Jane Toppan had become a crutch for the eminent Davis family while they were struck by the tragedy after the tragedy.
It was summer and the rich railway dynasty had welcomed their longtime friend and adored “Jolly” nurse in their idyllic Cape Cod house.
But, one by one, family members suddenly fell dead.
In just over a month, four died – succumbing to a myriad of diseases apparently unrelated.
Mary’s family matriarch ‘Mattie’ Davis was the first, with her death explained by her diabetes.
A few days later, his daughter Geneviève Gordon died of apparent heart failure.
After losing his wife and one of his daughters, Alden Davis – who made a fortune the family to direct the railway from Boston to Cape Cod – underwent an apparently fatal stroke.
Her other daughter Mary Gibbs would have died in a few days – apparently a broken heart.
But for the stepfather of Gibbs, the sudden outpouring of the whole Davis family was strangely suspicious.
Something sinister was happening.
Toppan, the popular nurse of Boston and the friend of the Davis family who had care about each of the four victims, fed a macabre secret.
“ Jolly ” Jane Toppan was one of the most prolific serial killers in America, murdering at least 31 victims
As a infirmarian, Toppan (photo) killed patients and any other person who started with deadly doses of morphine
For years, Toppan was known by the affectionate nickname “Jolly” Jane because of her warm and jovial way.
But, in reality, she was A “angel of death” – Kill patients and any other person who put themselves on their way with deadly doses of morphine.
Some have been injected with a fatal dose of drugs while others were poisoned with special Toppan bottles in Hunyadi mineral water.
In a sick touch, Toppan reveling to play with the life of his victims by bringing them to and from the edge of death with alternating doses of morphine and atropine.
While his helpless victims were dying, the nurse “Jolly” curled up with them – making a twisted sex chill while they were giving their last breathing.
As “Jolly” Jane Toppan was exposed as one of the first American serial killers, she had cost the life of at least 31 victims, according to her own letter of confession without remorse.
But many fear that the number can really exceed 100.
“She was probably the first female killer in series,” Dailyymail.com Diane Runney, former assistant director of the public library of Jonathan Bourne, in Dailymail.com.
“(But) it seems strange to me that fame has never really reached it.
Jane Toppan’s shocking confession letter was published in the New York Journal in 1902
Despite his frenzy of sadistic murder, Toppan is a serial killer that few heard about.
Even in the city of Cape Cod de Bourne – where many murders have taken place – Runney says that the scary past is a story little known among the community.
“People don’t know it … for any reason, this is one of those well-hidden secrets,” she said.
Born Honora Kelly in the end of southern Boston in 1854 with Irish immigrant parents, the start of Toppan in life was turbulent to say the least.
Her mother died when she was only a small child, leaving her and her sister to be raised by her alcoholic father.
Some victims were poisoned with bottles with Hunyadi mineral water laces
In a bizarre turn, his father – plagued by mental health problems – sewn his own closed eyelids and abandoned her two daughters with a female asylum in Boston.
Honora was then considered a servant under contract by the rich family Toppan and his name went to Jane Toppan.
“I am probably the only person to search for her research who feels sorry for her,” said Runney.
“Everyone calls him a monster, which was in a way, but the more I turned into things, the more I thought, it is a very interesting person.”
During her years of research, Runney says that it is “a question of why she was as she was”.
This is a question of Toppan gave a curious answer after being taken.
In his young adult, Toppan was jilée at the altar by her fiancé.
She continued to blame her lover – and be single – for having sent her on her dark and deadly path.
“If I had been a married woman, I would probably not have killed all these people,” she said sadly.
Rejected by her lover, Toppan decided to train at Cambridge hospital to become a nurse – a vocation which would give her knowledge of the drug and the position of confidence that she would exploit later.
An audience sketch of the trial of the “Angel of Death” Jane Toppan in the Boston Post in 1902
When Toppan started working as a nurse, she became an instant success, which earned her the nickname Jolly Jane because she still joked with her patients.
“She had a strange enough way to express her love for her patients. She took very well care of them … But in the end, she ended up killing them, “says Runney.
It is not known exactly when the series of murders started.
During his stay at the General Hospital of Massachusetts and the Cambridge School of Nursing, many patients were mysteriously died under his care.
When she then turned to private nursing care, offering her patients rich in home visits, there were also curious deaths of death.
But surprisingly, deaths have always been explained by a disease or another – and no alarm has been raised.
Several years would pass before anyone suspects the nurse to kill the patients she had adopted with such care.
For the other victims, Toppan’s murders were much more personal.
There was her adoptive sister Elizabeth Brigham with whom she had grown.
Toppan also murdered her adoptive sister Elizabeth Brigham (photo) with whom she had grown with
Her best friend Sarah Connors she wanted to take in a school of theology.
The sister of her love Edna banister who, she felt, embarked on a romance.
And its former owners Israel and Lovey Dunham.
Toppan’s chance was only exhausted when she murdered the Davis family in the summer of 1901 after dared to ask her to finally pay the $ 500 rent that she owed.
Even Toppan continued to admit that it may have been a step too far, declaring: “It was the biggest error in my life”.
After the pressure of the stepfather of Gibbs, his body was exhumed and a deadly dose of morphine discovered.
The depraved murder of Toppan was no longer a secret.
In October 1901, the 47 -year -old man was arrested for murder.
In the end, it was only judged for the murder of Gibbs in a case that made the headlines in the United States while the media and the public flocked to the history of a perverse serial killer who obtained a sexual kick of the murder.
The victims who lived to tell the story showed their shocking stories.
A patient described Toppan who took her out with a mystery drink, then climbed on her, kissing and caressing her while she was suffering in a hospital bed.
Jane Toppan was declared not guilty due to madness and was sent to the Massachusetts Psychiatric Hospital of Taunton (photo) where she lived until her death in 1938
At the time, the woman exceeded the bizarre meeting as a dream – only learning how close she was to be another victim when Toppan was arrested.
Although suspected of 11 murders, a letter of confession of bombs published in the New York Journal revealed that the actual number of Toppan’s death was at least 31.
In the shocking statement, Toppan boasted that his depraved goal was “to have killed more people – helpless people – than any other man or woman who lived”.
She also described being motivated by an “uncontrollable passion” for death, writing that: “No voice has as much melody as that which cries for life; No eyes as brilliant as those who are about to become fixed and glassy; No face as beautiful as that without pulses and cold.
Runney says that there is no indication that Toppan deliberately chose a career in nursing to give him the opportunity to kill.
“I don’t think it started like that. I think she may have accidentally killed someone without realizing it … She may have just decided: “Oh, look at what I can do. Wow, it really gave me a thrill.” But I don’t think she has become a nurse for this reason, “she said.
“I think that part was a feeling that it was powerful.”
An audience sketch of the Jane Toppan trial in the Boston Daily Globe on November 1, 1901
Toppan (photo) went up in his bed with his victims and obtained a sexual thrill from their death
More than a century, however, questions remain as to whether it was really Toppan that wrote the shocking confession letter.
Runney is not so sure.
“I always wondered if it was really (her),” she says.
“It didn’t hit me that it was her writing … just the way she is written. I don’t think it would have been so frank about things. It just seems to me that his nature had to be more secret.
She adds: “But then again, at that time, she may have decided that she was simply going to confess because it brought her notoriety.”
Toppan was found not guilty due to madness and was sent to the Massachusetts Psychiatric Hospital in Taunton.
She lived there until her death in 1938.
A little ironically, Toppan often refused to eat and drink in the – paranoid establishment that someone was trying to poison him.
