very soon Nannie meets her third husband who is a labourer named Arlie Lanning.
[00:42:22] Adam Cox: Run away Arlie.
[00:42:23] Kyle Risi: Run away, Ollie. Run, bitch, run! So they get married just after three days of meeting in 1947.
[00:42:30] Kyle Risi: And once again, the men that Nannie picks are always a disappointment to her. Like, she It's probably because she isn't allowing enough time to get to know these men before getting involved with them. Perhaps, perhaps maybe like she feels like she's running out of time as she ages and is like kind of eager to meet someone.
[00:42:47] Adam Cox: Hang on, you're making it sound like, oh, we should feel sympathy for her. And it's like, it's the men's fault they're not good enough. Oh, no, there's no sympathy there. I'm just trying
[00:42:54] Kyle Risi: to rationalize like, why she is getting married so quickly to all these men and [00:43:00] how she's managing to do it.
[00:43:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.
[00:43:02] Kyle Risi: Like, how do you convince someone to get married to you in such a short space of time? I don't get it. Three
[00:43:06] Adam Cox: days. And also I thought, and this is a very sweeping, broad accusation, but I thought if you got divorced back then, you were not looked upon fondly. You're like, oh no, you wouldn't like touch her because she's already had kids.
[00:43:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah.
[00:43:22] Kyle Risi: Maybe in like upper class high societies. But when you live in Alabama, you're like, Bitch! Lisa's not my cousin!
[00:43:30] Kyle Risi: But, oh yeah, that's true that, yeah. Have as many divorces as you like. Lisa's not your cousin.
[00:43:34] Adam Cox: And clearly she's charming enough to like, get these men.
[00:43:37] Kyle Risi: That's the thing, she's super charming. But the thing is though, She's obviously eager to meet Mr. Right because perhaps she feels like she's running out of time but she's not doing the due diligence that she needs to vet these men first so again Arlie ends up not living up to this idyllic vision that she has fantasized from these romance magazines because it turns out that Arlie is also an alcoholic [00:44:00] but even worse he is a womanizer and this of course just is not going to do for Nann and like I said We haven't really spoke about how people talk about how we haven't really talks about how people see Nannie in a day to day life because People see her as this really respectable woman. She's extremely active in the church. She's adored by all of her neighbors and she wants to, and she really works to be seen as this perfect doting wife who is adored by her husband.
[00:44:29] Kyle Risi: So having the community aware that Arlie is frequenting local sex workers is just really embarrassing to her, right? And so after five years of marriage and after being constantly embarrassed by Arlie's behaviour, frequenting the sex workers, Arlie suddenly falls ill.
[00:44:48] Adam Cox: You know, I can't say I'm surprised. Um, and also, it sounds like a gradual thing, so she's gone away from maybe not the poison, because maybe she's thinking, you know what, I can't use that trick again.
[00:44:57] Kyle Risi: Mm.
[00:44:58] Adam Cox: She's doing something else to [00:45:00] gradually make him ill? Well, that's interesting. Because
[00:45:01] Kyle Risi: the reason why Frank died so quickly will come to light later on, and how she realised that was a mistake.
[00:45:08] Adam Cox: Oh.
[00:45:09] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she's working out dosages.
[00:45:11] Adam Cox: Oh, I see.
[00:45:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so several days he starts experiencing vomiting, dizziness, and other symptoms just before like just dying at home.
[00:45:21] Kyle Risi: And again, the coroner puts us down to just standard heart failure. So again, they've missed the poisoning. So once again, Nannie has evaded all suspicion. And even after admitting to people that her husband felt fine until she gave him some prunes and coffee for breakfast, still didn't raise any alarm
[00:45:39] Adam Cox: bells.
[00:45:39] Adam Cox: So you were the last person to give him something to eat and then he fell
[00:45:43] Kyle Risi: ill? Yeah.
[00:45:44] Adam Cox: You are a bad cook.
[00:45:45] Kyle Risi: She, that's it. Yep.
[00:45:49] Kyle Risi: It's the sausages. But Ali's relatives they don't buy this explanation that he died from sudden heart failure at all. They have a feeling that she was involved in some way. [00:46:00] They're mildly suspicious. Put it that way. Mildly suspicious.
[00:46:03] Adam Cox: Everyone's mildly suspicious, but no one's actually taking it seriously. Because of the way
[00:46:07] Kyle Risi: she comes across. They're like, oh, it's Nannie. The giggling granny. But of course, there just isn't enough evidence to warrant an evidence. Exhumation. Is that the correct way of saying that?
[00:46:14] Kyle Risi: Exhumation? When you Exhuming the body. Yes. So following Arlie's death, Nannie finds out that he had actually left their house to his sister in his will. Oh, sneaky. Obviously, knowing what we know about Nann this just isn't going to go over well, right?
[00:46:30] Adam Cox: Yeah, poor sister. That's not going to end well, is it?
[00:46:33] Kyle Risi: So at first she seems to accept it. right? So Nani vacates the house and goes to stay with Ali's mother. So her mother in law, essentially.
[00:46:42] Kyle Risi: Her name is Sarah. And she's there to kind of just buy the time while she finds another place to live. It appears that she's cutting her losses and she's going to move on, but then suddenly the house that's left to Arlie's sister, so their old house, suddenly and mysteriously burns down.
[00:46:57] Kyle Risi: Oh. [00:47:00] Coincidence? No. Someone's left the gas on.
[00:47:02] Adam Cox: Nannie's up to no good.
[00:47:03] Kyle Risi: Nannie's up to no good. So following the, so following this, a fire, so following this, a fire, so following this, the fire, so following this, the fire insurance check arrives a few weeks later. Of course, it's made out to Arlie's estate, so based on this, it belongs to Arlie's sister.
[00:47:14] Adam Cox: Okay, yeah.
[00:47:15] Kyle Risi: But before his sister can collect the cheque, Arlie's mother, who is living with Nann suddenly dies in her sleep on the 3rd of January, 1953.
[00:47:25] Adam Cox: Asphyxiation, by any chance?
[00:47:28] Kyle Risi: No, poisoning this time.
[00:47:29] Adam Cox: Poisoning? Oh, okay.
[00:47:30] Kyle Risi: And while the family are occupied with funeral arrangements, Nannie then steals the cheque, she illegally cashes it, and then she flees town. How does she manage to cash it when it's not in her name? Well, in America, they have this thing where, they , make the cheque out for cash, which means you can just walk into any bank and just cash it.
[00:47:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:47] Adam Cox: Fine. And she just does a run. So, okay, people must suspect her now. Please don't go, they mildly suspect that she had something to do with it.
[00:47:55] Adam Cox: Well, the
[00:47:56] Kyle Risi: thing is though, she's moving about quite a lot, right? So, she's evading a lot [00:48:00] of suspicion from the authorities and things like that. Which I think is
[00:48:03] Adam Cox: suspicious.
[00:48:06] Kyle Risi: Where were you living before? Oh, down the road? Ooh. That's suspicious. Just showed up here,
[00:48:11] Adam Cox: yeah? Yeah. And then someone else died. And then you moved on.
[00:48:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah.
[00:48:15] Adam Cox: Suspicious.
[00:48:16] Kyle Risi: Don't be suspicious. Don't be suspicious. So we've got a real piece of work on our hands here, right? We've got this Lonely Hearts killer. A killer of family members, her own children. She just doesn't seem to have any limits whatsoever. She's disgusting.
[00:48:31] Kyle Risi: And so even though Nannie is later on the record saying that it wasn't about the money for her, to me, it really seems like it was like, To me, it really seems like it was about the money.
[00:48:40] Adam Cox: Yeah, why else did she do this? She wanted that money to move on.
[00:48:43] Kyle Risi: So she's telling everyone that it was all about her searching for the real romance of life, and that's the reason why she was killing.
[00:48:51] Kyle Risi: She was bored with her situation. But the reality is she's probably lying. Maybe in her mind, if it was seen to being all about the money, then maybe [00:49:00] she thinks that maybe this would paint her in a bad light. But I mean, it's warped way of thinking, regardless, she still killed people.
[00:49:06] Kyle Risi: Regardless of what the motive is, right? It doesn't make it better if it's about the romance of life or whether or not it's about the money. You still killed someone.
[00:49:15] Adam Cox: Yeah, you don't feel sympathetic going, Oh, she killed 10 people, but she was just looking for love.
[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: She did it for
[00:49:20] Adam Cox: love. Yeah. No, no.
[00:49:23] Kyle Risi: I'm going to do that from now on.
[00:49:24] Kyle Risi: Next time we have an argument and I hit you, I'd be like, but it's for love. I did it for love.
[00:49:29] Adam Cox: Well, you publicly, um, acknowledged that. Adam,
[00:49:32] Kyle Risi: if anyone on this podcast saw what you look like, they'd be like, there's no way Kyle is hitting Adam. There's no way.
[00:49:39] Adam Cox: I don't know what you mean by that, but anyway.
[00:49:41] Kyle Risi: Go check out pictures of Adam, you'll know what I mean.
[00:49:44] Kyle Risi: His Instagram has got a lot of followers because he's got a lot of muscle going on.
[00:49:48] Adam Cox: Um, so what's happening with Nann ,
[00:49:52] Kyle Risi: after all this happens, she goes and stays with the sister Dovey, or Dovey, in Alabama. And at the time, Dovey was really bedridden [00:50:00] with an unspecified illness, but even though she was sick, she was stable. Okay. But soon after Nannie arrives, Do you know what?
[00:50:09] Adam Cox: If Nannie turns up on your doorstep, do not let her in. Don't
[00:50:12] Kyle Risi: let her in! She's like the Grim Reaper. Like, one minute she shows up, and then all of a sudden, bad things start to happen. People are dying! Don't let her in!
[00:50:19] Adam Cox: So, was Dovey
[00:50:20] Kyle Risi: poisoned as well?
[00:50:21] Kyle Risi: Well, we'll get into that. Okay. So we'll leave, we'll go through some of the details of the other murders first, and then we'll talk about Other murders? Oh, babe. It goes on. She killed 11 people that we know of.
[00:50:33] Adam Cox: So how many are, how many we are now? Oh god, I've lost track. One, two, three, four. So two children, two husbands, a sister.
[00:50:42] Adam Cox: Mother in law. Oh, mother in law. Yeah. Okay, so six.
[00:50:46] Kyle Risi: So, Nani is now traveling around. She's not staying in one place for very long, which I think is by design. I think this helps it make it harder for authorities to start piecing the puzzle together. I genuinely think that if she just stuck around in the same town, they would probably figure out what's [00:51:00] going on, right?
[00:51:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but again, she's back at finding a man She joins a dating service this time called the diamond circle club Which is where she meets her fourth husband a guy called richard morton Now he's a retired salesman from kansas and Nannie is initially attracted to him because of course he is handsome He treats her well, and he just so happens to have a lot of money.
[00:51:20] Adam Cox: Okay,
[00:51:21] Kyle Risi: which is which is helpful Yeah, right that again You That proves it's about the money, right? A little bit, I think. But again, just like Arlie, Richard is also a womaniser.
[00:51:31] Kyle Risi: So within two months of them getting married, Nannie realises this isn't going to work for them, and she gets back onto the dating sites while she plans Richard's murder.
[00:51:41] Kyle Risi: And in April of,
[00:51:41] Kyle Risi: and in April of 1953, Richard ends up dying in his home in Kansas. She ends up collecting a total of 1, 400 from his insurance payout and is ready to flee town to the next location before anyone starts asking questions. But before she's able to flee, Nannie's mother, Lou, [00:52:00] breaks a hip and now she needs round the clock care.
[00:52:03] Kyle Risi: Can you sense what's coming?
[00:52:05] Adam Cox: Feels like another insurance policy is going to be taken out.
[00:52:07] Kyle Risi: Of course. The fact that her mother has broken a hip and is now moving in just is not gonna do. So, if you haven't worked it out, Nannie starts taking steps to sack her off too. So just a few days after her mother moves in, Lou begins experiencing intestinal pains. She's completely incapable of keeping anything down. And after three days, Lou dies.
[00:52:28] Adam Cox: I would like to say I'm shocked, but I'm not. So she's
[00:52:30] Kyle Risi: racking up these murders, man. That's awful. Killing your own mother.
[00:52:35] Adam Cox: I mean, I don't know what's worse, your children or your mother.
[00:52:38] Kyle Risi: I think the kids are the worst. I mean, anyone's worse.
[00:52:40] Kyle Risi: Killing anyone, but when it's your family members, that's just the worst. that you could possibly do?
[00:52:45] Adam Cox: Blood related, yeah.
[00:52:47] Kyle Risi: So anyway, Nannie is now able to get out of Dodge. So she moves back to Alabama. Again, within a few months, she meets now her fifth husband, a guy called Samuel Doss.
[00:52:56] Adam Cox: Okay. Where she gets
[00:52:57] Kyle Risi: her name, right?
[00:52:58] Adam Cox: Right, her last husband.
[00:52:59] Kyle Risi: So the [00:53:00] question I have is, how is she able to operate so swiftly in getting these men to marry her? What is it? Is it? It probably comes down to that facade that she's presenting to everyone. She's extremely charming. She's extremely likable. And men are all for it, Adam.
[00:53:15] Kyle Risi: Like on the face of it, I guess they think Nannie is the perfect woman, right? Because she prides herself as coming across as this doting, great, attentive, homemaker and I think because of this she's able to pressure them into marrying her very quickly else they lose risk they else they risk losing her to like another bachelor.
[00:53:34] Kyle Risi: That's interesting. Another Jeremy Clarkson.
[00:53:35] Adam Cox: Another yeah.
[00:53:36] Kyle Risi: Do you know there's a whole world of
[00:53:37] Adam Cox: Jeremy Clarksons out there. Do you know what's interesting though because a couple of these men are womanizers which makes me think they can, I don't know, they go after any or a lot of women. But they've settled on her, so it must be that they settle on her to marry because of this homeliness, I'm guessing.
[00:53:51] Adam Cox: Do you think? Interesting. Otherwise, they're like, well, yeah, they're off sleeping with another woman. They probably could have married one of them.
[00:53:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah, sure. Maybe she's picking men that [00:54:00] are not that attractive and she's still maybe quite attractive and she seems to have the whole package and she's Lowering her bar now, maybe. Maybe this search for romance for life is all just a crock of shit And that she's deliberately lowering her bar to dupe these men that are never gonna get someone like her Uh, so she can get the money.
[00:54:17] Adam Cox: Well, it feels like if she's got an insurance policy on pretty much every one that she's killed.
[00:54:21] Kyle Risi: Uh huh, yeah. So, once again, it's not long before she realises that Samuel just isn't her Prince Charming.
[00:54:28] Kyle Risi: And the reason is that even though he's wealthy, he's extremely frugal. So again.
[00:54:33] Adam Cox: He's tight. That's another reason to bump him off.
[00:54:36] Kyle Risi: So he won't let her turn on the fan in the middle of summer. And remember, they live in Alabama. So there's mosquitoes, there's sweat, there's humidity. Like her hair is like Monica from Friends.
[00:54:46] Kyle Risi: It's the humidity! But above all, he disapproves of her reading romance novels because he's really orthodox Christian type of style. Right. Which, of course, that's not true. That's the thing Nannie loves to do the most in the world!
[00:54:59] Adam Cox: [00:55:00] Yeah, this is gonna ruin her romance of life. That's porn for her, she's a porn
[00:55:02] Kyle Risi: addict.
[00:55:03] Kyle Risi: She is a porn addict.
[00:55:04] Adam Cox: Well, I imagine it's descriptive, isn't it? It's still porn.
[00:55:08] Kyle Risi: Is it? Yeah, so think about like Rachel from Friends, right? When Joey finds her a dirty novel.
[00:55:13] Adam Cox: Is that porn though, or is that just It's
[00:55:14] Kyle Risi: porn, it's lady porn. It's still porn. Why do we have to have two sets of standards for the two things?
[00:55:22] Kyle Risi: Men are visual, women are descriptive. I mean, most of the time women can read, and men can't. So that's why they go for the more visual pictures. Pictures, comics. Yeah, porn comics.
[00:55:32] Kyle Risi: The interesting thing is that because he's so frugal, he won't spend money on life insurance policies. So rather than killing him, she decides that she's going to leave. But Samuel begs her, but Samuel begs her to stay, saying that he'll change, and he even promises to take out two life insurance policies and name Nann
[00:55:51] Kyle Risi: So this just proves that her motivation is all about money and I'll talk about the motivation the strong motivation Because for [00:56:00] money she's willing to kill without money. She's just simply willing to leave
[00:56:04] Adam Cox: interesting. Yeah.
[00:56:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So to me this promise of a life insurance policy is that motivation? It's strong enough motivation to just knock them off But anyway, one evening, she is making Samuel a homemade, she is making Samuel a homemade prune cake, and he ends up eating the entire thing.
[00:56:19] Kyle Risi: And within 24 hours, Samuel is admitted to hospital with flu like symptoms, and doctors diagnose him with a severe digestive tract infection, after she tells them that he ate a whole prune cake. And the doctor's like, Oh, well, well,
[00:56:31] Adam Cox: maybe a daddy prune.
[00:56:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that makes sense. He's going to be fine. Just send him home. And they discharge him. So when they get back home, she then makes him a celebratory meal. And afterwards, she serves him some coffee laced with arsenic. And Samuel dies that same evening.
[00:56:49] Kyle Risi: So she almost got busted. Yeah, she almost got busted. He gets discharged and then she goes and she kills him it that same bloody night.
[00:56:56] Adam Cox: I guess maybe act fast before anyone more questions it and like [00:57:00] he's still sick from the dirty prune and yeah.
[00:57:03] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, he's not that sick because he's able to wolf down a nice celebratory meal.
[00:57:07] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true.
[00:57:08] Kyle Risi: So I think this is a great time to take another quick break and when we get back I'm gonna tell you how things started to take a turn for Nann
[00:57:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. Cause someone's got to question what she was up to.
[00:57:16] Kyle Risi: Questions need to start happening, right?
[00:57:19] Kyle Risi: So we're back. So Adam, this is where things start going downhill for Nannie, right? So finally, because Samuel's doctors don't believe that his death was accidental,
[00:57:31] Adam Cox: finally,
[00:57:32] Kyle Risi: because of course, remember, that he was completely fine the previous day. Just a bit of prune cake, indigestion. And then he gets discharged and all of a sudden he's dead.
[00:57:42] Kyle Risi: So there's like a negligence kind of element there. So doctors, a combination of being a little bit suspicious, because of course they also need to protect their own back.
[00:57:50] Kyle Risi: They advised Nannie to request for an autopsy. the absolutely bizarre thing is that Nannie. emphatically agrees. She's [00:58:00] like, of course there should be an autopsy. Like, whatever might have killed him might kill someone else, right? So, to me, she's either really stupid or really confident that they're not going to find out what killed him.
[00:58:11] Kyle Risi: Because, who in their right mind, after all, wouldn't want to know? would agree to an autopsy after knowingly poisoning someone.
[00:58:18] Adam Cox: Yeah, she must think that they're not going to find out, or she's going to do a runner whilst they're investigating.
[00:58:23] Kyle Risi: Well, of course, when the results come back, there is a massive amount of arsenic in Samuel's system.
[00:58:29] Kyle Risi: And Nannie's like, whaaaaat? How could such a thing happen? And the doctor's like, yeah, okay, Nannie. And they decide to alert authorities and they spend several weeks investigating, after which they firmly suspect Nann as being a cold blooded murderer.
[00:58:47] Adam Cox: Finally,
[00:58:48] Kyle Risi: someone's doing their job. So when they look deeper into her past, they find all these suspicious deaths that have been linked back to Nannie.
[00:58:54] Kyle Risi: And either she was like there when they died, or they'd been the last [00:59:00] person to have contact with her before they died. So these are quite suspicious things, especially when Like, these things keep racking up, right? Because remember, in the Harold Shipman case, he was either the last person to see them alive or recently seen them alive.
[00:59:15] Kyle Risi: And when they spoke to other doctors who'd been practicing for like 40 years, they'd gone through their entire career never been in a situation where they were the last person to see their patient alive. And when there's a sheer, huge, when there's a huge volume of people, that you were the last person to see them alive that raises alarm bells, right?
[00:59:31] Adam Cox: Or gave them their last meal.
[00:59:33] Kyle Risi: Or gave them their last meal.
[00:59:35] Kyle Risi: So meanwhile Nannie is still free and she's already making moves to find her next victim and is actively corresponding with a guy named James Keel. But, luckily, in November of 1954, the police arrest Nannie in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And apparently when she's arrested, she's remarkably calm and cooperative with police.
[00:59:55] Kyle Risi: She even flirts and giggles with them a bit. And to them, she just doesn't [01:00:00] seem like this killer that they've been gathering all this evidence from. Because like, like I said, when we said in the very beginning of this episode, you have this image of what someone looks like when they're a serial killer, right?
[01:00:11] Kyle Risi: That they're going to be dark and looming and, you know, Freaky with like a weird hypnotic stare and they're going to stalk you. No, this is just an ordinary cheerful granny. Who's coming to the police station. They're like, have we got the right person? And what the fuck's happening?
[01:00:25] Kyle Risi: Again, this possibly demonstrates some of her personality traits that have won her five fricking husbands in the first place, because it's wild that she manages to get these men to marry so quickly. Mm-Hmm. and James Keel. He had a lucky escape. In fact, he even said as much after all of this came out, he was like, thank fuck. I did not. See her or meet her or have a prune cake sent to me.
[01:00:48] Adam Cox: Yeah,
[01:00:49] Kyle Risi: so while being interviewed She had this air as if like she had nothing to worry about literally saying I have nothing to hide My conscience is clear and [01:01:00] she says that she married these men because she loved them So, obviously, she is denying everything at this stage. Even going as far as denying being married to Richard.
[01:01:09] Adam Cox: Richard. Which one was Yeah, which one was he again?
[01:01:11] Kyle Risi: So, if you've lost track, he is the husband she killed before her mother came to live with them, after The mother broke her hip.
[01:01:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think there should be a rhyme with this one. You know, like with Henry VIII's wives, where it's like, what was it? Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, died. This one's poisoned, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned, poisoned. Poisoned.
[01:01:31] Kyle Risi: Poisoned.
[01:01:31] Adam Cox: Poisoned.
[01:01:32] Kyle Risi: Really helps.
[01:01:32] Kyle Risi: Very helpful. Thanks Adam.
[01:01:34] Adam Cox: You're welcome.
[01:01:36] Kyle Risi: So, uh, yeah, if you lose track of all the victims, just remember Adam's rhyme.
[01:01:43] Kyle Risi: So a theme that ki So yeah, so she's denying everything at this stage, and a theme that keeps coming up time and time again throughout this entire story are these romance novels. At the station, she just will not shut up about them, and she just keeps talking to them about all of her favourites, like, What are you doing?
[01:01:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, I
[01:01:59] Kyle Risi: don't [01:02:00] know. So she tells him, I'm sure, I'm st I'm sure, I'm sure I'll find my perfect mate yet.
[01:02:03] Adam Cox: In prison.
[01:02:04] Kyle Risi: In prison?! You want a bull dyke to be your next husband? Maybe, maybe that's what will find her romance. Do you think? Maybe that's what she needs. Yeah. She doesn't need a man who's a womanizer or an alcoholic.
[01:02:15] Kyle Risi: She needs a bull dyke.
[01:02:17] Adam Cox: Who's a
[01:02:17] Kyle Risi: womanizer. A womanizing bull dyke,
[01:02:21] So the fact that this is such a central theme in her life, I think potentially really speaks to her motives. Like she's always on the lookout for the perfect man. And when it doesn't seem to be her prince charming, Rather than divorcing them, it may just be easier to just kill them because she isn't spending enough time to do her due diligence, right?
[01:02:40] Kyle Risi: So she gets into the situation where she's already married to them. How long is a divorce going to take? And also they have to agree to the divorce as well. So maybe it's just easier to kill them. I don't know. Is it money? Is it the romance of life? I
[01:02:53] Adam Cox: think we discovered it's money. It's definitely money.
[01:02:57] Kyle Risi: Also during the interview, she also talks about her [01:03:00] head injury that she got when she was seven and how this ended up plaguing her with headaches and blackouts for an entire life. And throughout the interview at the station, she just cannot stay on track with anything. The police say that she just will not stop reading her romance magazine while she's being interviewed.
[01:03:16] Adam Cox: Weird.
[01:03:16] Kyle Risi: And apparently every time they took the magazine away, she just giggled and then she would flirt with them a little bit. So it's clear this is a woman who knows how to use her charms to get what she wants. Why
[01:03:27] Adam Cox: is she
[01:03:27] Kyle Risi: allowed
[01:03:27] Adam Cox: her romance magazine whilst they're questioning her? It's the 50s, who knows?
[01:03:32] Adam Cox: It's fine, you can question me about all my husbands. I just want to see what happens in this story with the stable boy.
[01:03:38] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yeah. So after she's arrested, the newspapers get word that Nannie is being interrogated, and by the next morning, the phones are literally ringing off the hook with people calling in.
[01:03:50] Kyle Risi: to give their evidence against us and now people are starting to come forward because they're starting to piece all the pieces together so it takes ages but eventually after several hours Nannie starts [01:04:00] making small admissions and she admits to lying about knowing who Richard Morton was and eventually She admits that they were indeed married.
[01:04:09] Kyle Risi: Like, come on. How loose do you need to be to forget who you are married to?
[01:04:14] Adam Cox: I don't know, when you've killed five husbands, maybe you do forget.
[01:04:16] Kyle Risi: I mean, come on. It's Come on. You can count to five, like, husband one, husband two, husband three, husband four. It's physically impossible!
[01:04:25] Adam Cox: Maybe I'm giving her too much credit, I don't know.
[01:04:27] Adam Cox: Maybe, maybe.
[01:04:28] Kyle Risi: So then the small admissions turn into full blown confessions, and first she confesses to killing Samuel, who was her last husband, the one who she gave the prune cake to, and then he went to hospital. Basically, she said that when she married him, she didn't know how annoying he was going to be.
[01:04:46] Adam Cox: Well, no one knows that when they marry someone. That's
[01:04:48] Kyle Risi: not what you're supposed to say, Adam! That's not what
[01:04:50] Adam Cox: you're supposed to say, Adam! That's true, isn't it? That's
[01:04:53] Kyle Risi: What a thing to say for justifying murdering, then.
[01:04:56] Adam Cox: I'm not justifying, I'm just, I somewhat relate to that. So Adam,
[01:04:59] Kyle Risi: like, [01:05:00] let's get married. What are the chances of you killing me after we get married? Well, Kyle. I don't know how annoying you're gonna be.
[01:05:06] Kyle Risi: That's why we're not getting married.
[01:05:10] Kyle Risi: Uh, so she says that she felt sorry for herself rather than him because he didn't let her have a fan or even a TV.
[01:05:17] Adam Cox: Let me get out my little violin for her. Oh
[01:05:19] Kyle Risi: yeah, so she also says that Samuel was a beautif. How true that is I don't know, perhaps like she was just planting seeds to justify.
[01:05:28] Kyle Risi: The murder or murdering him eventually Nannie confesses that she put an inch of rat poison in his coffee But she'd overestimated the dose because what ended up happening was that Samuel immediately vomited most of it up Hence why he was admitted to hospital, right?
[01:05:45] Kyle Risi: And so when he finally gets home, she has to do it again Now remember he was the husband who promised to take out the life insurance policy so that she would stay, right? So her motivation seems to be those life insurance policies, but to police she insists that [01:06:00] money just wasn't a motive at all.
[01:06:02] Kyle Risi: Instead, she tells police that she killed Samuel because she was bored and looking for her next mate. So the police kind of buy this because when they look into the insurance payouts, they really weren't that big.
[01:06:15] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess a thousand pounds or whatever it was. I mean, I don't know what that would have been to someone back then.
[01:06:20] Adam Cox: It's a
[01:06:20] Kyle Risi: lot of money then, but it's not a huge amount of money. And again, this is why I keep flip flopping. Did she kill for the money? Did she kill because she was looking for Prince Charming? Was she a real romantic? Did she was completely obsessed with these romance magazines and it clearly led to how she kind of led her entire life.
[01:06:38] Kyle Risi: So
[01:06:39] Adam Cox: I guess the money helps to have those new starts and beginnings. But yeah,
[01:06:42] Kyle Risi: The money is a means to Facilitating that next move. So I think that's a fair assessment
[01:06:48] Kyle Risi: ends up signing a confession that she murdered samuel and then they begin pressing her about the others.
[01:06:54] Kyle Risi: One by one she signs another confession and then another and another and each time she says and after each time she [01:07:00] signs a confession she says now my conscience is clear
[01:07:03] Adam Cox: oh but one more thing yeah
[01:07:05] Kyle Risi: yeah uh oh yeah about that
[01:07:07] Kyle Risi: and again, I have to stress that getting these confessions out of her was really hard. They had to use her romance magazine as like a dangling carrot. So each time she cooperated, she got to read her magazine for a little while before they moved on to the next, the next murder, essentially.
[01:07:22] Adam Cox: Really? That's bizarre, but that's just how I don't know obsessed she is with this these books or magazines.
[01:07:28] Adam Cox: It's
[01:07:28] Kyle Risi: bizarre, isn't it? Yeah such bizarre behavior It's
[01:07:29] Adam Cox: almost like slightly childlike in terms of what they're doing.
[01:07:33] Kyle Risi: Could it come down to that brain injury, do you think?
[01:07:35] Adam Cox: Maybe, but is she now, like, using that as a crutch?
[01:07:37] Kyle Risi: I think she's using quite a few things as a crutch.
[01:07:39] Adam Cox: True.
[01:07:40] Kyle Risi: So the, her reason for, so her reason for killing Richard and Arlie, um, is that they've been obviously sleeping around, they were womanisers. As for Frank Halston, she says that she killed him because she found out about his criminal record and of course the fact that he was an alcoholic.
[01:07:53] Kyle Risi: But the crux of each of these murders was the disappointment in her marriage. For Frank, [01:08:00] she alluded to him raping her. Remember, he was the second husband who was out celebrating the end of World War II,.
[01:08:05] Kyle Risi: She says that she was visiting her mother when Frank's brother showed up at her mother's house saying that Frank wanted to see her and when she got back she finds him passed out at the edge of town. So apparently she drives him home and then he starts advancing on to her but Nannie refuses and then according to Nannie, there was then some kind of assault that took place.
[01:08:25] Kyle Risi: After which, she gets his bottle of whiskey, she tops it off with a rat poison, and her justification was that she just wanted to teach him a lesson.
[01:08:33] Adam Cox: You have all the ones that she killed. Not to say that you should kill someone in return for that kind of attack.
[01:08:39] Adam Cox: But um, you know, there is some sort of justification, I guess, in like trying to protect herself.
[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but this is the thing. She, she seems to have the sense that she can justify why she murdered everyone. Yeah. Everyone that she killed. So at this point, she refuses to confess anything else.
[01:08:52] Kyle Risi: She's starting to tell police that they can dig up all the graves in the world, but they're not going to get anything else from her. Mhm. But then they try pressing her about discussing her [01:09:00] daughters, her sister, and her mother. But she outright denies killing any of them. She says that she only poisoned people who deserved it, and her husbands deserved it. And that the other deaths were all completely coincidental. And that was just the end of it.
[01:09:15] Adam Cox: Hmm.
[01:09:15] Adam Cox: Do you not think, Okay, these five husbands that you had maybe weren't the greatest of people. But um, do you not think the common denominator here is you? Exactly,
[01:09:24] Kyle Risi: exactly. So in the wind down of the interrogation, she's just relentless with the charm and the flirting, and she insists that she wants to cook them a meal, which I'm sure they're like, Mm, yeah, sure, how about lasagna?
[01:09:35] Kyle Risi: Like, no thanks, bitch!
[01:09:36] Adam Cox: No, we'll order in.
[01:09:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Also, police ask her what they should do with her. After obviously all these confessions and she says well anything you like anything you do is perfectly fine with me
[01:09:49] Adam Cox: god Like seriously put it away.
[01:09:50] Kyle Risi: Here's some horn bag. She is.
[01:09:52] Kyle Risi: So following her interview police contact charles bragg. Remember he was the first husband, right who went off with little miss new [01:10:00] boobs Luckily, he is the only one of her husbands to like not die And when police tell him That she has confessed. He is absolutely not surprised one bit and he tells them, like, he was deeply, deeply afraid of her.
[01:10:12] Kyle Risi: And that if she was ever in a bad mood, he would refuse to eat or drink anything that she prepared. So he had a hunch. And again, that makes me really angry that he felt that way, knowing that he had left Florina, or Florin, and Melvina, knowingly. with her all these
[01:10:28] Adam Cox: years. Exactly. Bad father.
[01:10:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure.
[01:10:32] Kyle Risi: Finally, Nannie is charged with 11 counts of murder on November the 29th, 1954. Her attorneys attempt to kind of, uh, submit for an insanity plea. And through all of this, becomes this international sensation in the media and this is where she earns that nickname the giggling granny also the jolly widow.
[01:10:52] Adam Cox: The jolly widow.
[01:10:53] Kyle Risi: She's not Santa.
[01:10:55] Kyle Risi: She's got an evil laugh as well. Yeah.
[01:10:58] Adam Cox: Jolly widow. What a weird [01:11:00] name.
[01:11:00] Kyle Risi: And all this is because of that cheerful demeanor. That she displays in court when she finally gets there So several days after her arrest the bodies of her mother her sister and her grandson robert And frank are all exhumed and they find out that her mother frank and the sister were all poisoned with arsenic And little robert was uh was smothered smothered to death.
[01:11:22] Kyle Risi: So There's layers of So her lawyers submit for an insanity plea and she's required to undergo a 90 day psychiatric evaluation to help build her case. And during the assessment, she says that she hopes that maybe doctors will help teach her how to think straight, saying that she's been thinking crooked.
[01:11:38] Kyle Risi: Ever since she was about 9 years old, which is obviously a reference to that incident that happened on that train. When it comes to her being prepped for a trial, she tells her lawyers that she was confident that she would be able to justify murdering all of her husbands without question.
[01:11:53] Adam Cox: Deluded.
[01:11:54] Kyle Risi: But she still continues to deny killing her mother, her sister, her grandson, and obviously her daughters. And I [01:12:00] guess, perhaps the reason for that. is that she knew that maybe that would be really hard to justify to a jury in court, you know?
[01:12:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. So in May of 1955, a jury finds her guilty and she is sentenced to life in prison. So the question is, did she kill for money? Or did she kill because she wanted to keep chasing that romance of life? And I think to a degree, as we said, it might be both. The money would help her, as you correctly said. Move on to her next Prince, right? Mm-Hmm. . It's a facilitator. So it's probably a combination of the two. There's so many debates on where, what was it? Was it the money? Was it Romance for Life? But it has to be both.
[01:12:39] Kyle Risi: So in an article released in 2005, they talks about how her case led to the creation of Oklahoma led to creation, led to the creation of Oklahoma's Medical Examiner system.
[01:12:47] Kyle Risi: Mm-Hmm. , which basically placed the right for doctors to request an autopsy without permission of Nexa kin, which is like smart, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because. , because otherwise, like, your next of kin could just deny it, trying to keep getting away with murder, because [01:13:00] grannies and wives and husbands, they murder people!
[01:13:03] Kyle Risi: Only ends up serving 10 years of her life sentence because in the June of 1965
[01:13:09] Adam Cox: Someone gives her prune cake?
[01:13:10] Kyle Risi: She dies of Leukaemia, Adam.
[01:13:12] Adam Cox: Okay. Well, don't make me feel bad for someone that's a murderer. Sorry, yeah.
[01:13:16] Kyle Risi: I need to take these chances when I get them, you know. And that is the story of Nannie Doss, the Giggling Granny.
[01:13:22] Kyle Risi: Oh, wow. So how do you feel about your grandmother now? Thank god she's dead.
[01:13:28] Adam Cox: No, I had a very good grandmother, so yeah. That you know of. Yeah, I don't, not that aware that she's She's great
[01:13:33] Kyle Risi: until she's not.
[01:13:34] Adam Cox: Yeah, all right. And I just realized my rhyme was wrong, because the first husband did live.
[01:13:40] Kyle Risi: Oh, lived, killed, beheaded, I don't know.
[01:13:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, he divorced and a douchebag because he didn't tell anyone about his stupid wife.
[01:13:47] Adam Cox: That's true. The rest were poisoned.
[01:13:49] Kyle Risi: And the rest were poisoned.
[01:13:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so it's wild to me that there are people out there that view people's lives as disposable things that they can do what they want with. It's even [01:14:00] scarier. When these people seem like charismatic, lovely individuals like grannies.
[01:14:04] Kyle Risi: Like, people often let their guard down, and as a result, she People often let the guard down and as a result she murdered her husband, she murdered her mother, her grandchildren, and even her own daughters, which I just don't believe that she felt even an ounce of remorse for.
[01:14:16] Adam Cox: Doesn't sound like that, and whether it was the brain injury that didn't allow, I don't know, that changed her brain to not think or have any remorse or empathy, maybe, even still, she's kind of a sick person.
[01:14:29] Kyle Risi: She is. So Is there anything else you want to add before we run the outro for this week?
[01:14:34] Adam Cox: I think that's it. But just be careful. If you do hug your grandma.
[01:14:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she could be holding a knife in the other hand. A shiv.
[01:14:42] Adam Cox: Doesn't have to be a knife, Kyle. We've learned from today.
[01:14:45] Kyle Risi: Sure, that's true. She didn't kill with knife, did she?
[01:14:47] Adam Cox: Some prune cake will do it.
[01:14:48] Kyle Risi: Don't eat no prunes. To be fair, I'm recently, I'm really partial to a date.
[01:14:52] Kyle Risi: I'm a dual date. Watch out. Thanks Adam.
[01:14:56] Kyle Risi: And that's another episode of the Compendium Podcast. If you enjoyed [01:15:00] today's episode, do us a favour and hit that follow button right in the app that you're listening to us right now. It really means a lot to us. If you can't wait for more, good news is we now release next week's episode 7 days early.
[01:15:11] Kyle Risi: Just visit our Instagram at the Compendium Podcast and click that link in the bio. It's completely free to access this via Patreon. So don't let the subscribe prompt fool you. If one episode just isn't enough and you're craving up to four early episodes, then feel free to subscribe and join the Certified Freaks community.
[01:15:31] Kyle Risi: Either way, we'd love you to join us. Either way, we'd love you to join us to have a chat, find out what we're working on next, and just come and hang.
[01:15:36] Kyle Risi: As always, set your app to automatically download new episodes as soon as they are released and leave us a review. Your support is so important to us.
[01:15:46] Kyle Risi: We release every Tuesday.
[01:15:47] Kyle Risi: And until then, remember. Not every sweet granny is baking with sugar. Sometimes it's arsenic.
[01:15:53] Kyle Risi: See you next time.
[01:15:54] Adam Cox: Bye. [01:16:00]