The Unbelievable Story of Serial Husband Killer Nannie Doss
Posted: Monday, May 31, 2010
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Nannie Doss was born in 1905 as Nancy Hazle to James and Lou Hazle in the textile village of Blue Mountain, suburb of Anniston, Alabama. She was one of five children, one brother and three sisters.
James was a strict father and ruled his house with a heavy hand. He made his children work on the family farm and school attendance was erratic. Nancy suffered a head injury when she was seven years old and suffered headaches, blackouts and depression for a number of years. It was believed that her accident was the cause of those symptoms as well as her mental instability.
The marriage was not a happy one but it produced 4 daughters in a period of four years. These were born 1923-1927. In late 1927, the two middle daughters died from what was thought to have been food poisoning. Braggs mother also died somewhere around this time. Braggs, thinking his wife had poisoned the two girls, took the eldest girl, Melvina, and fled the household, leaving the new baby with Nancy.
About a year later, Braggs returned with his daughter and another woman in tow. The woman was a divorcee with a daughter of her own. Nannie and Braggs were divorced and she took her two daughters back to live with her mother. Her father died shortly afterward.
Some two years later, she met a man, Robert Frank Harrelson from nearby Jacksonville, Alabama via a lonely hearts column. They were married in 1929. Afterward she discovered that Harrelson was an alcoholic and had a criminal record for assault, yet the marriage lasted for sixteen years.
In the meantime, her two daughters had married. The eldest, Melvina gave birth to a boy, Robert. In a couple of years she was hospitalized giving birth again, this time to a daughter. She wanted her mother at her side and her husband Mozie Haynes, went to her and brought her to the hospital. When the child was born she was a beautiful normal baby girl but by noon, she was dead. Doctors were baffled.
Melvina told others that, while mostly under sedation, that she thought she saw her mother stick a hat pin into the baby's temple. Doctors failed to find any evidence of anything to kill the child. Some though that Melvina was hallucinating. Some six months later, her son Robert passed away while in the care of Nannie.
Harrelson, Nannie's alcoholic husband, in a drunken state in 1945, raped her. She, knowing where he hid his jug of corn whiskey, got it and laced it heavily with arsenic rat poisoning. He died a painful death.
Nannie, appeared then to be on a roll. She again went to the lonely hearts columns and soon met Arlie Lanning. After three days of courtship, they were married. Arlie, although not an alcoholic, did like to booze it up now an then and also had a roving eye for the ladies. Their marriage was haphazard, Nannie would leave for weeks at a time and then return, while Arlie spent more and more time boozing and hanging out at bars where lonely women were to be found. During one calm period while Nannie was at home, Arlie suddenly took very sick and died.
Shortly after his death, their house burned to the ground and the insurance money went to Arlie.
Nannie joined the Diamond Circle Club where she met and married her forth husband Richard Morton from Emporia Kansas. At last Nannie had found a husband who did not drink. But...he was indeed, a ladies man and spent his time in that hobby. Little did he realize that he was preparing his own death by doing so.
Nannie's mother, Louisa Hazle, came to live with them and shortly was shortly poisoned by her daughter. Approximately three months later, she also poisoned her wayward husband Richard.
Very shortly after Richard's death, she met Samuel Doss, a religious and avid churchgoing individual. He would not allow Nannie to read her love story magazines and would not allow a television or electric fan in the house. The marriage did not last very long. Doss became ill and was admitted to the hospital. The doctor opted for a stomach infection for which he prescribed medication and released the patient.
Once he was at home, Nannie quickly dosed him with a lethal amount and he died. This caused the doctor to suspect foul play and he ordered an autopsy, which indicated a high level of arsenic rat poison.
After hours of questioning, Nannie kept denying having had anything to do with Doss' death or anyone else's. But finally, she relented and confessed all of the other four.. She had poisoned her first husband but he had escaped and lived.
The police, in cooperation with other agencies in others states, exhumed all of the bodies of anyone she had been suspected of killing. All of the four husbands, and her mother showed heavy doses of arsenic poisoning. In addition to this it was found that her sister Dovie, her grandson, Robert, and her mother-in-law (Arlie Lanning's mother) all died from asphyxia. It was assumed that she had smothered them.
Nannie's lawyers knew of nothing they could do for her other than advise her to plead guilty. Which she did, and was sentenced to life in prison. She died in 1965 from leukemia while in prison.
For a lengthy, very detailed story of this woman's entire life and escapades, from interviews with people including her close relatives, Click Here.
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