Was there something in Alabama’s water in the 1950s? Something that made women who looked like grandmothers kill their husbands, neighbors and even small children? In Alabama alone:

• Two women were executed in the poisoning deaths of numerous family members, including children.
• Two more were sentenced to life in prison for the poisoning deaths of family members and acquaintances, including children.
• A fifth woman was sentenced to 10 years for the murders and gruesome dismemberment of two brothers who were her neighbors.

Click through the gallery above to see photos and newspaper headlines about the crimes.

Arsenic: A woman’s weapon of choice

A UPI story published on June 27, 1958, in newspapers across the country, like this one in The Anniston Star, quoted criminologist Dr. Dudley Degroot on why women often chose poison as a means of murder. The story was written in response to the string of arsenic killings by women in the South at that time, including several from Alabama, one from Georgia and one from South Carolina.

“For one thing, women abhor violence, especially women in the middle and upper classes. Women are supposed to be the gentler, subordinate sex – the housewife and mother – and they will invariably choose a quiet, non-violent way to commit murder,” he said. His adjectives for women seem patronizing now, but at the time, women were often labeled as the “behind-the-scenes” keepers of the home and family. Degroot said arsenic was the most readily available poison; it could be bought without raising suspicions because it was a common ingredient in rat poison and insecticide.

Female murderers, he said, are able to rationalize their actions by telling themselves they deserve their cheating/abusive/annoying husbands’ life insurance money sooner rather than later. However, Degroot did not address how female poisoners justify to themselves the murders of small children.

In only one of the five cases from the 1950s in Alabama did a woman use violent means to murder: Viola Hyatt was convicted of the murders and dismemberment of two neighbor men. She then drove along the highway discarding body parts from the car window.

Unregulated life insurance

In the 1950s, Alabama did not require insurance agents to have permission from people, or even notify them, when life insurance policies were purchased against their lives. In one case described below, Mary Perkins worked in collusion with an agent to take out life insurance policies on as many as 150 people without their knowledge. Today, Alabama insurance agents require a signature of the person named in the policy.

Here are synopses for five female killers from the 1950s:

Earle Dennison (ca. 1898-Sept. 4, 1953)

Nickname: Aunt Killer

Age at time of execution: 55

Hometown: Wetumpka, Ala., Elmore County

Number of reputed victims: Two of her nieces. After Dennison was charged with killing her 2-year-old niece, Shirley Diann Weldon, authorities exhumed the body of Shirley’s sister, Polly Ann Weldon, who had died the day Shirley was born. Her body also contained arsenic but Dennison was not charged in Polly’s death.

Method: Arsenic poisoning

Motive: Insurance money

Charge: Murder of Shirley Diann Weldon.

Convicted: 1952, became the first white woman sentenced to die in Alabama’s electric chair.

Death: Executed Sept. 4, 1953.

Quote: “God has forgiven me for all I have done. Please forgive me for what I did. I forgive everyone.”

Odd footnote: The Weldon family sued the insurance companies, saying they should have been suspicious of Dennison’s reasons for taking policies on the children without the family’s knowledge. The Weldons won a $75,000 wrongful death settlement.

Nancy “Nannie” Hazel Doss (Nov. 4, 1905-June 2, 1965)

Nickname: The Giggling Granny, the Lonely Hearts Killer

Age at time of conviction: 48

Hometown: Blue Mountain, Ala., Calhoun County

Number of reputed victims: Four husbands, two children, her mother, her two sisters, a grandson and a mother-in-law.

Method: Arsenic poisoning

Motive: Insurance money

Time period of crimes: 1920s-1954 in four states.

Charge: Murder of Samuel Doss in 1953 in Oklahoma.

Convicted: 1954, sentenced to life in Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Death: Died in prison in 1965 of leukemia.

Odd footnote: Used “lonely hearts” singles ads to find husbands.

Viola Hyatt (Feb. 3, 1929-June 12, 2000)

Nickname: The Torso Killer, the Alabama Axe Murderess

Age at time of conviction: 30

Hometown: Rabbittown, Ala., Calhoun County

Number of victims: Two, brothers Lee Harper, 48, and Emmett Harper, 55.

Method: Shot to death, then dismembered with an ax.

Motive: Unknown. Some say Viola was abused by the brothers, others speculate Hyatt’s father helped in the killing and/or dismemberment.

Charge: Two counts of murder.

Convicted: Pleaded guilty in 1959 and was sentenced to life in prison.

Death: Viola Hyatt was paroled in 1970 after serving a little more than 10 years. She returned to the area near the crimes and lived in a mobile home in Jacksonville until her death in 2000.

Odd footnotes:

• Threw parts of the victims’ dismembered bodies from her car as she drove through rural Alabama. A creek where body parts were found on Young’s Chapel Road is known as Arm and Leg Creek, according to the Anniston Star.
• In 2015, Jacksonville State University students produced a play about the murders.

Rhonda Bell Martin (1907-1957)

Nickname: Grisly Momma

Age at time of execution: 49

Hometown: Montgomery, Ala., in Montgomery County

Number of reputed victims: Confessed to killing her mother, two of her husbands and three of her children. She is thought to have killed two other children but denied it.

Method: Arsenic poisoning

Motive: Reportedly insurance money, although she did not collect large sums.

Time period of crimes: 1940s-1951

Charge: Murder in the death of fourth husband, Claude Carroll Martin, 51.

Convicted: 1951

Death: Executed Oct. 11, 1957, in Alabama’s electric chair.

Quote: In an article in The Montgomery Advertiser on May 26, 1957: “I committed every murder I’m accused of. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t understand. I didn’t do it for money. I loved my family; I guess I loved them to death.”

Odd footnotes:

• She reportedly asked that her body be donated to science so people could figure out why she killed.
• Her fifth husband, who was left paralyzed from arsenic poisoning, had briefly been her stepson; he was the son of her fourth husband.

Mary Perkins (ca. 1922-unknown)

See a photo of Mary Perkins in Jet Magazine here.

Nickname: Lady Bluebeard

Age at time of conviction: 36

Hometown: Selma, Ala., in Dallas County

Number of victims: At least three, and possibly as many as five.

Method: Arsenic poisoning

Motive: Insurance money

Partner in crime: Insurance agent Rufus J. Hogue, 27, was charged with forgery in connection with the case, accused of helping Perkins get policies.

Charge: Indicted in 1957 for murders of 10-month-old Gloria Jean Montgomery, the daughter of a neighbor; her husband Charles Perkins Sr.; and 70-year-old Della Davis.

Convicted: 1958, sentenced to three life terms.

Death: It is unclear if Perkins died in prison; the Alabama Department of Corrections was unable to provide the information.

Odd footnotes:

• Shot herself in suicide attempt when suspicion fell on her for the murders.
• She was one of 22 children, according to a feature in Jet Magazine in 1957.

Read More: When the ‘Florence Nightingale’ of Alabama poisoned her family and friends