Joanna Dennehy, English Serial Killer of Male Strangers “For Fun”: 2013

UPDATE, November 21, 2014: As of today, Dennehy's murder victims number 4 rather than 3. John Rogers finally succumbed to injuries caused by being stabbed 40 times.

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Lesbianism:

Joanna Dennehy told friends she was a lesbian. During her trial a CCTV (dated 2012/04/02) recording was played which showed Dennehy flirting with a female cashier. [See: Hugo Gye, “Caught on CCTV: Chilling moment serial killer Dennehy flirted with a female shop assistant before going out in search of more victims,” Jan. 21, 2014]

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On November 18, Joanna Dennehy, 31, of Bifield, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire surprised her own defense attorney by pleading guilty to three murders, two attempted murders and three counts of preventing a lawful burial.

“I’ve pleaded guilty and that’s that,” Dennehy told the judge at her arraignment hearing. When her attorney requested a delay in order to advise his client she interrupted him saying “I’m not coming back down here again just to say the same stuff. It’s a long way to come to say the same thing I have just said.”

Dennehy was arrested April 3, 2013, the day after she was spotted in Hereford in the act of randomly stabbing two men, Robin Bereza and John Roger, in broad daylight. Both were seriously wounded yet survived. Police of several municipalities jointed together and tracked down the stabber quickly, her green star tattoo under the right eye making her easy to spot. Dennehy’s boyfriend, Gary “Stretch” Richards, one of the tallest men in England at 7’ 3”, was arrested with her. “Stretch,” along with two other men, are charged with assisting Dennehy in disposing of the bodies of the three men she stabbed to death, whose bodies had been discarded in two cases in the countryside.  All three men suspected of assisting Dennehy following her crimes denied charge of being accessory to the murders and to denying the  lawful burial of the corpses and to perverting the course of justice.

The three murdered men were  Kevin Lee, 48, who died of multiple stab wounds, killed on March 29 and whose body discovered March 30; Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, who was stabbed in the heart sometime between March 19 and 29; John Chapman, 56, who died from multiple stabs in neck and chest on March 29.

Dennehy had previously been convicted of crimes, but police withheld the details.

~ Trial ~

Ms. Dennehy’s accomplice Gary Richards testified in court on January 21, 2014, that in April of the previous year she had asked him to accompany her in one of her forays in search of a stranger to stab to death, that: “I want my fun. I need you to get my fun.”

Another accomplice, Mark Lloyd described to the court how Ms. Dennehy went about getting the fun she sought: “She [Dennehy] takes a knife out of her left pocket with her right hand. She strikes him like in the film Psycho, just like that. Thrusting and putting her whole weight behind it... Gary is seeing exactly what I’m seeing and there’s just no emotion from him at all.”

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FULL TEXT: Serial killer Joanna Dennehy plotted to cut off guard's finger to escape jail.  She hoped to use the finger to beat the prison’s biometric security, a source claimed. But the plot – detailed in a written plan by Dennehy – was thwarted when two fellow inmates got in touch with the authorities.

Dennehy plotted the prison break while in segregation at Britain’s most secure women-only jail – HMP Bronzefield, in Ashford, Surrey. The source said: “With the help of another lifer, she was planning an escape. What came to light was how she was going to do it, which was extremely vicious.

“It involved killing a prison officer and also mutilating another. “This was for biometrics, to cut off her finger for the print. Two prisoners grassed her up and told the officer what was happening. “There was a lockdown and the Home Office was notified.”

The serial killer was sent to HMP Bronzefield after her arrest last April. The category-A jail is the largest women’s prison in Europe.

It has housed some of Britain’s most notorious inmates, including Rose West – who got a life term in 1995 for murdering 10 girls – and Karen Matthews, who faked the kidnap of her daughter Shannon and was released from jail in 2012.

Dennehy is believed to have started planning her escape in early September, but prison officers were alerted before anybody was attacked.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: “In September, vigilant searches by staff at HMP Bronzefield uncovered intelligence which could have been interpreted as an escape plan.

“The matter was dealt with swiftly, with no security breaches, and a prisoner was relocated to the segregation unit.” Surrey Police said an investigation into the planned prison break had been launched. A spokeswoman said: “We are aware of allegations of a planned escape from HMP Bronzefield. An investigation is ongoing but there have been no arrests or charges.”

Bronzefield, which opened in 2004, is the only purpose-built private prison solely for women. It has a 12-bed mother and baby unit and offers full-time education courses tailored to women.

[Louie Smith, “Serial killer Joanna Dennehy plotted to cut off guard's finger to escape jail,” Mirror (London, England), Feb 13, 2014]

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5 stabbings during a 14 day period in 2013:

1) March 19 – Lukasz Slabososzewski, 31, Rolleston Garth, Peterborough, died

2) Apr. 29 – John Chapman, 57, Bilfield, Peterborough, died

3) Mar. 29 – (date reported missing) Kevin Lee, Fletton, died.

4) Apr. 2 – Robin Berez, 63, Hereford, survived

5) Apr. 2 – John Rogers, 56, stabbed 40 times, Hereford, died Nov. 21, 2014

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The Dennehy case is the fourth female serial killer case (one in which there were two female perpetrators) in 2013 known to this writer. The others occurred in Colombia, France, Poland and the United States.

On January 29, 45-year-old Esneda Ruiz Cataño was arrested Ebéjico, in Antioquia, Colombia, on the suspicion of murdering thee husbands, each of them stabbed to death: in 2001, 2006 and 2010. The media has dubbed her “The Predator” (“La deepredafora”). Ruiz collected live insurance payments following each death.

On March 24, a French woman, identified only as Audrey C.,” a 32-year-old waitress in Ambérieu-en-Bugey, confessed to drowning her two newborn babies, whose bodies were found in her freezer. Yet she had murdered another newborn years earlier and had been imprisoned for that crime. In that first killing, Audrey put body of her murdered child in a bag, then convinced her own mother to discard it. Audrey was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison for infanticide, while her mother received an 18-year jail sentence. She was released from prison in 2010.

On April 10, a woman called by the court, “Lucyna D.,” 41, of Lubawa, Poland, confessed to murdering three newborn boys and keeping their corpses in her freezer because she “could not part from them.”

On June 21, Diane Staudte, 51, and her daughter, Rachel Staudte, 22, of Springfield, Missouri, USA, were charged with the poison murders of two family members and the attempted murder of a third. The elder Staudte told detectives that she chose to terminate the life of her husband Mark because she “hated him.” Her son Shawn, she asserted, deserved to die  because he was “worse than a pest.” Daughter Sarah, who survived the attempt on her life, but barely, was deemed not fit to live by her mother because she “would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid.” At first the killer mom attempted to cover up daughter Rachel’s role as an accessory. Yet ultimately Rachel was revealed to have planned and executed the crimes in tandem with her malicious mother. Antifreeze was the mother and daughter serial murder team’s poison of choice.

To date, the longest list of female serial killers (cases with 3 or more victims) was published by Peter Vronsky in 2007 in his book, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters. This list contains 140 cases. Subsequent research by The Unknown History of Misandry project has turned up a total number five times this size (over 700 cases with 3 or more victims — from across the globe).

[Robert St. Estephe]

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EXCERPT: Sean Keeble who met Dennehy at a friend's house while she was on the run from police, noted that she seemed happy to see herself on TV. On asking her why she killed, she told him: "I want to murder men, I want to be a serial killer, write a book and be famous." [Priya Joshi, “Joanna Dennehy: Three Male Accomplices Obsessed by ‘Kill Bill' Serial Killer Convicted for Murders: Joanna Dennehy: I want to be a serial killer, write a book and be famous,” International Business Times, Feb. 12, 2014]

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Aug. 16, 2018 – Serial killer Joanna Dennehy is believed to have tried to kill herself in jail after apparently making a grisly suicide pact with her prison girlfriend. Dennehy, 35, is understood to have been found with her throat slit, while her lover had cut her wrists. A source told The Sun: “When the guards found them they were entwined on the floor, which was covered in blood.” [Daily Mail, Aug. 16, 2018]

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LINKS from above:

Audrey C. http://www.euronews.com/2013/03/27/mother-arrested-after-babies-bodies-found-in-a-freezer-in-france/

Esneda Ruiz Cataño http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271476/Wife-dubbed-predator-accused-killing-husbands-collect-life-insurance-policies.html

Lucyna D. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/lucyna-d-suspect-murdered-3-infants-poland_n_3050996.html

Joanna Dennehy http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509256/Joanna-Dennehy-pleads-guilty-killing-3-Cambridgeshire-men.html

Diane Staudte & Rachel Staudte http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/23/antifreeze-deaths/2449915/

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[9675-1/16/21]

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Queen Eadburgh, Saxon Serial Killer – England, 800

Eadburh (Old English: Ēadburh), also spelled Eadburg, (flourished 789-802) was the daughter of King Offa of Mercia and Queen Cynethryth. She was the wife of King Beorhtric of Wessex, and according to Asser's Life of Alfred the Great she accidentally killed her husband by poison. She fled to Francia, where she is said to have been offered the chance of marrying Charlemagne, but ruined the opportunity. Instead she was appointed as the abbess of a convent. Here she is said to have fornicated with an English exile. As a result she was eventually expelled from the monastery and ended her days begging in the streets of Pavia. [Excerpt from Wikipedia]

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Here is a more detailed account Eadburgh’s poisoning career and aftermath, taken from the medieval chronicle by Welsh monk John Asser and retold by Charles Dickens in “A Child’s History of England” (1851):

“This Queen Edburga was a handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they offended her. One day she mixed a cup of poison for a certain noble belonging to the court, but her husband drank of it, too, by mistake, and died. Upon this, the people revolted in great crowds, and running to the palace, and thundering at the gates, cried, “Down with the wicked queen who poisons men!” They drove her out of the country, and abolished the title she had disgraced. When years passed away, some travellers came home from Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had been a ragged beggar woman – who had once been handsome, but was then shriveled, bent, and yellow – wandering about the streets, crying for bread; and that this beggar woman was the poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, Edburga; and so she died, without a shelter for her wretched head.”

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On John Asser, see

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01798a.htm

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More cases: Women in Power: Aristocratic Female Serial Killers

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[3206-1/10/21]

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Please join our hate group!

Please join our hate group!

This is what we hate. If you hate these things too, then we love you,

• “After birth abortion” (the right of a mother (exclusive right of the female sex) to legally order a child to be put to death for the first 2+ years of its life (because if the mother were to put the child up for adoption this could cause her "distress")
• Alimony racketeering (“gold-digging”)
• Authoritarian manipulation of children
• Blacklisting (especially in university context, ejecting non-compliant intellectuals from the conversation)
• Blackmail
• Censorship (political correctness)
• Child/parent malicious access denial (including malicious parental child abduction)
• Chivalry Justice – female sentencing discount for crimes by women (even when committed against women)
• Coerced child drugging based on specious “diagnoses”
• Coercive anti-father and anti-family protocols and policies (overt and covert)
• Concentration camps (under any name, no matter how euphemistic)
• Cultural misandry
• Due process violations (civil right violations)
• Genocide (including murdering people “for their own good”)
• Fake statistics and fake (deliberately skewed) social science studies
• False allegations (such as the medieval “Blood Libel” against Jews)
• Financial fraud
• Homelessness and lack of concern over male poverty
• Intellectual fraud
• Interference with MGTOW (Men Going their Own Way) by “man up” harassers
• Initiation of violence
• Larceny
• Malicious child/parent access denial
• Parental alienation
• Personality disorders (and Psychopathic, Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic)
• Police state
• Preferential and anti-merit race/sex profiling in hiring and education
• Prison Industrial Complex
• Real rape: of boys, girls, men women
• Relational aggression (slander and gossip used to undermine colleagues)
• Slavery (including using fatherhood and student loans to create debt slaves controlled by corporate contractors)
• Secretive, abusive, corrupt child protection institutions
• Spying on citizens by own government
• State-corporate cooperation in media propaganda with false information
• State interference with religious freedom
• State-sponsored ideological indoctrination of children
• Suicide – largely ignored due to high ratio of males broken by cultural misandry
• Surveillance state
• VAWA immigration racketeering (grand larceny, perjury, fraud, interstate racketeering by non-profit employees, kidnapping (false imprisonment and parental child abduction).

Many members of the International Men’s Human Rights Movement hate these things. That is why the Men’s Human Rights Movement is called a “”hate group” by authoritarians drunk with a greed for power and a lust for manipulation and coercive control of others.

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Child-Torturing Croatian Baby Farmers – 1893

FULL TEXT: A recent telegram from London states that some shocking revelations have been made in connection with baby-farming at Warasdin, a town 36 miles from Agram, the capital of Croatia (Austria). Several miscreants had been arrested, who, it was ascertained, systematically practised shocking cruelties on children in order to produce various kinds of deformity for the purpose of exciting sympathy of the public. In some cases it was discovered that children were purposely crippled so that they might accompany beggars on their rounds. Children were found whose legs and arms had been deliberately broken while others had had their eyes gouged out so as to make them blind. One unfortunate child was found with its body bent double, and kept in that position by being placed between boards tightly screwed together. Various horrible implements of torture intended to be used for producing deformity in children were also brought to light.

[From “General News,” The Daily News (Perth, WA, Australia), Sep. 4, 1893, p. 2]

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Headline and date in image from: [“Baby-farming Horrors in Croatia.” The Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NS, Australia), Aug. 21, 1893, p. 1]

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For more cases, see: Women Who Like to Torture

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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

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Sadism & Female Serial Killers

 
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Marie (Gautherot) Gagey, French Serial Killer - 1854

Executed at Dijon Oct. 7, 1854; convicted of five murders.

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FULL TEXT: The court of assizes of the Cote d’Or, has just been occupied three days (says Galignani) in the trial of a woman named [Marie] Gagey, aged thirty-five, for poisoning an old man named Dougerelles, formerly a workman at the Imperial printing office, lived for some years at Semur on a pension of 600 fr., and had besides a considerable sum in his possession. In September last year he resolved to remove to Arnay-sous-Vitteaux, and he arranged to board and lodge in a public house kept by the woman and her husband. He went there on the 2nd October, and took with him in his portmanteau a sum of 9500 fr., chiefly in gold.

The woman knew that he was well to do, but she asked her servant who carried his portmanteau up stairs if it was heavy, and if she had not heard money chink in it. On being answered in the affirmative, she said “He is well off, the old fellow!” and she subsequently told another person that her new lodger had at least 3000 fr. Some days after Dougerolles, after breakfasting, was seized with violent vomitings and pains in the bowels. The medical man who was called in did not doubt for a moment that he had been poisoned. He employed all the resources of his art; but the old man died after a few hours’ of dreadful sufferings. The next day the judge de paix went to put the seals on his effects, and found that his portmanteau had been forced open, and it contained no money at all, nor anything of value.

It immediately became rumoured, that the map had been poisoned and robbed. On this, some gendarmes were placed in the house to prevent anything from being touched until a judicial investigation could be made, After a while, the woman taking advantage of a moment in which she thought herself unobserved, slipped a little packet from a cupboard into her pockets. The packet was seized, and was found to contain arsenic. Questioned as to how the become possessed of the poison, then stated that she had found it, in the presence of a neighbour, under the bed of Dougerelles, a few days before his death; but the neighbour positively denied that she had done anything of the kind. She was arrested, and the body of the deceased was examined. The stomach exhibited all the signs of poisoning, and a considerable quantity of arsenic was found in its contents. Arsenic was also found in what he had thrown up.

The arsenic, it appeared, had been put in some coffee, and this coffee had been prepared by the woman. Before the man’s death she had been inconvenienced for money; immediately after it she paid a creditor 200 fr., her husband paid another 507 [semi-legible] fr., and on searching her house about 700 fr., were found.

Moreover, part of the man’s clothes were discovered secreted on her premises, after her arrest, it was discovered that in April, 1845 one of her husband’s aunts named Claudine, died suddenly, and with all the symptoms of poisoning, after being attended by her, her husband being the woman’s heir. In December, 1849, she went to visit another aunt of her husband, to whom he was also heir, named Reine Comrad. When she arrived Reine was in good health; but on accepting some bread and wine, offered by the woman for her breakfast, she was seized with rocking  pains in her bowels, and after repeating vomitings and frightful sufferings, died. In March 1851, one of the woman’s own children, a girl aged only fourteen days, was suddenly seized with vomitings, and died. In May, 1852, another of her children, a boy, aged four days, was also seized with vomitings, and died.

The bodies of the two women and the two children were dug up, and in the bowels of all arsenic was found. In addition to all this there was strong reasons to suspect that the accused had, in 1845, poisoned a woman named Bernard to whom her husband owed a life rent of 300 fr.; that woman having been taken ill after being visited by her, and having died with all the symptoms of poisoning. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and the court condemned the woman to death.

[“A Female Poisoner.” Colonial Times (Hobart Town, Tasmania, Australia), Dec. 28, 1854, p. 2]

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Marie Gagey was convicted of 5 murders and executed, according to a 2012 article in La Bien Public.

[“L’aubergiste de Vitteaux manipulait de l’arsenic aussi,” La Bien Public, Nov. 3, 2012]

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Victims:

1845 – Mme. Bernard, creditor
Apr. 1845 – Claudine, aunt

Dec. 1849 – Reine Comrade, aunt

Mar. 1851 – girl, 14 days

May 1852 – boy, 4 days

Sep. 1853 – M. Dougerelles, lodger

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Executed Oct. 7, 1854

Source:

http://laveuveguillotine.pagesperso-orange.fr/Palmares1832_1870.html

EXCERPT: Le 7 octobre 1854, Marie Gagey était extraite de la maison de justice de Dijon et conduite par les gendarmes et les exécuteurs des arrêts criminels des départements de la Côte-d'Or et du Doubs sur les lieux de l'exécution. [Adelayde, “Marie Gautherot épouse Gagey empoisonneuse de ses enfant – 1854,” 19 Avr. 2016]

http://stasidion63.rssing.com/browser.php?indx=52496698&item=112

Charles Marques, “L'aubergiste de Vitteaux avait empoisonné ses propres enfants,” Apr. 20, 2016

http://stasidion63.rssing.com/browser.php?indx=52496698&item=112

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For more cases of this type, see Serial Baby-Killer Moms.

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More cases: Female Serial Killers Executed

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[711-1/10/21]

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Nellie Webb, Suspected New Hampshire Serial Killer - 1881

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): New Hampshire, Sept. 15. – There is much speculation over the strange and apparently unaccountable deaths that have recently occurred in two well-known families here. A reporter of THE SUN has succeeded in gleaning the following facts about them. In adjoining houses in one of the principal streets lived Mr. Barton G. Towne and Dr. Frank Bugbee. The family of the former consisted of himself, his wife, and her daughter, Miss Nellie Webb, Dr. and Mrs. Bugbee, Hattie Bugbee, 14 years old, and Hannah H. Regan, a servant girl, made up the other household. Mrs. Bugbee was a daughter of Mrs. Towns, and the families were of course very intimate. All the members of both families were warmly attached to each other.

On July 18 Miss Hattie, Dr. Bugbee’s daughter, was stricken with diphtheria, and lived but a few days. Just five days after her death Mrs. Bugbee was taken ill and died almost immediately. Her death was soon followed by the death of the servant, and this in turn by the sickness of Dr. Bugbee. Dr. Bugbee soon recovered and went about his dally duties, but was again obliged to give up and leave town to try to regain his health. He went to various places, and finally visited Derby Line, Vt., where resided two brothers of his who were practicing physicians. Returning from there he was taken suddenly sick and died in a few days.

The physicians said that his disease was malignant diphtheria and blood poisoning, the same disease that had carried off the members of his household.

The death of so many people in one locality gave rise to the supposition that the cause might be imperfect drainage, and the Board of Health made an investigation without finding anything out of the way. In November Mrs. Towne. Mrs. Bugbee’s mother was taken ill and died very suddenly. The doctors said again that it was blood poisoning. The sixth and last death, that of Mr. Towns, occurred in the following manner, and with similar symptoms, on February of the present year.

To determine the cause of so many deaths in one part of the town the authorities caused Mr. Towne’s body to be exhumed in May, and an analysis of the stomach made by a local chemist revealed to the horror of the community that he had been poisoned by arsenic, which was found in considerable quantities. In August the bodies of Dr. and Mrs. Bugbee and Mrs. Towns were examined, and the vital organs were submitted to Prof. Wood of Cambridge, who, about two weeks ago, reported that no poison was found in the case of Mrs. Bugbee. The report in the case of Dr. Bugbee and Mrs. Town, just received, shows that in the former traces of whiskey and arsenic were found, and in the latter arsenic alone. As these reports leave the case, the first three persons who died – Miss Hattie and Mrs. Bugbee and Hannah Regan – died from natural causes, and Dr. Bugbee and Mr. and Mrs. Towne came to their death by poison.

The only member of the two families living is Miss Nellie Webb, who, last fall, married Burt Mayo, a conductor on the B. C. M. Railroad. She has been a member of the Towne family since she was a very little child, and had shown the utmost affection for all the members of both families. For some reason suspicion rested on her, but there is no proof whatever and she has the sympathy of the community.

When Dr. Bugbee returned from Derby Line he brought a demijohn of whiskey. which he considered better than could be obtained in town, and cave this medicinally to Miss Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Towne, and a brother of the Townes from Littleton, N. H. All were made more or less sick by its use.

[“Arsenic, Not Diphtheria. – A Singular Series Of Death In A New Hampshire Village. – Only One Member of Two Families Surviving – exhuming the Bodies – Arsenic Found in Three of Them – A Suggested Explanation.” The Sun (New York, N.Y.), Sep. 16, 1881, p. 1]

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EXCERPT (Article 2 of 2): All eyes were on the day of October 18, 1881, as the Coös County Grand Jury convened to look into the mysterious deaths. Then on the 26^th the Gazette told readers that after two days devoted to the case, the jury returned and “no indictment was found.” The jury felt that the evidence that would have indicted Nellie Webb Mayo was insufficient and circumstantial.

Many in Lancaster were not convinced, including the executor of the Bugbee estate, James W. Weeks. This is brought out in an entry in Richard P. Kent’s diary for December 15, 1881, where he noted: Mr. J. W. Weeks made a lengthy call at our house and talked over the incidents connected with the Towne and Bugbee families. He had no doubt of the guilt of the suspected party, although the Grand Jury failed to indict her.”

[Charles J. Jordan, Tales Told in the Shadows of the White Mountains, Chapter 7, “Was It Murder? The Bugbee-Towne Mystery,” University Press of New England, Lebanon, N. H., 2003, pp. 68-82; quote, p.80.]

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DEATHS:

Mrs. Harriet Towne – died  (natural death, as ruled)
Barton G. Towne– died Nov. 1881(arsenic)

Dr. Frank Bugbee – survived one probable poisoning; died ca. Jul. 21, 1881 (arsenic)

Hattie Bugbee – (arsenic)

Mrs. Maria Bugbee – died ca. Jul. 26, 1881(natural death, as ruled)

Hannah H. Regan – servant (natural death, as ruled)

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For more cases of this category, see: Female Serial Killers of 19th Century America (as of January 20, 2014, the collection contains 61 cases)

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[1360-12/27/20]

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“Golden Wig Female Serial Killer” – England, 1900

NOTE: The following fragmentary description does not indicate whether the case in question, in which a woman had poisoned three persons, involved the death of each victim nor whether the crimes were serial in nature. The case is, nevertheless of great interest, thus it is included in the serial killer category her provisionally pending the discovery of more details.

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EXCERPT: Another notable example is that of an old woman with gray hair, who becomes homicidal when she is deprived of a beautiful golden wig suited to a girl of seventeen. The experiment was tried one, but so much violence resulted that the Commissioners recommended that she should be allowed to retain her headdress.

Before admission to the asylum she had poisoned three persons. But the wig and plenty of pink powder keep her peaceable and content.

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FULL TEXT: It is a curious fact that many insane women are possessed with an insatiable vanity and a mania for “make-up,” says the London Express.

Sometimes the only way to keep the peace with such patients is to allow them a certain freedom in the use of cosmetics.

A wave of unmanageableness often passes over the woman’s side of an asylum if the material of a new uniform dress deserves the title of dowdy.

Many insane women will tear a somber brown gown to shreds. But if it is a pretty blue or a smart red, they preserve it carefully against spots and dust.

The effect that dress has on the insane is so well known that the Lunacy Commissioners make special comments in their official reports to the Lord Chancellor on the colors and materials of the gowns supplied to women in the various asylums.

Very clever devices to obtain cosmetics are resorted to by patients infected with the mania of vanity, who have been accustomed to artificial aids to beauty.

They soak paper roses in water and use the tinted result as a check reader. Or they put the red covers of books borrowed from the asylum library in a basin of boiling water and bottle the carmine fluid for future face use. Fresh flowers of reddish tinge are crushed and used on faded checks and wrinkled skins.

One former society beauty, now in an asylum, is perfectly tractable so long as she is allowed to water a curly false fringe and to use a modified amount of rouge and powder. If these are taken away she becomes suicidal and refuses to eat.

Another notable example is that of an old woman with gray hair, who becomes homicidal when she is deprived of a beautiful golden wig suited to a girl of seventeen. The experiment was tried one, but so much violence resulted that the Commissioners recommended that she should be allowed to retain their headdress.

Before admission to the asylum she had poisoned three persons. But the wig and plenty of pink powder keep her peaceable and content.

The friends of patients who find their happiness in personal decoration bring them small packets of cosmetics, or rather they smuggle them in, for such articles are contraband and against the rules. Though their minds are gone, the patients are clever enough to make little holes in their mattresses and to invent most cunning biding places for their treasures.

In those case where restriction of toilet appliances increase insane outbreaks, the attendants let these little beauty stores pass by unnoticed. So long as the make up is not too evident the attendants do not interfere.

Strictly speaking curl papers are not allowed in asylums. As a matter of fact their use is overlooked. Curled fringes and wavy locks often make all the difference between peace and rebellion. The ingenuity displayed by feeble in turning every-day articles to facial use is often surprising.

Brickdust, scrapped from the asylum walls, and powdered hearthstone have frequently figured in lieu of rouge currant jam provided a week’s roses for pale cheeks. Indellable [sic] pencil, coal dust and black lead make a dark stain for colorless eyelashes and outline deficient or white eyebrows.

A handful of flour, begged from the kitchen, is an excellent substitute for toilet powder, while gray or faded hair is sometimes tinted with a strong decoction of tea leaves. A tendency to tight lace to such tiny proportions as to interfere with sanity and bodily health in another foible of the woman with unhinged mind. Abnormal waists are counteracted by lacing the corset with elastic.

An insane asylum would not seem to offer many temptations to its inmates to rival one another in dress and beauty. But generations of women patients appear to make themselves happy by following a feminine instinct to be personally attractive.

[“Varieties of the Insane – Domestics, Wigs And Curl Papers In Demand In Asylums. – Brick Dust in Lieu of Rouge – Crazy Women Who Are Fastidious in Regard to Their Families – Rivalry of Dress Among the Mentally Unsound.” The Turners Falls Reporter (Ma.), Sep. 26, 1900, p. 7]

[Note: The phrase in the original “was tried one,” has been corrected to “was tried once”]

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[939-1/12/21]

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Betty Jo Green, Alabama Serial Killer - 1984

“Betty Jo Green of Athens, Alabama, only killed an ex-husband and a sister-in-law, but her legal defense wins the prize. Green claimed "she had another woman living in the left side of her body." She, or they, were convicted anyway and are serving a life term in the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.” [Don Noble, Forgotten Tales of Alabama, The History Press, 2013]

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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Athens – An Athens woman was sentenced to three life terms in prison Friday for the poisoning deaths of two relatives and the attempted murder of her fiance.

Limestone County Circuit Judge Henry Blizzard ordered that Betty Jo Green’s three life sentences run consecutively.

A circuit court found the 55-year-old former waitress guilty of two counts of murder on Sept. 30. The charges stemmed from the arsenic poisoning deaths of her husband, Glenn Orman Green, who died in 1978, and her sister-in-law, Grace Blankenship, who died in 1978.

She was also found guilty of attempted murder in the poisoning of her fiance, Arthur Self.

After Mrs. Green’s arrest in November 1984, police said she admitted putting arsenic in the victims’ coffee.

[“Woman gets 3 life terms,” Times Daily (Florence, Alabama), Oct. 17, 1986, p. 2B]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Athens – Criminal history appeared to repeat itself Thursday with the announcement of the arrest of a Limestone County woman who allegedly used arsenic to poison her late ex-husband and to try to kill her fiance.

Sheriff Mike Blakely said Betty Jo Green, 53, of Athens was arrested Wednesday night and charged with the death six years ago of her ex-husband and attempted murder of her daughter, who was poisoned in 1979.

Arthur Self, an Athens businessman described as Green’s fiance, was admitted as Green’s fiance, was admitted to Huntsville Hospital Nov. 5 for treatment of an illness later diagnosed as being caused by ingestion of a “chronic dose” of arsenic, Blakely said.

The sheriff said medical officials notified law enforcement authorities and an investigation was launched by his office Nov. 18.

The investigation led authorities to believe that Green’s ex-husband, Glenn of Athens, who died at the age of 61 on Nov. 30, 1978, might have been murdered.

Blakeley said officials obtained authority to exhume Green’s body Wednesday morning from a grave in the old Decatur city cemetery. The body, he said, was sent to the state’s forensic sciences laboratory in Birmingham where pathologists “found a large quantity of arsenic in her.”

At that point, Blakely said, a warrant was issued for Betty Jo Green’s arrest and she later surrendered.

Late Thursday afternoon, she was taken before Circuit Judge Henry Blizzard, who set total bond at $100,000 – $50,000 each for murder and attempted murder. She was still in jail Thursday night.

The sheriff said it was possible that Green would be charged with responsibility for one or more additional deaths. He refused to identify who the other suspected victims might have been.

“It’s possible there will be other exhumations,” Blakely said.

He declined to comment on possible motives or additional evidence involved in Green’s case.

Hilley, now serving a life sentence, was arrested in 1979 but fled from Alabama before her scheduled trial and was missing for three years until she was discovered living under an assumed identity in New England.

The former Anniston secretary was charged with murder after authorities exhumed the body of her late husband, Frank. The body was exhumed after Hilley’s daughter, Carol, was diagnosed as suffering from arsenic poisoning.

[“Athens Arrest Repeats History – Arsenic charges spur memories,” Times Daily (Florence, Alabama), Dec. 14, 1984, p. 1]

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4 victims:

1978 – Grace Blankenship, sister-in-law, died.

1978 – Glenn Orman Green, husband, died.

1979 – daughter, survived poisoning, murder attempt.

Nov. 1984 – Arthur Self, fiance, attempted murder, poisoning; survived.

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CHRONOLOGY

1931 – Betty born.

1953 – Betty marries Raymond Frazer Cooley.

1978 – Raymond Frazer Cooley (58), husband, dies; no suspicion of murder in the 1984 investigation.

Jul. 15, 1979 – Grace Blankenship (60), dies.

Nov. 30, 1978 – Glenn Orman Green (61), dies.

Dec. 6, 1981 – W. E. “Bill” Brooks (50) dies.

Nov. 5, 1984 – Arthur Self (56), fiancée, hospitalized, paralyzed; recovery, released.

Dec. 20, 1984 – Arthur Self, re-hospitalized. tests show arsenic poisoning.

Nov. 18, 1984 – Sheriff initiates investigation.

Nov. 30, 1984 – Glenn Orman Green (61), exhumed.

Dec. 12, 1984 – Glenn Green exhumed; arsenic found. 

Dec. 12, 1984 – Betty Jo Green (53) arrested, Limestone County Jail.

Dec. 19, 1984 – Grace Blankenship exhumed; arsenic found.

Jan. 8, 1985 – W. E. “Bill” Brooks, employer, exhumed, autopsy finds arsenic but not considered cause of death.

Feb. 1985 – Betty Jo Green indicted on 3 charges: Glenn Green, murder, Grace Blankenship, murder; Arthur Self, attempted murder.

Mar. 4, 1985 – Betty Jo Green declared mentally competent.

May 22, 1986 – arraignment postponed.

Sep. 30, 1986 – Betty Jo Green convicted on all 3 charges.

Oct. 17, 1986 – Betty Jo Green (55) sentenced to 3 consecutive life sentences.

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For links to other cases of woman who murdered 2 or more husbands (or paramours), see Black Widow Serial Killers.

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[5079-4/8/20]

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