“Grandma Reed,” Suspected Serial Killer – New York, 2014

An unusual – and enlightening – article by Vice writer John Reed (not to be confused with the novelist of the same name), tells of his suspicions that his grandmother, aged 94 in 2014, might have been a serial killer. Her name is not given, so we’ll dub her “Grandma Reed” for our purposes here. She lived in New York City.

The article shows just how slippery the typical female serial killer case usually is. We often are left with just circumstantial evidence, inference and ambiguity . . . and dead bodies.

Here is the article’s first paragraph:

“People were always dying around Grandma – her children, her husbands, her boyfriend – so her lifelong state of grief was understandable. To see her sunken in her high and soft bed, enshrouded in the darkness of the attic, and surrounded by the skin-and-spit smell of old age, was to know that mothers don't get what they deserve. Today, when I think back on it, I don't wonder whether Grandma got what she deserved as a mother; I wonder whether she got what she deserved as a murderer.”

And another paragraph from the body of the article:

“Sometimes when I tell these stories, I have the feeling that people think I should have done something. Well, it was difficult psychologically to piece all of this together, and as a kid, I didn't understand what was going on. Before Grandma put me to bed she'd sometimes serve me this really rich hot chocolate that looked oily and thin. And when I woke up it would be 24 or even 72 hours later. Three or four times we rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night because I was having trouble breathing. But it wasn't until my 30s that I connected all this and it dawned on me that sleeping for three days is not normal or OK, and that the only times I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, I was at Grandma's.”

[John Reed, “What Do You Do When You Think You Have a Murderer in the Family? I've come to believe that my grandmother literally poisoned those around her.” Vice, Oct. 26, 2014]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avywv4/my-grandma-the-poisoner-0000474-v21n10

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