The Giggling Granny, aka Nannie Doss, was born into a family of farmers in 1905 in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Growing up, her father was violent, and her mother turned a blind eye. Her father also did not allow her or her sisters to dress up or meet boys their age, leaving Nannie frequently finding her escape in reading romantic stories in newspapers and magazines. On a family trip, Nannie claimed to have suffered a head injury when a train caused her to slam her head into a metal bar.
Nannie was married not once or twice, but five times, all in her search for the “perfect mate.” At age 16, she married Charles Braggs. Two of their four children died mysteriously, but when asked, Doss had no explanation. They got divorced, and Charles is said to be the only husband who survived Nannie.
She was quick to jump into another marriage with Robert Harrelson in 1929, whom she found through a "lonely hearts" newspaper column. Newspapers.com describes lonely hearts as marriage ads in newspapers for Americans seeking companionship. One day, Robert had come home drunk, and they got into a fight in which Robert became violent. Out of anger, Nannie added rat poison to his wine, which led to his death.
She married Arlie Lanning after their first meeting in 1947 in North Carolina. This time she played the ideal housewife, so when Arlie was poisoned and died, everyone was sympathetic to the “poor grieving widow.” After the death of her mother-in-law, who is also considered one of her victims, she went to live with her sister. Perhaps not so surprisingly, her sister also passed away a few days after her arrival, according to Murderpedia.
Her last victim was Samuel Doss in June, 1953. Samuel was tight with money and with what Nannie was able to do with her free time. He was admitted to the hospital for a month from Nannie’s poisonings, but he survived. When he came back from the hospital, Nannie poisoned him again. This time, the autopsy helped prove that Nannie had poisoned him. She was imprisoned for life after she confessed to murdering Samuel Doss in October, 1954.
Nannie became a national sensation, earning the nickname “The Giggling Granny” because of her habit of smiling and giggling as she discussed the crimes she committed. According to Tulsa World, she confessed to killing her four husbands, two children, her sister, her mother, two grandsons, and a mother-in-law and blamed it all on the head injury she suffered as a child. As a result, she escaped the electric chair and spent her days in the prison ward. She got a life sentence and died in prison of leukemia on June 2, 1965.
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