Nannie Doss may have seemed like a sweet, loving grandmother, but investigators soon found something more sinister lurked behind her charming smile after every member of her family mysteriously died.
Doss was born Nancy Hazel on November 4, 1905, in Alabama. An abusive father heavily impacted her childhood, and she described it as “an unhappy and difficult childhood.” She was kept out of school to do work on the family’s farm, where she constantly had to do chores. Nannie’s father forbade his daughters from wearing makeup or even dress clothes. They were not allowed to attend social events, and she reportedly slammed her head into a metal bar at the age of 7, while aboard a train visiting relatives in southern Alabama, which caused her continued struggles growing up.
Nannie was first married at age 16 in 1921 to Charley Braggs, who worked alongside her at a linen factory. Doss had described how Bragg’s mother tried to take over her life, limiting Nannie’s activities and not even allowing her own mother to spend the night. This time in Nannie’s life took a toll on the young woman, as she began to drink to excess and became heavily addicted to smoking.
The marriage produced four daughters, but the couple would lose their two middle daughters to suspected food poisoning in 1927. Braggs skipped town with the oldest daughter, Melvina, and Nannie was forced to find employment in a cotton mill to support her newborn daughter and herself. Bragg’s mother also died during this time. In the summer of 1928, Braggs returned with Melvina, accompanied by a divorcee. Soon afterwards, Braggs and Nannie Divorced, and Nannie took her two girls to her mother’s house. Braggs maintained that he left Nannie because he was afraid of her.
Doss would find love again when she married Robert Franklin Harrelson in 1929. After a few months of marriage, she discovered the man was fond of the bottle and had a criminal record for assault. The two did remain married for 16 years, until in 1945, when she served him a “Cup of Shut the Hell Up,” when she added rat poison into his whisky jar. Harrelson later died that evening.
In 1943, Doss’s daughter, Melvina, gave birth to Robert Lee Haynes. Another baby followed in 1945, but soon died. Exhausted from labor, Melvina thought she saw Nannie stick a hatpin into the baby’s head. When Melvina asked her husband and sister about the incident, they said Nannie had told them the baby was dead, and they noticed that she was holding a pin. The doctors, however, could not give a medical explanation for what caused the baby’s death.
Melvina and her husband drifted apart after the death, and Melvina began dating a soldier, whom Nannie disapproved of. When Melvina went to visit her father after having a nasty fight with her mother, her son Robert mysteriously died while under Nannie’s care on July 7, 1945. The death was ruled as asphyxia from unknown causes. Two months later, Nannie collected $500 from the life insurance policy she had taken out on the child.
Nannie would meet and wed her third husband, Arlie Lanning, whom she had met through the lonely-hearts column in the paper while traveling in Lexington, North Carolina. After three days of courtship, the pair married, but Lanning was a reported alcoholic. Nannie would leave for months on end during the marriage, but when she was at home, she played the doting housewife. When Lanning died of heart failure, the townspeople gathered around Nannie and supported her at his funeral.
The couple’s house, which had been left to Lanning’s sister, mysteriously caught fire and burned. Insurance money was awarded to Nannie, who quickly deposited it. After Lanning’s mother died in her sleep, Nannie got out of town and ended up at her sister Dovie’s home. Dovie was bedridden, so having her sister at the house was a welcome sight for her. But soon after Nannie arrived, Dovie died.
Nannie was on the prowl again for another husband. She joined a dating service called the Diamond Circle Club and met Richard Morton of Jamestown, North Carolina. They married in Emporia, Kansas, in 1952. In 1953, Nannie poisoned her mother, Louisa, in January of that year, when she came to live with them, and three months later, Morton died on May 19.
In June 1953, Nannie married a Nazarene minister named Samuel Doss in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Samuel was looking to pick up the pieces of his life after he had tragically lost his family to a tornado in Arkansas. Mr. Doss was a devout Christian and disapproved of his darling wife reading romance novels and stories. In September, Samuel was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, but was released on October 5, after he was treated for a severe digestive tract infection. A week later, he would be dead. Nannie killed him on the evening of October 12, 1954, to collect two life insurance policies that she had taken out. His death prompted his doctor to order an autopsy, which revealed vast amounts of arsenic in his system.
Nannie’s death game was up as she was promptly arrested. Nannie Doss confessed to killing four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, and her mother-in-law. She pleaded guilty on May 17, 1955, and was sentenced to life in prison. The state of Oklahoma did not pursue the death penalty because of her sex. Doss was never charged with the other deaths, and she died from leukemia in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1965.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr.