00:00:00
Diane Ranney: We are at the Jonathan Bourne
Public Library in Bourne, Massachusetts,
00:00:06
which is on Cape Cod, and I am Diane Ranney. I
am the assistant director here at the library.
00:00:13
Phoebe Judge: Everyone must know you because
you’ve been here for so long. Diane Ranney: Pretty
00:00:17
much, yes.
Phoebe Judge: Diane Ranney has been here at this library for
43 years, and she’s spent a lot of her career
00:00:27
studying one very odd piece of local history.
Diane Ranney: When we were in the old library,
00:00:32
which is now the archives, there was a vault,
and the vault was opened for the first time
00:00:39
after years and years of being closed up.
And these death certificates were found.
00:00:45
Phoebe Judge: The death certificates were
from 1901. Diane started to look at the
00:00:50
certificates more closely and realized that
the dead were all related to one another.
00:00:55
Diane Ranney: Well, when someone, when four people
die very suddenly in the course of approximately
00:01:02
six weeks and they’re all in the same family and
the same doctor has signed the death certificate,
00:01:11
my first inkling was the doctor did it.
Phoebe Judge: The doctor’s name was Leonard
00:01:17
Latter, and he listed the causes of death as
diabetes, heart disease, cerebral apoplexy, and
00:01:23
exhaustion. And while he was the doctor in charge
of the family, he wasn’t the only one there.
00:01:29
Diane Ranney: And then I started reading that
at all times, the nurse who was in attendance
00:01:35
at all of these deaths was Jolly Jane.
Phoebe Judge: For the last 20 years, Diane Ranney has collected whatever she can
find about this nurse, nicknamed “Jolly Jane,”
00:01:48
a funny, cheerful woman loved all over
the state of Massachusetts — who would later be called the “most notorious
woman poisoner of modern times.”
00:01:57
I’m Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
[Music.] Jolly Jane was the nickname of Jane
Toppan. But even that wasn’t her real name;
00:02:14
she was born Honora Kelley in 1857. Her mother
died of tuberculosis, leaving her young kids
00:02:21
in the hands of her husband, a tailor who
was an alcoholic and, as the story goes,
00:02:27
attempted to sew his own eyelids shut.
Diane Ranney: Basically, the father went
00:02:33
insane and he was committed. So she lived with
her grandmother, she and her two sisters, lived
00:02:38
with her grandmother for a while, and then the
grandmother basically could not take care of them.
00:02:43
She became impoverished, as they say in those
days, and eventually she was placed in a home
00:02:52
for children who were destitute. But then she was
adopted, but not formally, they never signed the
00:03:00
formal adoption papers. She was given the name
Jane, supposedly after a favorite aunt of the
00:03:06
Toppans, and, of course, she took their last name.
And she was a very very well liked child. She had
00:03:13
friends, she was smart, she got along well with
people in school, and seemed to have a really good
00:03:23
childhood after the first couple of years.
Phoebe Judge: She graduated from high school
00:03:28
in Lowell, Massachusetts, and
went on to nursing school. Diane Ranney: So she went to very prestigious, the
Cambridge Nursing School in Boston. Shem again,
00:03:38
was extremely smart. Her professors said, “Wow,
this woman really knows what she is doing.”
00:03:46
But she had an unfortunate habit
that she liked to experiment. She felt that she needed to know how her
patients would react if they were giving
00:03:56
certain dosages of morphine and atropine.
Phoebe Judge: Morphine basically slows you down,
00:04:02
makes your pain go away, makes you tired.
Atropine does the exact opposite, it wakes
00:04:08
you up. They give it to people in cardiac
arrest to get their hearts going again.
00:04:13
Diane Ranney: Now, obviously, these people were
very ill to begin with, and her conscience,
00:04:19
such as it was, probably said, “Well, they are
going to die, why don’t I just make it easier?” To
00:04:25
my way of thinking, if I were reconstructing how
she did it, she would have gone into the room
00:04:30
and very carefully and compassionately told the
person who may or may not have been conscious,
00:04:37
“I am going to help you,” and then given them
an injection, and then maybe watched, and said,
00:04:43
“Oh, I’m not quite ready to have this happen.” So
she would give them an injection of the atropine,
00:04:49
bring them back a little, and then say,
“Hm, well it’s time,” give them another
00:04:55
injection of morphine, and then they would
die. And then she would either report it
00:04:59
or have someone else discover the death.
Phoebe Judge: Some accounts from the time
00:05:05
say that Jane later confessed to enjoying
the back and forth between the two drugs,
00:05:10
watching someone slip into a near-coma
and then suddenly waking them back up. And it wasn’t always injections. She also
dissolved the drugs in mineral water and
00:05:22
offered them to her patients as health tonics.
Diane Ranney: On the day before graduation, she
00:05:27
left the school, so she was never given her formal
certificate. So technically she really wasn’t
00:05:34
a nurse, as a professional nurse, because she
didn’t have the certificate. I mean she had all
00:05:40
the training and she was considered an outstanding
nurse. She was considered compassionate, she could
00:05:45
cheer people up, she could tell stories, and she
had a great deal of humor, which is where she got
00:05:51
her nickname of Jolly Jane, because if people
were very sad she would come to nurse them and
00:05:57
they would cheer up. And she was quite, I don’t
know, a real dichotomy between what she was doing
00:06:04
and how she presented herself.
Phoebe Judge: Will you describe what she looked like?
Diane Ranney: She actually looked like her name.
00:06:13
She was very plain, hence Plain Jane. She had a
very round face. A little kind of a pockmarks,
00:06:22
some pockmarks, probably from acne when she was
a child. She wore her hair at the time, it was a
00:06:28
style that was not flattering to her. It was
pulled up in a big bun kind of on the top of
00:06:34
her head toward the back. She always
wore black. She was just a very plain person. Very — not very attractive.
Phoebe Judge: Jane began working as a
00:06:46
nurse at Mass General in Boston, where she
quickly developed such a good reputation
00:06:51
that she was able to move into private
nursing. This was a step up, more money.
00:06:56
And while she was secretly murdering her
patients, she didn’t murder all of them.
00:07:01
Diane Ranney: I mean it wasn’t as if every single
person that she touched — you know, kind of
00:07:05
like Typhoid Mary, she was not that kind. Some
people recovered. Now whether it was because
00:07:10
they didn’t do anything to her initially to
incite her wrath or whether it was because
00:07:16
they had stronger constitutions, I don’t know.
Phoebe Judge: There are some creepy theories
00:07:20
about what exactly she was doing. Was she
playing God? Was she experimenting? Did she
00:07:26
really believe that her victim was in terrible
pain and that she was helping them not suffer?
00:07:31
And here’s where it gets really wild. By some
accounts, she would crawl into bed with her
00:07:37
victims as they died and comfort them, kiss
them. Some say it gave her a sexual thrill.
00:07:44
Did anyone ever — I mean, is there any
record of anyone waking up and saying, “What the hell is going on?” And not
being killed, but having the experience
00:07:54
of Jane in the bed, or anything like that?
Diane Ranney: There was one recorded incident
00:07:58
of that where the person actually awoke, and
she said that she was just comforting them.
00:08:04
And then quickly got out of
the bed, evidently, and said, “Oh we'll just go about our business.” So that
person was saved, more or less, by waking up.
00:08:16
Probably she didn’t use enough morphine.
Phoebe Judge: So she wakes up, the victim wakes
00:08:20
up and Jane is right there laying next to her.
Diane Ranney: Odd, very odd I imagine.
00:08:25
[Music.]
Phoebe Judge: It’s so hard to imagine that no one was
catching onto her. But the more she worked,
00:08:36
the more people loved her. They moved her into
their homes to care for their sick relatives.
00:08:41
Diane Ranney: Even if there had been a death in
the family ,they felt that, oh, she had done the
00:08:46
best she possibly could and, you know, when they
were so overcome by grief after whoever died — but
00:08:54
Jane was there, and she took charge, and she kept
things going, and so we’d highly recommend her.
00:09:01
There was a woman in Watertown, her name escapes
me at the moment, but her family was so thrilled
00:09:08
that she was able to be with this woman “until
the very bitter end,” as the quote says. And I
00:09:15
thought, “Yes, it certainly was the bitter end.”
But she was highly recommended, so she had a lot
00:09:21
of people that she was able to bamboozle.
Phoebe Judge: She was able to bamboozle people
00:09:26
into hiring her, but she was broke and constantly
taking loans from her patients. Some of her money
00:09:34
went to rent a vacation house on Cape Cod,
just down the road from Diane’s library.
00:09:38
Diane Ranney: Yes, that was the
Davis house. And she would come every year. So she was paying quite a bit.
Phoebe Judge: The Davis house was owned by
00:09:47
Alden Davis and his wife Maddie, who were both in
their 70s. Their daughters and grandchildren were
00:09:53
often at the house. Jolly Jane fit right in.
Diane Ranney: And they loved her, they absolutely
00:09:59
loved her. They thought she was the most
wonderful person in the world. She made up games,
00:10:04
she would take them to the beach, she would have
parties at her little cottage that she rented.
00:10:10
So she became a fixture in Cataumet.
Phoebe Judge: The Davis family was used to Jane owing them money, but when she
hadn’t paid them for an entire year’s
00:10:21
rent and was prepared to come back again for
another summer, Maddie Davis decided to make
00:10:26
the trip from Cataumet to Boston to settle up.
Diane Ranney: She owed approximately 500 dollars
00:10:32
to Alden Davis. And he was a very strict Cape
Codder. He was a businessman. He had not amassed
00:10:42
his fortune by letting people not pay their debt.
But he was also in his 70s and he was not really
00:10:49
in good health. And neither was Mrs. Davis, but
she decided that she would go up to Boston and
00:10:55
sort of track down Jane before she came to the
cottage or requested the cottage for the year.
00:11:02
The day before, she actually had a fall.
People reported that she was fine. She
00:11:08
was also diabetic. They attributed
her fall to possibly the diabetes. She got up, according to witnesses,
went to Boston, tracked down Jane,
00:11:20
and stayed at her apartment, and developed
severe pain. And so Jane called the doctor,
00:11:29
he came to the apartment, and the doctor said,
“Oh, she needs to have bed rest.” So Jane said,
00:11:37
“Well, I’ll stay with her.” And so she stayed
with her. Unfortunately, she died the next day.
00:11:46
So when she died, Captain Davis as he was called —
captain was simply a title, it wasn’t — he wasn’t
00:11:52
really captain. But he went up to Boston with
his daughter, Genevieve, and they were going
00:11:58
to bring the body back and Jane said, “Oh, don’t
worry, I’ll make sure I take care of it.” So she
00:12:04
actually took the seat that had been paid for as
the return trip for Maddie Davis, while the body
00:12:10
was in the baggage car.
[Music.] Phoebe Judge: Jane managed the body and then
organized the funeral. And then she would have
00:12:19
left to return to Boston — except one of the
Davis daughters, Genevieve, suddenly got sick.
00:12:25
Diane Ranney: So she's taking care of Genevieve,
who has always been listed as doing poorly. She
00:12:33
had a dyspeptic disposition, is the way they
put it. Which, to me, indicates something wrong
00:12:41
with her stomach. She suddenly took ill, and of
course Jane was asked to stay on, because Jane
00:12:48
could take care of things. And then she died.
Phoebe Judge: The cause of death was listed as
00:12:55
heart disease. Mr. Davis was so distraught by the
sudden deaths of both his wife and daughter that
00:13:01
his doctor ordered him to go on bedrest.
Diane Ranney: A mistake. Yes, I will grant you
00:13:06
that’s definitely a mistake. But in those days,
you were ordered to bed when you were distraught.
00:13:12
He dies of what is termed apoplexy, which, of
course, would be understandable, because if you
00:13:20
are overcome with grief and you’re 70ish, apoplexy
seems to be a good cause. Today we would call it
00:13:28
a stroke. And again they had no reason to believe
that anything bad was happening. People just said,
00:13:35
“Oh my goodness, the poor Davises. They have all
that money, they have all that property, and what
00:13:40
is it coming to? They have nothing now.” So here
we are with one daughter left, and that’s Mary.
00:13:47
Mary Gibbs. Her husband is a sea captain,
Captain Paul Gibbs. He is out to sea.
00:13:52
He is expecting a big homecoming, a
welcome from all the family. Instead, after she lingers for a little while — about a
week or maybe a little bit more — she dies.
00:14:05
[Music fades out.]
Phoebe Judge: Mary Gibbs was 30, and the stated cause of her death was “exhaustion.” And
while Mary’s husband may have been away at sea,
00:14:18
his father was right there in Cataumet, and had
been checking in on his daughter-in-law. So when
00:14:25
she died — the fourth and final member
of the Davis family to die of seemingly natural causes in 6 weeks — he spoke up.
Diane Ranney: He meets his son at the dock
00:14:36
when the ship comes in and says, “I think there
is something really wrong with the way Mary died.”
00:14:44
Because he had asked the doctor — this is the
father-in-law — he’s asked the doctor, “Well, what
00:14:50
about the injection that you ordered for Mary?
Why did she have to have it?” And the doctor says,
00:14:57
“I didn't order any injection, what
do you mean injection?” And he said, “I was right there when Jane, Nurse Jane, told
me that she was going to give Mary an injection.”
00:15:07
And the doctor said, “Oh no, I wouldn't
have ordered any injection. She was simply,
00:15:13
she had had heart trouble, but she was
recovering.” And, this is the odd part, is that
00:15:20
Jane thought she could get away with one more.
Phoebe Judge: Yeah, so the father-in-law says,
00:15:26
something is going on here. He asks about
the injection. And then what is the next
00:15:32
step? Who starts looking into this?
Diane Ranney: The doctor actually started looking into it, because after all, these, all
four of these people were his patients. And as
00:15:41
I had said before, I would have been very
suspicious of the doctor. I guess he was
00:15:47
well loved enough that nobody thought anything
of it. But the father-in-law and the son had
00:15:54
decided that they would ask the state police,
a Sergeant Whitney, to come and investigate.
00:16:00
So they had to exhume the body. And when they did,
they found the morphine and atropine in her body.
00:16:09
And they found a record that she had
actually purchased morphine from a Falmouth
00:16:15
pharmacy. The person who was asked about
it remembered her as being quite genial.
00:16:24
Obviously, it was Jolly Jane. The pharmacist
in Wareham said that the order was called in
00:16:30
through the telephone, and he couldn't recognize
the voice but it definitely was sent to that
00:16:36
address. So she made two purchases of
morphine and atropine from two different places within the space of six weeks.
Phoebe Judge: Jane knew that there was going
00:16:45
to be an autopsy and left Cape Cod. Instead of
going home to Boston, she went to New Hampshire
00:16:51
and stayed with friends. The detectives
found her and brought her back to Boston,
00:16:55
where she met with a shrink — it was called an
alienist at the time — and then, Jane confessed.
00:17:02
Diane Ranney: She finally said, “Yes, I did
kill all of them, but it was only because I
00:17:07
felt so sorry for Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Davis.” And,
you know, Mrs. Gibbs had lost her whole family,
00:17:14
which is highly ironic because she is the one
who had made them lose their whole family. But
00:17:18
she said, “You know, the two Davises were, they
were older and they were getting on and they were
00:17:26
in pain all the time.” Which may or may not have
been true, but you still don't have the right to
00:17:31
decide whether or not their pain should end.
Phoebe Judge: The detectives were hoping she
00:17:35
would confess to the murder of Mary Gibbs,
so they didn’t know what to think when Jane
00:17:40
Toppan just kept confessing. She confessed
to 31 murders with names and details,
00:17:47
even confessing to taking her foster sister
out for a picnic of corn beef and salt water
00:17:52
taffy and poisoning her with strychnine.
Diane Ranney: So she was actually put on
00:17:58
trial at the Barnstable County courthouse.
But only for the one murder. That was the
00:18:04
murder of Mary Gibbs, her final victim.
There weren’t autopsies for anyone else.
00:18:10
The trial lasted nine days, and Jane was found not
guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to what was
00:18:16
then called the Taunton Lunatic Asylum.
[Music.] And then we have... memories of Jane.
We have several newspaper articles.
00:18:30
And these are some of the originals. This is a picture of her. It says, “This is Jolly
Jane. She wasn’t much fun.” Very interesting. This
00:18:42
is a copy which has a picture of her, a sketch
actually, that was done while she was on trial.
00:18:48
And it’s entitled, “Angel of Death.”
Phoebe Judge: So what do you like about Jane,
00:18:56
what attracts you to her? Because she sounds like
just a nut job to me. What is it that — why spend
00:19:04
all this time thinking about this woman?
Diane Ranney: I don’t really spend all this
00:19:08
time thinking about her, I think it comes and
goes. When we get questions about her, it sort of
00:19:14
reignites my theories of, was she really insane or
did she actually — was she a great con-artist?
00:19:21
And I do feel very, very sorry for her victims,
obviously. But at the same time I think that if
00:19:29
children are not treated right when they’re very
young, that this is the kind of thing that can
00:19:34
happen. And I try to hold everyone in compassion,
so that’s probably — my background is just
00:19:42
trying to be compassionate about everything.
And it is also really intriguing. Every time I
00:19:46
read another article, there is some little detail
that I didn't see before, or there is something
00:19:53
that contradicts one of the other articles.
And so I like to go back and look at things,
00:19:57
like the clerk’s report, and see exactly what was
listed and when they died and how they died and,
00:20:06
so... It is a little strange.
Phoebe Judge: It’s a little strange, your compassion for this woman?
Diane Ranney: That, yes,
00:20:13
people have told me that. But I also did
a reenactment for a series of programs
00:20:22
we were doing here in Bourne, at the
library. And someone said to me once, “You really have an uncanny ability to get
into that woman’s skin.” And I said, “Trust me,
00:20:32
I’m no murder. I’m not a serial killer.”
Phoebe Judge: When you say do a reenactment,
00:20:38
what did that entail? You did it
here, right? What does that entail? Diane Ranney: It was more like a monologue.
I dressed up as Jane and did a monologue
00:20:49
about how she felt jilted and why she
actually killed people. So I sort of channeled her I guess you might say.
Phoebe Judge: What does that look like,
00:20:58
channeling Jane?
Diane Ranney: It is kind of, well let's see if I can do it again.
[As Jane.]
00:21:16
You know dear, I really don't understand why everyone is so interested in me. I
mean after all I am just a nurse.
00:21:28
You know, I had some very dear friends, but
well, I had to help them to their reward.
00:21:38
You know, it's a little fun sometimes, to see how
people react when they have that morphine in them.
00:21:47
Not — not really fun of course, I wouldn't
want anyone to get the wrong idea, but
00:21:53
I don't know why I am here. I
don't know why they put me away. I mean after all, it was only 31 people.
But it is nice to come and visit me today.
00:22:05
You know, sometimes my mind wanders a little,
and it might have been more than that. I am
00:22:12
not really sure.
Phoebe Judge: That’s wonderful, you – that’s great. You’ve
embodied Jane. We’ll look for your syringes.
00:22:25
Jane Toppan was institutionalized at
Taunton State for almost 40 years, and over the course of her hospitalization,
she continued to confess to even more murders,
00:22:38
telling her doctor, “It would be
safe to say that I killed at least 100 from the time I became a nurse until
I ended the lives of the Davis family.”
00:22:48
She died there at 81 years old, and hospital
officials remembered her as a “quiet old lady.”
00:22:55
In 1902, her case was written up in the journal of
the American Medical Association. The piece reads:
00:23:02
“It is not flattering to the medical profession
that such an individual could have passed so long
00:23:08
undetected. It is proof that the most dangerous,
morbid tendencies and an absence of moral control
00:23:16
can exist with apparent perfect sanity.”
[Music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren
00:23:29
Spohrer, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special
thanks to Alice Wilder and Chelsea Korynta.
00:23:37
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal. You can see them
00:23:43
at thisiscriminal.com, where we’ll also have
a picture of Jolly Jane and the Davis House.
00:23:49
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud
00:23:55
member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of
the thirteen best podcasts around. Shows like
00:24:01
Radio Diaries, 99% Invisible, and Strangers,
hosted by Lea Thau. In her latest series,
00:24:07
she follows the story of a woman who decided
to give a kidney to a complete stranger.
00:24:12
Speaker: I see it more as almost like an
obligation. I’ve been describing it like
00:24:17
jury duty. There’s 100,000 people out there
waiting for kidneys and people dying every day,
00:24:22
where if it was just like jury duty, when your
number came up you would either get approved or
00:24:26
not approved and you would either do it or you
wouldn’t and it would just be like expected,
00:24:30
you know? And when you start talking that way
people kind of get defensive and, you know, “Well
00:24:35
jury duty, that’s way different than kidneys.”
Phoebe Judge: Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by
the Knight Foundation and MailChimp,
00:24:43
celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.
I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
00:24:50
Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.