Random "Little Old Ladies" Who Committed Murders (17 items)

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  (#1) Leonarda Cianciulli

  • Dec. at 76 (1894-1970)

  Between 1939 and 1940, Italian serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli, nicknamed “la saponificatrice di Correggio,” killed three women as human sacrifices to break a family curse.

  Cianciulli suffered numerous miscarriages and lost many of her children to illness when they were young. To protect her surviving children, she turned to the occult for answers and chose to offer the dark powers human sacrifices in exchange for their safety.

  In order to dispose of the bodies, she dismembered them. She then turned them into soap or baked them into tea cakes to sell in her shop. She noted that her final victim made excellent soap, and a wonderful snack: "The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.” Italian authorities sentenced Cianciulli to 30 years in prison. 
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  (#2) Andrea Göppner, The Newborn Baby Killer

  German authorities arrested Andrea Göppner in July 2016 following the discovery of eight dead babies in her apartment. The woman admitted to killing several of the children but says she can't remember exactly how many. In a confession read out by her lawyer, Göppner revealed she had given birth to each of the eight babies alone at home and promptly suffocated any baby that moved or cried. She placed the bodies in plastic bags or containers and hid them in the apartment.

  She and her husband lived in the apartment with the deceased infants, along with their three other children. Authorities charged Göppner with four counts of murder and sentenced her to 14 years in prison. 
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  (#3) Amelia Dyer

  • Dec. at 59 (1837-1896)

  For 20 years, Amelia Dyer is said to have killed more than 400 infants while she was working as a "baby farmer," someone who adopts children for lump sums of money. In 19th-century Victorian England, it was common for older women to take in children for a fee. The Victorian nurse offered her services to young mothers who were unwed or unable to care for their offspring. 

  Initially, she neglected the children until they died, but when that began to take too long, she started murdering them at the onset of their adoption to make more of a profit.

  Police were only able to confirm one of Dyer’s victims, but investigators found concrete evidence of between 12 and 50 more deceased children who had been in her care. However, it's widely speculated she killed hundreds more. Authorities sentenced her to death by hanging, and she died in the summer of 1896.
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  (#4) Tamara Samsonova - Known As 'Granny Ripper' - Ate And Dismembered Her Victims

  Tamara Samsonova, also known as the "Granny Ripper," is a 68-year-old woman from Russia who confessed to killing 11 people over the span of two decades. Shortly after her arrest in July 2015, St Petersburg police found Samsonova's diaries, which included the gruesome details of how she would murder, dismember, and eat some of her victims. As brutal as the details of her story are, her journals give a fairly straightforward version of each of her crimes: 

  I killed my tenant Volodya, cut him to pieces in the bathroom with a knife, put the pieces of his body in plastic bags and threw them away in the different parts of Frunzensky district.

  Courts found Samsonova mentally insane and sentenced her to life in a psychiatric facility.
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  (#5) Nannie Doss

  • Dec. at 59 (1905-1965)

  Nannie Doss began her silent murder spree at the age of 16 when she unsuccessfully tried to poison her first husband. Shortly after, in 1927, two of her daughters died of “food poisoning,” and her husband left with the eldest child.

  For the next 30-some years, Doss would go on to allegedly kill four husbands, her mother, one of her mothers-in-law, her two sisters, a grandson, and a nephew. She was finally caught in 1954 when her fifth husband toppled over dead after drinking his morning coffee. The doctor who performed the autopsy found enough arsenic in his body to kill a horse and suspected foul play. 

  In 1955, she confessed to her killings and served a life sentence in Oklahoma. News reports from the time say she was cheery, going as far to joke to journalists about her dead husbands. When asked why she killed, she told investigators it was a case of "marital boredom." 
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  (#6) Gloria Marie Tensley Kept A Skeleton In Her Closet

  In July 2016, 36-year-old Allen Trobaugh moved in with 65-year-old Gloria Marie Tensley and helped her take care of things around the house. In the closet of her home in Paragould, Arkansas, he found a human skeleton. He told Region 8 News:

  I tried to open it and finally opened it and it was like this wind blew out and cobwebs everywhere, I just immediately looked down and said, 'Oh no, that can’t be real.'

  Trobaugh said he lived with Tensley for about three months before finding the body. Reportedly, Tensley was cashing Social Security checks in the dead man's name after she stashed his body in the closet. Authorities charged her with abuse of a corpse and fraud. 
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  (#7) Faye Copeland Made A Quilt Out of Her Victims' Clothes

  Faye Copeland worked with her husband Ray to kill drifters who they lured to their Missouri farm. Ray Copeland was a known fraud in the small town of Mooresville. When money was tight, he picked up drifters to act as farm hands to commit cattle fraud. The drifters bought cattle using bad checks and then after the transactions were done, they would mysteriously disappear. The Copelands killed the drifters and buried the bodies on the farm. Allegedly, Faye even sewed a quilt from her victims' clothes. 

  Authorities arrested the Copelands after a former employee called a Crime Stoppers tip line in 1989. Charged on first-degree murder counts, the courts sentenced both Ray, 76, and Faye, 69, to death, as the oldest couple on death row. Ray died in prison, and the courts later reduced Faye's sentence on appeal. In 2003, she died on parole in a nursing home. 
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  (#8) Nilda Sheffield Killed Her Daughter and Grandchildren to Save Them From 'Hell'

  In 2015, Nilda Sheffield, 53, wrote in her diary that she wanted to kill her daughter and grandchildren to free them from "hell." She compared herself to Abraham, a biblical figure God called upon to sacrifice his own son. 

  The Florida grandmother then shot 31-year-old Elizabeth Flores and her children, ages 7 and 2, before turning the gun on herself. According to police reports, Sheffield killed her family with a shot to the back of the head while they slept. Sheffield reportedly believed the family would be reincarnated and meet again in their next lives. 
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  (#9) Angela Bingham Suffocated Her Young Grandson

  In 2016, Felton police arrested Angela Bingham after she confessed to killing her 3-year-old grandson. Bingham reportedly said she couldn't afford to have a kid around, so she held a towel over her grandson's mouth until he died from lack of oxygen. In order to mask the smell of his decomposing body, she "stuffed towels around the bedroom door and burned incense." 

  Bingham allegedly tried to kill herself after committing the murder. Delaware authorities sentenced her to 22 years in prison.
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  (#10) Mangal Bharat Thorat Lit Her Daughter-In-Law On Fire

  In November 2005, following an argument regarding a dowry, 62-year-old Mangal Bharat Thorat beat her daughter-in-law, Neelam Thorat, doused her in kerosene, and set her on fire. Mumbai High Court sentenced Thorat to life in prison. Neelam sustained burns on over 85 percent of her body and later died from her injuries at Bhatia Hospital. Allegedly, Thorat had persistently tormented her daughter-in-law since the nuptials earlier that March. 

  Prosecutors tried to have Thorat's husband arrested as well, but according to a judge working the case, "Although her husband was also equally a culprit, there is no substantial evidence to convict him." The courts acquitted him of charges.
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  (#11) Melissa Ann Shepard Tranquilized Her Husbands To Death

  Melissa Ann Shepard’s nickname is "Internet Black Widow." This 81-year old woman from Halifax, Canada murdered two of her five husbands and tried killing the others over the span of two decades. Her method of choice was to give her husbands tranquilizers, causing them to overdose. 

  After the death of her second husband in 1991, authorities convicted her of manslaughter and sentenced her to six years in prison. After an early release, Shepard killed another man. Evidence also shows she tried unsuccessfully to kill two of her other husbands as well. Police finally charged her with attempted murder in 2005 after the near death of her fifth husband. Her husband had been admitted to the hospital for poisoning, and investigators found a stockpile of prescription pills from five different doctors at her home. 

  In 2016, the courts released Shepard under the stipulation she document any potential relationship with a man and to report weekly either by telephone or in-person to the police.
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  (#12) Juana Barraza

  • 65

  In Mexico City between 1998 and 2006, Juana Barraza, 48, murdered close to 50 women while moonlighting as a luchador - Mexican wrestler - named La Dama del Silencio, or "The Silent Lady." Most of the women she killed were over the age of 60, and she either strangled or bludgeoned them to death before robbing them. The press donned her Mataviejitas - "Little Old Lady Killer."

  After her arrest in January 2006, Mexican authorities sentenced her to 759 years in prison. 
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  (#13) Dorothea Puente

  • Dec. at 82 (1929-2011)

  At 64, Dorothea Puente stood trial for murdering nine people, including a former boyfriend. Monterey County convicted Puente after law enforcement found her victims' bodies buried under her unlicensed boarding home in Sacramento.

  Puente murdered victims who police referred to as “shadow people,” or people without friends or family - the elderly, alcoholics, and the disabled. She gave her borders fatal doses of drugs and then cashed their Social Security checks. Authorities apprehended Puente in the early '90s,  and she served her life sentence in Chowchilla prison, where she later died at the age of 82. 
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  (#14) Hazel Dulcie Bodsworth Baked Cakes For Cops, Then Killed Her Husband

  Hazel Dulcie Bodsworth had a reputation for baking cakes and delivering them to the local police station. Australian authorities later discovered she killed three men, including the father of her four children.

  Bodsworth staged her killings as accidents. Her first husband "accidentally" drowned, another of her victims tragically burned in a "strange" house fire. She even tried killing her son-in-law by shoving him into a hole, but he survived the attack.

  When police finally caught her in 1964, she and her new husband were on their way to pick up their newly adopted son. Bodsworth and her husband, Henry William Bodsworth, stood trial before the Central Criminal Court. She admitted guilt, and the court sentenced her to life in prison, of which she only served 14 years. Henry pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served five years for the death of Bodsworth’s first husband.
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  (#15) Helen Golay

  • 92

  Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, dubbed the “Black Widows,” set up an elaborate scheme where they would take in homeless men, apply for life insurance policies for these men valued in the thousands, and then crush them with their cars in staged hit-and-run accidents. 

  The ladies received $2.8 million in insurance payouts before Southern California authorities unearthed their plot. The Black Widows killed two men, but police discovered their crimes after the women failed a third murder attempt. The women tried to convince a homeless man named Jimmy Covington to apply for an $800,000 life insurance policy. He became suspicious and fled. 

  In 2008, law enforcement charged Golay and Rutterschmidt with two counts each of murder and conspiracy in the deaths of Kenneth McDavid and Paul Vados. Los Angeles courts sentenced the Black Widows to life in prison.
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  (#16) Carolyn Hood Helped Her Son Kill Her Husband

  In 2016, Montgomery law enforcement arrested 79-year-old Carolyn Hood for allegedly helping her son, William Minton, kill her husband. Investigators report Minton killed Kenneth Hood in 2014 and then dismembered his body. Reportedly, Minton scattered Kenneth’s remains around Baldwin County, AL. 

  Despite her attorney referring to her as "basically an invalid," police believe Hood helped Minton dismember Kenneth's corpse. While her son did most of the dirty work, prosecutors believe she had a hand in the slaying of Kenneth. Both initially faced capital murder charges, but in 2017, Alabama courts dropped the case against Hood, who has since moved into a nursing home. Minton pled guilty to manslaughter and received a life sentence.
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  (#17) Sandra Layne Repeatedly Shot Her Teenage Grandson

  In 2012, law enforcement arrested 74-year-old Sandra Layne after she shot her 17-year-old grandson multiple times. Reportedly, she shot him in the chest, back, and abdomen. At the trial, her lawyer argued self-defense, claiming that her grandson, Jonathan Hoffman, was a drug addict and Layne was afraid of him.

  Michigan prosecutors alleged she was fed up with her grandson's juvenile delinquency and plotted to murder him. Hoffman had even called authorities during the shooting, further cementing Layne’s guilt to the jury. The courts sentenced Layne to 22 years in prison.

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