Between 1909 and 1928, Gifford poisoned with arsenic 3 to 17
people in Catawissa, Missouri, USA, she was arrested on 25 August, 1928, she
was charged with the poisoning deaths of three victims, Elmer and Lloyd Schamel
and Edward Brinley, at her trial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity
and committed to the Missouri State Hospital where she remained until her death
on August 20, 1951.
Bertha Gifford (April 3, 1872 to August 20, 1951) was a farmwife in rural
Catawissa, Missouri during the early 1900s who was accused of murdering 17
members of the local community. And while
some consider her to be America's first female serial killer, that dubious
honor was earned 100 years previously by Lavinia Fisher near Charleston, South
Carolina. (Another Later Article in this Series).
Her personal life:
Bertha Alice Williams Graham Gifford was born in Grubville,
Missouri, the daughter of William Poindexter Williams and his wife Matilda, née
Lee. She was one of 10 children. She was married to Henry Graham and this union
produced one daughter, Lila. Following Graham's death, she married Eugene
Gifford and they had one child, James.
The Crimes:
In 1928, Gifford -
known in her community for her cooking skills and caring for sick neighbors and
relatives - was arrested at Eureka, Missouri and charged
with the murders of three people. Following the exhumation and post mortem
exams of Edward Brinley and Elmer and Lloyd Schamel whose bodies were found to
contain large amounts of arsenic, Gifford was put on trial in Union, Missouri. Following the three-day trial, she was found
not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Missouri State Hospital
#4 (a mental institution) where she remained until her death in 1951.
Although counts vary, most historians and family members
agree that Gifford actually killed at least 17 people over a period of 21
years. Most of her victims were children.
More details of Mrs. Bertha Gifford:
She was the daughter of William and Matilda Williams.
Married Henry Graham (December 1894)in Hillsboro, Jefferson County, Missouri.
After his death she married Eugene Gifford (1907) Hillsboro, Jefferson County,
Missouri. Alleged to be one of the most beautiful women of Jefferson County
with dark hair and a dark complexion.
Gene and Bertha moved to Catawissa (Morse Mill area),
Franklin County, Missouri. Neighbors reported she was an extraordinary cook. She
was also reported to be a friendly, caring woman and would don a white dress
and carry her satchel to ailing neighbors. Reportedly, many of her patients
died violently of what was called "gastritis." But she was also reported
to have bought considerable amounts of arsenic for rat infestation in her barn. Eventually, an investigation on the numerous
deaths of her patients, caused her arrest and conviction of three counts of
murder due to arsenic poisoning. She claimed to have used the arsenic to alieve
their suffering.
She was found to be criminally insane and was sent to State
Hospital in Farmington, Missouri where it was said she was a cook.
The following was written in 1928:
Bertha Gifford, Missouri Serial Killer, Who Murdered Sick
Children:
Mrs. Bertha Gifford, the tireless “Good Samaritan” and
death-bed watcher of Meramec River, Missouri, is in jail, suspected of 17
murders, most of them of children, of which, the police say, she has confessed
three and admitted that there “may have been more.” For the last 16 years, in
her old farmhouse, known as the “Catawissa House of Mystery,” this strange
character has held herself ready to dash for the bedside of every dying
neighbor within 20 miles. Uncomplainingly, in fact, and eagerly she would jump out of her
warm bed-in the middle of the night, put on her nurse’s while uniform, which
was always hanging on the chair, and drive her old car, or before that the
horse and buggy, through any sort of weather. Even in blizzards, when no wheel
could turn, she would plough her way on foot along cow paths between ten-foot
drifts. Nothing could slop this determined woman, who usually managed to get
there ahead of the country doctor.
And “good old Bertha,” now 50 years old but once the belle
of Meramec Valley, really was a Good Samaritan, provided her patients actually
went through with the program of dying as expected. In that case, with prayers,
tears and tender ministrations, she eased their last moments, and she never
asked money for her services. The only trouble with Bertha, the police say, was
that when her patients rallied and gave promise of recovery, she resented such
attempts to cheat the grave and fed them rat poison.
Mrs. Gifford had a passion for death-beds and funerals of
which she missed only one in 18 years. But just as youths sometimes become so
overenthusiastic about running to fires that they finally get to setting some
themselves, this death-bed fan, it is charged, could not resist the temptation,
when anyone started to withdraw from the edge of the grave to just push him in
with a little arsenic. She took command of the funerals too and liked to see
everything done right, even going so far as to pay for the embalming of one of
her victims. Mrs. Gifford, though not n trained nurse, was a very competent
volunteer one as the doctors well knew. She could keep temperature and
nourishment chart, understood symptoms and drugs and therefore might be allowed
discretion in administering medicines.
Bertha seems to have preferred children for her patients
whenever she could get them. The police say this was because they would
trustfully swallow anything she gave them as long as it did not taste too nasty,
and they never presumed to correct any misstatement she might make to the
doctor. When Bertha took charge of a case she took command of the household,
ordering this in and that out of the sick-room and impressing the family in
countless ways with her superior knowledge and experience. Early in the
evening, in her kindly but firm professional manner, she would turn to the
mother and say:
“Now, my dear, I want you to go to bed and get a good
night’s rest, so you can take my place tomorrow. Don’t worry As I am here.”
This was really a command, and a reasonable one. The mother,
relieved to know that her child was in more competent hands than her own, would
always obey. Thus Mrs. Gifford had a whole night, free from witnesses, alone
with the helpless child. Shortly before the rising hour next morning, when she
roused the family and telephoned for the doctor, the little patient would be
too far gone to dispute the nurse’s statement that the turn for the worse had
just come in. And the parents would comfort themselves with the thought, that
their baby had had the best of care in its last hours. And Bertha wept harder
than any of them. As might be expected, it was the women who first suspected
Bertha, thinking it strange that whenever that ministering angel “plunks
herself down in a sick-room, the patient never gets well.”
The men scoffed, but the women kept right on putting two and
two together, and when Ed Brinley died, the ninth in the house of mystery
itself and the seventeenth under Bertha’s care, all with the same symptoms,
they demanded an investigation of this “bedside saint” who had consecrated her
life to good works. The authorities look notice and questioned the impressively
indignant Bertha. Mrs. Gifford explained each one of the deaths plausibly. They
were from acute gastritis caused by the rural habit of eating a heavy dinner at
noon and then laboring on a full stomach instead of having the main meal at
night after the day’s work is over, as the city man has learned to. The
physicians must have been satisfied because they had issued death certificates.
Could a lot of ignorant gossips know more than the doctors?
Dr. James Stewart, State Health Commissioner, must have
thought they could because he had the records of drug stores in the neighboring
towns examined and learned that Mrs. Gifford had been a steady customer of
arsenic rat poison which produces symptoms quite similar to gastritis. Also she
had made her purchases in some cases just before the deaths in question.
Bertha, a picture of outraged innocence, and threatening slander suits, was
brought over before the grand jury. The chain of coincidences went back to
1909, when nobody thought it strange that Mr. Graham, the public benefactor’s
last husband died of cramps in the night before the doctor arrived. The next to
succumb of “ptomaine poisoning,” in 1913, was her new mother-in-law, Mrs.
Emilie Gifford, in spite of Bertha’s seemingly heroic efforts. Here Bertha’s
grief was not so great but was considered adequate for a mother-in-law. A year
later her thirteen-year-old brother-in-law, James Gifford passed out in Mrs.
Gifford’s arms with those same symptoms of stomach cramps and vomiting.
George Stuhlfelder told the Grand Jury how this “ministering
angel” for whom he felt nothing but gratitude at the time, had nursed his three
children, Bernard, 15-months old, Margaret, two years and Irene, seven for
small ailments which promptly turned into acute gastritis and ended in the
death of all of them. George L. Shamel, a hired man who had worked at the
Gifford place testified to the deaths of his two boys:
“I worked off and on for the Giffords about 18 years. I went
to the Gifford place once in 1925, on a Saturday night. On the very next day,
the Sabbath, my boy, Lloyd, nine years old. had stomach cramps. Two days later
he died after being sick at his stomach all the time. The doctor said it was
acute gastritis but didn’t know what caused it. There was no post mortem. Five
weeks later my other boy Elmer, he was seven years old, got sick, with stomach
cramps. He lived two days too. They said it was the same gastritis. There was
no post mortem. I always trusted the Giffords and thought it was just my luck
when the boys died.” Hardly a month after Elmer’s funeral, Mrs. Gilford learned
that Mrs. Leona Slocum, Shamel’s sister, a tuberculosis sufferer was “sinking.”
Bertha put on her nurse’s uniform of white, rushed to the bedside and took
charge. Sure enough Mrs. Slocum rallied so strongly that they were just telling
the ‘Good Samaritan” that there was no longer any need of taking advantage of
her kindness when the patient suddenly developed alarming stomach pains, nausea
and died.
“Before I lay down she asked ‘Where’s Eva’ meaning Mary’s
mother. She seemed satisfied. I then dozed off. After that the survivors of the
Shamel family, while not exactly suspicious, decided that Mrs. Gifford was
unlucky. But the Sluhlfelders took a chance once more on Mrs. Mary Sluhlfelder,
aged 74, with the invariable result, death from gastritis. Quite similar were the
last moments of James Ogle, a hired man of the Giffords who had incidentally
complained that he could not collect the money they owed him. Bertha however,
paid the money in time for it to be spent on the funeral.
S. Herman Pounds, one of the strongest physical specimens in
the neighborhood indulged a bit too much in his own hard cider and went to
sleep in the Gifford pasture. Bertha had him brought into the house and gave
him something to sober up. “Acute gastritis, superinduced by alcoholism,” she
told the doctor who arrived too late. There was the sudden onset of this same
stomach trouble, carrying off “Grandma” Birdie Unnerstall just as Bertha
dropped in for a visit while everyone was away. Mrs. Laura Brown, of East St.
Louis, aunt of little seven-year-old Mary Brown, one of Mrs. Gifford’s alleged
poison victims, tells a sample of Mrs. Gifford’s nursing.
“One afternoon about two and n half months before Mary
died,” Mrs. Brown said, “she was lying ill in the bedroom. I entered. Mrs.
Gifford was sitting by the bedside- She seemed annoyed by my presence. “I had
come all the way from East St. Louis to Catawissa to visit the sick child and
mentioned that I was tired. “Mrs. Gifford urged ‘Why don’t you lie down and
take a little nap.’ The last of the list was Ed. Brinley, a neighbor and
another cider victim who rested for a fatal moment against the mailbox post,
outside the Gifford house. Bertha’s watchful eye spotted him there and she
ordered her husband to carry him in. When two hours later he also had met his
death from the same old symptoms, even the men admitted that it was queer.
The Grand Jury thought so too and indicted Bertha for murder
but she still persisted in her denials until Andrew McConnell, chief of police
of Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, took a hand. He noticed that the
prisoner seemed specially annoyed at the suggestion that, she had poisoned
Beulah Mounds, three-year-old daughter of S. Herman Pounds. He harped on that
case until, according to McConnell, she finally snapped at him:
Well, anyway, I did not give any arsenic to that Pounds
child.”
“To whom did you give it?” the chief asked quietly. Her
answer, he says, was a confession that she had poisoned Brinley, the Shamel
boys and perhaps some others. Her excuse was that she wanted to put them out of
their misery. Brinley’s body was exhumed and its stomach showed traces of
arsenical poisoning, according to the police. Since the confession, Bertha’s
chief ambition has been to avoid being photographed. She sits in her cell with
a blanket, ready to throw over her head whenever she hears a footfall in the
corridor. She exhibits remorse, too, and says she does not care to live.
If she is guilty of the crimes charged against her, there
seems no reason why she should live.
[“Dealt Out Death in the Guise of an Angel of Mercy – Kindly
Mrs. Gifford Was Always Glad to Nurse a Sick Neighbor for Nothing, but So Loved
to See Them Die, the Missouri Police Charge, That She Fed Them Rat Poison if
They Showed Signs of Getting Better,” The American Weekly, San Antonio Light (TX.),
Magazine section, Oct. 13, 1928, p. 7]
As always, stay safe !
Bird
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