The grandmother who poisoned her husbands, children, grandchildren and mothers-in-law to collect life insurance
Lapatilla
She was 7 years old and her life was a martyrdom: her demanding father made her work, along with her brothers, in the fields. He pulled weeds with bare hands, plowed and sowed the land with his small fingers and They didn’t let her play because that was wasting time.. Therefore, the day they told her that they would go by train to visit relatives in Alabama, she felt excited about such an adventure: she had never stuck her nose beyond the fence of the farm or school and they had never had a vacation.
By infobae.com
That afternoon in 1912 she got on the wagon with everyone, very excited. She was determined not to miss anything. He was in his world dreaming of another life when the locomotive made an emergency brake. Nannie, with her light weight, went flying through the air and hit her head squarely on the iron seat in front of her. From that day on, that is what she maintained years later, “I suffered pain, severe migraines and fainting.” The coup would be his great excuse to justify his numerous crimes: murders in cold blood that he committed without losing, not even for a second, his kind smile.
Nancy “Nannie” Hazle (later known as Nannie Doss, the last name of her last murdered husband) was born on November 4, 1905 in Blue Mountain, Alabama, United States. She was the eldest of five children born to Lou Holder and James Hazle. Her parents married after conceiving her, which at the time was a challenge to norms.
James turned out to be a controlling and harsh father.. Nannie hated him. Her childhood was unhappy and her education was erratic because they preferred her to work on the farm. At the age of five he was already cutting wood. Not to play, not to mention. Friends? Less. When she could, Nannie went to school, but it was too far away: she had to walk more than six kilometers between there and back. It was the furthest I had ever gone..
Then came the aforementioned blow to the head on the train ride, but they didn’t give him much trouble. Life continued as difficult as before. When he reached adolescence, he only found pleasure in reading gossip magazines with stories of rosy loves and the columns of lonely hearts. Dreaming worked as escapism. Her father prohibited his female daughters from wearing any type of makeup or provocative clothing. He gave them eternal sermons. In short: they had to avoid being looked at by men to avoid problems. Of course, in line with these mandates, dances and social gatherings were prohibited for them.
Working in a linen factory in the nearby town of Anniston, Nannie met her first husband: Charles Braggs. Although Nannie was only 16 years old, her father very happily approved of this relationship. Four months after they met, the marriage was celebrated. The year was 1921. Braggs was the only child of a single woman who, of course, when Nannie moved into the house with Braggs, she stayed living with them. Many decades later, Nannie stated: “I got married the way my father wanted (…). His single mother (by his mother-in-law) took over my life completely when we got married. “She didn’t see anything wrong with what he did.”
In the four-year period between 1923 and 1927, the couple had four daughters. The stress in which Nannie lived with so many little ones and the mandate of her mother-in-law who was as inflexible as her own father, led her to turn to drink and cigarettes. I wasn’t happy. Braggs would sometimes be gone for several days and Nannie would go crazy because she suspected infidelities. Married life was nothing like he had dreamed of while reading his pink magazines.
During the year 1927, two horrible deaths occurred within a few days of each other. The same thing happened both times: Braggs came home from work and found one of his daughters lying on the kitchen floor.. On both occasions it was almost the same and the minors were dead.
Nannie wanted to make her husband believe that it could have been due to accidental poisoning. But Braggs distrusted her and he began to fear his wife. His daughters, it was said, were fine when he left for work, how could it be that after breakfast they had died? On both occasions the insurance paid a small sum of money for their deaths. But Braggs felt in danger and did not let Nannie convince him. He trusted her again so he didn’t eat or drink anything Nannie made. In fact, many years later, They baptized him “Lucky Charlie.”. We’ll see why.
One afternoon, fed up with the situation in which he lived, he packed his bag, took Melvina, his eldest daughter, and left directly. He left the youngest, the newborn Florine, and her mother and owner of the house living with Nannie. Curiously, shortly after leaving home, Braggs’ mother also died. There are no records of what could have happened to him..
Nannie was left alone with Florine and to support herself she got a job in a cotton mill. Braggs, despite his fear, returned to the house where Nannie was with Melvina a year later. She wanted to separate, she already had a new partner, and get the Braggs house back. It was the summer of 1928. He obtained a divorce and Nannie ended up going to live at her parents’ house with her two daughters Melvina and Florine.
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