October 27, 2020 • 32 mins
Dubbed Atlanta’s "Mrs. Bluebeard," a pejorative term referring to women who killed their own family members, Roberta Elder was suspected of killing three husbands, four of her children, three step-children, her mother, her grandchild, a cousin, and even probably more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where this season we're exploring the lives and motivations of
some of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm
Riachru Marquis and I'm Holly Fry And in today's episode,
(00:22):
we're going to look at the life of Roberta Elder,
a woman from Georgia who was accused of poisoning more
than a dozen people over the course of about fourteen years,
mainly so she could profit from being the sold beneficiary
of each victim's insurance payout. What little dang time Yeah,
(00:49):
time in nineties. The second Roberta is an interesting woman
to talk about. We don't actually know very much at
all about her life was like before she was accused
of poisoning people with everyone's favorite poison, arsenic. I know
it's mine, it goes in everything. We don't actually even
(01:13):
know what year she was born, although based on reports
from her trial, she was probably born between about nineteen
o seven and nineteen o nine. We do know that
she lived in Atlanta, but we don't know for sure
if she was native to the city. We can't even
be sure what years she died in or if she
died in prison, but we know or certain that Roberta
(01:37):
was accused of killing several people, all of whom were
her relatives, so the killings likely started as early as
ninety eight. No one suspected anything of Roberta until Reverend
William Elder, who was the Baptist minister Andrewberta's husband, died
after eating a snack of bananas and cheese in his
(01:58):
lunch in nineteen fifty two. I have so many questions
about that combination of food, and some things made complete sense.
I was like, oh, banana bread with cream cheese on
it completely makes sense. And then there was some sort
of deep fried stuffed banana with mascapona cheese in it,
(02:21):
and I was like, well, that makes sense too. But
then there was like banana and Swiss, which I was like,
that sounds like my breath would never recover from that. Ever. See,
there's part of me that wants to try these things.
Of course, of course, because maybe we're missing out on
a culinary delight. It's possible. I have links. I'll share them.
(02:43):
Great to go back to William and Roberta. As far
as we can tell, they did not have a bad marriage.
They were raising their children and what we would now
kind of consider a Brady Bunch style, so it was
a blended home. They each brought children into the marriage
and they were only married for a little more than
two years when William died. And just about one year
(03:04):
into their marriage, tragedies struck when Williams daughter's Annie Pearl
and Fannie May this was roberta stepdaughters, became unexpectedly ill
and they both died just a few months apart. When
William also became unexpectedly ill, Roberta cared for her sick husband,
really not something that you would consider out of ordinary
(03:24):
for a spouse to do. She called on the family
doctor who attended to William and gave him medication, and
then the doctor was called back to the house when
William's condition worsened, but he ended up tending to his
patient on what would become his deathbed. So there was nothing,
at least superficially that was suspicious about William's death, that is,
(03:47):
until the attending position had a Eureka moment he noticed
sores and ruddy spots on William's body, which you know,
a little bit strange. The cause the death he had
suspected was pneumonia, but with these thoughts, it was probably
not what he originally believed it to be. So how
(04:10):
could anyone confuse the symptoms of arsenic poisoning with something
like pneumonia, you might be wondering, Well, this actually does
make some sense once you get to know a little
bit more about arsenic. We've talked throughout this show about
some of the strange side effects. But one of the
reasons that arsenic has been such a popular method of
(04:31):
poisoning throughout the centuries is that it really is a
great mimic. So not only can arsenic be delivered in
such a way that it's pretty much impossible to place
a perpetrator at the crime scene, it's classic symptoms can
range from everything like abdominal pain and vomiting to really
highly unpleasant burning sensation throughout the body, which doesn't to
(04:55):
me sound like pneumonia. I've had pneumonia, I didn't have that, Yeah,
And depend ending how much you ingest and over how
long a period of time, it can also cause organ damage,
which is why it's easily overlooked and instead diagnosed as
kidney failure or heart failure, or a long infection like
bronchitis or pneumonia. Exposure to arsenic can affect almost all
(05:19):
systems of your body, and the longer you're exposed to it,
the worst things can become for you. Signs of long
term exposure can also sometimes show up on your skin,
like we heard from Williams symptoms, and that can look
like everything from just a you know, a flushing or
a blushing, to something like a hyperpigmentation, which means your
(05:41):
skin darkens. Sometimes you might get something called our cynical
hyper keratosis, which is a condition for your skin on
the palms and your souls begin to thicken. And because
of the condition of William's skin and the concern about
(06:01):
the number of recent deaths in the elder home, remember
Annie Pearl and Fannie May had died just about a
year prior, the family doctor notified the coroner and he
recommended a post mortem examination be performed on William's body,
and I thought this is really interesting of him. He
also went on to describe Roberta when he was in
(06:21):
the house. So he said that Roberta was a careful
talking quote unquote and also quote unquote emotionless woman. When
he was there, he suspected arsenic poisoning. He suspected she
was guilty of doing it, and he suggested that an
investigation into Roberta be opened. Atlanta police eventually claimed that
(06:45):
between nineteen thirty eight and nineteen fifty two, numerous individuals
died under suspicious circumstances while they lived in Roberta's household.
It fell to Detective J. E. Helms to compile a
list of individuals who had died while living with Roberta,
including family in Watkinsville, Georgia, where her brother lived, and
(07:05):
in her former homes in Atlanta's northeast and northwest neighborhoods.
So we're going to take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor. But when we come back, we're
going to talk about the very very very long list
of Roberta's victims. Very very very you drove me out
(07:36):
of Mama, Welcome back to Criminalia. Now we're gonna start
talking about how although many of Roberta's relatives died allegedly
of pneumonia, they probably actually did not in fact I
of that. So, during their investigation, Roberta was accused of
poisoning more than a dozen relatives, as we mentioned earlier,
(07:58):
and that included every went from husbands, which were three
which we're county common law husbands, which was common at
the time, uh, four of her children, three stepchildren, as
well as her mother, a grandchild, a cousin, and maybe
maybe we're not on this one, the former wife of
(08:19):
her recently deceased husband, William. So pull up a seat,
because the list of suspected victims compiled by Detective Helms is,
as Maria suggested before the break, a lengthy one. I
believe it's that very, very very Yes, in case you
weren't clear, Yeah, this is gonna take a minute. So
(08:42):
it's believed Roberta's first victim was John Woodard, who was
thirty six years old when he died in December of
and John is believed to have been Roberta's common law
husband James Thurmond, whose name may have been James, but
it also may have been Willie. Records are unclear. Was
roberta son from either her first or second marriage. He
(09:03):
died in June of nineteen thirty nine, when he was
just thirteen years old. His cause of death was recorded
as malnutrition and respiratory trouble. Willie May and Lily Lou
Thurmond were two of Roberta's daughters from either her first
or her second marriage, not exactly sure. Willie May died
when she was just two weeks old. Lily Lou, whose
(09:23):
name may have actually been Mizzy May, it's a little unclear,
was just one week old when she died. Jimmy Lee
Crane Hunter, Roberta's grandson, was just two years old when
he died in December of nineteen forty one. And then
there was Gloria Evans, who was Roberta's cousin, and she
was three years old when she died from suspected food poisoning,
and that happened the day after Christmas in nineteen James
(09:45):
Garfield Crane was another of her suspected victims, also from
food poisoning. Records about who James exactly was, though, are
a bit of a maze. Some list James as having
died in December of nineteen forty three, the age of one.
You could read a different set of historical accounts, however,
and James Garfield Crane is listed as one of Roberta's
(10:07):
husbands who was forty five when he died in nineteen
forty seven. It could also be that these were in
fact two different individuals, a father and son, so James
Senior and James Jr. That seems entirely plausible, but because
the two descriptions have been confused and interchanged in various
accounts over the years, we just don't really know exactly
(10:28):
what the reality was there. We just know that someone died.
Roberta's mother, Kelly sometimes Kelly is spelled c O L
L I E like Collie, died in nineteen Nora Scott
Harris is the only person on this list who was
actually a close family friend instead of a relative, and
Nora was ninety three when she died in December of
(10:48):
nineteen fifty one, and Roberta was the sole beneficiary of
her insurance plan. That had also been the case with
each of her relatives who had died, And that takes
us to Fannie May and Annie Pearl Elder, who were
William's children from a previous marriage. Both died in the
early nineteen fifties, likely nineteen fifty or and or ninety one.
(11:10):
It's a little unclear, but they died close together, and
the cause their death, both girls was reported to be
complications of pneumonia. Fannie May was fifteen and Annie Pearl
was nine. And then, of course there is the Reverend
William Elder, Roberta's third husband, who died in August of
nineteen fifty two. So the cause of death for almost
(11:36):
everyone on this list had been recorded as pneumonia, duree mia,
which is a form of kidney disease, or just generic
food poisoning. In response to the detective's list, the Fulton
County coroner, who at the time was a man named
Ed Almond, stated, and we are quoting him, this is
(11:56):
an unheard of thing. Why this reads like something out
of storybook, Keppa, It was not a story book. The coroner,
who examined the dasth certificates of each victim, concluded that
all of the listed causes of death in each case,
including pneumonia and urmia, could actually be presentations of arsenic poisoning,
(12:19):
probably long term, and he was right on the money.
Postmortem tests on the Reverence body alone found enough arsenic
to kill three men, and when Annie Pearl and Fannie
Maze bodies were exhumed and examined, arsenic was found in
both their skin and their hair. So, with his testing complete,
(12:39):
the medical examiner now believed Roberta was poisoning her victims
by seasoning their food with arsenic powder. Now, if any
of you are Agatha Christie detective novel fans, you might
think that she'd probably noticed that your food had been
tainted because she writes that arsenic has a sweet flavor.
But that, like her novel, is pure fiction. What we
(13:03):
know from experts today is that arsenic actually has no
taste at all, and that's what makes it so perfect
for anyone or a homemaker like Roberta to sprinkle it
into the foods and drinks that she serves to her family.
Enough about it, I guess that, Christie Maria, we're getting
back to reality and the story of Roberta's history. And
(13:23):
as suspicions about Roberta continued to grow, other lucky to
be alive family members who had previously fallen ill with
what they believed to be food poisoning flu or pneumonia
after spending time in Roberta's home began to come forward
to question her innocence. And they probably think they're lucky
stars a little bit too. Yeah, No, kidding right. So
(13:45):
during the investigation against her, insurance records revealed that Roberta
had collected insurance benefits ranging from fifty dollars all the
way up to three thousand dollars during this period of time.
Most of the payouts were between fifty dollars to five
dollars be fifty dollars to three dars depending on which
source you read on at least a dozen relatives, and
(14:05):
it dated all the way back to nineteen thirty eight.
Most of the deaths occurred within a year or just
slightly over a year after the insurance plan on the
victim was opened, and Roberta, you can see what's coming here,
was always the soul beneficiary on each plan. On September
ninety two, roberto was arrested as a suspect in the
(14:28):
death of her husband, William Elder. When we come back,
we're going to talk about the suspicious powder Roberta was
seen taking from her brother's farm. Welcome back to Criminalia.
We are talking about how Roberta Elder may have concealed
(14:51):
poisoning her relatives with arsenic Since so, one of the
most interesting pieces of Roberta's case is that Atlanta detectives
were never able to figure out where she acquired the
arsenic she was accused of using in these poisonings. Witnesses
came forward offering stories that day saw her with a
(15:13):
new stash of powder every time she visited her brother's
farm near Watkinsville, which is roughly seventy miles outside of Atlanta.
Her surviving children agreed do they believed she brought powder
back from that farm. Roberta, defending herself as one naturally would,
insisted that the powder she kept on hand was just
used to and we quote her kill plant insects, and
(15:36):
that sounds pretty straightforward actually, like we've all had to
deal with things like aphids in our garden, right, died
tenacious earth works perfectly right, And maybe she was using
it for this purpose because until the nineteen fifties, most
pesticides on the market were arsenic base. That was like
the dominant ingredients and most in most of those and
(15:56):
rodents as well, as we've talked about many times before,
so most housewives had it on hand. Roberta's alibi was
that it was only to kill ants, uh, and that
probably wouldn't have been suspicious at all. Had her relatives
not also been dying at an alarming rate. But even
so this was all circumstantial evidence. There were no eyewitnesses.
(16:19):
But there's also this interesting matter of Roberta and her
bottle of milk of magnesia. This is perhaps one of
the most strange and important pieces of the poisoning puzzle
if you don't know what it is. Milk of magnesia
was and actually still is a really commonly used over
the counter product to treat heartburn and constipation. It wouldn't
(16:42):
have been unusual to have a bottle or two in
a medazine cabinet in homes across the US in the
nineteen forties and fifties or today, right, and Roberta, who
cared for her sick husband's children and other relatives, was
known to dose out milk of magnesia to help with
her loved ones gastro intestinal issues. She insisted that she
did not place any of the we quote pink stuff
(17:05):
she used to kill insects into her bottle of milk
of magnesia, and she insisted that she definitely did not
give any such thing to her husband William. But the detectives,
no matter how hard they tried, could not produce even
a single witness who actually ever saw Roberta mix arsenic
powder or pink powder, or any powder for that matter,
(17:28):
into milk of magnesia or frankly, into anything else. Yet
still without any direct evidence, everything we've talked about has
been circumstantial, the case still moved forward. The state tried
Roberta on one of three murder indictments. Yes, there were
about a dozen potential victims that we read earlier, but
(17:50):
the three that they went after her for were her
husband William and her two stepdaughters, Fannie May and Annie Pearl.
Throughout the instigation and the trial, Roberta maintained her innocence.
She never once let down her guard or in any
way faltered. During the schial, one witness testified Roberta had
(18:12):
taken out a five insurance policy on her husband William
shortly before the time of his death, and if we pique,
this is kind of vicariously peeking into her financial affairs.
Through this witness, Roberta was also apparently short on her accounts.
Roberta's trial went on for about two years, so from
(18:34):
nineteen fifty two to nineteen fifty four, and during that
time the local newspaper described her as quote cool as
a cucumber. Throughout the proceedings before, during, and after, Roberta
never confessed to any of the accusations against her. No
one will ever describe me as cool as if you
come me either by a grand jury returned a verdict
(19:05):
against her, and you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that
she used sound guilty. And what's interesting to keep in
mind is this was a verdict that was based on,
as we said earlier, circumstantial evidence alone. Not only were
there new witnesses, there wasn't even a clue of Howard
Berta got her quote unquote pink powder, as she called it.
(19:29):
And speaking of that pink powder, as far as we
can tell from the court records and media reports, no
expert was ever called upon to test that powder to
figure out if it was or was not arsenic, or
was any other type of poison. Pink powder is even
often used in cosmetics as a way to create a
natural look. So this thing that everyone is calling pink powder,
(19:50):
we don't really know what it was. It could have
just been like a little a little you know, like
loose powder makeup. We have no idea whatever she wanted
to make the ants look beautiful. Well, who does And
we like to think that they would have done some testing,
but we cannot show that as fact because there's no
evidence that that happened. I mean, I'm amazed that they
wouldn't have, but there is no evidence that they tested
(20:12):
it at all. Um So, Roberta was then convicted of
murdering her husband, William and at the age of forty
five give her take a year, because you know, we've
talked about that fuzzy record keeping. She was sentenced to
life in prison. And this is where the facts about
Roberta Elder, her trial and her sentencing pretty much dry up.
(20:36):
But that's not really where her impact dries up. Let's
talk about Roberta, who was a black woman in Georgia
in the nineteen forties, fared in the local press. If
you've been listening to this season, you know that we
sometimes talk about the media and how it can impact
a trial, or at least how it's coverage can get
a city all riled up. And it doesn't even matter
(20:58):
what country we've talked about Italy, it's the United States.
People take sides, people get really interested in the story,
and often a story of a female accused will saturate
media reports and reporters follow the story as it infolds,
detail by detail. The women on trial often becomes sensationalized,
and it turns them into a bit of a celebrity.
(21:21):
Often it's not because of anything more than the fact
that they were women, the fairer sex, which I always
put in quotes because I actually hate that term. Women
are supposed to care for the home, not kill the
people in It is what the media gets. But perhaps surprisingly,
(21:41):
Roberta's killing spree did not actually draw much attention from
the mainstream press at all, which at this time in
the United States meant the mainstream white newspapers across the nation.
That's a really good point. So let's look at the
time and place Roberta lived. In The nineteen thirties en
forties were still the time when terror mentionings claimed the
(22:04):
lives that black American men, women, and children across the country,
not just in Georgia. Residential segregation was increasing, and most
white newspapers didn't have much of an interest in following
a story of a poor black woman who murdered other
black people. But it was the woman, not her crimes
(22:25):
that they ignored. So let's talk about a woman for
a moment named Nanny Doss. Nanny Dosh was a white
woman who, at almost the very same time as Roberta,
was also busy poisoning a dozen of her own relatives.
Nanny was responsible for as many as eleven poisoning deaths
and perhaps more during the same time span that Roberta
(22:48):
was going about her killings. Like Roberta, Nanny was a
poisoner who killed her husband's She killed four of her
five husbands and possibly another dozen or so relatives. Very
similar to Roberta, and also like Roberta, she killed with
arsenic and she was motivated to collect insurance money. But
what Nanny also had was media coverage, particularly white media coverage.
(23:13):
They referred to her with some very cute names. She
was called the giggling Granny, by the way, Do you
know why they called her that? Okay, So I looked
it up and it took me a little bit to
find it. But every time they would ask her about
someone that she had murdered, she would giggle. She wouldn't reply,
she would just laugh. Oh, Nanny, that's not good for you. Yeah,
(23:37):
that's you haven't had media training. So in addition to
the Giggling Granny. She was also called the Lonely Hearts Killer,
the Black Widow, and Lady blue Beard. She was also
called a self made widow in the white press. Today,
more than seventy years after Na's crimes, you can still
(23:57):
find out a ton of information about her if you
go on YouTube. Her name also appears in the top
ten most notable female serial killers. Contrast the ready availability
of information on Nanny Doss with the fact that we
couldn't find reliable information about Roberta's date of birth or
(24:17):
her date or manner of death, and if you think
back to the detective's list, we couldn't reliably identify even
the names of all of her possible victims. Some experts
argue that the race and gender of a killer and
a victim affects not only whether that killer or victim
receives any attention, but also how much attention the accused
(24:40):
receives from the press and the public. So unbalanced reporting
by the news media at this time can and does
send a message that white killers and white victims, particularly
if they are white females, hold more currency and are
given more consideration than those who are she minorities. But
(25:02):
the black press, especially the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender,
did report on both Roberta's trial and on her victims.
They were not necessarily kind, after all, she was on
trial for murder, but they did follow her story, and
it was in the black press that she got the
nickname Mrs blue Beard. Say, you may have heard that
(25:22):
nickname before blue Beard in regard to killers, and there's
actually a kind of long standing story behind it. But
don't confuse blue Beard with black Beard, who was a pirate.
Blue beards story started as a French folk tale, first
published as a mother ago as about the sixteen hundreds
(25:42):
or so, and it goes at a very very very
high level, like this, a wealthy man Mary's and then
kills his wife, and then does it again and again
and again. You can repeat that seven or seventy seven times,
depending on the telling of the story, and wild a
moral of this story is debatable depending on the criticism
(26:03):
you read. The term blue Beard has ever since been
used in reference to men who kill their wives, and
if you just add a missus or a lady in
front of it, it becomes a derogatory term referring to
a woman who has killed her own husband or husband's
and perhaps other family members. I also wonder if I
(26:25):
mean there's there's actually a lot. We've talked a lot
about black widows so far this season, but we haven't
really talked a lot about blue beards, and I wonder
if it was just kind of like, let's shake it
up a little bit. But we'll never know. Yeah, it
is interesting because accused women who are known to kill
and collect insurance payouts with the death of their spouses
are very, very frequently known as black widows. So Roberta,
(26:48):
who allegedly killed at least three of her husbands for
financial gain, certainly would fall into that category. But whether
you want to call her a MSS blue beard or
a black widow. Because of the number of deaths she
was linked to by police, the black press decided to
simplify things and just started referring to Roberta as a
serial killer, which is apparently after her trial. Truth. Right, So,
(27:13):
if you take a look at what the FBI profile
of a serial killer in the United States today looks like,
it's actually kind of fascinating, but it has nothing to
do with Roberta. In fact, it's kind of the opposite
of Roberta. It's almost always a white male who kills
people that he does not know, not family members, not
(27:34):
close friends, maybe somebody he's seen but doesn't know. But Roberta,
who is believed to have killed more than a dozen
relatives in about the same number of years, was black
and female, And among all known serial killers in the
United States, only about eight percent of them are women.
So she's like a tiny, tiny percentage of a tiny,
(27:57):
tiny person, exactly exactly. It's believed that because women are
more methodical and precise than male serial killers, they often
are able to continue their killing spreeze for an average
of eight years before they're caught. Kind of scary, yeah. Roberta,
if you'll recall from earlier in the episode, killed her
victims between ninety eight, possibly even earlier, all the way
(28:20):
to nineteen fifty two. Male serial killers, on the other hand,
average a streak of just about half that, roughly four
years before being caught. And also, women, interestingly, are more
likely to kill people they know. More. On experts on
serial killers, so in particular female serial killers, they report
that these are women who often use methods that are
(28:41):
considered a more low profiles and those that men favor.
So what that would look like is this. Women's serial
killers are more likely to murder with say, a slow
acting arsenical poison, rather than maybe carrying out a violent
act like shooting their victim with a gun. Female serial
(29:04):
killers are also often reportedly involved in activities such as
theft or fraud before they begin murdering. We don't know
about Roberta's life before she was accused, again in part
because she was black. There just aren't a lot of
records about her. There's just nothing. If she happened to
be a thief, or if she led a fairly straight
laced life, that's all lost to history. But what we
(29:26):
do know is that if she did it, she, like
other female serial killers, does appear to have done it
for the profit. Indeed, so Holly, it's time for your poison,
and I have to suggest that, whatever it is, let's
not serve it with bananas and cheese. I did toy
(29:47):
with the idea briefly. Well. I was thinking about some
sort of like banana liqueur dairy thing. Yes, but I
decided that just felt a little too grizzly for me. Today,
I'm not in that mood. I went so basic with
this story that just didn't want me to. I didn't
want to make it exactly exactly, so I went super
(30:08):
duper basic, a little on the nose, but as someone
who lives in Atlanta and loves this city desperately, I
just thought it would be a nice way to nod
to the city more than the actual story of Roberta.
So I made a beautiful iced tea, as you know,
we love our sweet iced tea in the South, and
then uh, and then I just poured an ounce and
(30:30):
a half of peach snaps into it, and it was delightful.
I don't know who wouldn't want to sit on their
portion drink that, But as I was drinking it, it is,
especially if you start with sweet tea, it becomes very
sweet and can be a little syrupy and heavy since
the schnaps is a little bit more in that space.
(30:52):
So it occurred to me that for someone that doesn't
like that level of heaviness, you could also sub in
like a flavored a peach infused vodka and it would
be delightful. Now that's where I'm going. There, you go,
then we'll make different drinks when you come to business.
I know the weather everywhere has been bananas this year.
We're still having days that are warm enough in Atlanta
that we can enjoy a cold iced tea. So that's
(31:15):
what I'm going with this week. That sounds delicious. That
sounds delicious. Yes, you can throw a picture together and
it's perfect for entertaining. Yes, thank you once again for
joining us for our ongoing discussion of the Lady Poisoners
this season. If you would like to subscribe to the show,
that sounds absolutely delightful to us, We promise not to
(31:36):
serve you bananas and cheese that are tainting. You can
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or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Criminalia is
a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(31:58):
you listen to your favorite nose
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where this season we're exploring the lives and motivations of
some of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm
Riachru Marquis and I'm Holly Fry And in today's episode,
(00:22):
we're going to look at the life of Roberta Elder,
a woman from Georgia who was accused of poisoning more
than a dozen people over the course of about fourteen years,
mainly so she could profit from being the sold beneficiary
of each victim's insurance payout. What little dang time Yeah,
(00:49):
time in nineties. The second Roberta is an interesting woman
to talk about. We don't actually know very much at
all about her life was like before she was accused
of poisoning people with everyone's favorite poison, arsenic. I know
it's mine, it goes in everything. We don't actually even
(01:13):
know what year she was born, although based on reports
from her trial, she was probably born between about nineteen
o seven and nineteen o nine. We do know that
she lived in Atlanta, but we don't know for sure
if she was native to the city. We can't even
be sure what years she died in or if she
died in prison, but we know or certain that Roberta
(01:37):
was accused of killing several people, all of whom were
her relatives, so the killings likely started as early as
ninety eight. No one suspected anything of Roberta until Reverend
William Elder, who was the Baptist minister Andrewberta's husband, died
after eating a snack of bananas and cheese in his
(01:58):
lunch in nineteen fifty two. I have so many questions
about that combination of food, and some things made complete sense.
I was like, oh, banana bread with cream cheese on
it completely makes sense. And then there was some sort
of deep fried stuffed banana with mascapona cheese in it,
(02:21):
and I was like, well, that makes sense too. But
then there was like banana and Swiss, which I was like,
that sounds like my breath would never recover from that. Ever. See,
there's part of me that wants to try these things.
Of course, of course, because maybe we're missing out on
a culinary delight. It's possible. I have links. I'll share them.
(02:43):
Great to go back to William and Roberta. As far
as we can tell, they did not have a bad marriage.
They were raising their children and what we would now
kind of consider a Brady Bunch style, so it was
a blended home. They each brought children into the marriage
and they were only married for a little more than
two years when William died. And just about one year
(03:04):
into their marriage, tragedies struck when Williams daughter's Annie Pearl
and Fannie May this was roberta stepdaughters, became unexpectedly ill
and they both died just a few months apart. When
William also became unexpectedly ill, Roberta cared for her sick husband,
really not something that you would consider out of ordinary
(03:24):
for a spouse to do. She called on the family
doctor who attended to William and gave him medication, and
then the doctor was called back to the house when
William's condition worsened, but he ended up tending to his
patient on what would become his deathbed. So there was nothing,
at least superficially that was suspicious about William's death, that is,
(03:47):
until the attending position had a Eureka moment he noticed
sores and ruddy spots on William's body, which you know,
a little bit strange. The cause the death he had
suspected was pneumonia, but with these thoughts, it was probably
not what he originally believed it to be. So how
(04:10):
could anyone confuse the symptoms of arsenic poisoning with something
like pneumonia, you might be wondering, Well, this actually does
make some sense once you get to know a little
bit more about arsenic. We've talked throughout this show about
some of the strange side effects. But one of the
reasons that arsenic has been such a popular method of
(04:31):
poisoning throughout the centuries is that it really is a
great mimic. So not only can arsenic be delivered in
such a way that it's pretty much impossible to place
a perpetrator at the crime scene, it's classic symptoms can
range from everything like abdominal pain and vomiting to really
highly unpleasant burning sensation throughout the body, which doesn't to
(04:55):
me sound like pneumonia. I've had pneumonia, I didn't have that, Yeah,
And depend ending how much you ingest and over how
long a period of time, it can also cause organ damage,
which is why it's easily overlooked and instead diagnosed as
kidney failure or heart failure, or a long infection like
bronchitis or pneumonia. Exposure to arsenic can affect almost all
(05:19):
systems of your body, and the longer you're exposed to it,
the worst things can become for you. Signs of long
term exposure can also sometimes show up on your skin,
like we heard from Williams symptoms, and that can look
like everything from just a you know, a flushing or
a blushing, to something like a hyperpigmentation, which means your
(05:41):
skin darkens. Sometimes you might get something called our cynical
hyper keratosis, which is a condition for your skin on
the palms and your souls begin to thicken. And because
of the condition of William's skin and the concern about
(06:01):
the number of recent deaths in the elder home, remember
Annie Pearl and Fannie May had died just about a
year prior, the family doctor notified the coroner and he
recommended a post mortem examination be performed on William's body,
and I thought this is really interesting of him. He
also went on to describe Roberta when he was in
(06:21):
the house. So he said that Roberta was a careful
talking quote unquote and also quote unquote emotionless woman. When
he was there, he suspected arsenic poisoning. He suspected she
was guilty of doing it, and he suggested that an
investigation into Roberta be opened. Atlanta police eventually claimed that
(06:45):
between nineteen thirty eight and nineteen fifty two, numerous individuals
died under suspicious circumstances while they lived in Roberta's household.
It fell to Detective J. E. Helms to compile a
list of individuals who had died while living with Roberta,
including family in Watkinsville, Georgia, where her brother lived, and
(07:05):
in her former homes in Atlanta's northeast and northwest neighborhoods.
So we're going to take a quick break for a
word from our sponsor. But when we come back, we're
going to talk about the very very very long list
of Roberta's victims. Very very very you drove me out
(07:36):
of Mama, Welcome back to Criminalia. Now we're gonna start
talking about how although many of Roberta's relatives died allegedly
of pneumonia, they probably actually did not in fact I
of that. So, during their investigation, Roberta was accused of
poisoning more than a dozen relatives, as we mentioned earlier,
(07:58):
and that included every went from husbands, which were three
which we're county common law husbands, which was common at
the time, uh, four of her children, three stepchildren, as
well as her mother, a grandchild, a cousin, and maybe
maybe we're not on this one, the former wife of
(08:19):
her recently deceased husband, William. So pull up a seat,
because the list of suspected victims compiled by Detective Helms is,
as Maria suggested before the break, a lengthy one. I
believe it's that very, very very Yes, in case you
weren't clear, Yeah, this is gonna take a minute. So
(08:42):
it's believed Roberta's first victim was John Woodard, who was
thirty six years old when he died in December of
and John is believed to have been Roberta's common law
husband James Thurmond, whose name may have been James, but
it also may have been Willie. Records are unclear. Was
roberta son from either her first or second marriage. He
(09:03):
died in June of nineteen thirty nine, when he was
just thirteen years old. His cause of death was recorded
as malnutrition and respiratory trouble. Willie May and Lily Lou
Thurmond were two of Roberta's daughters from either her first
or her second marriage, not exactly sure. Willie May died
when she was just two weeks old. Lily Lou, whose
(09:23):
name may have actually been Mizzy May, it's a little unclear,
was just one week old when she died. Jimmy Lee
Crane Hunter, Roberta's grandson, was just two years old when
he died in December of nineteen forty one. And then
there was Gloria Evans, who was Roberta's cousin, and she
was three years old when she died from suspected food poisoning,
and that happened the day after Christmas in nineteen James
(09:45):
Garfield Crane was another of her suspected victims, also from
food poisoning. Records about who James exactly was, though, are
a bit of a maze. Some list James as having
died in December of nineteen forty three, the age of one.
You could read a different set of historical accounts, however,
and James Garfield Crane is listed as one of Roberta's
(10:07):
husbands who was forty five when he died in nineteen
forty seven. It could also be that these were in
fact two different individuals, a father and son, so James
Senior and James Jr. That seems entirely plausible, but because
the two descriptions have been confused and interchanged in various
accounts over the years, we just don't really know exactly
(10:28):
what the reality was there. We just know that someone died.
Roberta's mother, Kelly sometimes Kelly is spelled c O L
L I E like Collie, died in nineteen Nora Scott
Harris is the only person on this list who was
actually a close family friend instead of a relative, and
Nora was ninety three when she died in December of
(10:48):
nineteen fifty one, and Roberta was the sole beneficiary of
her insurance plan. That had also been the case with
each of her relatives who had died, And that takes
us to Fannie May and Annie Pearl Elder, who were
William's children from a previous marriage. Both died in the
early nineteen fifties, likely nineteen fifty or and or ninety one.
(11:10):
It's a little unclear, but they died close together, and
the cause their death, both girls was reported to be
complications of pneumonia. Fannie May was fifteen and Annie Pearl
was nine. And then, of course there is the Reverend
William Elder, Roberta's third husband, who died in August of
nineteen fifty two. So the cause of death for almost
(11:36):
everyone on this list had been recorded as pneumonia, duree mia,
which is a form of kidney disease, or just generic
food poisoning. In response to the detective's list, the Fulton
County coroner, who at the time was a man named
Ed Almond, stated, and we are quoting him, this is
(11:56):
an unheard of thing. Why this reads like something out
of storybook, Keppa, It was not a story book. The coroner,
who examined the dasth certificates of each victim, concluded that
all of the listed causes of death in each case,
including pneumonia and urmia, could actually be presentations of arsenic poisoning,
(12:19):
probably long term, and he was right on the money.
Postmortem tests on the Reverence body alone found enough arsenic
to kill three men, and when Annie Pearl and Fannie
Maze bodies were exhumed and examined, arsenic was found in
both their skin and their hair. So, with his testing complete,
(12:39):
the medical examiner now believed Roberta was poisoning her victims
by seasoning their food with arsenic powder. Now, if any
of you are Agatha Christie detective novel fans, you might
think that she'd probably noticed that your food had been
tainted because she writes that arsenic has a sweet flavor.
But that, like her novel, is pure fiction. What we
(13:03):
know from experts today is that arsenic actually has no
taste at all, and that's what makes it so perfect
for anyone or a homemaker like Roberta to sprinkle it
into the foods and drinks that she serves to her family.
Enough about it, I guess that, Christie Maria, we're getting
back to reality and the story of Roberta's history. And
(13:23):
as suspicions about Roberta continued to grow, other lucky to
be alive family members who had previously fallen ill with
what they believed to be food poisoning flu or pneumonia
after spending time in Roberta's home began to come forward
to question her innocence. And they probably think they're lucky
stars a little bit too. Yeah, No, kidding right. So
(13:45):
during the investigation against her, insurance records revealed that Roberta
had collected insurance benefits ranging from fifty dollars all the
way up to three thousand dollars during this period of time.
Most of the payouts were between fifty dollars to five
dollars be fifty dollars to three dars depending on which
source you read on at least a dozen relatives, and
(14:05):
it dated all the way back to nineteen thirty eight.
Most of the deaths occurred within a year or just
slightly over a year after the insurance plan on the
victim was opened, and Roberta, you can see what's coming here,
was always the soul beneficiary on each plan. On September
ninety two, roberto was arrested as a suspect in the
(14:28):
death of her husband, William Elder. When we come back,
we're going to talk about the suspicious powder Roberta was
seen taking from her brother's farm. Welcome back to Criminalia.
We are talking about how Roberta Elder may have concealed
(14:51):
poisoning her relatives with arsenic Since so, one of the
most interesting pieces of Roberta's case is that Atlanta detectives
were never able to figure out where she acquired the
arsenic she was accused of using in these poisonings. Witnesses
came forward offering stories that day saw her with a
(15:13):
new stash of powder every time she visited her brother's
farm near Watkinsville, which is roughly seventy miles outside of Atlanta.
Her surviving children agreed do they believed she brought powder
back from that farm. Roberta, defending herself as one naturally would,
insisted that the powder she kept on hand was just
used to and we quote her kill plant insects, and
(15:36):
that sounds pretty straightforward actually, like we've all had to
deal with things like aphids in our garden, right, died
tenacious earth works perfectly right, And maybe she was using
it for this purpose because until the nineteen fifties, most
pesticides on the market were arsenic base. That was like
the dominant ingredients and most in most of those and
(15:56):
rodents as well, as we've talked about many times before,
so most housewives had it on hand. Roberta's alibi was
that it was only to kill ants, uh, and that
probably wouldn't have been suspicious at all. Had her relatives
not also been dying at an alarming rate. But even
so this was all circumstantial evidence. There were no eyewitnesses.
(16:19):
But there's also this interesting matter of Roberta and her
bottle of milk of magnesia. This is perhaps one of
the most strange and important pieces of the poisoning puzzle
if you don't know what it is. Milk of magnesia
was and actually still is a really commonly used over
the counter product to treat heartburn and constipation. It wouldn't
(16:42):
have been unusual to have a bottle or two in
a medazine cabinet in homes across the US in the
nineteen forties and fifties or today, right, and Roberta, who
cared for her sick husband's children and other relatives, was
known to dose out milk of magnesia to help with
her loved ones gastro intestinal issues. She insisted that she
did not place any of the we quote pink stuff
(17:05):
she used to kill insects into her bottle of milk
of magnesia, and she insisted that she definitely did not
give any such thing to her husband William. But the detectives,
no matter how hard they tried, could not produce even
a single witness who actually ever saw Roberta mix arsenic
powder or pink powder, or any powder for that matter,
(17:28):
into milk of magnesia or frankly, into anything else. Yet
still without any direct evidence, everything we've talked about has
been circumstantial, the case still moved forward. The state tried
Roberta on one of three murder indictments. Yes, there were
about a dozen potential victims that we read earlier, but
(17:50):
the three that they went after her for were her
husband William and her two stepdaughters, Fannie May and Annie Pearl.
Throughout the instigation and the trial, Roberta maintained her innocence.
She never once let down her guard or in any
way faltered. During the schial, one witness testified Roberta had
(18:12):
taken out a five insurance policy on her husband William
shortly before the time of his death, and if we pique,
this is kind of vicariously peeking into her financial affairs.
Through this witness, Roberta was also apparently short on her accounts.
Roberta's trial went on for about two years, so from
(18:34):
nineteen fifty two to nineteen fifty four, and during that
time the local newspaper described her as quote cool as
a cucumber. Throughout the proceedings before, during, and after, Roberta
never confessed to any of the accusations against her. No
one will ever describe me as cool as if you
come me either by a grand jury returned a verdict
(19:05):
against her, and you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that
she used sound guilty. And what's interesting to keep in
mind is this was a verdict that was based on,
as we said earlier, circumstantial evidence alone. Not only were
there new witnesses, there wasn't even a clue of Howard
Berta got her quote unquote pink powder, as she called it.
(19:29):
And speaking of that pink powder, as far as we
can tell from the court records and media reports, no
expert was ever called upon to test that powder to
figure out if it was or was not arsenic, or
was any other type of poison. Pink powder is even
often used in cosmetics as a way to create a
natural look. So this thing that everyone is calling pink powder,
(19:50):
we don't really know what it was. It could have
just been like a little a little you know, like
loose powder makeup. We have no idea whatever she wanted
to make the ants look beautiful. Well, who does And
we like to think that they would have done some testing,
but we cannot show that as fact because there's no
evidence that that happened. I mean, I'm amazed that they
wouldn't have, but there is no evidence that they tested
(20:12):
it at all. Um So, Roberta was then convicted of
murdering her husband, William and at the age of forty
five give her take a year, because you know, we've
talked about that fuzzy record keeping. She was sentenced to
life in prison. And this is where the facts about
Roberta Elder, her trial and her sentencing pretty much dry up.
(20:36):
But that's not really where her impact dries up. Let's
talk about Roberta, who was a black woman in Georgia
in the nineteen forties, fared in the local press. If
you've been listening to this season, you know that we
sometimes talk about the media and how it can impact
a trial, or at least how it's coverage can get
a city all riled up. And it doesn't even matter
(20:58):
what country we've talked about Italy, it's the United States.
People take sides, people get really interested in the story,
and often a story of a female accused will saturate
media reports and reporters follow the story as it infolds,
detail by detail. The women on trial often becomes sensationalized,
and it turns them into a bit of a celebrity.
(21:21):
Often it's not because of anything more than the fact
that they were women, the fairer sex, which I always
put in quotes because I actually hate that term. Women
are supposed to care for the home, not kill the
people in It is what the media gets. But perhaps surprisingly,
(21:41):
Roberta's killing spree did not actually draw much attention from
the mainstream press at all, which at this time in
the United States meant the mainstream white newspapers across the nation.
That's a really good point. So let's look at the
time and place Roberta lived. In The nineteen thirties en
forties were still the time when terror mentionings claimed the
(22:04):
lives that black American men, women, and children across the country,
not just in Georgia. Residential segregation was increasing, and most
white newspapers didn't have much of an interest in following
a story of a poor black woman who murdered other
black people. But it was the woman, not her crimes
(22:25):
that they ignored. So let's talk about a woman for
a moment named Nanny Doss. Nanny Dosh was a white
woman who, at almost the very same time as Roberta,
was also busy poisoning a dozen of her own relatives.
Nanny was responsible for as many as eleven poisoning deaths
and perhaps more during the same time span that Roberta
(22:48):
was going about her killings. Like Roberta, Nanny was a
poisoner who killed her husband's She killed four of her
five husbands and possibly another dozen or so relatives. Very
similar to Roberta, and also like Roberta, she killed with
arsenic and she was motivated to collect insurance money. But
what Nanny also had was media coverage, particularly white media coverage.
(23:13):
They referred to her with some very cute names. She
was called the giggling Granny, by the way, Do you
know why they called her that? Okay, So I looked
it up and it took me a little bit to
find it. But every time they would ask her about
someone that she had murdered, she would giggle. She wouldn't reply,
she would just laugh. Oh, Nanny, that's not good for you. Yeah,
(23:37):
that's you haven't had media training. So in addition to
the Giggling Granny. She was also called the Lonely Hearts Killer,
the Black Widow, and Lady blue Beard. She was also
called a self made widow in the white press. Today,
more than seventy years after Na's crimes, you can still
(23:57):
find out a ton of information about her if you
go on YouTube. Her name also appears in the top
ten most notable female serial killers. Contrast the ready availability
of information on Nanny Doss with the fact that we
couldn't find reliable information about Roberta's date of birth or
(24:17):
her date or manner of death, and if you think
back to the detective's list, we couldn't reliably identify even
the names of all of her possible victims. Some experts
argue that the race and gender of a killer and
a victim affects not only whether that killer or victim
receives any attention, but also how much attention the accused
(24:40):
receives from the press and the public. So unbalanced reporting
by the news media at this time can and does
send a message that white killers and white victims, particularly
if they are white females, hold more currency and are
given more consideration than those who are she minorities. But
(25:02):
the black press, especially the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender,
did report on both Roberta's trial and on her victims.
They were not necessarily kind, after all, she was on
trial for murder, but they did follow her story, and
it was in the black press that she got the
nickname Mrs blue Beard. Say, you may have heard that
(25:22):
nickname before blue Beard in regard to killers, and there's
actually a kind of long standing story behind it. But
don't confuse blue Beard with black Beard, who was a pirate.
Blue beards story started as a French folk tale, first
published as a mother ago as about the sixteen hundreds
(25:42):
or so, and it goes at a very very very
high level, like this, a wealthy man Mary's and then
kills his wife, and then does it again and again
and again. You can repeat that seven or seventy seven times,
depending on the telling of the story, and wild a
moral of this story is debatable depending on the criticism
(26:03):
you read. The term blue Beard has ever since been
used in reference to men who kill their wives, and
if you just add a missus or a lady in
front of it, it becomes a derogatory term referring to
a woman who has killed her own husband or husband's
and perhaps other family members. I also wonder if I
(26:25):
mean there's there's actually a lot. We've talked a lot
about black widows so far this season, but we haven't
really talked a lot about blue beards, and I wonder
if it was just kind of like, let's shake it
up a little bit. But we'll never know. Yeah, it
is interesting because accused women who are known to kill
and collect insurance payouts with the death of their spouses
are very, very frequently known as black widows. So Roberta,
(26:48):
who allegedly killed at least three of her husbands for
financial gain, certainly would fall into that category. But whether
you want to call her a MSS blue beard or
a black widow. Because of the number of deaths she
was linked to by police, the black press decided to
simplify things and just started referring to Roberta as a
serial killer, which is apparently after her trial. Truth. Right, So,
(27:13):
if you take a look at what the FBI profile
of a serial killer in the United States today looks like,
it's actually kind of fascinating, but it has nothing to
do with Roberta. In fact, it's kind of the opposite
of Roberta. It's almost always a white male who kills
people that he does not know, not family members, not
(27:34):
close friends, maybe somebody he's seen but doesn't know. But Roberta,
who is believed to have killed more than a dozen
relatives in about the same number of years, was black
and female, And among all known serial killers in the
United States, only about eight percent of them are women.
So she's like a tiny, tiny percentage of a tiny,
(27:57):
tiny person, exactly exactly. It's believed that because women are
more methodical and precise than male serial killers, they often
are able to continue their killing spreeze for an average
of eight years before they're caught. Kind of scary, yeah. Roberta,
if you'll recall from earlier in the episode, killed her
victims between ninety eight, possibly even earlier, all the way
(28:20):
to nineteen fifty two. Male serial killers, on the other hand,
average a streak of just about half that, roughly four
years before being caught. And also, women, interestingly, are more
likely to kill people they know. More. On experts on
serial killers, so in particular female serial killers, they report
that these are women who often use methods that are
(28:41):
considered a more low profiles and those that men favor.
So what that would look like is this. Women's serial
killers are more likely to murder with say, a slow
acting arsenical poison, rather than maybe carrying out a violent
act like shooting their victim with a gun. Female serial
(29:04):
killers are also often reportedly involved in activities such as
theft or fraud before they begin murdering. We don't know
about Roberta's life before she was accused, again in part
because she was black. There just aren't a lot of
records about her. There's just nothing. If she happened to
be a thief, or if she led a fairly straight
laced life, that's all lost to history. But what we
(29:26):
do know is that if she did it, she, like
other female serial killers, does appear to have done it
for the profit. Indeed, so Holly, it's time for your poison,
and I have to suggest that, whatever it is, let's
not serve it with bananas and cheese. I did toy
(29:47):
with the idea briefly. Well. I was thinking about some
sort of like banana liqueur dairy thing. Yes, but I
decided that just felt a little too grizzly for me. Today,
I'm not in that mood. I went so basic with
this story that just didn't want me to. I didn't
want to make it exactly exactly, so I went super
(30:08):
duper basic, a little on the nose, but as someone
who lives in Atlanta and loves this city desperately, I
just thought it would be a nice way to nod
to the city more than the actual story of Roberta.
So I made a beautiful iced tea, as you know,
we love our sweet iced tea in the South, and
then uh, and then I just poured an ounce and
(30:30):
a half of peach snaps into it, and it was delightful.
I don't know who wouldn't want to sit on their
portion drink that, But as I was drinking it, it is,
especially if you start with sweet tea, it becomes very
sweet and can be a little syrupy and heavy since
the schnaps is a little bit more in that space.
(30:52):
So it occurred to me that for someone that doesn't
like that level of heaviness, you could also sub in
like a flavored a peach infused vodka and it would
be delightful. Now that's where I'm going. There, you go,
then we'll make different drinks when you come to business.
I know the weather everywhere has been bananas this year.
We're still having days that are warm enough in Atlanta
that we can enjoy a cold iced tea. So that's
(31:15):
what I'm going with this week. That sounds delicious. That
sounds delicious. Yes, you can throw a picture together and
it's perfect for entertaining. Yes, thank you once again for
joining us for our ongoing discussion of the Lady Poisoners
this season. If you would like to subscribe to the show,
that sounds absolutely delightful to us, We promise not to
(31:36):
serve you bananas and cheese that are tainting. You can
do that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Criminalia is
a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
(31:58):
you listen to your favorite nose
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