Janie Lou Gibbs
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| Janie Lou Gibbs | |
|---|---|
| Birth name: | Janie Lou Gibbs |
| Born: | 1933 Georgia (U.S. state) |
| Penalty: | life sentence |
| Killings | |
| Number of victims: | five |
| Span of killings: | 1966 through 1967 |
| Country: | United States |
| State(s): | Georgia |
| Date apprehended: | 1967 |
Janie Lou Gibbs (b. 1933) was a serial killer from Cordele, Georgia, who killed her three sons, a grandson, and her husband, by poisoning them with arsenic in 1966 and 1967.
Contents |
[edit] Murders
Gibbs' husband of 20 years, Charles Clayton Gibbs, 40, died January 21, 1966. Her son, Melvin W. Gibbs, 16, died January 23, 1967, followed by her younger son, Marvin H. Gibbs, 13, on August 23, 1967. She inherited $31,000 from their deaths and tithed 10 percent to her church.
The deaths had previously been attributed to liver disease, but she was eventually arrested Christmas Eve 1967 after her oldest son, Roger, 19, died in the same fashion as his father, two brothers, and infant nephew.
[edit] Imprisonment
Despite the unusual coincidences of so many deaths in such a short period of time, she blocked insurance adjusters' requests for autopsies. Although insurance adjusters were suspicious, most of Gibbs' neighbors and friends from church could not believe that the 35-year-old grandmother who ran a day-care center could be a serial killer.
However, Gibbs' daughter-in-law demanded autopsies of her husband and child. The autopsies found fatal levels of arsenic in both bodies. The court ordered the rest of her family exhumed and each was found to have been murdered.
She admitted killing her family, but did not give a motive. In February 1968 she was found to be guilty and received five life sentences.
Gibbs, who in later years suffered from Parkinson's disease, was released in 1999.
[edit] References
- "Janie Gibbs" Mind of a Killer (DVD) Kozel Multimedia, 1998.
- "Judged Insane in Poisonings," The Associated Press, February 8, 1968.
- "Woman Charged in Death of Kin" The Associated Press, January 28, 1968.
