Many of the serial killers we cover focused on killing random strangers. That makes their behavior even more disturbing, since in most cases, murderers have personal connections to their victims.
But no serial killer in history has killed more of her own family members than Nannie Doss — also known as the “Giggling Granny.” A head injury at a young age, paired with her own obsession with having the “perfect husband,” led her on a killing spree that spanned three decades between the 1920s and 1950s. Victims included four of the men she married, two of her own children, her sister, her grandchildren, and two of her mothers-in-law.
In 1923, at age 16, Nannie Doss married Charley Braggs after dating for just four months.
They had four children together. She became overwhelmed while taking care of both her children and Braggs’ mother, so she began drinking heavily.
Mysteriously, Doss’ middle two children died of “food poisoning.”
After that, her mother-in-law passed away. Braggs suspected that his wife was the culprit, so the two divorced. This left the murderous Ms. Doss with the remaining children.
She met her second husband in 1929 in the classifieds section of a romantic magazine.
Although they were married for 16 years, Frank Harrelson was a drunk and a criminal, and one night, he raped Doss after a few hours of binge drinking. Doss soon put rat poison in his drink and killed him.
Her daughter Melvina eventually had two children of her own.
While under the care of her grandmother, the youngest granddaughter died. Another night, after Melvina returned from visiting her father, she found that her other child had died.
The Giggling Granny then married a man named Arlie Lanning, but he soon met a fate that was eerily similar to Harrelson’s.
His mother also died shortly thereafter. Doss then moved in with her sister who also — you guessed it — mysteriously died. The insatiable killer then collected life insurance from all three.
Between 1953 and 1954, Doss wasted no time killing her fourth and fifth husbands.
When doctors found traces of arsenic in her husband Samuel Doss’ system, police began questioning Nannie Doss about the trail of death she curiously left in her wake.
The Giggling Granny eventually admitted to all of the murders.
Still, she was only tried for the fifth husband’s murder. She served less than 10 years of her life sentence before dying of leukemia.
She didn’t get her chilling nickname until she started talking to the authorities about how she killed her husbands, giggling all the while. She said that she was driven by the dream of finding a perfect husband.
To me, the creepiest part about Nannie Doss’ many murders is the fact that she got away with the spree for so long, despite being the common denominator in each death.
