September 23, 2025 • 28 mins
Known as The Giggling Granny and The Lonely Hearts Killer, Nancy Hazle committed at least 11 murders over 27 years.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hudson River Radio. Your dog likes us. I'm Linda Zimmermann,
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River
Radio dot com. Greetings everyone to this oddly titled Giggling
Granny episode. We were discussed. We had a little pregame
warm up here and apparently this is disturbing but not
(00:29):
so disturbing.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Well, the last bunch of episodes we were overseas, so
now we're going to come back to the US, and yeah,
it's the ones that you had chosen especially were exceptionally disturbing,
especially Australia. I hate to say a murder is less
disturbing because it's not, but it is, you know what
(00:52):
I mean. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, there's different levels of depravity there. You have an
argument and you shoot someone, and then there's you planet
dismember them. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, let's go through this one and then you tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We'll see where we are on the depravity.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
This is a tough one. So we are going to
be talking about Nancy Hazel, which is of on documents
official documents spelled h A z l E. It is
OK spelled the normal h a z e l in
many places as well, but I believe her actual official
name was h a z l e Uh. Nancy was
(01:34):
born in nineteen oh five in Blue Mountain, Calhoun County, Alabama,
which is kind of in the northeast part towards Georgia.
She was one of five one of five kids, four
girls and a boy. Her father, Jim Hazel, was abusive
(01:55):
and difficult right off the bat. So we're not starting
off oney, ouh great here. He would keep the kids
home from school to make them work on their farm,
not let them do anything fun, no social kind of
stuff and all that. So I can only imagine what
it was like trying to be a farmer in Alabama
in nineteen oh five. So I can imagine the level
(02:17):
of stress and whatnot. Not that it excuses any abuse
or any poor treatment of your kids, but yeah, it
just sounds like a rough life to begin with. Her mother, Louisa,
was said to be a very loving mother, the complete
opposite of the father, but either way, growing up on
a farm in Alabama just was not easy. Nancy claimed
(02:38):
that when she was seven, she sustained a head injury
while riding a train. She said that the train stopped suddenly,
and then she she went forward and hit her head
on the metal bar on the seat and.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Farm, yeah, that's great metal bar.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, the old fashioned seats that would build for durability
and zero for safety.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, we had school buses with metal bars.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah from the top yep. I still when I was
growing up, I remember the old bus that still had
the metal bars there, so that seed would last forever.
You could crash that bus and see it'll be fine.
Forget the kids, but you don't have to replace the seat.
Maybe wipe it down. The blood and all the teeth, yeah, teeth,
The kids lost all that kind of stuff. So anyway,
(03:20):
this train stopped, Nancy went forward and hit her head
on the metal bar on the seat in front of her,
and she would later use this as an excuse for
what's coming. Otherwise, as a kid, she was into romance
magazines and she loved the world of glamour, the complete
opposite of where she was living. Her father would not
let any of his daughters wear makeup. They could not
(03:42):
wear dressy clothings clothes, they could not go to dances,
they could not go to social events, anything boys, anything
like that. So he dressed them down, and supposedly the
excuse was that it would keep the boys away. That
was the idea.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No nothing, keep the boys, that is correct.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
At sixteen, Nancy, who was now going by the nickname Nanny,
started working at the linen thread company nearby. That is
where she met Charles Charlie Braggs. Her father approved of Charlie.
Believe it or not, Wow, I don't know why. Wonder
why in hindsight that should be a giant red flag
(04:24):
when the abusive father likes this boyfriend. Maybe I don't know,
maybe there's something going on. Within months, they were married
and living together with his mother. With Charlie's mother, Charlie,
it turns out, was very much like Nanny's father in temperament,
which maybe why they got along so well. Their marriage
(04:44):
was difficult. His mother was no picnic either, made their
lives a living hell. Living in the same house. They
had four daughters together between nineteen twenty three and nineteen
twenty seven. That year, nineteen twenty seven, of their children
mysteriously died after eating breakfast. Ah, breakfast dropped dead all right.
(05:09):
It was assumed to be some type of food poisoning,
which would Yeah, I bet it was uh huh, all right,
but somebody anonymous had warned Charlie not to eat anything
that Nanny cooks. We don't know who warned Charlie, but
Charlie didn't eat breakfast. So Charlie lived all right, Okay,
(05:35):
all right. Shortly after this, Charlie's mother died. Okay, boo,
who uh huh. Nanny and Charlie were divorced by nineteen
twenty eight. So in between, let me back up just
a little bit. So Charlie had been warned not to
eat breakfast. Charlie wound up taking their oldest daughter, named Melvina,
(05:59):
and he left, leaving the newborn Florine with Nanny. He
took the oldest daughter, left the newborn, and was gone.
This is when Charlie's mother died after he had left.
So you just had Charlie's mother, the youngest daughter, and
nanny in the house. So all right, So Nanny and
(06:21):
Charlie were divorced by nineteen twenty eight. This makes Charlie
the only husband Nanny had to survive, the only husband
okay or yeah, okay, probably gonna want to write this down.
Later that year, he returned with their daughter and with
(06:41):
a new lady. So Nanny took the two remaining children,
the oldest daughter, Melvina, who came back the youngest one, Florine,
and moved back with her mother, back into the house
where she grew up. Braggs would later repeatedly say he
left because he was scared of Nanny. I would say
so after being warned not to eat breakfast right right.
(07:04):
Who I'm presuming would be his mother. I don't really
know for sure, but he left because he was scared
of her. It was really nice that he only took
one daughter and left the other one. Yeah, that woman
he was scared of.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
What a sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah. Well, since we set the stage, we're gonna take
a quick break and see where this takes us. So
we'll be right back. Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. And we have
yet another case of not so much food poisoning. But
I suspect poisoned food.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I think you might be right, but let's see what happens.
So at this point, Nanny. You remember, Nanny loved Romance magazine,
something she had always loved. She really really loved reading
the Lonely Heart's column. This is obviously pre internet, pre computer,
all that kind of stuff. You know, for a long
(08:07):
time that the want ads in the newspapers. It was,
you know, desperately seeking all that kind of stuff. Right,
So in these magazines they would have the lonely heart's column,
people looking for someone else. She loved reading those, which
is how she met husband number two, boy Robert Franklin Harrelson.
They married in nineteen twenty nine and lived in Jacksonville, Alabama,
(08:28):
but it was a rocky marriage from the start due
to his alcoholism. Oh, she could really pick them, she did. Yeah,
she had a type, I guess. In nineteen forty three,
the oldest daughter, Melvina, gave birth to a boy of
her own named Robert Haynes. Two years later, she had
a second baby. Right after this second birth, Melvina was
(08:50):
still groggy from being exhausted from being in labor obviously,
but they used ether at the time, so she was
still groggy, probably from the ether more than the labor.
But she thought she saw her mother stick a hatpin
into the newborn baby's head. For those who may not
know what a hatpin is, if you're not up on
(09:12):
your fashion, they are about six to eight inches long,
really sharp on one end and fancy on the other end.
And they were used to hold hats onto your head,
so the pin would go into the hat, through your
puffy hair and then out the other side. So it
was sharp on one end, super sharp.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh my god, good And yeah, I will put this
in the depraved category where the needle is moving rapidly.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah. So later Melvina told her husband and her sister,
I'm sorry, let me back up again here. So later
her husband, Melvina's husband, and Melvina's sister, the surviving sister
told her that nanny had told them that the baby
had all right. So she's getting it secondhand. So nanny
(10:03):
told the husband and the sister the baby died. They
wound up telling Melvina, and they noticed that she was
actually holding a hatpin. That is just because it's who
stands there with a hat pin?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So yeah, that wasn't a red flag.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, so Melvina probably saw what she saw even though
she was groggy. Doctors at the time had no explanation
for the newborn's.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Death about the hole through the head.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well, it's a hatpin is a tiny little thing, so yeah,
I don't know. Two years later, Nanny and Melvina had
a huge fight. Melvina and her husband had drifted apart
really because of over there newborn's death. That just can
mess anybody up, understandable. She wound up dating a soldier
(10:53):
that Nanny did not like, and after this fight, Malvina
decided to take a break. She went to go visit
her father and left Robert, her older son, in Nanny's care.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Not a smart thank you, dude, pause time out. You
watched your mother stick a hat pin through your newborn's head,
and you leave your son in her care.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Okay, just like Melvina's father took her and left the
new born, right, yeah, right, So we've seen a pattern
of bad decisions going on here. Yeah. So Melvina left
to visit her father, Robert, and the father was no
you know.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It was abusive as right.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So, so Robert's in Nanny's care at this point. Robert
died of asphyxia from unknown causes while in the care
of Nanny.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Huh, I'm so surprised.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And then a short time later, Nanny collected five hundred
dollars on a life insurance policy she had taken out
on him.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I was going to ask about insurance.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So yeah, Robert dies unexpectedly and suddenly, and Nanny makes
five hundred bucks off the deal. Okay, all right, Nanny
was still married to Harrelson for sixteen years at this point.
The alcoholic he came drunk home drunk one night after
going out. He was partying with his friends who were
(12:24):
lucky enough to return home from World War two alive.
So on that one, that's a good party, I will.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Kind of, yeah, you deserve a celebration.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah. After that, not so much. He forced her to
have sex with him, and in the next after waking
up the next morning, she poured rat poison into one
of his secret stash jars of moonshine that he didn't
think she knew where they were. Okay, okay. So he
died on September fifteenth, nineteen forty five, and that was
(12:56):
also assumed to be some type of food poisoning, which
I guess it.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Was alcohol poisoning, poisoning, alcohol poison alcohol. So it's all
a matter of the word order here exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So you're keeping track, so far, I'd lost count two husband's,
a newborn, a mother, and.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The two other children.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, so all right, well leave a couple of lines
blank because you're gonna need them. Husband number three, Arley
Landing of Lexington, North Carolina, come on down, you're the
next contestant. He placed an ad in the Lonely Hearts column.
He married Nanny in nineteen fifty. He was dead from
(13:42):
rat poison, but Nanny also had good timing because Arley
was a heavy drinker like the other ones. But there
was a small flu epidemic in that particular area. A
lot of people were getting sick, okay, and he it
was said that he died of heart failure too, because
he was not the model of good health. So a
(14:06):
little bit of rat poison on top of maybe he
had the flu, maybe he didn't, he had heart disease,
and he drops dead. So it wasn't really that suspicious.
So no autopsy was performed at that time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
The house they were living in was left to Arley's sister,
not to Nanny. Oh okay, so guess whose house quickly
burned down to the ground.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah wow, So we can add Arson now to the repertoire.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Allegedly we can add Arson to this. So the house
was not left to Nanny, but the insurance money from
the house burning down was left to nanny.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
That makes no Well, I guess you can put insurance
in whatever name you want. Wow, Okay, all right, okay.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So there you go. No house but a sack of
cash there, yeah go. Arley's mother happened to die in
her sleep shortly after this. That one actually seems to
be natural causes. That one does seem to be a coincidence,
so can't prove that. But all the totalitary circumstances there,
(15:18):
that does seem to be a natural cause death. Her
Lexington neighbors at the time thought she was the perfect wife.
Not so much that good reputation, that nice, quiet neighbor
who we've seen over and over again. Wouldn't her to fly? Okay,
maybe she wouldn't, But she killed a couple husbands and
children and children. After that, she moved in with her sister, Dovey,
(15:42):
who happened to be bedridden and needed almost around the
clock care. So guess who went belly up shortly after
Nanny showed up?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The perfect caregiver.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The perfect caregiver.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Wow, Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Dovey's out of the picture. Our next lonely Heart candidate
has been number four, Richard L. Morton of Emporia, Kansas,
Nanny moved, they got married. She moved in with him
to Kansas in nineteen fifty two. Tricky Richard here liked
to go out late and hang out with other women.
(16:17):
They both were apparently committing infidelity kind of stuff. But
Nannie was home taking care of her mother, Louisa, who
had to move in with them in January of nineteen
fifty three after her father died, the abusive father, so
he died on his own mother. Louisa had to move
in with them, and only a few days later Louisa
(16:40):
started complaining of severe stomach pain, and then she died.
Her own mother, her own mother.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I thought her mother was nice.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She was she was the sweetheart of the family by
all accounts. But now that I guess Nanny had to
take care.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Of her, take care of her.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It was in the house now, it was an inconvenient
So yep, she got stomach pain and she died. And
we've seen what caused the stomach pain, arsenic. Three months later,
Richard drank a thermis full of coffee that Nanny had flavored.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
With arsenic arsenic.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Two months after that, June nineteen fifty three, Nanny had
hopped on a bus to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the next
lonely heart, which would be husband number five, the gentleman
named Samuel DAWs. DAWs didn't drink, he was not abusive,
but he was a Nazarene minister who would not permit
(17:39):
any television show that was not educational or enlightening. He
forbade magazines with the same stipulation. And what kind of
magazines did Nanny?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
The romance that's what she lived for.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Romance magazines. Yep, Nope, she could not have them in
that household. So this time she actually he left the
house for a while until DAWs agreed to put her
name on their bank account and take out two life
insurance policies with her as the beneficiary as the name beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Nothing like putting a big target.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
On your back, yep, but that's what it was with
a serial killer exactly. That's what took for her to
move back into the house. So she did. Then guess what.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Did he get stomach pains?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Uh? That he did. She tried to kill him with
a prune cake laced with arsenic He spent a month
in the hospital recovering and when he got home after that,
she just did the arsenic in the thermos of coffee thing,
like had worked on the last guy. Yeah, I would
say the biggest mistake is a prune cake. I have
(18:49):
never in my life had a prune cake.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Why would anyone want it?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Why would anybody want a prune cake? And you know,
if you're going to dilute your arsenic in that much
prune cake, I guess you need to eat a bit
piece of prune cake.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah. Maybe it just ran right through him. It didn't
have time to work.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Maybe I don't know. I have no intention of ever
trying a prune cake. And now no, no, so no,
all right, lesson learned. We're gonna take a break and
see how this all out. All right, you're keeping score?
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I gave up?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Okay, yeah, understandable, but there's more so stick around, okay.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
We are back with a dizzying amount of dead husbands
and children and mothers and mothers in.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Law and I in a burning house and life.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And sorry Arson insurance insurance fraud.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Well, it was this last murder of husband number five, Richard,
that finally got somebody to pay attention. Remember we're talking,
we're in the mid nineteen hundred, you know, nineteen fifties
at this point still no internet. Newspapers were local. It
was your local radio station. There were national networks with
the news and all that, but these kind of cases
(20:18):
would not make the headlines like they would now.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I'm sure she wasn't broadcasting all these dead people.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Exactly exactly, and she kept moving. She was moving around
with the new husbands into new communities. So to you know,
link all these things together would be pretty difficult. That's
kind of understandable, especially at the time. But it was
this last husband, this husband number five, that finally got
somebody's attention. The physician treating Richard suspected foul play rightfully
(20:46):
so one she gave him a prune cake, which is
considered torture by the Geneva Convention. As far as I know,
rual and unusual punishment, I would think, so, I don't know,
maybe not, I've never had one. So this doctor suspected
play rightfully so, and convinced Nanny to allow an autopsy
of this husband. And he convinced her by saying that
(21:07):
it would help save lives in the future. It was
going to be an educational thing. We have to figure
out why he died. You could help save lives in
the future, and she ultimately agreed to that, so good
for him. What they found was enough arsenic in his
body to kill a horse.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And yes, it will save lives in the future because
it will stop her from, yeah, poisoning people.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I don't know if they determined how many prune cakes
it would take to kill a horse, but they know
how much arsenic it would take.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The doctor alerted the police. The police finally arrested Nanny.
Good all right, The police interrogated Nanny. This is before
Miranda Rights. Reminder, Miranda Rights didn't come around till nineteen
sixty six, so okay, police had more kind of a
wider approach, shall we say, you know, less restrict not
(22:00):
that they were cruel, They didn't do anything. I'm not
saying that, But this is before Miranda writes where you
could demand an attorney. You couldn't at that point. Well
you could, but most people didn't know that you could.
So interrogations kind of were handled little differently. They were
able to get her to confess to killing three of
her four husbands, by offering her the one thing the
(22:21):
husband wouldn't have let her have a Roman romance magazine.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Magazines.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You're getting her a romance magazine. And that got her
to confess to killing three of her four husbands.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Wow, tough nut to crack there.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yep, yep, that's what it's how bizarre. So it was now,
so they're in Oklahoma. I don't remember if I mentioned
that they're in Oklahoma at this point. I did mention
that she took the bus to Tulsa, so they're in
the state of Oklahoma. The state found her guilty of murder.
The bodies of her other husbands were then exhoomed and
found to contain either rat poisoning, arsenic the same thing.
(23:00):
Nanny was charged with murder in North Carolina, in Kansas,
and in Alabama, but she never made it to trial
outside of Oklahoma, so the charges were pending, but she
never made it to trial in those other states. It
was now nineteen fifty three. Nanny was forty eight years old.
There are pictures of Nanny at this point. She is smiling,
(23:20):
she is dressed up. She's got that glamour thing. If
you think of the TV shows of the fifties, the
way they dressed the pillbox hat. Oh right, right right,
that's exactly what she looked like. Wow, smiling, happiest could be.
But man, if you if I showed you the picture
now and said how old do you think she is,
you would have said seventy five? Because there's just something.
(23:43):
There's something about when you see pictures back then, they
just look so much older. I'm guessing it's smoking, because
everybody smoked. Yeah, that just ages you.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
But and she had a rough life too, with all
the abuse.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
From the dead go and shopping for arsenic and all
that kind of stopping.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
It's a tough thing to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Where's it? But she looked so much She did not
look forty eight, But then again, neither to anybody else
who was actually forty eight at the time. But she
was facing the electric chair, and that would have made
her the first woman executed in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Well wow.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Two years later, in nineteen fifty five, a judge declared
Nanny insane and that spared her from capital punishment. Okay,
all right. The judge explained that he he didn't want
to set the precedent of executing a woman. He didn't
want that on his shoulders. Yeah, which that's not a
reason to make a decision. I'm not for capital punishment,
(24:38):
but that's I don't want to be a respondib.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I know that's a woman is just as capable of murdering,
so she should face the same penalty.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Right, So he didn't want to set the precedent of
executing a woman, especially one would diagnosed mental disabilities. Okay
at this point, so Nanny got life in prison, and
she just looked thrilled. She was happy about it. She's
just smiling. She would smile and giggle whenever they talked
about her murders. It just didn't bother her, and that's
(25:08):
what got her the nickname the Giggling Granny.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
The giggling She.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Was also known as the Lonely Hearts Killer in a
Bunch of Us as well, because that's the column she
loves to read in those romance magazines. She confessed to
the murders of all her husbands. She blamed it on
her head injury that she got at seven from that train. Okay,
nice try. In reality, that head injury did give her
(25:33):
lifelong headaches and dizziness, and sometimes she did.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah it can't, Yeah, people can have complete changes in
personality with head and severe head injuries.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, so that is absolute. I have no doubt she
had the headaches and the dizziness and all the other
kind of stuff that makes you a murderer.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, whether that causes you to drive a hat pin
through your granddaughter's head.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, so she was one. Yeah. She was sent
to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAllister. She would happily
do interviews, always with a sonny and giggly disposition the
whole time, But after two years she began to regret
the life sentence and said that she should have just
been put to death all right. She also complained that
(26:21):
the only prison job they would let her do was
work in the laundry. She offered to work in the kitchen,
but for some reason they declined her very polite offer.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Wow, yeah, not a good idea.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I can't imagine why Nanny wound up dying of leukemia
on June second, nineteen sixty five. She is buried in
Oak Hill Memorial Park in McAllister, Oklahoma. If for some
twisted reason you like visiting these types of graves, so
a quick recap at least eleven murders we can pin
on her over twenty seven years, four husbands, two of
(26:58):
her own children, her own mother, one mother in law,
one of her sisters, and two grandsons.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Wow wow, that's that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And these people just kept getting away. You know, we've
seen a lot of women who had multiple arsenic murders,
but like in the eighteen hundred's, early nineteen hundred, she
was doing this pretty much into modern times. Yeah yeah,
and still getting away with.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It, still getting away with it. Yeah. I think moving
and getting remarried was the biggest reason why, because that's
just what you normally did. You got married and you
moved in with somebody. And you know, older is relative
because I guess you know, when you're in your forties
and fifties and dropped out of a heart attack in
(27:52):
the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, okay, it was accepted.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's true too.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah wow wow.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So I put this high on the deprad The hat
pin thing just that that just is catapults this case
and you in your own children. That puts it in
the highly disturbing category.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I think.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
There you go, Wow, well thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You're welcome, You're welcome, So would you like to take
us out?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Sure of. Hopefully you can join us again for Murder
in the Hudson Valley and stay away from hatpins.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Hudson River Radio. Your dog likes us. I'm Linda Zimmermann,
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River
Radio dot com. Greetings everyone to this oddly titled Giggling
Granny episode. We were discussed. We had a little pregame
warm up here and apparently this is disturbing but not
(00:29):
so disturbing.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Well, the last bunch of episodes we were overseas, so
now we're going to come back to the US, and yeah,
it's the ones that you had chosen especially were exceptionally disturbing,
especially Australia. I hate to say a murder is less
disturbing because it's not, but it is, you know what
(00:52):
I mean. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, there's different levels of depravity there. You have an
argument and you shoot someone, and then there's you planet
dismember them. You know.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, let's go through this one and then you tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We'll see where we are on the depravity.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
This is a tough one. So we are going to
be talking about Nancy Hazel, which is of on documents
official documents spelled h A z l E. It is
OK spelled the normal h a z e l in
many places as well, but I believe her actual official
name was h a z l e Uh. Nancy was
(01:34):
born in nineteen oh five in Blue Mountain, Calhoun County, Alabama,
which is kind of in the northeast part towards Georgia.
She was one of five one of five kids, four
girls and a boy. Her father, Jim Hazel, was abusive
(01:55):
and difficult right off the bat. So we're not starting
off oney, ouh great here. He would keep the kids
home from school to make them work on their farm,
not let them do anything fun, no social kind of
stuff and all that. So I can only imagine what
it was like trying to be a farmer in Alabama
in nineteen oh five. So I can imagine the level
(02:17):
of stress and whatnot. Not that it excuses any abuse
or any poor treatment of your kids, but yeah, it
just sounds like a rough life to begin with. Her mother, Louisa,
was said to be a very loving mother, the complete
opposite of the father, but either way, growing up on
a farm in Alabama just was not easy. Nancy claimed
(02:38):
that when she was seven, she sustained a head injury
while riding a train. She said that the train stopped suddenly,
and then she she went forward and hit her head
on the metal bar on the seat and.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Farm, yeah, that's great metal bar.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, the old fashioned seats that would build for durability
and zero for safety.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, we had school buses with metal bars.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah from the top yep. I still when I was
growing up, I remember the old bus that still had
the metal bars there, so that seed would last forever.
You could crash that bus and see it'll be fine.
Forget the kids, but you don't have to replace the seat.
Maybe wipe it down. The blood and all the teeth, yeah, teeth,
The kids lost all that kind of stuff. So anyway,
(03:20):
this train stopped, Nancy went forward and hit her head
on the metal bar on the seat in front of her,
and she would later use this as an excuse for
what's coming. Otherwise, as a kid, she was into romance
magazines and she loved the world of glamour, the complete
opposite of where she was living. Her father would not
let any of his daughters wear makeup. They could not
(03:42):
wear dressy clothings clothes, they could not go to dances,
they could not go to social events, anything boys, anything
like that. So he dressed them down, and supposedly the
excuse was that it would keep the boys away. That
was the idea.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No nothing, keep the boys, that is correct.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
At sixteen, Nancy, who was now going by the nickname Nanny,
started working at the linen thread company nearby. That is
where she met Charles Charlie Braggs. Her father approved of Charlie.
Believe it or not, Wow, I don't know why. Wonder
why in hindsight that should be a giant red flag
(04:24):
when the abusive father likes this boyfriend. Maybe I don't know,
maybe there's something going on. Within months, they were married
and living together with his mother. With Charlie's mother, Charlie,
it turns out, was very much like Nanny's father in temperament,
which maybe why they got along so well. Their marriage
(04:44):
was difficult. His mother was no picnic either, made their
lives a living hell. Living in the same house. They
had four daughters together between nineteen twenty three and nineteen
twenty seven. That year, nineteen twenty seven, of their children
mysteriously died after eating breakfast. Ah, breakfast dropped dead all right.
(05:09):
It was assumed to be some type of food poisoning,
which would Yeah, I bet it was uh huh, all right,
but somebody anonymous had warned Charlie not to eat anything
that Nanny cooks. We don't know who warned Charlie, but
Charlie didn't eat breakfast. So Charlie lived all right, Okay,
(05:35):
all right. Shortly after this, Charlie's mother died. Okay, boo,
who uh huh. Nanny and Charlie were divorced by nineteen
twenty eight. So in between, let me back up just
a little bit. So Charlie had been warned not to
eat breakfast. Charlie wound up taking their oldest daughter, named Melvina,
(05:59):
and he left, leaving the newborn Florine with Nanny. He
took the oldest daughter, left the newborn, and was gone.
This is when Charlie's mother died after he had left.
So you just had Charlie's mother, the youngest daughter, and
nanny in the house. So all right, So Nanny and
(06:21):
Charlie were divorced by nineteen twenty eight. This makes Charlie
the only husband Nanny had to survive, the only husband
okay or yeah, okay, probably gonna want to write this down.
Later that year, he returned with their daughter and with
(06:41):
a new lady. So Nanny took the two remaining children,
the oldest daughter, Melvina, who came back the youngest one, Florine,
and moved back with her mother, back into the house
where she grew up. Braggs would later repeatedly say he
left because he was scared of Nanny. I would say
so after being warned not to eat breakfast right right.
(07:04):
Who I'm presuming would be his mother. I don't really
know for sure, but he left because he was scared
of her. It was really nice that he only took
one daughter and left the other one. Yeah, that woman
he was scared of.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
What a sweetheart.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah. Well, since we set the stage, we're gonna take
a quick break and see where this takes us. So
we'll be right back. Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com. And we have
yet another case of not so much food poisoning. But
I suspect poisoned food.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I think you might be right, but let's see what happens.
So at this point, Nanny. You remember, Nanny loved Romance magazine,
something she had always loved. She really really loved reading
the Lonely Heart's column. This is obviously pre internet, pre computer,
all that kind of stuff. You know, for a long
(08:07):
time that the want ads in the newspapers. It was,
you know, desperately seeking all that kind of stuff. Right,
So in these magazines they would have the lonely heart's column,
people looking for someone else. She loved reading those, which
is how she met husband number two, boy Robert Franklin Harrelson.
They married in nineteen twenty nine and lived in Jacksonville, Alabama,
(08:28):
but it was a rocky marriage from the start due
to his alcoholism. Oh, she could really pick them, she did. Yeah,
she had a type, I guess. In nineteen forty three,
the oldest daughter, Melvina, gave birth to a boy of
her own named Robert Haynes. Two years later, she had
a second baby. Right after this second birth, Melvina was
(08:50):
still groggy from being exhausted from being in labor obviously,
but they used ether at the time, so she was
still groggy, probably from the ether more than the labor.
But she thought she saw her mother stick a hatpin
into the newborn baby's head. For those who may not
know what a hatpin is, if you're not up on
(09:12):
your fashion, they are about six to eight inches long,
really sharp on one end and fancy on the other end.
And they were used to hold hats onto your head,
so the pin would go into the hat, through your
puffy hair and then out the other side. So it
was sharp on one end, super sharp.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh my god, good And yeah, I will put this
in the depraved category where the needle is moving rapidly.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah. So later Melvina told her husband and her sister,
I'm sorry, let me back up again here. So later
her husband, Melvina's husband, and Melvina's sister, the surviving sister
told her that nanny had told them that the baby
had all right. So she's getting it secondhand. So nanny
(10:03):
told the husband and the sister the baby died. They
wound up telling Melvina, and they noticed that she was
actually holding a hatpin. That is just because it's who
stands there with a hat pin?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So yeah, that wasn't a red flag.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, so Melvina probably saw what she saw even though
she was groggy. Doctors at the time had no explanation
for the newborn's.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Death about the hole through the head.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well, it's a hatpin is a tiny little thing, so yeah,
I don't know. Two years later, Nanny and Melvina had
a huge fight. Melvina and her husband had drifted apart
really because of over there newborn's death. That just can
mess anybody up, understandable. She wound up dating a soldier
(10:53):
that Nanny did not like, and after this fight, Malvina
decided to take a break. She went to go visit
her father and left Robert, her older son, in Nanny's care.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Not a smart thank you, dude, pause time out. You
watched your mother stick a hat pin through your newborn's head,
and you leave your son in her care.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Okay, just like Melvina's father took her and left the
new born, right, yeah, right, So we've seen a pattern
of bad decisions going on here. Yeah. So Melvina left
to visit her father, Robert, and the father was no
you know.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
It was abusive as right.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So, so Robert's in Nanny's care at this point. Robert
died of asphyxia from unknown causes while in the care
of Nanny.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Huh, I'm so surprised.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And then a short time later, Nanny collected five hundred
dollars on a life insurance policy she had taken out
on him.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
I was going to ask about insurance.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So yeah, Robert dies unexpectedly and suddenly, and Nanny makes
five hundred bucks off the deal. Okay, all right, Nanny
was still married to Harrelson for sixteen years at this point.
The alcoholic he came drunk home drunk one night after
going out. He was partying with his friends who were
(12:24):
lucky enough to return home from World War two alive.
So on that one, that's a good party, I will.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Kind of, yeah, you deserve a celebration.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah. After that, not so much. He forced her to
have sex with him, and in the next after waking
up the next morning, she poured rat poison into one
of his secret stash jars of moonshine that he didn't
think she knew where they were. Okay, okay. So he
died on September fifteenth, nineteen forty five, and that was
(12:56):
also assumed to be some type of food poisoning, which
I guess it.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Was alcohol poisoning, poisoning, alcohol poison alcohol. So it's all
a matter of the word order here exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So you're keeping track, so far, I'd lost count two husband's,
a newborn, a mother, and.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The two other children.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, so all right, well leave a couple of lines
blank because you're gonna need them. Husband number three, Arley
Landing of Lexington, North Carolina, come on down, you're the
next contestant. He placed an ad in the Lonely Hearts column.
He married Nanny in nineteen fifty. He was dead from
(13:42):
rat poison, but Nanny also had good timing because Arley
was a heavy drinker like the other ones. But there
was a small flu epidemic in that particular area. A
lot of people were getting sick, okay, and he it
was said that he died of heart failure too, because
he was not the model of good health. So a
(14:06):
little bit of rat poison on top of maybe he
had the flu, maybe he didn't, he had heart disease,
and he drops dead. So it wasn't really that suspicious.
So no autopsy was performed at that time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
The house they were living in was left to Arley's sister,
not to Nanny. Oh okay, so guess whose house quickly
burned down to the ground.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah wow, So we can add Arson now to the repertoire.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Allegedly we can add Arson to this. So the house
was not left to Nanny, but the insurance money from
the house burning down was left to nanny.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
That makes no Well, I guess you can put insurance
in whatever name you want. Wow, Okay, all right, okay.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So there you go. No house but a sack of
cash there, yeah go. Arley's mother happened to die in
her sleep shortly after this. That one actually seems to
be natural causes. That one does seem to be a coincidence,
so can't prove that. But all the totalitary circumstances there,
(15:18):
that does seem to be a natural cause death. Her
Lexington neighbors at the time thought she was the perfect wife.
Not so much that good reputation, that nice, quiet neighbor
who we've seen over and over again. Wouldn't her to fly? Okay,
maybe she wouldn't, But she killed a couple husbands and
children and children. After that, she moved in with her sister, Dovey,
(15:42):
who happened to be bedridden and needed almost around the
clock care. So guess who went belly up shortly after
Nanny showed up?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The perfect caregiver.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
The perfect caregiver.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Wow, Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Dovey's out of the picture. Our next lonely Heart candidate
has been number four, Richard L. Morton of Emporia, Kansas,
Nanny moved, they got married. She moved in with him
to Kansas in nineteen fifty two. Tricky Richard here liked
to go out late and hang out with other women.
(16:17):
They both were apparently committing infidelity kind of stuff. But
Nannie was home taking care of her mother, Louisa, who
had to move in with them in January of nineteen
fifty three after her father died, the abusive father, so
he died on his own mother. Louisa had to move
in with them, and only a few days later Louisa
(16:40):
started complaining of severe stomach pain, and then she died.
Her own mother, her own mother.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
I thought her mother was nice.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
She was she was the sweetheart of the family by
all accounts. But now that I guess Nanny had to
take care.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Of her, take care of her.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It was in the house now, it was an inconvenient
So yep, she got stomach pain and she died. And
we've seen what caused the stomach pain, arsenic. Three months later,
Richard drank a thermis full of coffee that Nanny had flavored.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
With arsenic arsenic.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Two months after that, June nineteen fifty three, Nanny had
hopped on a bus to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the next
lonely heart, which would be husband number five, the gentleman
named Samuel DAWs. DAWs didn't drink, he was not abusive,
but he was a Nazarene minister who would not permit
(17:39):
any television show that was not educational or enlightening. He
forbade magazines with the same stipulation. And what kind of
magazines did Nanny?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
The romance that's what she lived for.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Romance magazines. Yep, Nope, she could not have them in
that household. So this time she actually he left the
house for a while until DAWs agreed to put her
name on their bank account and take out two life
insurance policies with her as the beneficiary as the name beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Nothing like putting a big target.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
On your back, yep, but that's what it was with
a serial killer exactly. That's what took for her to
move back into the house. So she did. Then guess what.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Did he get stomach pains?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Uh? That he did. She tried to kill him with
a prune cake laced with arsenic He spent a month
in the hospital recovering and when he got home after that,
she just did the arsenic in the thermos of coffee thing,
like had worked on the last guy. Yeah, I would
say the biggest mistake is a prune cake. I have
(18:49):
never in my life had a prune cake.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Why would anyone want it?
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Why would anybody want a prune cake? And you know,
if you're going to dilute your arsenic in that much
prune cake, I guess you need to eat a bit
piece of prune cake.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah. Maybe it just ran right through him. It didn't
have time to work.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Maybe I don't know. I have no intention of ever
trying a prune cake. And now no, no, so no,
all right, lesson learned. We're gonna take a break and
see how this all out. All right, you're keeping score?
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I gave up?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Okay, yeah, understandable, but there's more so stick around, okay.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
We are back with a dizzying amount of dead husbands
and children and mothers and mothers in.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Law and I in a burning house and life.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And sorry Arson insurance insurance fraud.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Well, it was this last murder of husband number five, Richard,
that finally got somebody to pay attention. Remember we're talking,
we're in the mid nineteen hundred, you know, nineteen fifties
at this point still no internet. Newspapers were local. It
was your local radio station. There were national networks with
the news and all that, but these kind of cases
(20:18):
would not make the headlines like they would now.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I'm sure she wasn't broadcasting all these dead people.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Exactly exactly, and she kept moving. She was moving around
with the new husbands into new communities. So to you know,
link all these things together would be pretty difficult. That's
kind of understandable, especially at the time. But it was
this last husband, this husband number five, that finally got
somebody's attention. The physician treating Richard suspected foul play rightfully
(20:46):
so one she gave him a prune cake, which is
considered torture by the Geneva Convention. As far as I know,
rual and unusual punishment, I would think, so, I don't know,
maybe not, I've never had one. So this doctor suspected
play rightfully so, and convinced Nanny to allow an autopsy
of this husband. And he convinced her by saying that
(21:07):
it would help save lives in the future. It was
going to be an educational thing. We have to figure
out why he died. You could help save lives in
the future, and she ultimately agreed to that, so good
for him. What they found was enough arsenic in his
body to kill a horse.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And yes, it will save lives in the future because
it will stop her from, yeah, poisoning people.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I don't know if they determined how many prune cakes
it would take to kill a horse, but they know
how much arsenic it would take.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
The doctor alerted the police. The police finally arrested Nanny.
Good all right, The police interrogated Nanny. This is before
Miranda Rights. Reminder, Miranda Rights didn't come around till nineteen
sixty six, so okay, police had more kind of a
wider approach, shall we say, you know, less restrict not
(22:00):
that they were cruel, They didn't do anything. I'm not
saying that, But this is before Miranda writes where you
could demand an attorney. You couldn't at that point. Well
you could, but most people didn't know that you could.
So interrogations kind of were handled little differently. They were
able to get her to confess to killing three of
her four husbands, by offering her the one thing the
(22:21):
husband wouldn't have let her have a Roman romance magazine.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Magazines.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
You're getting her a romance magazine. And that got her
to confess to killing three of her four husbands.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Wow, tough nut to crack there.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yep, yep, that's what it's how bizarre. So it was now,
so they're in Oklahoma. I don't remember if I mentioned
that they're in Oklahoma at this point. I did mention
that she took the bus to Tulsa, so they're in
the state of Oklahoma. The state found her guilty of murder.
The bodies of her other husbands were then exhoomed and
found to contain either rat poisoning, arsenic the same thing.
(23:00):
Nanny was charged with murder in North Carolina, in Kansas,
and in Alabama, but she never made it to trial
outside of Oklahoma, so the charges were pending, but she
never made it to trial in those other states. It
was now nineteen fifty three. Nanny was forty eight years old.
There are pictures of Nanny at this point. She is smiling,
(23:20):
she is dressed up. She's got that glamour thing. If
you think of the TV shows of the fifties, the
way they dressed the pillbox hat. Oh right, right right,
that's exactly what she looked like. Wow, smiling, happiest could be.
But man, if you if I showed you the picture
now and said how old do you think she is,
you would have said seventy five? Because there's just something.
(23:43):
There's something about when you see pictures back then, they
just look so much older. I'm guessing it's smoking, because
everybody smoked. Yeah, that just ages you.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
But and she had a rough life too, with all
the abuse.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
From the dead go and shopping for arsenic and all
that kind of stopping.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
It's a tough thing to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Where's it? But she looked so much She did not
look forty eight, But then again, neither to anybody else
who was actually forty eight at the time. But she
was facing the electric chair, and that would have made
her the first woman executed in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Well wow.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Two years later, in nineteen fifty five, a judge declared
Nanny insane and that spared her from capital punishment. Okay,
all right. The judge explained that he he didn't want
to set the precedent of executing a woman. He didn't
want that on his shoulders. Yeah, which that's not a
reason to make a decision. I'm not for capital punishment,
(24:38):
but that's I don't want to be a respondib.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I know that's a woman is just as capable of murdering,
so she should face the same penalty.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Right, So he didn't want to set the precedent of
executing a woman, especially one would diagnosed mental disabilities. Okay
at this point, so Nanny got life in prison, and
she just looked thrilled. She was happy about it. She's
just smiling. She would smile and giggle whenever they talked
about her murders. It just didn't bother her, and that's
(25:08):
what got her the nickname the Giggling Granny.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
The giggling She.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Was also known as the Lonely Hearts Killer in a
Bunch of Us as well, because that's the column she
loves to read in those romance magazines. She confessed to
the murders of all her husbands. She blamed it on
her head injury that she got at seven from that train. Okay,
nice try. In reality, that head injury did give her
(25:33):
lifelong headaches and dizziness, and sometimes she did.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah it can't, Yeah, people can have complete changes in
personality with head and severe head injuries.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, so that is absolute. I have no doubt she
had the headaches and the dizziness and all the other
kind of stuff that makes you a murderer.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, whether that causes you to drive a hat pin
through your granddaughter's head.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, so she was one. Yeah. She was sent
to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAllister. She would happily
do interviews, always with a sonny and giggly disposition the
whole time, But after two years she began to regret
the life sentence and said that she should have just
been put to death all right. She also complained that
(26:21):
the only prison job they would let her do was
work in the laundry. She offered to work in the kitchen,
but for some reason they declined her very polite offer.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Wow, yeah, not a good idea.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
I can't imagine why Nanny wound up dying of leukemia
on June second, nineteen sixty five. She is buried in
Oak Hill Memorial Park in McAllister, Oklahoma. If for some
twisted reason you like visiting these types of graves, so
a quick recap at least eleven murders we can pin
on her over twenty seven years, four husbands, two of
(26:58):
her own children, her own mother, one mother in law,
one of her sisters, and two grandsons.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Wow wow, that's that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And these people just kept getting away. You know, we've
seen a lot of women who had multiple arsenic murders,
but like in the eighteen hundred's, early nineteen hundred, she
was doing this pretty much into modern times. Yeah yeah,
and still getting away with.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It, still getting away with it. Yeah. I think moving
and getting remarried was the biggest reason why, because that's
just what you normally did. You got married and you
moved in with somebody. And you know, older is relative
because I guess you know, when you're in your forties
and fifties and dropped out of a heart attack in
(27:52):
the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, okay, it was accepted.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's true too.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah wow wow.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So I put this high on the deprad The hat
pin thing just that that just is catapults this case
and you in your own children. That puts it in
the highly disturbing category.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I think.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
There you go, Wow, well thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You're welcome, You're welcome, So would you like to take
us out?
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Sure of. Hopefully you can join us again for Murder
in the Hudson Valley and stay away from hatpins.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.
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