Episode Details

In this episode of pplpod, we examine the chilling case of Nannie Doss, an American serial killer known to the press as the "Black Widow," the "Lonely Hearts Killer," and most infamously, the "Giggling Granny". Between 1927 and 1954, Doss was responsible for the deaths of 11 people, a list of victims that included four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, and two of her grandsons.

Join us as we trace Nannie’s path from a controlled childhood in Blue Mountain, Alabama—where a severe head injury at age seven allegedly contributed to her later mental instability—to her adulthood fueled by an obsession with romance magazines and lonely hearts columns. We discuss how Doss used these columns to meet men, only to later kill them with rat poison or arsenic to collect life insurance money and continue her search for the "real romance of life". Finally, we cover her 1954 arrest after the sudden death of her fifth husband, Samuel Doss, and her subsequent confession to a decades-long killing spree.