Ep. 4: A Spoonful of Atropine Helps the Murder Go Down

0:06 Welcome to M4 Medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder. I'm Andrea Marciano and RN with 35 years of experience across various fields. From direct patient care in hospitals to home health, geriatrics, and injury medicine, I face life, death, and everything in between. And I'm Crystal Miller and RN with 13 1/2 years of experience. My work spans home health, Hospice, emergency care, geriatrics, and occupational health. From the chaos of trauma based quiet moments with patients, I've seen stories that defy explanations. We've been friends for over 25 years and as nurses we've shared countless stories that have left us and our families speechless. Now we're bringing those stories and many more to you in medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder.

0:53 Each week, we'll uncover cases that challenge the boundaries of medicine, sharing the human stories behind the science. From puzzling medical mysteries to shocking real life crimes, we'll bring you stories that'll leave you questioning everything you thought you knew while. We're both experiencing these nurses. We want to make it clear we're not here to give medical advice. This podcast is about storytelling, education and exploration, not diagnosing or treating medical conditions. This is medicine, mystery, mayhem and sometimes murder. Let's dive in. Hey Crystal, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? I am very well, thank you. Anything exciting going on in your life? Nothing other than starting to get menopause symptoms. 0 out of 10 do not recommend. Do not recommend.

1:37 Trust me, I get it because I've been 0 out of 10 in this experience for I don't even want to think about how many years now, but it's been more than enough. And we were, I was talking with a friend of mine who's on the very outside edge of it right now, and she was saying, how fair is this that we get to have all of these experiences of women that just are bogus? Yeah, they're they're havoc. They're mayhem. They are. They are. Yeah. And I just don't get it. Sometimes I just wish I wasn't involved in this process. There's not. It's not like there's a vote that we get to have, is there? Because as you said earlier, we vote no, thank you.

2:19 I'm. No, I'm fine. I would be so happy to never have hot flashes. I'd be so happy to have full control of my brain. I would be so happy to be able to think of the words I want to say and not suddenly spout out some word that has nothing to do with anything I'm even talking about. And I was telling you earlier also, the itchiness makes me crazy. Starts in your ears. Look for that. That's fun times. So ears start itching and then kind of it's global, at least for me. I am itchy all the time. And then there's the tinnitus and then there's do you want anything else? Because. Thank you. As our listeners may not know, we have 10 years between US11 well. 11 because you're October, Yeah, No, it's. Ten.

3:05 Yeah, it's 11. Regret because we're so close. That's right back up the train there, sister. 10 for me. But yeah, it's amazing what these next 10 years, how much fun you'll have. Oh, I'm so excited. I feel so blessed and lucky. Yes, well, I'm here to welcome you into the menopausal. Experience you. Well, as our show is not about menopause, which is good because it would just be far too frustrating and we have so much frustration in the world right now, we don't. Need to add any to do yeah? Well, one of the things today that we're doing is diving into the shadowy side of medicine, which is murder. And we talked, right?

3:46 We had talked originally that we were going to address murder as one of our topics. It won't be our only one, but we'd like to welcome you back to the M4 Podcast. And we do explore the fascinating intersection of medicine, mystery, mayhem, and as is today, the special occasion of murder. Crystal and I both really listen to a lot of murder podcasts, but we didn't want that only thing that we focus on because we think there's just a lot more to talk about. And with our backgrounds, we feel like that's really important today. We have this case. I just say this all the time when we talk about stuff. This case to me is just mind boggling. And I don't know what mind boggling really means, but my mind, maybe that's why I can't think of all the you're boggled. I'm boggled.

4:35 I'm constantly boggled. And I am on so many levels. And that's a personal story. Another another podcast for that one as well. But so far we have discussed and the mystery and intrigue of medical things that have done a rye, if you will, and there's chaos really every day. I've said this before, but every day I wonder how does anyone actually have a body that functions correctly throughout the day? Even with things like menopause and things that are chronic, we, we survive day-to-day with a body that can go haywire at any moment. And, and a lot of times I just think about that going, I don't get how even in this case, so many things can go correctly to, to get through a day. The thing that we're stepping in today, as I said, is murder. And sometimes it intersects with healthcare. When it does, it captivates the public imagination. And sometimes I think that we're just a bunch of sickos because we're so fascinated by how things are going wrong. Right?

5:37 Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd like you to. I'd like to take you through a guided meditation. Actually, just kidding. It's not a guided meditation because. It wouldn't work for me. It wouldn't. That's true. But just imagine, and we've both experienced this. We're in a bustling hospital. The monitors are humming, people are murmuring, staff people talking quietly. There's that low rumble of sound that you hear all the time. I don't think there's ever been a time in a hospital that it's been quiet. Maybe at night. Well, no, because you still got the monitors. Even then, even then, there's just nothing. There's no time in the hospital that I'm aware of that is just totally quiet. There's just too much going on. Doctors and nurses rush from patient to patient administering standard care, life saving care in the hospital.

6:22 We really all kind of hold on to that hope of recovery and healing. It's always that's what the goal is to help to people get through the times that are hard because there. I don't think I can think of a time that someone's been in the hospital, myself included. That is because I was looking for a nice vacation, right? I know let me go to a 4*5*0* hospital. Any of that. Beneath the surface of all of this that goes on, we expect certain things, we expect certain sounds, we expect hope and hopefully healing. But sometimes secrets may lurk. And what do we do when medicine and malice collide? There's a lot of a lot of times that that can happen. There have been a lot of stories throughout history that are factual and some that are fictional that talk about things that happen.

7:15 The mysteries and murder within the halls and walls of hospitals in clinics, right? I mean, we've heard of a lot of them, probably watched many of them. Everything from something like murder, She Wrote to having that be in the hospital or Matlock, who goes into different things and looks at cases of murder and mystery. And then you've got your things like the show house and, and other kinds of shows that are not, in my view, realistic, right? And and but. Everything's not rhabdomyosis. I I'm as surprised as you you are, but no, it's amazing how many people anyway.

7:56 But these stories have gone on really since the beginning of time when medicine has started. Some of times the criminals that commit these acts of murder in hospitals are called angels of death. It's usually something that is a surprise to people where the person starts out and they look like they're serving the patient, but then end up stepping aside or stray. And it really, as you listen to the story that I'm going to bring up in a few minutes, I, I want you to think about the ways that you think that someone can go from maintaining their oath, as in do no harm to the things that make them start to murder In, in history, there's some real life cases that have shocked the world.

8:42 One of them is the case of Doctor Harold Shipman. He was a British physician and he was convicted of killing multiple patients under his care. That's a case we may talk about later, but it's one of the things that some people know in history and there's a variety of them through history that has happened. And then you've got people in the hospital that are considered medical detectives, and those are the forensic teams and the medical examiners. So when somebody dies, as most people know if if they meet certain parameters, if they're under 80 and they have no known medical condition or maybe they had a condition that that was thought to have been able to be cured, but they suddenly died, then those kinds of cases are looked at to see what went wrong. And then there's a whole bunch of potentials of what might happen next. There's learning conferences, there's things like that. We we need to know what happened so we know how to prevent it from happening again if possible. And sometimes just the body is so stressed that it cannot recover from something that we probably think it should cover recover from.

9:37 And then they were they are able to these medical detectives, if you will, are able to tell if there is something that's suspicious or if there is something that is an unexpected air quote expected outcome. So sometimes that can happen too. And I like to think of them been blending science and sleuthing because I enjoy sleuthing. I love finding out the little details and facts, right, which is why we're here, right. And then as we mentioned, there's the fictional portrayals when I think anybody who watches a show about their specialty, like medicine or maybe you're car mechanic and you watch a show about it and they're like, that's not what really happens. We talked about it.

10:18 That's not what really happens. Or law enforcement or whatever. We on The Who actually practice know what's more likely to happen. And sometimes the portrayals of these shows are are good and they seem really on track. And other times I'm like, do they even know what side of a Band-Aid you would stick to a person? I don't. Know. But but these shows do often dramatize the tension between life saving care and lethal intent. They do it everything with music and storyline and and things like that. But you know, life isn't really quite that linear. There's usually a few other twists and turns. But do you have any idea, Crystal, or have you ever even thought of what would drive a medical professional to cross the ethical line between caring and killing? Have you ever thought about that? Not in the sense of like sitting down and saying to myself, now, why would Jane go from being a nurse to being a killer, right? I've only ever asked it rhetorically in passing, right? Like, why don't you do that?

11:18 And then moving on. Right. Exactly. Because I mean, I think to me, for people who do things like that, the rest of us can't really understand because it doesn't make sense to us. And that's that's true for any kind of killer I think that we hear about. Most of us cannot relate unless of course, it's in self-defense or for our children, our Mama bear comes out and that's different. But in cases where there doesn't seem to be a real gain, it makes it very to me, confusing and complicated. I don't I don't see how they can step over that line. Right. Yeah, I don't either. There's been a lot of study about this in in murder generally, but also in the medical related murders.

12:00 And psychologists and criminologists have analyzed the motives. They range anything from power and control to sometimes the person who does these medical killings feel like they're doing a mercy killing because the person is suffering too much or they're too difficult for their family or whatever. And so it's going to help and sometimes it's for a financial gain. And we're going to be talking about a few of these cases throughout time, only one today, but overtime we will. And it's, I find it very interesting to see who looks like they're motivated by certain things. But of course, we can never know. But many times the warning signs that these people are doing the things that they're doing are overlooked or they're rationalized. And you say something along the lines, well, that can't be right.

12:44 That can't be what happened. That doesn't make any sense. It's one of the things to me that makes these crimes especially chilling because we, we don't expect something like that. We don't think it's going to happen because that isn't what we promised to do. And we know now, especially in modern hospitals, there's a whole range of safeguards to prevent harm, everything from the training to technology that tracks the medicine and treatment. I was telling a friend of mine the other day that when I was in nursing school, there was a couple that was passing meds to each other, medication, narcotic medication. And it used to be so much easier to do because we would literally, we have a key on a bungee cord thing that the nurse who is in charge of the key for that shift, it wasn't even the director of nursing, It was just one of us. And we would rotate and we'd get the key and we were in charge of the drug cards.

13:38 And sometimes we'd go home with a key. We'd have to come back, bring the key, but that was how it was. And we just counted. We would say, OK, we gave this to this patient. We'd write it down. Nobody ever really checked to see if the patient got it. They didn't check to see if it was in our pockets. They didn't check any of that. We just were either trustworthy or not I suppose. But this particular couple I had been in school with was passing to each other and and so they would go back-to-back shifts. Ultimately they got fired and they actually never even took boards because they did this criminal act before they were even officially nurses. Oh my. Gosh. And I thought, gosh, you go through all of this for that. And then of course, we went to jail and one of them went to prison and and it was, it was wild. I don't get it.

14:24 But now in hospitals there are a whole lot more safeguards, and it's a lot harder to get medication you shouldn't have. It's a lot harder to not give medication when you should, and that kind of thing still possible, I suppose. And that's one of the reasons that people who have malicious intent should be watched and should be. These things should be tracked. But sometimes processes still don't work. But in medicine, especially as this is what we're talking about today, there are people, men and women, and we trust them with our lives. Right. When you go into the hospital, yeah. When you go into a hospital, you expect in many cases to come out better than when you got there, or at least more stable, right? I mean, to not have that expectation, obviously most of us probably wouldn't go to a hospital if we think that we might live or we might not.

15:17 That wouldn't really instill very much confidence. But there are people who are in the medical field that go rogue for whatever reason, and their leave, they use their medical know how and they try to grit away with murder. The modus operandi or MO of a serial killer can range wildly. And if you think about the kind of killers that most of us have heard of at different times, there's some people will snatch their victim, they'll they'll be kidnappers and they'll take them right off the street. They'll break into houses, they'll do, they'll mug people, they'll do things like that. And those are the things that we kind of are more used to hearing about. And they might have a weapon of choice. That could be a gun, a knife, a hammer or ligature. And there might be a sexual element. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. There can be torture or mutilation. One of the things that is the less discussed kind of silly serial killer is the one that's different from usual. And they don't stop the streets.

16:13 They don't go out anywhere to get them. They wait until somebody comes to them. And as I say, a lot of times they've been called Angels of Mercy and I have an issue with that state that title because Angel of Mercy sounds like it's good thing, right? Yeah, yeah, Angel of General sounds like it's a good thing. Yeah, Angel's here. Wait a minute. This Angel is not the same thing. So I don't like the title. And it's actually been shifted in most cases away from Angel of Mercy to healthcare serial killers or medical serial killers because an Angel of Mercy, it makes it sound just too sweet. Yeah, even an Angel of death, right? Just still sounds like it's like sweet. It's like Pixies or fairies. Yeah, it's giving it a lot of leniency and credit for actually sort of doing something good, it sounds like, right. But today what we're referring to is the very rare cases of doctors, nurses and caregivers who exploit their positions of trust.

17:09 Because that's what it's about, isn't it? Trust and then they they complete their own nefarious and murderous ends. It's just, it's hard to talk about this for me a little bit because as a nurse, the thought of these people walking in and doing these things hurts me because that's not what we commit to. That's not what we're trained to do. That's not what I would ever want to be associated with. When somebody says nurse, I would hate to have them think that because I'm a nurse, wow, I'm probably trying to pull one over on somebody or kill someone or yeah, which I don't. But but these people in the care environment who do target the vulnerable patients and usually they go for the most vulnerable and they kill them, as we mentioned before, for a variety of reasons. They like the feeling of God like power, a financial benefit or just purely because they're psychopaths. And research has told us that the majority of the murders take place in the hospital settings because it's a medical murder. 20% occur in nursing homes and the remaining 6% within the victims homes themselves.

18:19 So that surprised me actually that they've in studies and I can't remember how old the study was, but then only 6% of them were in their own home. I agree and. Particularly because home health and Hospice is so like you're on your own all the time. It's, I don't want to say it's unsupervised, but I mean it, but it is unsupervised in the sense of nobody's actually in the room with you, nobody's watching you do your job. You don't run across your colleagues. You know what I mean? It's just you and your patient and maybe their daughter or their neighbor is sometimes right. The more, the more often than not it's you and your patient. Right. And I think the main, the main reason there's not more in homes is because the availability of the medications needed to do these sorts of things are greater in the hospital, unless the nurse is carrying around their own vials of things, then it would be much harder.

19:12 I think it's still even harder, like I say, in the hospital than it used to be, but it's even easier than it would be in a home because there would be so many limited supplies. So that's the way I look at it is maybe that's why it's a lower level. And as you also said, though, there are many times that there are people there. Sometimes they are in the hospital too. But have you ever as a nurse, then you know I need you to step out because I'm going to do blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So then nobody. No, that hospitals are boring. You know, I was in a hospital recent, I guess it wasn't so much recently anymore but recently ish for 9 days after I had a complication with surgery. And I'm not going to ask somebody to sit there and be in there with me all the time. It's boring. Go live your life and don't be bored.

19:52 I don't have a choice. I have to be here, but oh, don't be here. And when I don't feel well, the last thing I want is somebody staring at me anyway. No kidding. No kidding. But one of the things I wanted to mention relating to these medical murders is that more than 50% of the killings are carried out using drugs or a lethal objection of some description. So that that makes sense to me. And as we talked about, victims are generally elderly or extremely ill and their deaths are easily explained. It's rare that someone who's going around killing these people kill someone that is perfectly healthy, that maybe just came in for a surgery to fix a broken arm and everything else was fine, but then they died.

20:33 It's more often someone who was compromised and it and it wouldn't necessarily be checked into. One of the things that I read was that most the way most medical serial killers are caught is when a significant cluster of deaths begin to raise suspicions or deadly substances are detected after toxicology tests. I as I read different stories about this, I've seen that where all of a sudden you happen to notice that on Susie Q's shift, a bunch of people die every time. So they start putting it together. And sometimes these killers, I've read some stories about them where they actually just changed hospitals frequently enough that nobody can watch the tracks. That's so counterintuitive to me. I'm just just you saying that my thought is like, I don't want anybody to die on my shift. No.

21:18 My shift. I know it's definitely. The idea of of somebody having a shift and and your deaths are become more frequent is just like is that's a nightmare to me, an absolute nightmare. Like like you said, it hurts. It's like I don't no, no, no please. Please, please, please stay alive. Please please please. Please, I mean, I'll do my job to to help assist with that, but please stay alive. Yeah, really. It's definitely a thing we like and it's bad for numbers anyway. But but it's truly a sick concept, right? I mean, for most of us, we just don't get it. But then again, murder's a sick business, right? Yeah, I think that's the truth.

22:00 Today we're going to talk about the vile deeds of one of the most prolific ever healthcare serial killers. Her name was Jane Taupin. Or get this, Jolly Jane. Oh wow. Right. She spent six years in the late 19th century poisoning infirmed piece of people in Boston, MA. This is her ambition, she stated, to have killed more people, helpless people, than any other man or woman, whoever lived. Wow, that was her mission statement. I bet she didn't take him past the NCLEX which is the board to get your license. Dear listeners, so so it is. As you might imagine I went down a bit of a rabbit hole for these resources I use today, but the primary sources were magazine article called The 10 most Prolific Medical Serial Killers of All Time. It was an Overview and analysis of Crime and investigation of the UK article called 21 Evil Doctors and Nurses who are also Brutal Serial Killers from allisinteresting.com. 17 Serial Killer nurses who killed patients and hospitals by ranker.com.

23:07 I looked up Jane Taupin in Wikipedia because who doesn't and and jolly Jane Taupin, the Killer nurse obsessed with death from the New England Historical Society and a book called Jane Taupin A Greed, Power and Lust Serial Killer by Michael Potts. Those were my primary resources and there were 10 more. I was shocked. Wow. So anyway, go back with me. In history, Jane Taupin was born with the name of Hanora Kelly. Oh, OK, right. Big leap. Well, it'll make sense. It'll make sense in a minute. But at first I thought what that that makes no sense at all. At any rate, she was born on May 31st in 1854. She lived until August 17th of 1938. She was an American serial killer. She killed 12 people in Massachusetts between 1895 and 19 O1.

24:03 She confessed, though, to killing 31, and she's suspected to have killed up to 100 people, 100 people. When you think about the serial killers that have been targeted in many of these shows, podcasts, movies, books, whatever, we're talking about serial killers of maybe three to 10 people on average, because I think it takes more than three to become a serial killer. Many of them I think. There's a time, I think there's a time frame limit also, but I'm not. Oh, yeah, it's true. They have to do it within a certain time frame. If they've taken too big a break, then they're not a serial killer. There's just a killer again, right? Whatever. But this woman is suspected of killing more than 100 people.

24:44 And she did all of these killings in her capacity as a nurse, and she targeted patients and their family members. Wild. Right. And later she admitted that she committed some of these murders to satisfy a sexual fetish. Yeah, it gets a little creepy. I guess that's easy to say because she's a killer. So she she was born as, as I said, Honora Kelly. She was the daughter of some Irish immigrants. Her mother Bridget Kelly died of tuberculosis when when Jane or Honora was very young, her father Peter was well known as an eccentric and abusive alcoholic. People nicknamed her father and this is one of those triads that happen when people become murderers.

25:29 But this part of her triad she was nicknamed or he was nicknamed Kelly the crack as in crackpot. Jane's father was considered a crackpot. I never looked this up, but in later years when they started talking about Jane and her history, it was said that her father had sewn his own eyelids closed while working as a tailor. OK, how does one do that? I think I would notice if I were sewing my eyelids closed, but just this is some of what she was raised around and through. So it is and so night and excuse me. 1860, which was a few years after Kelly's death or Kelly's wife's death. He surrendered her to the two youngest children, 8 year old Dalia and six year old Henora to the Boston Female Asylum.

26:16 It was an orphanage for indigent female children. Mr. Kelly never saw these kids again. Documents from the asylum noted that Dalia and Henora were rescued from a very miserable home. Quotes no records existed experience during the no time in the asylum, but reportedly Delia became a prostitute while the older sister Nellie who was not entered into this home because I guess she was too old. Nellie was later committed to insane asylum, which we don't call that anymore, but that's what they called it. Then in 1862, less than two years after being abandoned by her father, Hanorah was placed with as an indentured servant in the home of Miss CN Toppen Toppin. Does that sound familiar?

26:58 So. And that was in Lowell, MA. They were never. She was never formally adopted by the Toppins, but she took on their surname to distance herself from her former family, and she eventually became known as Jane Toppin. Now I feel like I had remembered the name Jane was a family name, but I'm I'm not sure that's accurate, but I thought I'd seen that somewhere. The toppings already had a daughter, Elizabeth and Hanora, or now Jane was on good terms with the daughter. In 1885, Toppin began training as a nurse at Cambridge Hospital. And unlike her early years, where she was described as brilliant and terrible, who knows what that looked like? Because again, they had no records of her time in this, in this insane asylum, if you will, or orphanage. They apparently she came with a history and. We'll take a little baggage with her. Yeah, a little baggage, a little baggage. And at the hospital, though, when she was training as a nurse, she was well liked.

27:52 She was bright, friendly, and that's when she earned her nickname as Jolly Jane because that's how she came across. And once she became close with her patients, she picked her favorite ones and they were normally elderly and very sick. Now I can almost not read this, but during her residency she used her patients as Guinea pigs and experience experiments with morphine and atropine. She altered their prescribed dosages to see what it did to their nervous system. Oh my goodness. Right. And she spent considerable time alone with her patients, making up fake charts, medicating them to drift in and out of consciousness and even getting into bed with them. Oh, boy. Right. So as would happen, the hospital administration grew concerned over her obsession with autopsies.

28:36 Apparently she just always wanted to be able to see an autopsy. Whenever one came up, she wanted to see it, but the hospital. So they were a little concerned about that. The administration said, well, that seems a little odd, but they didn't know she experimented with morphine and atropine on her elderly patients, which probably would have brought them a little more concern. Yeah. So this is something that I thought was was really scary. One patient, Amelia Finney, had an operation in 1887, and afterwards, she said Jane had given her a dose of bitter medicine, causing her to lose consciousness. Jane climbed into her bed and kissed her all over her face. But something startled her Jane and she stopped. The next morning, Finney decided it had all been a dream.

29:18 Because Can you imagine if she was given a medication that made her loopy somehow? Then it would be easy to think it was a dream. And well, that doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine that really happened, right Missus? Finney didn't worry about it anymore. But then 14 years later, when Jane was arrested, Finney realized it was no dream. Oh my gosh. I know I'm like, oh, I don't think I wanted to know that if I were she. In the meantime, Toppen was recommended for the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital, and so she was nominated to go there to work after. That's where she got placed once she graduated as a nurse. And as we know, the nursing training was a lot different than it is now. Basically, the way I've seen it is based as long as you can wear a nursing uniform and walk around patting people on the head. And I was going to say and not kill anyone, but apparently that was not a requirement.

30:07 That's not even a requirement, right? And so it was fairly, fairly simple training. But she she did go to the Massachusetts General Hospital and she was there, she claimed several more victims. She was fired the following year. It didn't really say if she was fired because she had killed people or if she just somehow had another issue. I don't know what it was at that point. But she did briefly return to Cambridge, which is where she had taken her training. She was soon dismissed for administering opiates. Reckless. Then, because that wasn't enough damage, she began her career as a private nurse, and she flourished despite the complaints of petty theft. So here's a nurse who's giving meds Willy nilly, and now she's stealing stuff.

30:52 But people liked her because she was Jolly Jane, for heaven's sakes. Wow. Yeah, in eighteen, 8970 year old Mary McClure became I'll on a visit to Cambridge. Her doctor sent Jane Taupin, who he quoted to be one of her best nurses, to care for her. Well, Jane being Jane poisoned Mary McClure and she died a month later. Jane killed a close friend with strychnine so she could take her job as a dining hall matron. That's so bizarre. Right. And then I don't even know why, why she would want that. And maybe a dining hall matron is different from what I imagine, but I think of a lunch lady.

31:34 I think it's fine. Lunch ladies are awesome. But she's a nurse already. So I don't know why she wanted to be a dining hall matron, but she was wanting to be the dining hall matron at Saint John's, John's Theological School in Cambridge. She got the job, but it didn't last, right? The administration couldn't ignore the complaints of incompetence and missing money. Oh, wow. Right. So a little picture into our friend Jane. Outside of her job as a nurse or as a matron in a dining hall, she guzzled beer, told dirty jokes, gossed up madly, and enjoyed turning her friends against each other. Oh. Wow.

32:14 So that was what she did on the side for fun. But to the doctors and their patients, she seemed a highly skilled, professional, compassionate and cheerful. And I think about this and the so many different facets that this woman had. She's a petty theft. She's a murderess. She likes to pit her friends against each other. And in the time in the 1800's, the fact that she guzzled beer, told dirty jokes and gossiped was pretty scandalous on all of those levels. And then to be considered a professional, highly skilled, compassionate, cheerful nurse, I don't know how she would keep track of really who she was in the moment. I barely have the skill to keep track of who I am day-to-day, and I pretty much do the same. I think back back to the menopause. Am I even human?

33:02 What is it? So Jane was earning $25 a week, and that was huge then because most women, when they worked outside the home earned an average of $5 a week. She reported later that she was also getting sexual thrilled with this criminal act by climbing into bed with her patients. So she murdered them. So she didn't just murder them, she murdered them while she was in bed with them. While she was assaulting them. Right, right. And it didn't even say that she ever assaulted them other than that one lady kissing her. Just being there was enough, I guess. You know, this isn't enough. This is just a precursor, but she began her poisoning spree in earnest by 1895 by killing her landlord, Israel Durham and his wife.

33:44 No idea why. And maybe maybe I mean, you think I don't know. This makes no sense to me. And and what I think is that they actually, these things were determined later when she's been caught. It's not like people were catching on that this was was Jane at this time. 1899, she killed her foster sister Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine. Now remember she and Elizabeth actually got along right, but she killed her with strychnine. Wow, got to watch her back on that one. In 1901, Toppin moved in with an elderly Alden Davis and his family to take care of him after the death death of his wife Maddie, who coincidentally Toppin had murdered. Oh my God, right.

34:27 So within weeks, she killed Davis. So the husband and his sister Edna and two of his daughters, Minnie and Genevieve, everyone started to think that this was a little bit sketchy. Imagine that I know. So the surviving members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology exam on many. Now, I don't know why they didn't order it on Genevieve. Maybe they just felt one was enough. I'm not sure. But at this time in what was it 1899 or excuse me, 19 O1 for this one, this would still have been a really rare testing and exam that they would do. Most of the time people died and they're like, all right, that's kind of how works.

35:08 Now, this toxicology exam showed that many had been poisoned. And so I don't know if they extrapolated then that Genevieve had as well. But at that point, local authorities assigned a police detail on Top End to watch her. And October 29th, 19 O1, she was arrested for murder. I as they watched her, it didn't say in this that they watched her and then they saw her do XY and Z. They just watched her. So something must have triggered their concerns because on October 29th, 19 O1, she was arrested for murder. As I mentioned, by 19 O2 she had confessed to 31 murders. Oh wow, I wonder how long it took her to confess. I wonder if she was like, you got me, let me tell you all about it.

35:49 Or if she was like, I just, I don't know what you mean. And then suddenly was like, you know, eventually was like, OK, you got me. Right bat my eyes faint a few times, things like that. Well, it's she was arrested at the end of October and then by 19 O2 she confessed. So I don't know if that was January 2nd or you know, I don't know. And so it's interesting because who knows how that works. But after she went to trial and after the trial, one of you might have heard this name, William Randolph Hearst Newspapers printed what was said to have been Toppin's confession to her lawyer. She claimed that she had killed more than 31 people and she wanted the jury to find her saying so she could eventually have a chance of being released. OK sister, you have killed 31 people even if you are saying you're not going to get released usually. And and I get that laws probably were different then, but it feels to me like that might even be against the pale at that point.

36:52 Yeah, yeah. And and Taupin insisted upon her own sanity in court, She said. This is my favorite. She said she could not be insane if she knew what she was doing and knew that it was wrong. But nonetheless, she was declared insane and committed. Yeah, yeah, in. June. I did not expect that. I know right? In June in 19 O2 she was found guilty by reason, or excuse me, not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life to the Taunton Insane Hospital. She died there in 1938 at the age of 81. So she was there for 36 years. So as a side note, I was just wondering which do you think would have been worse, prison or what they referred to then as an insane hospital?

37:40 From what I've heard, the insane hospital. That's what I've heard too. I happily have not been in one in the 1800s, but. I've been in one, but not in the 1800s. Not in the 18. Hundreds. You know this. I wasn't around in the 1800s. What? I am shocked. I've been in the Utah State Prison. Sorry, Utah State. Happy now, Utah? Wait a minute. Well, I have, but I haven't been an inmate. I've been in, I was in the Utah State mental Hospital in Provo. No, I I also not as a patient. I was going to say, there's history. I don't. Remember, visited the Utah State Mental Hospital before it was, it was one of the last ones to close in the country.

38:24 And so I, yeah, my, I want to say somebody I knew worked there. I don't remember who to be honest, but I visited with that person and it was a rough place. At best, Yeah, indeed. Well, I wanted to take it just a minute to talk about some of the victims that that Jane had had. And this isn't an inclusive list. This is just some of them. So Israel, we talked about who was a patient, died on May 26th, 1895 at 83. Lovely Dunham, which was the wife of Israel that I just mentioned, was a patient, died on September 19th, 1897. So what I found interesting is that, and she was 87, this is 2 years between when Israel died and Lovely died.

39:10 Jane was playing the long game, apparently. Yeah, yeah. And in some of these cases, they think that she had financial gain potential, like, oh, I know sometimes some of these cases I've read they've been put in the will or something like that. And or they start Skyping things in the house, they start taking this, they start taking that, and pretty soon there's nothing of value. And then they kill them because there's nothing of value. Nothing of value. Right. Another person was Elizabeth Brigham, foster sister, and that was her foster sister and she died on August 29th, 1899 and she was 70. And remember she died of script 9 poisoning. I'm sure that Jane was watching the results and and then there was Mary Mcnear who we talked about before she died at the age of 70 on December 29th in 1899.

39:56 Florence Caulkins, who is the housekeeper for Elizabeth, his her step sister died on January 15th, 1900. Just for memory's sake, this was about six months after she had killed Elizabeth. So Elizabeth was killed and then Florence was killed. And Florence was only 45. Oh wow, so then William Ingram who was a patient died on January 27th of 1900 and he was 70. And Sarah Myra Connors was a patient and friend. Oh jeez, don't discriminate. I kill my friends too. And she died on February 11th, 1900. She was 48. Then there was Edna Bannister who is a sister-in-law of Elizabeth again step sister she killed died on June 19th in 1901.

40:40 She was 77. Maddie Davis was the wife of Alden Dais we talked about earlier, July 4th, 19 O one, age 62. And then you've got Genevieve Gordon, who we also just mentioned, and Maddie Davis. And they both died on July 19, O1. They didn't mention their names, but their father died on August 8th of 19, O1, and he was 64. So I would think that these girls were probably in their late 30s or 80s. Yeah. And then the last one they mentioned here, which is of course not a list of 31, but this is Mary Minnie Gibbs, a daughter of Alden and Maddie, and she died on August 13th, 19 O1 She was age 40.

41:22 So she killed the entire Davis family between July 30th and August 3rd? July 30th of 19 O1 to August 13th of 19 O one. Wow. Yeah, wow. So as we were talking about, we wondered what on earth could happen? Why do people get to this place? An article in the Hosier State Chronicles, published shortly after after Jane's arrest, reported that Toppen would fondle their victims as they died and attempt to see the inner workings of their souls through their eyes. Yeah, that's Oh my gosh, like, imagine that's the last thing you see before you die. Her staring at your eyes, trying to see the inner workings of your soul in a malicious way. That seems seems awkward at best. Best.

42:07 And under questioning she stated she derived A thrill from patients being near death and coming back to life and then dying again. Oh wow. She administered a drug mixer to the patients she chose as her victims, lay with them and held them close as they died. Oh, isn't that sweet? Oh, isn't that sweet? Right as we talked about Toffins often consider an Angel of mercy and the angels of mercy or now as we talked about them are medical murderers and and hospital killer sort of things are the type of serial killer takes on a caretaker role and attacks the vulnerable and dependent. Now she was a nurse when she did this. Some people are not but they are in caretaker roles. But she also murdered for more personal reasons, such as in the case of the Davis family, she may have been motivated by jealousy. In the case of her foster sister, she later described her motivation as a paralysis of thought and reason and in in strong urge to poison right, So topping use poison for more than just one murder.

43:05 Because as we know, she used the medications in most of them, but in more than one she used poison. She had poisoned the housekeeper just enough so she appeared drunk. And this is what is another thing that seems odd to me. She did poison her enough to keep her looking like she was drunk in order to steal her job, right? And she still wanted to steal her job because she also wanted to kill the family. And she even poisoned herself to evoke the sympathy of men who courted her. Again, as we know, jolly Jane Taupin killed at least 31 people between 1880 and 19 O one. But the doctors who hired her thought she was one of their best nervous nurses. And today, psychiatrists say she was one of the most unusual serial killers in history.

43:46 Like many serial killers, she had an unstable childhood. Unlike most female serial killers, she did it for the sexual thrill. That's what is. So I don't know if it's scary or, or what the whole thing is scary, but especially that in cases of women, they almost never do that sort of thing. But Jane couldn't resist the excitement, admitted she had aspired, as I mentioned before, to kill more people than any other man or woman, whoever lived and. Aspiration and goals, baby. Right. And in that time frame, I don't know how she would know anyway. It's not like all of the news was like it is now where we see it everywhere. So I got just had to keep killing until whatever happens in figuring 100 is probably enough.

44:26 I was. Going to say until her heart tells her that she's done. She measures with her heart. Measures with her heart. Yeah, that sounds right. Jane also displayed the earmarks of a sociopath. Not surprisingly, she told outrageous lies and things that were along the lines of her father sailed around the world. And remember, he was a very abusive man. And she also had lost her mother early on. One of the other lies she said was her sister, married English nobleman. Her brother was decorated at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln. She never even had a brother. He was. He was decorated at by Abraham Lincoln. So those are the kinds. Yeah. Those are the kinds of things that she lied about. You talk about the ways that people get twisted, air quotes if you will, and this is one of those situations where nature versus nurture.

45:10 Was she Born This Way somehow? Some people say sociopaths and psychopaths are born that way and then some of them can control themselves, but some of them cannot based on what happened in their lifetime. I don't know the answer. I don't think even truly does, but I think people have a lot of theories about it. Do you have any? Thoughts related. I know it's, I know it's more nuanced than this and I know this isn't even necessarily accurate, but I do know that there's a a theory that's out there in the lay people's world that you and I don't remember even which direction it goes, but you bear one and you make another. So like you bear a psychopath and make a sociopath or you bear a meaning give birth to. So what is made one is 1 is born that way.

45:53 So I don't like I said, I I know that it again, it's way more nuanced than that. And that's not an entirely accurate depiction, but yeah, it just, it, it does make me wonder, Like, it makes me wonder if you go back to the nature versus nurture argument, right? The the British television show Sherlock. I think that's what it's called. I think so. And it might even be in the book. I haven't read Sherlock Holmes in decades, but you know, Sherlock Holmes is just, he self describes as a sociopath, right? He says he's a sociopath. So being an example of somebody who can be a sociopath and not use that as an excuse to murder or not have the desire to murder or whatever, right. And so then that brings back the nature versus nurture. Can we another fictional example is like Dexter, right? Can we take a serial killer and give them parameters, give them rules, give them boundaries, and have them do things other than serial killing?

46:53 Now obviously Dexter is a serial killer who kills serial killers, but. Right. That being a side, let's say it was instead of killing serial killers, let's say it was making them smell like skunk for a day or whatever so they can be found by the cops. I don't know, I'm just pit bawling. But like cat is there? Is there a level of nurture that we can present and implement that could potentially prevent psychopaths or sociopaths from killing? I don't. Know Yeah, well, there was a book I read recently called I Am a Sociopath and it was by. I'm not quite sure how to say her name, but Patrick Gegen she's a PhD and it's about her actual life as a sociopath and she talks about how she had to make almost a daily, sometimes hourly decision on not being a psychopath because her urges were there. But she knew she air quote shouldn't do that. Now she didn't.

47:50 She in her book and it's worth reading. I really I found it just amazing because my brain doesn't work this way. But she talks about how moment to moment she even had to make these decisions. And what she ended up doing is she did things that were of kind of high risk, but it gave her the thrill she needed. So she'd break into home, she'd try people's clothes on. She'd do things like that. She'd do smaller things that sort of had no victims, if you will, to get that high that she was looking for without doing something really horrendous that she knew was not OK. But it's not like she felt guilt about it or it's not like she just would feel bad if she did it. She just knew that it wasn't OK and she wanted to to do enough to not be kicked out of society, if you will. And it's just amazing that talks about her entire entire life. Some parts are easier to read than others, but it was just, it was just amazing.

48:48 Another mind boggling experience. It gave me a different look on how that was. So I believe that when you said you can bear a sociopath, I think that part was correct. But a psychopath is built because I think from the things I've read, sociopaths are the are kind of born that way and then they can morph into something more significant. But I think almost all psychopaths are sociopaths. That's what I've heard. Again, could be incorrect because I am not a psychology nurse today, right? But today we've taken our first steps into the murder topic on our M4 podcast. Our journey that goes through medicine, mystery, mayhem, and as we say, sometimes murder shows that healthcare world can be as enigmatic and suspenseful as any crime novel.

49:38 And it's it's just it doesn't take long to look through a few things to find these these mysteries and murders and suspense that go on. We want to stay tuned for more riveting stories. I think the most mysterious cases are usually just beneath the surface. You're here, you're here. Well, thank you all for listening do. You have an idea for an episode of this podcast? Just want to say hi? You can get in touch with us at our M4 pod. That's OURM the #4pod@gmail.com. We read every e-mail, and sometimes we even respond just like real professionals.

50:19 Because we are. Old friends with new twists and lots of body bags.