Nannie Doss, the “Giggling Granny,” an Alabama native whose cheerful demeanor masked a deadly spree that claimed 11 lives over nearly three decades made her final kill--and met the end of her murderous spree--in the state of Oklahoma.
Born in 1905, Doss’s story is a haunting blend of domestic tragedy, dark romance, and cold-blooded murder, leaving a legacy that still echoes through the Sooner State and beyond.
A Troubled Beginning in Blue Mountain
Nannie Doss was born Nancy Hazel on November 4, 1905, in Blue Mountain, Alabama. The daughter of Louisa “Lou” Holder and James F. Hazel, Nannie grew up in a household dominated by her abusive, controlling father.
James forced his five children, including Nannie, to toil on the family farm, often denying them education. Her schooling ended after sixth grade, leaving her with a limited academic foundation but a vivid imagination fueled by her mother’s romance magazines.
These tales of love, particularly the “lonely hearts” columns, became an escape from her harsh reality—and, perhaps, a twisted blueprint for her future.
At age seven, Nannie suffered a head injury during a train ride when an abrupt stop sent her crashing into a metal seat. She later blamed this incident for lifelong headaches, blackouts, and depression, conditions some speculate may have influenced her descent into violence.
Whether this injury truly shaped her psyche remains a matter of debate, but her early years were undeniably marked by trauma and repression.
Nannie’s first foray into marriage came at 16, when she wed Charley Braggs, a co-worker at a linen factory in Alabama, in 1921. Approved by her father after just four months of courtship, the union quickly soured.
Braggs’s domineering mother moved in, mirroring the control Nannie had fled at home. The couple had four daughters between 1923 and 1927, but the marriage unraveled amid mutual infidelity, heavy drinking, and smoking--vices Nannie adopted under strain.
In 1927, tragedy struck: two of their middle daughters died suddenly, officially from food poisoning. Suspicion fell on Nannie, and Braggs fled with their eldest, Melvina, leaving newborn Florine behind. He later claimed he left out of fear for his life--a fear that made him the only husband to survive her wrath.
Divorced by 1928, Nannie turned to the lonely hearts columns she adored, seeking romance and a fresh start. Her second husband, Robert “Frank” Harrelson, a Jacksonville, Alabama, resident she met through such an ad, proved a violent alcoholic.
Their 16-year marriage ended in 1945 when Nannie poisoned him with rat poison after he raped her in a drunken rage.
By then, her body count had begun to climb: two of her grandchildren--Melvina’s infant daughter (stabbed with a hatpin) and son Robert (asphyxiated)--died in her care between 1943 and 1945.
Nannie’s Oklahoma chapter began with her fifth husband, Samuel Doss, a Nazarene minister from Tulsa she married in June 1953.
She had already dispatched three other husbands—Frank Harrelson (1945), Arlie Lanning (1950, North Carolina), and Richard Morton (1953, Kansas)—along with her mother, sister, and mother-in-law, often using arsenic or rat poison slipped into food or drink.
Samuel, a strict man who disapproved of Nannie’s beloved romance novels, became her final target. After surviving a failed attempt with poisoned prune cake, he was hospitalized in September 1954 with a digestive infection.
Released on October 5, he died a week later on October 12 after Nannie served him arsenic-laced coffee, eager to claim two life insurance policies.
This time, the death raised red flags. Samuel’s doctor ordered an autopsy, revealing enough arsenic to kill “twenty men,” as one account put it.
Arrested in Tulsa, Nannie confessed in October 1954 to killing four husbands, her mother, sister, a grandson, and a mother-in-law--11 victims in total, though she denied harming other “blood kin.”
Oklahoma prosecutors, led by J. Howard Edmondson (later governor), focused solely on Samuel’s murder. On May 17, 1955, Nannie pleaded guilty, her trademark giggles during interrogations earning her the “Giggling Granny” moniker.
Sentenced to life in prison--the death penalty was avoided due to her gender--she died of leukemia on June 2, 1965, in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary’s hospital ward, buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park in McAlester.
Historians and criminologists still ponder her case. Was she a product of a traumatic childhood, a brain injury’s lasting echo, or simply a psychopath cloaked in a grandmotherly guise?
Her cheerful facade--smiling in mugshots, joking about her prison laundry duties--contrasted starkly with her deeds, making her a figure of both fascination and revulsion.
In Oklahoma,
Nannie Doss remains a grim footnote, a reminder that evil can wear the most disarming of faces. Her story, born in Alabama but cemented in the Sooner State, continues to captivate, a chilling tale of love gone lethal, told with a giggle that lingers in the shadows of history.
