Nannie Doss was an American serial killer who between the 1920s and the 1950s wiped out 11 members of her family -four husbands, two of her own children, her dear old mom, both sisters, a nephew, a granddaughter and a grandson!
As is so often the case with female serial killers, Doss’s weapon of choice was poison -except in the cases of her two-year-old grandson whom she suffocated, and a newborn granddaughter through whose skull she stuck a hat pin!
Apart from being yet another example of the kind of evil woman Western society likes to sweep under the rug, Doss is of interest for two other reasons. The first is that it is difficult to imagine that a male serial killer could kill so many members of his family and take 30 years to be found out! Imagine a man who loses wife after wife in suspicious circumstances and doesn’t have the police pouncing on him after the second or third one! Yet in the case of Doss, it a three decade murder spree before a doctor finally realized there was something suspicious about the death of her fifth husband and had ordered an autopsy which revealed that the man is system was filled with arsenic!
The other thing that caught my attention about this case was that the authorities refused to pursue the death penalty simply because she was a woman! No obfuscation here, they actually stated outright that no one in that state had ever pursued the death penalty against a woman and they werent going to be the first. So instead of being executed Nannie Doss was simply thrown into jail, where she died 10 years later from leukemia -let’s hope it was slow and painful. In this sense things have probably improved somewhat in the last 50 years or so as the authorities had no problem executing Aileen Wuornos, despite the fact that she killed no children and no members of the sacred sex.
Doss’ murders, jolly disposition and the fact that no one seemed willing to suspect her are the prime inspiration behind a screenplay that Michael is currently working on. If anything comes of this I will let you know, but let’s keep in mind that Michael has a history of starting yet never finishing quite a few screenplays – so don’t be holding your breath for a Nannie Doss movie anytime soon.