Was there something in Alabama’s water in the 1950s? Something that made women who looked like grandmothers kill their husbands, neighbors and even small children? In Alabama alone:
- Two women were executed in the poisoning deaths of numerous family members, including children.
- Two more were sentenced to life in prison for the poisoning deaths of family members and acquaintances, including children.
- A fifth woman was sentenced to 10 years for the murders and gruesome dismemberment of two brothers who were her neighbors.
Click through the gallery above to see photos and newspaper headlines about the crimes.
Arsenic: A woman’s weapon of choice
A UPI story published on June 27, 1958, in newspapers across the country, like this one in The Anniston Star, quoted criminologist Dr. Dudley Degroot on why women often chose poison as a means of murder. The story was written in response to the string of arsenic killings by women in the South at that time, including several from Alabama, one from Georgia and one from South Carolina.
“For one thing, women abhor violence, especially women in the middle and upper classes. Women are supposed to be the gentler, subordinate sex – the housewife and mother – and they will invariably choose a quiet, non-violent way to commit murder,” he said. His adjectives for women seem patronizing now, but at the time, women were often labeled as the “behind-the-scenes” keepers of the home and family. Degroot said arsenic was the most readily available poison; it could be bought without raising suspicions because it was a common ingredient in rat poison and insecticide.
Female murderers, he said, are able to rationalize their actions by telling themselves they deserve their cheating/abusive/annoying husbands’ life insurance money sooner rather than later. However, Degroot did not address how female poisoners justify to themselves the murders of small children…