Episode 561: “Jolly Jane” Toppan: Angel of Mercy (Part 2)

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey Weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna, and this is psychological damage.

This absolutely is psychological damage.

With a little dash of psychological damage, I would say it's a lot it is. This is part two of Jane Toppen, who is known as Jolly Jane. She doesn't live up to that name, though.

That's one of those nicknames that you're like, Yeah, okay, yeah, I can't think of like any other person to compare it to, but I know exactly what you mean. But oh, no, I'm making sounds. Sorry, son of a bitch.

Yeah, we're chaotic right now, but you love us for that and we love you back. But in part one, I mean, she was unhinged. Yeah, that's not even the word, to say the least.

Yeah, she ended up killing her own sister and delighting in it, and then trying to go fuck her mans, trying to go fuck her mans. She's not even done with that, so she hasn't even given that up.

I had a feeling because then she fucking killed, then she killed. The helper that her brother-in-law had hired to help him in the house after he was grieving the death of his wife. Meanwhile, this man is, like, in his 70s, yeah, and just like dealing with all of this, she has killed countless patients.

She has killed elderly couples, her landlords, she has killed her friend, she has killed, I mean, there's no bounds to her. And she does it with a smile on her face, and she ends up hugging the person and caressing them as they die.

I hate the part where you say, caress, yeah, it's not great, it's pretty horrible. It's not great. But what is great is Ash has found a new passion.

And before we get into part two, which honestly, you need this right now, you need it. I'm not kidding you. I don't think anybody realizes how fucking brutal Jane Toppan is. I'm so scared.

It's going to get worse in part two and you, you need to be ready. So Ash has found a passion, and here it is. my passion is called Sound Baths.

Get ready.

That was a good one, wasn't she? Absolutely Brown Cow, stunning. You feel healed, I always feel healed.

I'm in a I'm on a healing journey, you are on a healing journey. Yes, look, I just.

I put down the sound bath and picked up my French fry, French fry, Palisanto.

I have a like, a little like chunk of Palisanto on my chair. And I keep thinking, it's a French fry. Because that's who I am as an individual. And I keep seeing this, really. This look of pure joy on her face when she walks by, and I can almost see the like, Oh, a rogue French fry. And then she realizes they eat it right off the arm of my chair.

She realizes it's not, and it's always severe disappointment. It makes me feel bad. Yeah, what are you going to do?

That's where we are today. Well, we're in a place you're welcome. For the sound bath, Mikey went out and bought a sound bath because the energy was weird in here. Wait, should I quickly tell my story?

Yeah, tell your story before we get into it, don't worry, we'll get into it. But this is a very interesting story and it's paranormal, so you guys will appreciate it.

I actually like, I've never, ever had an experience like this and I'm ready to talk about it. It happened like it was this week, wasn't it? Yeah, it was literally days ago. And we should preface this by saying, like, I've been dealing with some fuck shit lately.

Yes, and I've been in a place of rage in this room. In particular, Alina's energy has been, like, very heightened lately. We'll say, yeah. So I went to go to the bathroom the other day and there wasn't any toilet paper in the bathroom.

So I came in here to be like, Hey, asshole, there's no toilet paper in the bathroom, but I walked into the bathroom, experienced the fact that there was no toilet paper. Went to turn around and I'm like, about to walk out the doorway of the bathroom. And I see Alina, like, very like. I see her. And it registers like, Oh, that's my bitch ass sister who didn't fill the toilet paper. And you're wearing, I saw you wearing a white sweatshirt, like you're always wearing a white sweatshirt. I'm wearing one right now.

Literally is wearing one right now. And I went to say something to you. And then I was like, I had this like wave of confusion wash over me and this is all in like, like two seconds. Yeah, but like, I experienced a wave of confusion. And then you were gone and I was like, wait, that, like, what, that's what? And then I walked in here. And it was like the one fucking day where she wasn't wearing a white sweatshirt and she's just sitting on the couch in the office.

And I had not moved, like, had not moved. Mikey was in the room with me the entire time. And you wouldn't have been able, like, I would have seen you, like, dive onto the couch if you were like, fucking with me. For if you were able to to shift time like that.

That would have been funny, I. It was cause it happened so quickly that I saw you. But it wasn't like a oh, I just saw something out of the corner of my eye. Or like, Oh, I saw, like a reflection in the mirror. I literally saw you and you were there for like two, three seconds. And then I think the wave of confusion that washed over me was like, Wait, no, like, that's not her.

I was, and I like, opened my mouth to say something to you before, I was like, No, that's not her. So I was literally just standing there with my mouth open, just in an empty room, with your mouth open. And then I ran in here and you saw, I was like, shook.

She was like flushed and like slightly shaking, and I could. I could essentially see her heart beating out of her chest. Yeah, like it was a very real fight or flight reaction that was happening there that I could witness just from looking at her. I'm actually surprised I didn't pee my pants.

I am, too. I still don't know what the fuck that was. It's true, I'd like to be escorted everywhere now, yeah.

I don't know what it was, but I'm like, we were like, maybe my energy is so fucked up that something's going on. I don't really know how that works. But so that's why actually Mikey went out and got the sound bowl. And it's my new passion now, even though it stresses me out.

She hates it. Yeah, I hate it, I love it, but I think. But Mikey said, Today we think you hate it partially because you don't like loud noises, for sure.

But also because your energy is like, No, no, don't heal me, no, don't heal me with sound. Maybe I think that's what it is. I'm open.

I'm an open book. But genuinely, I don't think like I've seen actual ghosts before, like in front of me, and I haven't been. That wasn't a ghost. That wasn't like a glimpse of, like, something out of the corner of my eye. That was something I've never fucking experienced. I really want to know what the fuck it was.

When we looked into it, it seemed like it possibly could have been like a glitch in the matrix, but it didn't. I don't know, I just don't think it was that. I feel like it was like a trickster, like when we had Rachel Stavis on.

We need Rachel back, we need Rachel to fucking, We need Rachel here. We need her at least on a Zoom with us to cleanse the space.

Not for a recorded thing, but like, something's up. We just got to bring her here. And then my little sister was texting me today and telling me, like, a bunch of fuck shit that's going on, like, spiritual fuck shit in her house. I think, maybe, I mean, we got eclipse energy.

That's what I feel like. I think there's, you know, there's all kinds of shit going down in the airwaves right now. Yeah, and like in the cosmos, it's like energy in general, like this in this year of 2024 that we've never experienced on Earth before. So I think it's just a bunch of fuck shit happening, to be quite honest.

So let's continue the pattern. And you can tell me the fuck shit of June, Toppin, toppin, toppin. Well, that's, I mean, we're going to get into it. Now that we've made you wonder about space and time, we've bathed you with sound.

You know, we've bathed you with sound, we've done all that, and now I'm going to take you to a really terrible end of the story. I'll sound bath you at the end, if you want, there you go.

Sound bath you, sound bath you, sound bath you. What we're going into right now is her final killing spree.

Throughout much of her adult life, Jane had found professional success and had somehow dodged suspicion, like we were talking about and arrests, nobody even suspected her. And it was due, in large part, to her ability to place herself into the good graces of powerful and influential people that she needed to. She was able to manipulate, able to charm, that's her thing.

And in fact, it was the letters of recommendation and other support from physicians and surgeons that were very well respected. That had continually got her employment at hospitals and in private, nursing her entire life. Which is wild when you think about that, because it's even after so many patients had died under very confusing and unexpected circumstances. Around her and families. Like going to her, being like, Hey, it's weird that this happened. And then also all of my loved one's things were missing.

Do you think she had something to do with it? And they're like, abso-fucking-lutely, not no way, and then it's like your own sister died violently and unexpectedly on vacation with you.

Yeah, weird. And then your brother-in-law's housekeeper, your brother-in-law's housekeeper, like all these people around you.

Your friend? Yeah, weird. But unfortunately, for one of those influential benefactors, placing their trust in Jane Toppen would prove to be a very poor decision. Oh, no.

So in the summer of 1901, Jane returned to the Cape Cod Cottage, where she had murdered her sister just two years earlier. Oh God. Jane had been vacationing there with Elizabeth and Oramel since 1896. And in that time, they've gotten to know the owners of the rental property pretty well. Their names were Alden and Mary Davis.

The Davises had always been impressed with Jane's professionalism and success in the nursing realm. And they were always happy to have her at the cottage for the weekend. So they were really nice. In fact, Jane had so ingratiated herself that the couple was willing to let her live in the cottage at a seriously reduced rate of $250 for the entire season. Wow.

Of course, as a single person of limited means, Jane didn't have that much money to begin with, but accepted the offer anyway. Of course, because she just figured I'll just, you know, I'll just murder people if I need to steal it. She figured she would find some way to pay. That's part of her illness is she believes she will always get out of a gym, no matter what, because she's smarter than everyone.

And because she has, yeah, she's had no, honestly, nothing to tell her the contrary. And it turned out Jane was right to think the Davises cared enough for her that they would believe whatever excuse she gave about why she couldn't pay that price that she had agreed to pay. Year after year, the couple invited Jane back at the same discounted rate, despite the fact that Jane almost never paid what she was owed, what she owed, excuse me. But eventually, however, Mary Davis had finally reached the limits of her generosity, and she decided she wore out her fucking welcome.

She's done with making exceptions for little Jane Toppin there. So, in June, after receiving a letter from her daughter saying she would be stopping in Boston for a few days. Mary thought, You know what? That's a good enough reason to go to the city and finally collect the debt that Jane had owed them. Fair, yeah.

Way more fair than most people, exactly. And in the weeks leading up to her planned trip to Boston. Mary had actually been in kind of poor health on account of her diabetes that she was dealing with. Which wasn't helped by what at the time was a record breaking heat wave in the northeast. For that reason, and more, Alden Davis, her husband, had tried to convince her to abandon the trip to visit Jane, but Mary was she wasn't taking no for an answer.

She was like, Nope, I am, she was firm in her resolve. And on the morning of June 25th, Alden accompanied his wife to the train station. Because she said, Fuck it, I'm going to get that debt. She's a brave bitch. When Mary Davis finally reached Cambridge that afternoon, she wasted no time going straight to Jane's boarding house on Wendell Street.

And she got there just as Jane and her landlords were sitting down for dinner. So she announced her reason for being at the house. And immediately, Jane invited Mary to sit down, have a rest, eat something, and she insisted that Mary must be thirsty after such a long trip, nope, so she disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a glass of water for their guest.

I'm not thirsty at all, no, after they'd eaten, Jane said she'd be she'd be happy to pay what she owed. Of course, like, I'm never I'm not going to stiff you.

Such a good hearted woman. Yeah, of course I will. And then she said, You know what, Mary, why don't you and me? We take a walk to the bank and I'll get that money out right now? But when Mary stood up from the table, she was suddenly very dizzy and fell weak. Despite this, Mary was determined.

She was like, I'm getting that fucking money, and so she was like, I'm fine. But as soon as they stepped outside into that sweltering heat, Mary collapsed to the ground. June in the middle of Boston is not fun, and this was a record-breaking heat wave.

Right? So Jane's land, Jane's landlord, Melvin Beadle, rushed outside, and with Jane's help, they were able to get Mary upstairs to a vacant bedroom. As Melvin attempted to make Mary comfortable, Jane disappeared into her own bedroom, where she grabbed a hypodermic needle. Mary was clearly very uncomfortable and was trying to speak, trying to say something, and Jane said, So I gave her another small dose of morphine.

Another, another.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down-low.

Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's hysteria.

It's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely?

Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole and I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time. The impact on victims and what's left once a facade falls away? We've covered stories like a shark tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills. An active lawsuit filed by Larry King. And no real product to push.

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This quieted Mary for a long time. The following day, Jane sent word to Alden, her husband, to let him know what had happened, and Alden sent their daughter, Genevieve to Cambridge to check on the situation. Although Mary hadn't been in the best health recently, Genevieve was very surprised to find her mother was in such bad shape by the time she got there. And despite Jane's protests, she called a doctor to come Good, Dr.

John Nichols came a short time later and was given a thorough explanation of the symptoms by Jane, who explained that Mary was a bad diabetic, who, against Jane's advice, had eaten a large piece of cake after dinner the previous evening. What a bitch to act like. This is her diabetes, and like, her negligence in handling it. And she's like, And I tried to tell her not to, but, you know, she decided to have the cake. Recognizing that Mary's symptoms were similar to that of someone in a diabetic coma, the doctor had really no reason to doubt Jane's assessment. Yeah, and she knows that.

She's a nurse, medically trained person. Nor did he have any reason to doubt that the woman was already in the capable hands of a trained nurse who had worked at Mass General in Cambridge Hospital and as a private nurse. So he left the house with a plan to check in periodically over the next couple of days in the week. After that. Jane spent day after day injecting Mary with varying doses of atropine and morphine, pushing her to the brink of death, then pulling her back.

Oh my God. Then repeating the cycle, pushing her to the brink of death, pulling her back. This is like misery.

It's like, diabolical, I mean, this is, this is sadistic. And she was angry. The fact that Mary was trying to make her pay for her fucking ride, which is wild, that she's angry about that. She wanted to exert control over this woman.

Very much so, and she was punishing her, absolutely. As Harold Schechter points out in his book, this method was, quote, a calculated effort to make the old woman's death seem like the result of natural causes, right?

But she was also there was an obvious level of sadism involved in prolonging this death and the agony involved in it. It was like Jane was reveling in the power she had. And again, not just over Mary's life and death, but also the power she had over Mary's loved ones. Who could only sit by helplessly as she died horrifically. And finally, on July 4th, Jane administered one final dose of morphine and killed Mary Davis just for collecting a debt.

This is like, scary. The people who for years had allowed her to live there for like no money and just took care of her. And then eventually were like, you got to pay your debt and she was like, I'll just kill you.

And not only kill you, but punish you slowly. While there was a certain element of sadism in the murder of Mary Davis, Jane's reason for killing this woman was mostly because she didn't want to pay the debt. Nope, and she didn't want to deal with it.

But in the wake of Mary's death, for reasons that were never made clear, Jane decided pretty immediately that she was going to kill the entire family.

Like, she wasn't stopping at Mary. Do you think it's possibly so that the that house, that property they owned, couldn't be left to anybody else? And she could still go there? I don't know, that's the thing. There would be nobody around to question her motives at all.

Because they were, like you said, they were all sitting by, watching helplessly. As Mary died. She just got mad and I think she wanted to punish them all. This is nuts in a few weeks after Mary's funeral, with their father in declining help and health and deep in the throes of grief.

At this point, of course, Genevieve and her sister, Minnie, invited Jane to stay with the family in Cataumet, near the Cape. At least until Alden was well enough to care for himself again. Because she's a nurse, so they're like, this is how much they trust her.

They think you helped our mother in her dying days? Yes, so come help our dad when you tortured our mother to death. But we have, like the fact that they had no idea at that point.

And it wasn't long after Jane had gotten settled in the Davis home that she set the house on fire, intending to kill everyone inside. So, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Yeah, what the fuck? yep.

Moved in with the family, set the house on fire. So she goes from like, slowly, methodically poisoning people and getting some kind of sexual thrill out of that, to literal arson. Just to like to kill an entire family. What the fuck, yeah, you said that.

Yeah, just like. And then she set the whole house on fire, and then she set the house on fire. What? just set the house on fire. Thinking she could make it look like an accident.

Sure, did it work? Fortunately, Alden Davis had been suffering from insomnia since his wife's death. He was not able to sleep because he was so upset, he smelled the smoke and began yelling for help.

At this point, Jane appeared and was like, Oh my goodness, you roused me from my sleep. I had no, oh no. The house is on fire and the two put out the fire with minimal damage. In the days that followed, though, she repeatedly tried to burn the house down with everyone inside. But every time, her attempts were thwarted by neighbors, who managed to extinguish the flames before any harm could be done.

And at what point were they like, Hey, weird that you're here and our house keeps catching fire? Well, that's the thing. So eventually the family was like, it's a little suspicious. You're kind of the common denominator here that our house has never caught on fire before.

And now that you've moved in with us, it is a regular occurrence, perpetually catching on fire, it can't stop, won't stop catching on fire. At this point. They're like, this seems to be a pattern that you are here and this is what's happening.

So they were like, Jane, this is a little weird. Can you maybe explain what's going on? So she made up a story about having seen a stranger lurking around the house just before the fires. All started. Sending rumors of an arsonist around the small town and seeming to satisfy the Davises suspicions that they were being targeted, Oh, no.

And also scaring the shit out of the entire town, everyone, because they think there's a rogue arsonist. Oh, that was extra for her, I bet that fed her for days.

Now, very often, Jane would find a way to justify her actions so as not to appear psychotic. In the case of her elderly and infirm victims, for example, if she would say they were suffering, you know, they'd be better off dead. So what she was doing was in their best interest. Like, who gives a shit if I'm actually torturing them? In the case of Genevieve, Gordon, Alden and Mary's daughter, a similar rationale was applied.

Although she had attempted to appear strong in order to support the rest of the family, Genevieve had in fact been extraordinarily affected by her mother's death. Of course, she was deep in the throes of grief, struggling. Sometime in late July, Jane pulled Minnie aside to tell her, You know what? I noticed? Genevieve seems a little melancholy, and you know what I did.

See her in the garden shed and she was looking at a small bottle. I think it was poison. Essentially being like, Hey, Minnie, I think your sister's going to kill herself. What now?

The story was a complete fabrication. That was a lie, of course, but the bottle of poison was real. Yeah, because Jane planted it there.

It was Pfeiffer's Strictly Paris Green, which was a popular insecticide containing high levels of arsenic and copper, both of which are toxic at even small amounts. Yeah, with the seed of concern planted, it didn't come as a total surprise. A few days later, on July 28th, when Genevieve became violently ill and started vomiting uncontrollably, Genevieve was taken to bed and watched over by Jane.

The next morning, Jane roused Minnie to let her know that her sister had died in the middle of the night. Oh my god. A doctor was called and the usual evaluation was made, after which Genevieve's death was declared the result of heart disease, though no death certificate was ever made up. That's weird. Privately, Jane told some of the neighbors that she'd found a syringe next to Genevieve's bed and believed she had taken her own life.

So she walked around and told all the neighbors that Genevieve had killed herself, which is clearly untrue. This is even worse. Ready? Oh no.

Later, after her arrest, Jane said I went to the funeral and felt as jolly as could be and nobody suspected me in the least.

Felt as jolly as could be at a funeral, at her funeral, as the killer, after killing this woman's young woman's mother in an agonizingly torturous way. For trying to collect a debt.

This is truly unlike any other case that we've covered. And she's so open about just like whatever, and just like she's so open about getting how happy she was. So much enthusiasm and like, glee from this, yeah.

That's sick, yeah. With her plan to completely eradicate this entire family in motion now, Jane wasted little time moving on to her next target. On August 8th, after returning from a trip to Boston, Alden Davis returned home to the cottage, suffering the effects of another record-breaking heat wave that was happening.

This is an awful time for all of them. After getting Alden settled on the couch, Jane went to get a glass of water and Alden was like, Oh, thank you so much. I'm going to go to bed and rest, but I'm going to drink this water first. The next morning, when Alden didn't come down for breakfast, one of his grandchildren was sent to check on him. No.

And the little girl returned a few minutes later, frightened because her grandfather wouldn't wake up. Alarmed, Minnie and Genevieve's husband, Harry rushed to Alden's bedside, where they found him dead. Oh my God, so she's killed mother, father and one sibling, and she's not done.

No, she's not done.

And somehow it gets worse. Alden's doctor, Dr. Leonard Ladder, was summoned to the house. And Jane explained her theory that after all the stress and grief of the previous month, you know what, his heart just simply gave out.

Like, you, piece of shit, like he died of a broken heart, she's trying to say, which is legit, like that does happen, but oh my God. And Dr. Ladder knew Alden's history and his recent condition.

So he was like, You know what, I guess? So Jane's assessment seems right. And he concluded that Davis was known to experience weak spells that invariably followed any great excitement or nervous strain.

And his death was caused by apoplexy. Oh my God, now. In the past, Jane's murders, like most serial killers, were followed by like a cooling off period. Yeah, where she would let things stabilize, chill out, let the suspicions subside, and then she would ramp up again.

But she appears now that she's in the grip of, like, a frenzy, This is absolutely frenzy. And she was finishing this job, she wasn't stopping there, she was not done.

Less than a week later, on the morning of August 12th, MinNIe and Harry Harry is Genevieve's husband. Yeah, right. Minnie and Harry were planning to go to Woods Hole for the day. When Jane convinced Minnie to drink a glass of cocoa wine to build up her strength for the trip. It wasn't long after that, Minnie began to feel very badly. And by the time the pair had returned from Woods Hole, Minnie was exhausted, dizzy and listless, barely able to move from the couch.

Feigning concern, Jane rushed off to the kitchen to get a glass of water into which she dissolved a tablet of morphine and a tablet of atropine. The drugs took hold very shortly. And Jane made Minnie comfortable on the couch, then went to bed for the night, knowing that she was going to be agonizingly dying on the couch. Oh my god. And also Dave said that that cocoa wine is wine with cocaine in it, yeah.

So she now has cocaine in her system, mixing with whatever the fuck Jane put in her water. Yeah, atropine and morphine. Like your heart is going to blow out of your fucking chest, this next part is going to really get you it got me.

So that evening, while the few remaining members of this family slept, Jane crept back down to the parlor, where Minnie had slipped into a coma. She injected her with one additional dose of morphine just to make sure this would have been the point. Usually where she, like with her other victims, that she like, gets into the bed with them and does some weird shit. But this time she did something. In my opinion, that's worse.

She didn't lay with Minnie, she went upstairs, woke up. Minnie's 10-year-old son, Jesse and Quote brought the little boy into her own bed and held him close, while his mother lied, dying on the couch downstairs.

That's.

Tell me that didn't that like my that made my stomach sick. No, that actually like....

Like, that turned my stomach that is woke that 10-year-old child up and took him to her bed.

To be with him so she could have him near her, while she knew that she had murdered his mother and she was agonizingly dying downstairs. That's that was like her next level of, like, what she was going to derive out of this. That's twisted on so many levels. Because she claims that she gets sexually aroused when these things happen, and this seems like it was another way to do so.

Because it's her knowing that that's happening downstairs, and him not knowing that. And she has that woman who's dying's baby in her fucking bed, that's EW, I wanna...

I'm, like, actually filled with rage all of a sudden. No, literally, like it turned. When I say it turned my stomach, it turned my stomach.

Oh my.

And she's, I hope, something really fucking awful happens to her, and she's not done, no.

You gotta tell me at the end that like.

I never wanna hear that. Like anybody got sentenced to death, but this woman sentenced her to fucking death, she's fucking awful. That's heinous.

That she.

Like that, yeah, that just sent me yeah as it should.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia or a corrupt police cover-up?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

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Minnie's nearly lifeless body was discovered the next morning, August 13th, by her cousin Beulah Jacobs, who notified Harry Gordon. That's Genevieve's husband. Yes, her brother-in-law, yeah. For the second time in less than a week, Dr. Ladder had to come to the Davis House to attend to a dying person.

And he was immediately met by Jane again, who told him about the trip the woman had taken to Woods Hole against Jane's advice. Yeah. Dr. Ladder examined Minnie and prescribed regular drinks of cocoa wine to stimulate her.

Because, remember, we're in the time of, you know, living where a doctor would just say, like, do some cocaine about it. That's like a legit, like people joke about that, but the fact that it's like a legit thing, yeah, it was to, like, stimulate her. And then he left, insisting that he would come back to check on Minnie.

Under the circumstances, it seems the decision to give this patient more alcohol, like laced with cocaine before leaving, would make us be like, What the fuck, yeah? But it's truly a testament to how thoroughly Jane had convinced everyone of her competency and innocence. That he was like, okay, just continue the course and we'll get she'll be fine, right?

Of course, by that point, Minnie was far too sedated to drink anything. So Jane created a poison enema, what you heard that, right? a poison enema by dissolving a morphine tablet in whiskey.

Then she administered it to Minnie.

A poison enema.

Yep, I'm so I. yeah, no words, I what the fuck?

When Dr. Ladder returned a few hours later, he was surprised to find that Minnie's condition had severely worsened. So he called for another doctor, who happened to be vacationing nearby. The two men tried for literally hours to get Minnie back to stable, but she was almost completely unresponsive by this point, a little after 4 p..m.

That afternoon, after having been subjected to every treatment and medication the doctors could think of, Minnie Gibbs died from what Dr. Ladder would later describe simply as exhaustion.

Exhaustion.

And.

A poison enema is nowhere near where I ever thought we would go. Your mind can't conceive of it. a poison enema, you can't conceive of what this woman does.

Like, you really can't. Who the fuck thinks of that? Jane Toppin? And that's also like, weirdly, yeah, there's just weird shit everywhere.

Like, that's fucking weird, she's fucked.

Fucked, oh my god, and just like to violate her like that, like she's already completely out of it and you're just performing a fucking enema, yeah.

Like, that's like another level, like, obviously you're killing her, that's a fucking violation of anybody's. Yeah, it's an enema that, you know, is going to prolong this torture and make it worse. Oh my god, that's....

That's beyond, that's beyond. And obviously, right now, it seems like nearly impossible to believe that an entire family could die unexpectedly and under mysterious circumstances in a six-week span without raising significant suspicions. It sure does, but in 1901, medicine and biology were still emerging as modern fields of study.

So diagnoses were sometimes.

Like, they were rudimentary and really poorly understood at best. And very few people would have suspected, much less ever believed, that a woman, especially a nurse, would be capable of systematically killing four people who she had known for years and claimed to have loved for years, she claimed to have loved this family. I'm just like, but like, Hey, everyone in town like this woman shows up, their house starts, as Elena said, perpetually catching on fire.

Always after one of them died, then a bunch of them die in like weird circumstances.

The fire and the numerous, numerous deaths. To me, I'm like, it's really hard to think, it's hard to understand, especially from this place and time where we are. But the residents of Katamet just chalked up the death of the Davis family as an act of God and said it was very tragic. But what can we do? And it's likely no one thought much about, you know, Jane, at all.

No one ever, ever bothered to ask any questions. When she packed her bags and returned to Boston, they were just like, Okay, bye Jane, sorry.

And it's not even like she kept going back to that house. So she didn't even do this. Not that that would make it any better, but she did it to get the house, she didn't even do it for that. That's why I think she just did it, because she wanted to demolished an entire family.

She got satisfaction out of it and, like, what happened to these kids? Yeah, she left Harry, Harry, yeah.

Harry was the only one who she wanted to kill. All the actual like family members, like the blood family members, the blood, exactly.

Yeah, and despite, I know, I mean, you think we're done, we're not done, no. Despite the passage of many, many years, Jane had never stopped believing that, with Elizabeth out of the way, she could finally have Oramel Brigham to herself.

She wasn't done girly pop, she wasn't done. In late August 1901, Jane had just returned home from Cape Cod and given that she had no pressing things to attend to, decided she would pay a visit to her former home. And when she arrived in Lowell to visit Brigham, she had expected to find him alone, but was disappointed because when she went there, his sister, 70-year-old Edna Bannister, happened to be there.

Just like Florence Calkins on the previous visit, Jane looked at her and said, Well, you're not a romantic rival, but you are competing for his attention and I don't like that. And just as before, she resorted to her typical methods of dealing with problems. On the afternoon of August 26th, Edna felt dizzy and was generally feeling run down, so she went to her room to take a nap.

When she woke later that evening, she was already feeling better, just a little spell. But Jane still insisted the woman should rest and brought her her classic glass of water. That's so scary, that is just something innocuous.

As a glass of water, here's water. In the middle of the night, as Jane watched over Edna, the woman slipped into a coma. The following morning, Oramel called for Dr. William Bass, the same physician who was called upon Florence's death, but the doctor was unable to revive Edna.

The next day, Edna Bannister was declared dead from heart failure. Later, when Jane finally confessed to her crimes to the police, she said Everything seemed favorable. For my marrying. Mr. Brigham. I'd put the three women to death who had stood in my way. Stop it.

That when you actually lay that out like that, that's first of all how she sees that. Is that the his wife, his housekeeper and his sister are rivals who stand in her way. Yep, and I put them to death.

She killed them because of that, literally said I had put the three women to death who stood in my way. I put them to death. Like she somehow has the power to sentence them to death. It's just so callous.

The way she speaks, she's so callous. Now. We've been sitting here this whole time being like, where the fuck are all the people that suspect that something weird is afoot here? Because again, now, this same doctor and poor Oramel, he's like, Am I just a death magnet? What the fuck is going on?

Is every woman in my life gonna die like the grief in his life? Yeah, but the thing is, throughout her adult life, several people did suspect her of nefariousness, but they didn't really know what she had done. Like they couldn't, they weren't. Like, I think she's murdering lots of people.

Like, no one was really thinking that. They just couldn't be sure, like they were like, something's off here, like she's, something's up with her. I don't know what it is.

I think she's doing some bad shit, but people are dying around her. But she's a nurse and a woman, I can't imagine she's so nice, right?

Taking care of us, you know, it was one of those kinds of things. But after his daughter-in-law Minnie's mysterious death and the death of her immediate family, Captain Paul Gibbs became suspicious that these deaths weren't the result of natural causes. Let's fucking go Paul Gibbs, let's go Captain Paul Gibbs.

He had just visited with Minnie the day before her death. And she, while obviously deeply in grief because everyone was dying around her and her family. She hardly seemed exhausted to him, She was like he was like she died of exhaustion the next day, like she was fine, she was fine.

She was just sad. Then, after Minnie had become ill, Gibbs paid a visit to see how she was doing and walked in on Jane, giving Minnie an injection. The scene itself hardly seemed unusual because, after all, Minnie was sick and Jane was a nurse. Yet there was something that he couldn't pinpoint, He was like, there's something secretive about her behavior.

It didn't look like she wanted me to see that right, and it made him think that she was doing something she shouldn't have done. He was picking up on the little details and he's a dad.

Like, he's a parent and he's a fucking captain, he's a fucking captain of what.

We don't know, but he's a captain of this. And after the young woman's death, Paul suggested that an autopsy should be performed like he was proactive.

He was like, let's figure this out suggestion. And Jane strongly objected, saying there is no need of an autopsy. There was no suspicious circumstances. I'd be like, and she's a nurse.

Maybe as far as you're concerned. And he didn't want to spread any slanderous rumors, so he kept his concerns to himself for a while. Because he was like, I feel like I'm going to, like, he's being a decent human and being like, I don't want to like, totally smear this woman's name if I'm like, completely wrong. Like she's a nurse. Like, I'm just gonna like, fuck up her whole life by being like, I think you killed her when I don't have the proof.

Yeah, so he was like, you know what, like, I'll just keep it to myself. But it turned out he wasn't alone in this, especially when it came to the Davis family.

The day before his death, Alden Davis took a train to Boston to do some business. And on his return trip, he spoke to a fellow train passenger named Ira Cushing. In the following days, Cushing was shocked to learn that Alden had died because he appeared very healthy when he had seen him. It didn't seem possible that this man could look and feel perfectly healthy one day, then dead the next. His suspicions were further stoked when, just a few days later, Alden's young, healthy daughter died under similarly mysterious circumstances.

I'm so glad people are like, actually putting things together here. Yeah, like, this is fucking weird. Because he couldn't be certain about what had happened. But Ira Cushing felt it was important that he at least share his perspective with someone, so he sought out captain Gibbs, who he knew had a close relationship with the Davis family. Cushing paid a visit to Gibbs a short time after Minnie's funeral and explained that he believed the Davis family had been poisoned.

And he said, Probably with arsenic. Close to his surprise, Gibbs agreed. He was like, Oh my God, you're saying exactly what I've been thinking, and he's like, or at least something like that, like arsenic.

And leveraging their most influential contacts, the two men initiated a plan to get the bodies exhumed and to have proper autopsies conducted to all in the Davis family members. Let's fucking go two kings here, two kings. And it took some persuasive arguing, but eventually, Cushing and Gibbs were able to convince the D.A. that there was some reason to believe the deaths hadn't been natural. Damn.

And the DA agreed to have the bodies of Genevieve and Minnie exhumed. Wow, on August 30th, the bodies were exhumed from their graves. And autopsies were performed by Dr. Robert Fontz, the medical examiner from Barnstable County, with assistance from two doctors from Harvard Medical School. Also based on the two men's suspicions, the district attorney assigned State Police Detective John Patterson to tail Jane.

Let's fucking go, let's go somebody, go get her, go get her, go get her.

So Detective Patterson trailed Jane from the moment she left Cataumet. Oh, shit, following her all the way to Lowell, where he took a room in a boarding house under an assumed name. Jane, meanwhile, had already resumed her plan to marry Oramel Brigham. However, when she realized the man wasn't interested in her, Jane then made a disingenuous attempt to end her own life by drinking poison.

But what she was doing, and she admitted this later, was she was hoping that the dramatic display would just convince Brigham to give in. Right? The plan didn't work. Obviously. He's like, I really just don't like you, no way.

And Jane was admitted to Lowell General Hospital, where Patterson also checked in under an assumed name, Shut the Fuck up. Discharged from the hospital in early October, Jane decided to abandon her plans to marry Brigham and instead headed out to visit an old friend in Amherst, New Hampshire, with John Patterson following closely behind while Jane was visiting Amherst. Doctors on Cape Cod were examining Genevieve and Minnie's remains while the press were just sitting by waiting to hear what the fuck was going on in 1901? What the fuck else is going on?

And given how tight-lipped the clinicians were being, the press started speculating that it was probably all bullshit. Okay, they weren't hearing anything, so they were like, So the Boston Daily Globe actually wrote. From facts gleaned after the autopsies, it is inferred that nothing was found to warrant any suspicions. They weren't saying that because they heard that, they were saying that because they hadn't heard anything.

Yeah, so they just bullshit, they were making an inference. It's easy to understand why that assumption was made, because the alternative was honestly too hideous for anyone to even comprehend at that point. Of course, absolutely.

The truth, though, was that Dr. Fonce and his colleagues had found lethal traces of poison in Minnie's stomach that very much exceeded anything one might consume on accident. That finding, along with the growing suspicions around Jane, was enough to get an arrest warrant. Nice.

On October 29th, State Police Detective Josephus Whitney Josephus I know Josephus forever.

Josephus Whitney, in the company of two other detectives, traveled to Amherst and sought out Patterson, who was staying at a boarding house near the home of George and Sarah. Nichols, with whom Jane had been staying. Get those people away from her. Oh, absolutely, because you'll hear in a second. The detectives informed Patterson of the autopsy results, and together the four detectives went to the Nichols home to arrest Jane. Toppen Incredible.

Since leaving Kintelmit in late summer, Jane had begun to get the impression that people were, uh, maybe gossiping about her a little bit. I wonder why, and that maybe they were suspecting that she had something to do with the Davis family deaths. Maybe. Whether this was just paranoia or not is unknown. But when detectives showed up with the arrest warrant, Jane was not surprised at all.

When they announced that she was being arrested for the murder of Minnie Gibbs. Jane was unperturbed, started packing her things without any issue and said, I'm innocent. And then she said, And I'll readily go back with you. I'm very shocked by this. And it seemed that they had gotten there just in time. Because in her confession, Jane said, Jane said, If the police hadn't shown up, I might have killed George Nichols and his sister, too. The fact that she says, like, I might have, like, maybe.

Maybe if I felt like it, that isn't that just fucking crazy, that's fucked up like she didn't.

Even she didn't go there with any intention to kill them. No, just maybe if I, if I got around to it, like if they pissed me off, I might have if the mood struck, you know, literally, though.

So Jane was transported back to Barnstable, Barnstable, Barnstable, where she was held on the charge of murder in the case of Minnie Gibbs. The next day, she appeared before a judge in the Bristol County Court, where she pleaded not guilty to the charge.

And the case was continued to November 8th, and Jane was remanded without bail. Just as she's always done in the past, when she was accused of wrongdoing, she took on the role of I'm so misunderstood, I'm a victim.

Told the press that, oh, no. Like total victimhood. She insisted she knew nothing about the deaths of the Davis family, accepting that I suppose they all died from natural causes, she told the reporter.

But if Jane was hoping to keep her name and story out of the papers, she didn't do a good job. Within days, nearly every paper across the state, and honestly, the surrounding areas, was dedicating multiple pages to this story. Reporters were seeking out anyone that could have any facts or any speculation, really, on Jane Toppin. And while she was only facing one charge of murder at the time, several people started connecting the dots and wondering whether all those who died under Jane's care had in fact died of natural causes. The answer is no.

And in a statement to the press regarding Jane's desire to marry him, Ormel Brigham said It is generally understood that she did. And I never proposed to her, nor she to me. I suppose she wanted to get the money. Mrs. Toppin left. And if she married me and I was out of the way, of course it would be hers. Wow.

So he was like, she was going to kill me, like, Yeah, she wanted to marry me, but I'm pretty sure she would have killed me and taken the money. It was just a conquest. Yeah, Jane Toppin had spent years murdering people and went entirely undetected.

In fact, anytime a person did voice any concern or any suspicions, you heard? They were shouted down by someone way more powerful, who outright refused to entertain any notion that Jane could be anything other than professional, amazing, no way could she have murdered someone at the point where their faces literally became omelets. But also now, it seemed like everyone had a story to tell about Jane and her cruel or bizarre behavior. I believe it. Unnamed classmates from primary school were quoted as saying they'd always had a certain fear of her.

Wow, while other articles noted any peculiarity, as though it was evidence of insanity. All of a sudden, it was as though everyone went from believing in Jane's innocence without any questions, just blindly, to all of a sudden harboring these deep-seated suspicions that she'd always been capable of cruelty and murder. And it's like, Where were you? Yeah, exactly.

When all these people were murdered, exactly because the grand jury had already broken for the year, there was considerable time between when she was arraigned and her trial. In that time, the press went crazy trying to publish anything they could get their hands on about it, specifically related to Jane's motives and her sanity. By March, the DA's office had assembled a panel of three alienists, which is psychologists.

I also wish we called them that now alienists, the alienists. I think that's such a cool name, that's fun.

It was to determine whether she was sane and could even be held accountable for the murders. Upon their first visit to Jane, she was defiant and she said, Why? How absurd me. insane, of course, I'm not.

I'll show them that I'm not insane. I'd be like, I'm good, I think you should probably go with the insane on this. The more Jane talked, the more the panel of doctors concluded she was definitely psychologically impaired. Yeah.

While Jane was also always intelligent and always very coherent, and never resembled what the public at that time imagined a mentally ill person to be. There was increasingly little doubt that Jane was entirely capable of murder, they said. Her utter mendacity and disposition to speak slurringly of even her best friends, and to make accusations against them, almost without exception. To praise one minute and blame the next was very marked. And that's what the panel wrote in their report. And they also noted that she seemed to lie constantly, making the most outrageous claims, seemingly without any regard of whether even someone believed her. So they're, like, all together.

We surmise that something's up here, that she's wild by April, after multiple visits with Jane in her jail cell, the Alienists concluded. Homicidal mania is naturally the dominant force in the mentality of the nurse, and Miss Jane Toppin is insane, so they said, homicidal mania, which makes sense.

It does also. By that time, the charges against Jane had grown to include three of the four members of the Davis family, all of whom she was accused of killing. With intentionally fatal doses of morphine or some other poison. And it turned out that once the three doctors got Jane talking, she was more than happy to boast about herself and her crimes. So all they needed to do was sit back and listen to her. I wonder at what point she was just like, Meh, actually, whatever, here it is.

Because at first she's like, Nope, I didn't do shit, and I'll prove it to you. I think then she was just like, whatever, because she thought she would get out of it, right? And she was like, I might as well just tell you. It's kind of fun to talk about, so I'll get out of it, I'm sure.

Thank God, you know. Or do you think it was? When she realized, like, Oh fuck, I'm probably not going to get out of this, She never realized that, really.

She didn't realize that until it was way past this. She thought. Even when she was sentenced, she thought there's no way I'll get out of this. That's interesting. Spoiler alert.

Although she stopped short of confessing outright to a large number of murders, her quote Fond remembrances of the patients who had met such tragic deaths was a compelling reason to suspect her of killing dozens of people. I would say so. In their final report to the DA's office, the panel of alienists concluded that Jane had exercised a cool judgment, sagacious and sound, when she committed the murders, and that she was insane and irresponsible at the time of the homicide with which she is charged. The problem, though, was, What do you do with her? Jane's insanity was not temporary.

And as far as the alienists saw it, it was something that she had always had and was always going to live with. Like, this wasn't something that was going to be fixed, and it was also not something she could really be treated for. And, yeah, like, rehabilitated and released into the world.

They said her disease being constitutional, she will never recover, and that, if ever at large again, she would be a constant menace to the community. I love that they describe it as a menace. I think she was a little bit more than that.

She was a top tier menace, I would say, How about threat? Yeah. On June 22nd, a special session of the Barnstable Superior Court was called to order was called to order in the case against Jane. By that time, she had confessed to at least 31 murders.

Damn. But was now suspected of many more, given the notoriety of the case. The prosecution was led by Massachusetts Attorney General Herbert Parker, who presented the jury with Jane's confession. And the many of the important points from the psychological evaluation, concluding that Jane was, and always would be a danger to society. I mean, pretty remarkably, but honestly, understandably, the defense didn't really bother to refute the claims made and just agreed with the narrative presented by Parker. Including their theory as to the motive, which is personal or financial gain, means she was irredeemably insane, yeah.

And opportunity. She was a nurse with unrestricted access to poisons. Just nuts. The trial lasted less than one day, and the only testimony presented was the panel of alienists who evaluated Jane at various points leading up to this.

Yeah, and given that Jane, who was only really formally charged with three murders, freely admitted to murdering 12 people. And had been described like at least 12 people at least, and had been described by three doctors as having quote, a degenerate type of insanity. There was little doubt as to what the verdict was going to be.

And after hearing the testimony and listening to both sides, the jury deliberated briefly and returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, despite being found not guilty. It was still understood that Jane was a highly dangerous person who needed to be permanently removed from society, so she was a sentence to immediate commitment. To quote the Taunton Insane hospital for life, that's a quote that's not me saying it.

When the sentence was read, Jane seemed completely unmoved and said, I realize that I'm not fit to be free and I think you've done the best thing for me. So it was like, I don't actually give a shit about this, so whatever, so I guess, lock me away, whatever, because she's like, I don't care now. From the moment Jane was arrested, practically all of New England followed the case daily and were very surprised by how jovial and high spirited Jane had been in the face of all these accusations.

However, just two years later, The Boston Globe reported that in her time at Taunton Hospital, Jane had become quote emaciated. Her high spirits have gone and it is not believed she can live very long. I saw a picture of, there's a photo of her before she was admitted, and then like one or two years in. And she looks like a different person, a completely different person. And equally shocking to everyone was the ways in which Jane had decomposed mentally, yeah.

The Globe reported. The mind that was able to convince so many that it was normal is now palpably diseased. For mental imbecility, that means physical disintegration has complete possession of the nurse. Wow. Not surprisingly, Jane entered the hospital, like I said, with the belief that it was going to be a short confinement. She was going to win her release.

She was going to get out, she'll convince somebody, and she thought she would convince somebody. I will be able to convince them to let me out, I believe it.

And this, of course, directly contradicted the court's order that she was going to be confined for the remainder of her life. But Jane's personality disorder, told her, made her believe that she was smarter and better than any other people, and would eventually get out of this predicament. She found herself in when it became apparent, finally, that she wouldn't get out of the situation as easily as all the others. Jane became defiant and uncooperative, and eventually she fell back on her old habits of pettiness and spiteful gossip that had plagued her her entire life. One report said She has abandoned the careless, cheerful frame of mind in which she has been heretofore been, and is now fretful, peevish, even ugly and fearful of eating because of suspected poison.

Which I think is the funniest, like karma move in the whole world. It's also just hilarious that they're like, she's even ugly now, she's even ugly now.

I know I'm like, Damn, I was like, what a read. damn. Early 1900s, like Jesus, she's fretful, peevish, even ugly. Yeah, even ugly.

Now she was a lot of things in the year after she was confined, started to be confined, but one thing she never was remorseful, I believe ever. I'm not even shocked by that.

Ever, and while she may have been unpleasant and been relentless gossip, Jane's time at Taunton Hospital passed relatively uneventfully, eventually, she became what one staff member described as a quiet old lady. Just another patient who caused no trouble. On August 17th, 1938, Jane Toppin died from natural causes at Taunton State Hospital at the age of 84. The fact that she got to live that long really makes you wonder what the forces are that be?

Yeah. In writing of her death, many papers could not resist using the statement she made to the press after she was sentenced. And this is it. I've given the alienist St. Herbert Parker the names of 31 persons I killed.

But as a matter of fact, I killed many more whose names I cannot recall. I think it would be safe to say that I killed at least 100. From the time I became a nurse at a Boston hospital, where I killed the first one, until I ended the lives of the Davis family. Wow, and that is the story of Jane Toppin. That was absolutely mind-bending.

She is incredibly prolific and incredibly fucked up, truly like, Wow. I was also just looking at pictures of the state Hospital that she was at because I think it got demolished. Yeah, it did, and it was the second mental hospital in Massachusetts.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's like one of the infamous ones, you know, crazy, yeah.

I also think the site is like, super haunted. I've seen it in one of the New England books. Yeah, definitely. It's one of those ones that's always on the list. It's just like that part of the story just caught my attention for a minute.

But holy shit, yeah, that the way that that like, obviously like murder is terrifying in and of itself. And like. It started off so scary, but then as it went through, she just got so much more unhinged with every last murder.

Like, truly, she just wanted to kill an entire family. Yeah, and in your rational mind, like, you're thinking like, there has to be an end game. Like, for why she wanted to do that, like, I was like, No, she wants the house.

Yeah, like when you said that, I was like, Oh, just wait. But no, she didn't want the house, she just wanted to kill a family. Yeah, she felt like she was justified in everything she did.

That really was like a mind bending case, that one was a wild one. Yeah. So, with that being said, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it. Weird, but not so weird as Jane Toppan.

Because what the actual fuck?