Victims
The victims were mentioned in the earlier section called "Cases." Besides the one child she supposedly killed with a hatpin, Nannie Doss killed her victims by poisoning them with rat poison or arsenic. The reason she killed was because people didn't treat her the way the books said they would. Either that or they got in the way of letting that happen. All of her victims were family, either by blood or marriage links. Total she killed 11 people and they are as follows:
- Her 2 middle daughters
- Frank Harrelson
- Arlie Lanning
- Arlie Lanning's mother
- Her sister Dovie
- Her grandaughter
- Her grandson
- Her mother, Lou Hazle
- Her son-in-law, Richard Morton
- Sam Doss
Suspect
The only real suspect in all of the murders was Nannie Doss herself. It wasn't until the last murder that anyone was even suspected. It is hard to believe that no one seemed to catch on to the fact that all of Nannie's family members were dying. The doctors just assumed it was of natural causes and Nannie was such a great actress that no one ever questioned her. After the murder of Sam Doss, the doctor who has just one day earlier released Mr. Doss from the hospital became concerned. He knew that he was fine the day before and was sure that Sam had not died of natural causes. The only person that was in contact with him was Nannie and so she was taken in a questioned.. especially after the autopsy was completed.
Psychological Profile
Since Nannie was never suspected of committing the murders, she was never seen or evaluated. It wasn't until her last murder, Sam Doss, that Nannie was caught. Once the authorities had their hands on her, they needed her to stand trial for her latest murder and all of the previous ones they had now linked to her. Before going to court, Nannie had to go through psychological test to make sure she was sane and capable of standing trial. After the test were completed, it was ruled that Nannie was in fact sane and able to to attend the trial.
In interviews that Nannie gave years later, she blamed her problems on an accident she had when she was seven. Once on a trip to Alabama she was on a train that came to an abrupt stop. When the train screeched to a stop, little Nancy came flying forward and slammed her head on the hard seat in front of her. She claimed that she, "suffered pains and blackouts for months, and headaches for the remainder of her life." This apparently was not significant enough for the doctors to notice anything. Later on after Nannie was away in prison a genealogist decided to voice her opinion on Nannie's reason for being so heartless. She disagreed the Nannie's train stop changed her forever. She believed that Nannie came from a family of hard people with a tough reputation. Nannie had a much different way of showing her feelings and dealt with them in more severe ways then everyone else... obviously. |