1. Mary Elizabeth Wilson
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"The Merry Widow of Windy Nook" was a black widow who, after being found guilty of murdering four former lovers, was the last woman sentenced to death row in Durham, England. Her initial punishment was later commuted to a life sentence due to her age and she died in prison. Women on death row isn't necessarily uncommon, but there are certainly fewer women on death row than men so that begs the question, what in hell did she do to these men, right? Well lemme tell ya. After being in service to a family, she married the son, John, and they remained married for 43 years. At some point during the marriage, Mary took a lover, a man also named John who lived at Windy Nook with the family. The sources differ as to when the men died (one cites them as dying in the same year, while another says it was a year/18 months apart) but either way, between 1955 and 1957, both her husband and lover died, with her husband dying first. Both men left Mary with their life savings, which she took when she married her second (or third, some sources say that she married the lover soon after her husband's death) husband Oliver in 1957. This marriage did not last long, as Oliver was dead before the couple's two-week anniversary, from what the doctor diagnosed as heart failure. Oliver, a retired real estate agent, also left his wife some money. Not long after, she married her final husband Ernest and within the year he too was dead, also from cardiac failure.
Suspicion started to head Mary's way after she'd started making questionable statements about her husbands. Following her wedding ceremony to Oliver, they apparently had a lot of food left over from the reception. She joked that they should probably save some of it for the funeral and while I am guessing people took that lightly at first (she had buried two other men before that, so maybe she just had a dark sense of humor), nobody was laughing when Oliver turned up dead 12 days later. People were already starting to gossip when she married Ernest, but after he died she joked with the undertaker that she deserved a discount for all the business she was providing him. This got the gossip mill going again, as did her absence from his funeral. Someone finally reported Mary's surprisingly...merry...attitude towards her husbands' deaths to the police, who investigated and decided to exhume her last two husbands. They found that both men had been poisoned and her final husband had a combination of wheat bran and phosphorus in his stomach, two of the vital ingredients in rat, beetle and roach poisons.
As it turns out, Mary sort of told on herself when visiting with a friend shortly before Ernest's death; she'd told the woman of her husband's poor health and mentioned that he was constantly thirsty, which the prosecutors used against her as thirst is a sign of phosphorus poisoning. None of her husbands had left her a significant amount of money (her total inheritance was no more than 200 pounds) so money was ruled out as a factor for the murders and Mary was found guilty of killing both Oliver and Ernest. At a later date, her first husband and lover were also exhumed and poisoning was confirmed as the cause of death in both cases, but since Mary had already been sentenced, there was no need to try her again. She died in Holloway Prison a few years afterward but the tale of the Merry Widow lives on.
2. Wayne Lonergan
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This case was quite scandalous, both for its time (the '40s) and today's, from beginning to end. The short version of this story starts with a man named William Burton, who ran the Burton-Bernheimer beer company. At some point, he employed the services of self-described "morally corrupt gigolo" Wayne Lonergan (although the official story is that William was Wayne's 'patron.'). Wayne, who was bisexual at best, down low at worst, and William were already sleeping together when William introduced Wayne to his daughter Patricia. Patricia already marched to the beat of her own drum as an heiress, preferring to spend her time partying rather than hob-nobbing with society's elite. At some point throughout the following year Wayne continued to sleep with William and also started sleeping with Patricia, who eventually got pregnant, at which point his liasons with Patricia's father came to an end.
The two married (with her father's encouragement, go figure) but Patricia continued to party and Wayne continued to sleep with wealthy society men. A couple of years later, the two split and Wayne was written out of Patricia's will when they formally separated, which had him inheriting millions. Not long after that, Patricia failed to show up for a family dinner and when her mother went to her apartment to check on her, she found Patricia dead in her bedroom. Her skull had been fractured with a blunt object that was later identified as a candelabra, then strangled afterward. The overkill method of her murder raised police suspicion and though Wayne initially said he'd been keeping intimate company at the time, this alibi eventually fell apart. He finally admitted that the two had been having relations and she had bitten his...equipment...during a sexual act, which angered him and caused him to kill her in a fit of rage.
The trial was just as much of a scandal as the relationship and murder; the salacious bits of the relationship were revealed to the public and before the jury had even been selected, there was a mistrial and Wayne was set free. The second time around, however, he wasn't so lucky and was convicted of second-degree murder to be served at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. He unsuccessfully petitioned to receive some of his wife's inheritance from prison and was released in 1967 on the condition he return to Canada, where he lived until his death in the mid-'80s.
3. Tillie Klimek
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If you'd ever like to meet a genuine black widow, meet Tillie Klimek. Seven--seven--husbands fell prey to her machinations, which technically classifies her as a serial killer but because her victims were her husbands, I wanted to include her in today's post. I also wanted to include her because she put a supernatural twist on her story, which I hadn't heard before. According to certain renditions of the story, Tillie used to predict the deaths of both dogs and humans, usually her husbands, then everyone would be astonished when they actually happened a short time later. The truth was that Tillie was just bold enough to tell people they were going to die without telling them that she was going to kill them. Either way, I imagine it must have been quite unnerving for those on the receiving end of those comments. But anyway, the story goes that Tillie, a Polish immigrant, moved to Chicago with her family when she was a year old and in 1890, married her first husband John. She had children and John died in 1914, leaving Tillie his life savings. She married again shortly after and three months later, he died as well and left his insurance to his wife. Tillie found a lover not long after and started pressuring him to propose, but did herself in by admitting that she'd poisoned her first two husbands. This scared the man off from proposing, so Tillie threatened him. Obviously, he found himself in the same boat as Tillie's husbands not long after.
It was the death of her third husband, Frank, that caused the tides to change for Tillie. They had been married a couple of years when he mysteriously got ill and took to his sickbed. This is where the 'psychic' legend comes into play, as supposedly Tillie told neighbors that she knew Frank was going to die. She ordered a coffin and began to sew herself a funeral hat as he lay dying. Sure enough, not long after, Frank was dead. At Frank's funeral, a man named Joseph Klimek showed up, hoping to get closer to the new widow. Tillie didn't bite at first, but she eventually came around and the two got married, despite whisperings from others that maybe he should reconsider. Joseph was convinced Tillie had changed her ways, except that she hadn't. Tillie was ready to get rid of Joseph, so she went to talk to her cousin Nellie, a widow herself, and that conversation sealed her fate. She shared her desire to be rid of her husband and Nellie responded by giving her some rat poison. Joseph fell ill not long after due to the timely poisoning of all of his meals, but his brother got suspicious and brought in his personal doctor to have a look. The doctor confirmed Joseph was suffering from arsenic poisoning and he was immediately hospitalized, and the police began to investigate.
Both Tillie and Nellie were arrested for attempted murder, and that's when the foundation completely fell apart. Anonymous letters tipped the police off to have Tillie's former husbands' bodies exhumed, and all of them had signs of arsenic poisoning. Someone tipped the police to the skeletons in Nellie's closet, and unsurprisingly, Nellie's first husband was found to have died of arsenic poisoning as well. From that point, relatives bombarded the police with their suspicions and it was revealed that Tillie had killed their siblings, her former lovers, a couple of dogs, and in the most tragic part of the story, her own two infants and grandchild. But because of Chicago's corrupt, biased way of handling prosecutions back then, Tillie was done wrong by the prosecution. Whereas attractive defendants often got off during this time, Tillie's homely looks were a strike against her and a primary reason why she was convicted. Joseph died a few years after the trial, and despite Tillie having been in prison for awhile by then, his autopsy showed that his insides were still full of arsenic. How, though?
4. Evelyn Dick
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Evelyn Dick was a woman who, unlike many of today's other entries, only killed one husband, but her story is still a bit crazy. Her father Donald stole from his railway job in order to fund a lifestyle out of the family's financial means, including Evelyn's private Catholic school tuition. Evelyn's mother Alexandra encouraged her to use her good looks in order to get wealthy men to buy her gifts, with the eventual goal to marry a rich man who could continue to fund the lifestyle Evelyn desired. Along the way, however, Evelyn got pregnant a couple of times. Because she was an unwed mother and this was the '40s, obviously this would have caused some scandal so her daughter was immediately given to her mother, with the lie that the father was in the navy to explain his absence. A second pregnancy ended in a stillbirth, and a third one soon after ended tragically as well. But I'll get back to that later.
Following the birth of the third child, Evelyn met and married a man 15 years her senior named John Dick. Her parents did not support the marriage and didn't attend the ceremony. Evelyn was under the impression that John was wealthy but was disappointed to discover that he actually wasn't, so she went back to one of her former lovers soon (by soon I mean days) after the wedding. After a reconciliation attempt by John in which Evelyn refused to stop seeing her other lovers, John moved out of their home and into a relative's. He attempted once more by threatening to tell Donald's employers about his theft, and John responded by threatening to kill John. Not long after that conversation, the two officially separated and John went missing.
About 10 days after John went missing, a couple of kids hiking in the mountains discovered a headless torso with gunshots (that weren't life-threatening) in it and upon investigation, it was revealed that the torso was John's. As it turns out, Evelyn killed John, probably with a gunshot to the head, and with the help of her father, dismembered him before burning his head and limbs in the fireplace. The torso was likely placed in the mountains because it was too large to burn in the little fireplace. Bone fragments were found that were later confirmed to be John's and bloodstained clothing and car seats matched with John's blood type as well, which sealed the case.
But there's more--remember that baby I mentioned she had earlier? While searching Evelyn's house for evidence about John's murder, the police came across a suitcase that contained a cement block. Upon cracking through the cement, an infant's body was found inside. The baby had been strangled before Evelyn encased it in cement and placed it in a suitcase before hiding it in the attic. Cement residue was later found in a potted plant container by the next owner of the house. In a bit of a shock move, the prosecution gave Alexandra immunity for testifying against her daughter, which she did. Evelyn was jailed for 11 years, at which point she changed her name and vanished into obscurity, so nobody knows for sure what became of her. There's a little tidbit at the bottom of the 2nd link that I'd like you to read, but the first link is definitely worth reading in its entirety. Apparently the bad vibes in the home didn't end when Evelyn's family moved out.
5. Amy Archer-Gilligan
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Do you remember the 1944 dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, with my husband Cary Grant? I saw it sometime last year but if you've never seen it before, the very short story is that when a man goes to visit his elderly aunts, he finds that they have been murdering lonely bachelors who visit their boarding home in a twisted play on mercy killing. It was a funny movie, if not a bit macabre, but the movie was actually based on a true story! Enter Amy Archer-Gilligan, the "Nursing Home Killer."
After marrying her first husband James, they moved with their young daughter into the home of an elderly man named John Seymour. When the man died a couple of years later, the family converted the house into a boarding home for the elderly and allowed Amy and James to stay for a few more years. They eventually opened their own boarding home, which they ran together for three years, then James died of kidney disease. It was a little suspicious that an insurance policy had been taken out on him shortly before his death, but foul play was not suspected yet so Amy was free to marry again, which she did. Her second husband Michael died after three months of marriage from what the coroner said was severe indigestion and unsurprisingly, Amy was the sole inheritor of Michael's estate. When an investigation was opened into his death later, it was revealed that Michael's will was entirely forged. But it wasn't the murders of both husbands that Amy was tried or convicted for; after her husbands passed on Amy continued to run the boarding house, but its residents continued to come in without coming back out again. By the end, it was suspected that Amy possibly killed almost 100 of the boarding house's residents in the nearly 10 years that she ran the home. Michael and her other residents all appeared to have died by either arsenic or strychnine poisoning, but it was never revealed if James actually died of kidney disease or if that was just a side effect from being poisoned. She was originally sentenced to be hung, but it was commuted to a life sentence and after a few years of that, was declared insane and sentenced to a mental institution.
6. Ruth Brown Snyder
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Similar to a couple of other names on today's list, Ruth Snyder's murder of her husband would be immortalized in pop culture, this time the inspiration for the signature crime noir flick Double Indemnity. If you've seen the movie then you know where I'm going with this case. Ruth Snyder was a bored housewife when she met Judd Gray and the two began an affair. Some sources cite Ruth's husband Albert had his hat hung on another woman and Ruth was only taking her cues from him when she began seeing Judd. Either way, at some point after the affair began Ruth began dropping hints, then outright saying that Judd should kill her husband and save her from a loveless marriage. She had a life insurance policy out on her husband and at some point was looking to cash in on it. During this time, she had tried to kill Albert several times, to no avail. Judd, for his part, initially didn't seem to keen to go through with the murder, but Ruth eventually convinced him and despite his attempts to get caught drinking in public on their way to the Snyder home, nobody noticed.
The sources differ on whether Albert was asleep or coming in the door when Gray attacked him with a small window sash weight, but either way Albert fought back fiercely, and Gray called out to Ruth for help. After the unsuccessful bludgeoning by Gray, Ruth took over with a weight then chloroformed him before strangling him with a wire. The two then concocted a sloppy story about the Snyders being robbed by Italians, Judd tied Ruth up in order to make the story more believable, and left. The jewels Ruth mentioned the robbers stole was found underneath her bed, and a check made out to Gray was found in her bedroom. While going through Ruth's address book, a policeman asked her if Judd could have done it, at which point she blew their cover by asking if he'd confessed.
The gig was up then, and both were arrested for the murder of Ruth's husband. The story is typical from there; Ruth and Judd turned on each other but both were found guilty and sentenced to death at Sing Sing. despite media being banned from the room, a police officer snuck a camera inside by strapping it to his ankle. When the electric chair was turned on and the current made Ruth's body rigid, he snapped a photo, giving the world its first photo of an electrocution. This case was referred to as "The Dumbbell Murder" because of the sloppiness and skill level by the murderers.
Mandy's Note: I noticed that while I was finding the source for Amy Archer-Gilligan's photo, it sent me to a Rolling Stone site, where a couple of the people I profiled today are on the list of "Black Widows." Just wanted to clarify that yet again, I chose these myself based off of several lists. Any similarities between posts or lists was not intentional.*
So that wraps things up for me today. Per usual, I hope you enjoyed and I encourage checking out the resource links. Even though I included a lot of information, I left a lot out so that you'd read the sources. For those of you who like to discuss true crime, I think stories like these can open intriguing lines of dialogue between you and others--or it can open a dialogue with you and I on your thoughts about these cases (hint hint!). I don't mind the former but I'd love the latter. Okay, enough pandering. See you in a couple of days!
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