OPINION: HOLY COW! HISTORY: The ghastly tale of the Giggling Granny

Criminals come in all shapes and varieties, and they prompt many reactions. Some infuriate you. Some leave you perplexed. Some evoke pathos and tragedy. And some are just plain creepy.

They all apply to one felon who left lawmen stunned and disturbed. When her crimes finally caught up with her, 11 people were dead by her hand. This is the story of the Giggling Granny, a case that was anything but funny.

She was born Nancy Hazel. Everyone called her Nannie. Her demanding father wouldn’t let his children attend school; they had to work on the family’s hardscrabble farm in the North Alabama hill country instead. Her favorite escape was reading her mother’s romance magazine and dreaming of finding true love.

Traveling to visit relatives in South Alabama when she was 7 years old, the train she was riding in abruptly stopped. Nannie’s head slammed against a metal bar, leading to years of blackouts, severe headaches and acute depression. She later blamed what happened next on that head injury.

Nannie took a job in a textile factory and, at age 16, married for the first time. That was in 1921. Four daughters followed in four years. Her demanding mother-in-law lived with the newlyweds. Nannie started smoking and drinking to excess. The young couple each accused the other of being unfaithful. It was a miserable existence.

Suspected food poisoning took the lives of two daughters. Then the mother-in-law died. The husband grabbed their youngest, an infant girl, and ran off. When he finally returned, a nasty divorce followed.

Husband No. 2 turned out to be an alcoholic. Now grown, the daughter gave Nannie a grandson. The boy died of asphyxiation while she was watching him. She soon collected a $500 life insurance payout (almost $10,000 today).

The years rolled by. More marriages; more mysterious deaths. There would be five husbands in all. It was the demise of the last one that finally led the law to catch up with her.

The two had tied the knot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 1953. Nannie was nearing 50 then. Sam Doss was a Nazarene minister who’d lost his wife and six children in an Arkansas tornado. He strongly disapproved of the romance magazines Nannie still loved. It appeared this marriage was headed for heartache like all the others.

Just 15 months later, Sam was admitted to the hospital with strange flulike symptoms. Doctors discovered a severe infection of the digestive tract. Sent home on Oct. 5, he died one week later. Alarmed, his doctor ordered an autopsy.

And that was when Nannie Doss’ morbid secrets came crashing down.

The autopsy had turned up a huge dose of arsenic in Sam’s system, landing Nannie behind bars. What was most unnerving was her demeanor during her confession to investigators.

Puffing one cigarette after another, she was chatty, even jovial, as she recanted a horrifying string of killings in several states over the years. Her happy, upbeat attitude disturbed everyone. Nannie laughed, smiled and repeatedly giggled while recounting to detectives her grisly, low-key killing spree. When all was said and done, she admitted murdering four husbands, two of her kids, her mother and sister, one mother-in-law, and two grandsons. Eleven victims in all, each connected by marriage or family blood.

Insurance money was a prime motive. Most of her murders used liquid rat poison.

The press had a field day. News stories referred to her as the Lonely Hearts Killer, the Jolly Black Widow, and the nickname that stuck above all others, the Giggling Granny.

Nannie pleaded guilty in 1955. The state didn’t pursue the death penalty because she was a woman, as sometimes happened at the time. She was sentenced to life in prison for Sam Doss’ murder; she was never charged for the other 10 killings.

The end came in 1965 when she died of leukemia in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at age 59. The secret of what drove her to kill so many people went to the grave with her.

Did the head trauma suffered in that railroad car so many years before cause her mental instability? Was it the times she was raped as a small girl, stories her parents refused to believe when she told them? Or was there some deeply seeded demon buried within that made her kill again and again?

We are left without answers. Only the relentless chuckling during her confession still eerily echoes through the decades.

J. Mark Powell is a former television journalist. His nonfiction book “Witness to War: The Story of the Civil War Told by Those Living Through It” is available at jmarkpowell.com. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.