PROFILE OF A SERIAL KILLER: NANNIE DOSS

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Profile of a Serial Killer: Nannie Doss

Olivia Rakas
Seton Hill University

Word Count:

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Abstract

Nannie Doss was a female serial killer from 1927 1955. She killed
eleven members of her family including two of her children, two of her
grandchildren, and four of her husbands. Nannie Doss was raised in a very
strict household run by her father and turned to her mothers romance
novels to find the love she so longed for. She never found that love in real life
and decided that her husbands, and anyone else she found to be a nuisance,
should be exterminated like rats. Nannie Doss was finally charged with
murder after she had given her fifth husband enough arsenic in his coffee to
kill twenty men. She responded to the officials and their questions by
giggling, giving her fifty-year-old woman the nickname The Giggling
Granny and The Jolly Black Widow. She was found sane and sentenced to
life in prison, but after just ten years she died of leukemia in 1965.

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Nancy Hazle, better known as Nannie Doss, was a serial killer that left four states,
twenty-seven years, and twelve victims, including four of her five husbands, in her wake (Greig,
2005). Her many nicknames include The Lonely Hearts Killer, The Giggling Granny, and
The Jolly Black Widow.
Born on November 4, 1905 to James and Lou Hazle in Blue Mountain, Alabama, Nancy Hazle
was one of five children. She was the eldest of her brother and three sisters. Her father, James
Hazle, was strict and controlling, often working his five children like slave hands on their large
farm, where they were often beat for not following his harsh rules. James did not allow for his
daughters to wear makeup of any kind, they were not allowed to go to ball games, and they were
forbidden to visit friends (Manners, 1997). When she was seven years old, Nannie was on a train
going to visit family in Alabama. The train halted forward and Nannie hit her head off of a metal
bar. After the incident, Nannie suffered for years with migraine headaches, blackouts, and
depression. Because of the daunting work that James had his children doing, their attendance in
school was often sporadic, Nannie never learned to read well and at an early age she became
extremely promiscuous and despite not having very strong reading skills, would turn to her
mothers romance magazines to fantasize about the ideal love that she longed for (Greig, 2005).
When she was sixteen years old, she married Charles Braggs, a coworker at the Linen Thread
Company, and they had four daughters in quick succession (Mayo, 2008). It turned out that
Charleys mother was no better than her father when it came to rules and Nannie felt the
pressure. Charley came home one day to find that the two middle daughters they shared were
found dead in the middle of the kitchen floor. Their food had been poisoned and Charley took his
eldest daughter, Melvina, and fled, leaving behind Florine, his newborn daughter. He was often

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called the one that got away by Nannies family (Mayo, 2008). In 1929, Nannie Doss took a
job in a cotton factory to support herself and her remaining daughter, Florine (Greig, 2012).
Remarried to Frank Harrelson, she found that he did not live up to her standards of her romance
magazines, as he was an alcoholic and a cheat (Greig, 2005). In 1945, tragedy struck again when
Florines daughter, Nannies granddaughter, was found dead almost immediately after birth.
When Florine awoke from labor she looked over at her mother, in what would seem to be a
nightmare or a drug induced dream, to see Nannie sticking a hatpin into her babys head. The
nightmare was an all-too-much reality. Soon after, Florine left her son in Nannie Doss care, only
to find that three days later the baby died from ingesting rat poison and that Nannie Doss had
collected $500 from a life insurance policy she had taken out on little Robert (Greig, 2005).
During that same year, Frank Harrelson came home drunk after a night on the town, abused his
wife, and wound up with a heavy dose of rat poison in his corn liquor. Luckily enough for
Nannie, she had just insured Franks life and was now able to collect the payment to buy a house
in which she lived until 1947 (Greig, 2012).
Nannie Doss continued to answer Lonely Hearts advertisements in her romance
magazines. One of the unlucky men to make contact with her was Arlie Lanning from Lexington,
North Carolina. They met and two days later they had married. Yet, once again, even though he
came straight out of the pages of her romance magazines, Arlie was a drunk and a
disappointment, nothing like the courageous, spontaneous, and caring men she found in her
books. In 1950, Nannie served him a meal of prunes and coffee. He had horrible stomach pains
and died two days later, it may have been the arsenic in the coffee or the rat poison in the prunes,
the authorities still are not sure (Greig, 2005). Still after seven victims, Nannie Doss was never
suspected of a thing, even after Arlies house burnt down, leaving Nannie to collect the insurance

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payment. After she had collected all she felt she deserved, Nannie cleared town and moved in
with her sister, Dovie, who was dead by June, 1952 (Mayo, 2008). In 1952, Nannie took her
romance dreams out of a magazine and got a job in a lonely hearts club named the Diamond
Circle Club and met Richard Morton. They moved to his home in Emporia, Kansas, but Nannie
Doss soon found him to be a fraud, a cheat, and a womanizer. He, however, lived to see another
day, as her next victim would be her mother, who came to live with her and Richard in January,
1953. Three months later, Richard left the same way everyone else did, chronic stomach pains
and a heavy dose of arsenic. Still, no doctors asked for an autopsy and Nannie was not diagnosed
with any sort of mental deficiency (Greig, 2012).
In June 1953, Nannie moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to marry Samuel Doss. Nannie Doss
had kept in touch with the Diamond Circle Club even though the result of her husbands being
unfaithful was death. Doss, however, was different from the rest, he was not a drinker or a
womanizer, he was moral, thrifty, and good man, but his rules were too strict for the carefree
Nannie Doss. In order to keep the love of his life, Doss gave Nannie full access to his checking
account and put her in charge of all of his insurance policies. Unfortunately, money was exactly
what Nannie wanted and it was time to whip up another batch of prunes for Dear Old Sam
(Mayo, 2008). Also unfortunately for Nannie was the fact that Sam did not die right away, he
lived in the hospital for twenty-three days, only to return back home. The evening he arrived
back home with Nannie, she cooked him a lovely pork roast, washed down with a cup of coffee
laced with enough arsenic to kill twenty men.
In 1955, with the suspicious activity, finally, Sams doctor ordered an autopsy (Greig,
2005). The authorities were unable to believe that the fifty-year-old grandmother was possible of
such an atrocious crime. When asked questions Nannie would giggle, receiving her name the

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Giggling Granny, this unnerved the police and detectives and they refused her from reading
her romance magazines or having contact with the lonely-hearts club. Under this heart breaking
news, she confessed not only to the murder of Sam, but to the murders of three of her other
husbands (Greig, 2005). She was placed on trial and sentenced to life in prison. After serving
only ten years of her sentence, she died of leukemia in 1965 (Mayo, 2008). The bodies of her
deceased family members were exhumed and had autopsies performed on them to find that in all
of them were high doses of arsenic and/or rat poisoning. Nannie said of herself that she was
looking for the perfect mate, the real romance of life (Greig, 2012). Through her search for true
love, she managed to kill her husbands in an agonizing way and she was said to even take delight
in watching the men die (Hickey, 1991).
Nannie Doss had a very stressful childhood, which lead to her troubles in school and her
never getting farther than sixth grade. Nannie was quite promiscuous, but she never showed any
sort of violent behavior. She lived in the fantasy world of her romance magazines, but this was
no cause for alarm as most teen girls show interest in boys. Nannie was obviously very social, as
she had five husbands, out of which came four children. She often found her husbands through
personal ads in newspapers and through lonely-hearts clubs, in which she worked and often
frequented to find her next mate while still in a relationship with her last. Nannie was never
diagnosed with a mental disorder, although her killing spree would certainly suggest some sort of
missing link in her mental capacity. The nature of Nannies crimes seemed to be ridding herself
of her husbands and family members almost like exterminating an annoying bug. Her crimes
spanned twenty-seven years and took twelve victims, including two of her children, two of her
grandchildren, one nephew, one mother-in-law, one mother, one sister, and four of her husbands.
When Nannie was caught she appeared very jovial, giggling at all questions asked on her, and

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playing the innocent granny. She was found sane and capable to stand trial. She was given a life
sentence and died of leukemia in 1965, with hundreds of romance novels located in her cell. It
seems that Nannie never truly got over her traumatic childhood, her abusive and overbearing
father, her love of love, and her unreachable high standards in men, placed there to fulfill her
sense of power in a way that true love never could have.

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Bibliography
Greig, Charlotte. (2005). Evil Serial Killers: In the Mind of Monsters. London:
Arcturus
Publishing Limited.
Greig, Charlotte. (2012). Serial Killers: Horrifying True-Life Cases of Pure Evil.
London: Arcurus Publishing Limited.
Hickey, Eric W.. (1991). Serial Murderers and Their Victims. Belmont,
California: Cengage Learning.
Manners, Terry. (1997). Deadlier Than the Male: Stories of Female Serial
Killers.
Chicago, Illinois: Trafalgar Square Publishing.
Mayo, Michael. (2008). American Murder: Criminals, Crimes, and the Media.
Michigan: Visible Ink Press.
Schurman-Kauflin, Deborah. (2000). New Predator: Profiles of Female Serial
Killers.
New York, New York: Algora Publishing.