Profiling women who turned to poisoning for profit. Belle Gunness dispatched suitors for their ready cash, while in Connecticut, a carer turned her OAP home into a murder factory.
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00:00Everybody has to be forgiven, but you can't forgive what she really did to those men.
00:20These are the stories of terrible deeds.
00:24They would choose two or three victims a year and simply kill them.
00:30Of crimes written in blood on history's pages.
00:34She was just a conveyor belt of bodies coming in and out of there.
00:39Across time and across continents, something united these murderers.
00:45What they did was unforgivable, but they were clever.
00:49They shared a common ambition.
00:52They understood her market for death very thoroughly.
00:56They wanted money.
00:58Greed can become a monster that feeds on itself.
01:02And would do anything to get it.
01:05Even when they came here and didn't intend to spend the night, they stayed and they went back and got their money and came back.
01:12The business of deadly weapons.
01:16Money makes people do all kinds of things.
01:45In a remote field in Norway stands a silent reminder of a deadly woman.
01:51It's not to celebrate her, but to mark where one of the worst female mass murderers in the world was born.
01:58For a century, residents of the small village of Selbu have lived in the shadow of their infamous resident, Belle Gunness.
02:11Headmaster Torget Storseth has two great passions.
02:16One is teaching.
02:18The other is search for the truth behind the Norwegian serial killer.
02:23My father told me the story about Belle Gunness.
02:27She was clever at school, but she might be characterized as an outsider among the children.
02:34So it might be an illustration that she was easily angered.
02:41In the late 19th century, an angry young woman left the chill of Norway for a new life in America's Midwest.
02:54Well, a lot of Norwegians went to America.
02:58We were a poor, poor country, and they went to seek their fortune, seek new opportunities.
03:08Torget has come to La Porte, Indiana, to solve the mystery preoccupying his village to this day.
03:18Well, they are curious, I think.
03:21How could a woman from our area become one of the worst female serial killers in the world?
03:32Hello.
03:33Welcome to La Porte County Historical Society.
03:35Thank you.
03:36Torget Storseth.
03:37Good to see you.
03:38Author Sylvia Shepard has chronicled Belle's crimes and is anxious to share notes with a fellow seeker from Belle's hometown.
03:47It's been said that she probably killed in the 40s, close to 40.
03:51The pair meet at the local museum where some of Belle's handiwork is kept.
03:57I understand that it is Scandinavian because I had an archaeologist look at it,
04:01and he said from the forehead and the way that it's shaped that it was indeed Scandinavian.
04:06The skull's identity is unknown.
04:09And right here it even says, found in the outhouse at the Gunness Farm.
04:15It could be any of the lonely men who strayed into Belle's trap.
04:24She wanted Norwegian men, so she advertised in a Norwegian newspaper called The Scandinavian.
04:34See, many of these men had come over from Norway, and they wanted a woman, a wife, you know, somebody companion.
04:42Belle was a good catch.
04:45She had profited from a string of insurance claims.
04:49She'd lost a candy store to fire and two husbands in suspicious circumstances.
04:56Belle had 48 acres here.
04:58Chickens, pigs, you know, she advertised and said that she had all this.
05:03And she did have all that.
05:04She just didn't include what she did with the people.
05:08She had an allure.
05:11Many men came and thought they weren't going to be staying, but they did.
05:15In 1908, one victim to fall for Belle was Norwegian Andrew Helgeline.
05:21He was just one of those people that answered one of her ads.
05:25Convinced his future would be here with Belle, Andrew surrendered his life savings, $3,000.
05:33She kept men here, even when they came here and didn't intend to spend the night.
05:38Or they stayed, and they went back and got their money and came back.
05:42By the time Andrew Helgeline settled in La Porte, Belle had three foster children to raise.
06:01The farm's income was modest, so her new man's savings were a windfall.
06:10But this homely scene was a prelude to death.
06:14Female serial killers frequently use poison as their weapon.
06:18Former FBI criminal profiler Candice DeLong, with 20 years experience, recognizes Belle's business plan.
06:30They don't have to get close to the victim.
06:32They just have to get close to their food.
06:35And strychnine is something that one would expect to see on a farm.
06:41Strychnine was commonly used as rat poison.
06:45Strychnine is a phenomenal compound. It comes from the seed of a tree in India.
06:53Forensic pathologist Dr. Janice Amatuzio, based in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, knows strychnine's inevitable result.
07:02It antagonizes, or stops, the inhibitory reflex.
07:09So that all of the reflexes of the stronger muscles, the flexor muscles, are exaggerated.
07:20Relax.
07:25What an individual who takes strychnine will feel is initially perhaps a sense of anxiety or nervousness.
07:37Then they'll notice muscle twitches and muscle spasms.
07:42And then they actually get into almost a seizure-like state where they have convulsions.
07:57These contractions are painful.
08:03And the victim is conscious throughout this whole process and probably terrified.
08:12It would take two types of people to be able to watch that.
08:16A sadist would probably enjoy it, or a cold-hearted individual for whom killing was no big deal.
08:31The greater gain, getting their money, was worth whatever they had to do to get it.
08:42But Bell's treachery would go much further.
08:46It would rank among the most grisly crimes in Indiana's history.
09:00In the 1880s, in Liverpool, England, a group of women ran an extraordinary cooperative.
09:12I think everyone is familiar with the concept of women sticking together in times of trouble.
09:17But you normally assume that it's going to be a helping in a pleasant way.
09:31Retired police prosecutor Angela Braben spent a lifetime fighting crime in English courts.
09:38But the case that fascinates her most happened before she was born.
09:43You've got a group of women living together and they're forming a web, a syndicate of murder.
09:50And they're investing in death.
09:55The plan was simple. Ensure everyone in their immediate acquaintance.
10:02Then kill them, one by one.
10:08There were four women who were actually killing.
10:14Then there were five or six others who were concerning themselves solely with the insurance.
10:21No one was spared. Siblings, husbands, strangers.
10:28Like young boarder Maggie Jennings.
10:32There's probably one person in the group that's the leader. The alpha female.
10:38The one who came up with the idea, who drew up the plans, who gave the orders.
10:42And everybody else pretty much followed in line.
10:45In Liverpool, the Pax leader was Catherine Flanagan.
10:51Second in command, her sister, Margaret Higgins.
10:57Their method? Poison.
11:02Wow.
11:07Arsenic obtained from flypapers. It was very readily available.
11:11All little shops would have the flypapers.
11:14You'd soak them in water and obtain liquid, which then could very easily be added to the food.
11:21No suspicions were raised when victims like Maggie Jennings died in the prime of life.
11:32The doctors were expecting to find the diseases of poverty, malnutrition and insanitary conditions.
11:39The women, therefore, made sure that the doctors found something that would fit with what the doctors were expecting.
11:50With every death came an insurance payout to one of the women.
11:56With every death came an insurance payout to one of the group, to be later shared.
12:04Maggie Jennings, for example, was insured for over £112.
12:08And those insurances were started approximately 12 months before she died.
12:13So that was a very good rate of return for an investment.
12:17A good return indeed, when a labourer's weekly wage was less than a pound, not even a couple of dollars.
12:27The women in the Liverpool syndicate were illiterate.
12:31But that didn't hinder business.
12:34Insurance brokers at the time were eager to sign up customers for their own commissions.
12:40They would be paid one year's premiums as their commission.
12:43So obviously the more people they could be encouraged to insure, the better.
12:47And if somebody was not sure about the right answers, they would make the answers up as they went along.
12:55This confluence of poison, poor hygiene and exuberant sales pitches created the perfect storm of murder.
13:04Victims were chosen depending on how old they were.
13:07Were they ill? Could they be hastened?
13:10Could they get insurance for them? And if so, how much?
13:14And they would choose two or three victims a year and simply kill them.
13:22Greed can become a monster that feeds on itself.
13:26And it's one of the toughest things in the world to keep a lid on.
13:29The Liverpool syndicate operated undetected for at least four years.
13:35Their final tally would shock the country.
13:41It's very complicated to explain who killed who.
13:45And so this is a little diagram.
13:48Certainly they killed Thomas Higgins, that's one husband gone.
13:52They probably killed the other husband, John Flanagan as well.
13:56They certainly killed a son, a daughter-in-law, a daughter-in-law's mother, a lodger, a lawyer, a lawyer's son.
14:07They certainly killed a son, a daughter-in-law, a daughter-in-law's mother, a lodger, a little step-daughter of 12, neighbours, friends, anyone else really that they could get their hands on.
14:30It's believed the syndicate murdered at least 17 people for profit.
14:35If there was any remorse, it seemed lost in a web of shared liability.
14:41In a gang or a pack committing a crime, whether it's one crime or several ongoing crimes, the sense of guilt, if there is any, is definitely shared.
14:55In 1883, after four years, the group's power was finally extinguished.
15:01A suspicious relative convinced authorities to test the body of Margaret's husband.
15:07Police found arsenic, then pieced together a long trail of death.
15:13Enough evidence was found to convict Catherine Flanagan and her sister Margaret Higgins.
15:24Newspaper reports describe how they hung side by side from the gallows.
15:32Just as shocking to the English public was the fact the Liverpool women could kill those near and dear to them, even a child.
15:43In La Porte, Indiana, Belle Gunness seems to have shared that chilling facility.
15:53Belle's story took a mysterious twist one spring evening.
15:57There was a handyman that was in that house, and when he went to bed that night, the occupants of the house were Belle and three children.
16:17The fire began at about four o'clock in the morning.
16:22The Gunness Farm was razed, its occupants consumed. The only survivor, Belle's handyman.
16:31When they got down through the ashes into the basement, there were four bodies there, three children and a female.
16:38And there was more.
16:41Investigating the fire scene, workers noticed soft spots around the farm and began to dig.
16:52They would find all of the victims wrapped in gunny sacks, parts of them.
17:02They had been all dismembered, fit into these sacks with lime.
17:12There were children that were in her care, and of course the men who came to visit her and never got away.
17:22Among the victims would be Andrew Helgeline, the partner wooed from Norway.
17:29They found him in a garbage pit where Belle had carried garbage, fish heads, tomato cans. It smelled terrible. That was the excuse for the smell.
17:42Other human bones suggest the Gunness Farm pigs helped conceal further victims.
17:52I think the fact that Belle threw the body parts of her victims into a pig trough is a pretty good indicator as to the type of person that she was, how she felt about these men that she killed.
18:09What kind of final send-off is that for someone that was a human being to throw their body parts in a pig trough?
18:15Well, that's the kind of person she was. She didn't care. That's where she thought they belonged.
18:21Altogether, 14 bodies were found, including Belle's foster children.
18:27Probably she had given poison to her three children and killed them.
18:36Maybe with a hammer blow too because there was found holes in their skull after the fire.
18:44How could a mother do a thing like that?
18:53There's another mystery. Did Belle perish in the fire?
18:59The only adult female body left few clues.
19:04At that time they thought it was Belle dead in the fire.
19:09But the body was smaller than Belle's and inexplicably the skeleton was headless.
19:17There is no logic to the fact that there were her children's skeletons intact and then the one adult skeleton which one would think would be hers.
19:27The head is missing and the head of course would be the one part of a skeleton that would have the most identifiers.
19:34Was this just another of Belle's insurance scams?
19:39Tourgette's search for the truth is not yet over.
19:48As any business person knows, if you can match service with customer need, there's opportunity for profit.
19:56For Amy Archer Gilligan, that opportunity came with the elderly.
20:02Amy Archer Gilligan presented herself to the world as this very innocent Christian woman projecting this veil of just a caretaker who wanted to take care of the sick and make a living at it.
20:19Investigative journalist M. William Phelps believes Amy's customers were sold the perfect pitch.
20:27You know in today's economy, today's marketing, she would have been an expert marketer.
20:33What she should have had was a sign out front really that said elderly care for life as long as you don't die first.
20:39In 1907 in Connecticut, Amy was ahead of her time, launching one of New England's first nursing homes.
20:48She was a pioneer of elderly care at the turn of the century in New England.
20:54She kind of pioneered this whole idea of nursing elderly people which later turns into convalescent homes, this kind of thing.
21:04Seniors like Franklin Andrews signed up for a peaceful caring home in which to spend their twilight years.
21:14The marketing ploy was a thousand dollars and I give your relative, your elderly person life care.
21:23And life care meant they stayed in the home, she took care of them, fed them, clothed them, gave them medicines.
21:34There was no time limit. As long as the customers lived, Amy promised to care for them.
21:43You know it seemed too good to be true.
21:45Clients and their families hoped for a long and restful life.
21:50But Amy's business plan called for something else.
21:55Turnover.
21:58Let's set the scene. Picture a calm and peaceful New England night.
22:02Patients are ready in the morning.
22:04They're ready to go.
22:06They're ready to go.
22:08They're ready to go.
22:10They're ready to go.
22:11Let's set the scene. Picture a calm and peaceful New England night.
22:14Patients are readying themselves for bed.
22:16They've just finished dinner.
22:20You have Amy Archer Gilligan in the kitchen mixing up a batch of warm lemonade.
22:26And warm lemonade at the time was an elixir for if you had the flu or you had an ailment.
22:33Amy kept her overheads down and vacancies up with arsenic.
22:41She understood her market for death very thoroughly.
23:01Her whole marketing genius was get the person in there.
23:05Let him stay there for maybe a month.
23:07Knock him off.
23:09And she's got a thousand dollars in her pocket.
23:11It sure beats changing bedpans for a living.
23:25Amy's calculations went further.
23:28To conceal evidence of her poisoning, she counted on an old mortuary practice.
23:34Well, basically, embalming fluids were preservatives.
23:37And they contained alcohols, formaldehyde.
23:40And they often contained a number of heavy metals like arsenic.
23:44Embalming, of course, being done prior to any post-mortem examination.
23:50Or prior to any specimens being taken for toxicology.
23:56They dubbed it a murder factory because she was just a conveyor belt of bodies coming in and out of there.
24:02But Amy's business plan had a fatal flaw.
24:06Medical records of the time may have misrecorded the cause of death.
24:11But they could not hide the number dying under Amy's care.
24:15The returns of death certificates to the office of the Windsor Town Clerk show
24:20that there have been 60 deaths at the Archer home since the place opened in the fall of 1907.
24:25Over time, a case mounted against Amy Archer Gilligan.
24:30But police needed evidence.
24:33Franklin Andrews' body was exhumed and tested positive for arsenic.
24:39No surprise for an embalmed body of the day.
24:42But there was one anomaly.
24:45Well, they found his stomach loaded with arsenic.
24:48Enough to kill several men, that was the quote.
24:51Such levels could only have come from ingestion.
24:55Right here, the Hartford Courant reports, it is the belief of the authorities
24:59that the wholesale murders had been committed at the Archer home.
25:05Amy was convicted of murder and declared insane.
25:13She spent the rest of her life in an asylum.
25:17By the time she died, arsenic embalming fluid was banned.
25:31Justice should have caught up with Norwegian serial murderer, Bel Gonesse, in Indiana.
25:38But he was not.
25:40Justice should have caught up with Norwegian serial murderer, Bel Gonesse, in Indiana.
25:46But did it.
25:48Welcome to La Porte, Indiana.
25:50Thank you very much.
25:52The Bel Gonesse case is something that is probably a major part of the history of this whole town.
25:59Judge Robert Gilmore's predecessor presided over La Porte's most infamous trial.
26:04The skeletons were in somewhat of a fetal position, somewhat clenched.
26:10The fire's heat might explain it.
26:13But skeletons buried beyond the flames were also contorted.
26:21And then the argument became whether or not it may have been strychnine
26:26that caused the bodies to clench and get into the fetal position.
26:30Strychnine, basically what it does,
26:33is it causes the stronger muscles to overcome the weaker muscles.
26:37So the hand will flex at the wrist, the arm will flex at the elbow,
26:42and the elbow will flex at the shoulder.
26:45And likewise, the legs.
26:47The legs will contract and flex in a pleasant way.
26:53Strychnine was confirmed in the stomach of Norwegian lodger, Andrew Helgeline.
26:58Bell was exposed as a murderer.
27:02But there was one more mystery.
27:05Did the serial killer perish?
27:08The whole trial centered around the fact that Bell was a serial killer.
27:13He was a serial killer.
27:15He was a serial killer.
27:17He was a serial killer.
27:19The whole trial centered around whether or not, in fact,
27:23it was the body of Bell Gunness that they found in the remains of the fire.
27:28Or whether, in fact, it may have been some other third party, we know not who.
27:33In this courtroom in 1908,
27:36jurors heard how the headless body seemed too small for Bell's large frame.
27:41One theory was the fire had shrunk the body.
27:44Well, you know, they tried to say that just like a roast,
27:48this body cooked up and got skinny then, you know, skinnier than Bell was.
27:52But the children were still the same size.
27:54And their heads were all down there.
27:58Despite conflicting evidence,
28:01jurors found the headless body was Bell Gunness.
28:05But many believed otherwise.
28:08And 23 years later, there was one more twist.
28:12There was one more twist.
28:21For three decades, Ellen Penny has kept a secret.
28:26I remember every little detail about everything to do with this.
28:31Always have.
28:33Because I've relived it all my life.
28:38Over and over.
28:41Today, she wouldn't change her loving family for the world.
28:46But in 1967, her dreams were elsewhere.
28:51We may have gone on and got married like we thought we would,
28:54but he didn't get that chance.
28:57And not because God chose to take him,
29:01but because his mama did.
29:04At 15, Ellen was falling in love for the very first time
29:09with 16-year-old Melvin Gibbs.
29:14The affair bloomed under the watchful eye of Melvin's mother, Janie.
29:22She was big in the church,
29:25and she was big in all of the activities.
29:29But their love would be cut short by murder.
29:42Janie's three sons had already lost their father to a mystery illness.
29:49And it seemed Melvin could be next.
29:53He started having bad headaches.
29:56He would turn real pale,
29:59and his features would look drawn,
30:02and the whites of his eyes would get real, real red.
30:09He was never one to make a big deal out of it.
30:13And I'd say, you have a bad headache, don't you?
30:16And he'd say, yeah.
30:17Melvin's headaches became worse.
30:20Doctors were perplexed.
30:24Janie was not.
30:27She was poisoning her son with mild doses of arsenic.
30:31If it's given over a period of time,
30:34individuals will have a variety of symptoms,
30:38and the doctors won't diagnose it unless they think of it.
30:42They're very careful.
30:44They won't diagnose it unless they think of it.
30:47They're very slowly being killed,
30:50while the medical community, the physicians,
30:53are just watching to see what happens.
30:56Only two people knew the true story.
30:59Janie and her son.
31:02And just as I got to the door, I heard Melvin holler.
31:06He did it. He did it.
31:10And Melvin was sitting up in the bed, looking right at her.
31:14And his pillow was laying on the floor in front of her.
31:18And I said, did you hear that?
31:21Did you see what he did?
31:23She said, I don't know what it is I'm supposed to have done.
31:32Melvin's outbursts were put down to delirium.
31:40But soon, he would be silenced.
31:43Right under his doctor's noses.
31:47She went to the little pitcher of water they always have in the hospital room,
31:53and poured that water out and poured hers in.
31:59She said that the water there had too much sulfur in it and it burned his throat.
32:09In a cruel twist, Janie deceives her son's sweetheart into the final act.
32:23She said, Ellen, give him some more water. Give him some more water.
32:28His throat's dry. Give him some more water.
32:30Give him some more water.
32:35That water, Ellen now realizes, was laced with arsenic.
32:43I was there with my hand on him, and you could feel his heartbeat.
32:51And then just all of a sudden, nothing. Just completely stopped.
33:01I don't really blame myself.
33:12But I think that she had some kind of perverse pleasure.
33:23Melvin's life insurance paid handsomely.
33:26As would policies on every other member of Janie's family.
33:31Her husband, three sons, and a grandson.
33:35All would die of a mystery illness.
33:46With each life insurance policy collected, Janie Gibbs' lifestyle improved.
33:51Afterwards, you hardly ever saw her in the same dress twice.
33:55She bought a new car, bought a house.
33:59Janie also shared her gains.
34:04We were building a new church, and I was told she donated $10,000,
34:11but she donated different amounts at different times.
34:14Donating the large sum of money to the church may have been a way to assuage her guilt,
34:20if she had any guilt.
34:22And it simply could have been a very calculating move to not be suspected of anything.
34:32But as her family died around her, people were suspicious.
34:36I think there was a lot of people that were starting to be suspicious.
34:40But if you're wrong, you know, this is Janie Gibbs.
34:45She's the pillar of the church.
34:48And what kind of monster are you for making an accusation like that against her?
34:55But five deaths in the one-fifth of the population.
34:59Well, what we're looking at is the autopsy report on Melvin Gibbs.
35:03And this was performed on January 18, 1968.
35:07And it happens to have been an exhumation autopsy.
35:11Now, it's important to realize that in some individuals,
35:15there will be a very minute amount of blood loss.
35:18And the autopsy report is a very minute amount of blood loss.
35:22And the autopsy report is a very minute amount of blood loss.
35:25It's important to realize that in some individuals,
35:28there will be a very minute amount of arsenic, just normally found in tissues.
35:32What was found in his liver and kidney was at least 20 times the amount normally found.
35:40The levels here are sufficient to have caused death.
35:45Janie was convicted on five counts of murder and sentenced to life.
35:55But there would be one more discovery,
35:58making Janie's murders an even greater family tragedy.
36:09And this is the greatest tragedy.
36:12This is on par with the deaths of the people.
36:16Frank Martin was Janie Gibbs' defense lawyer.
36:20He believes his client's motivation was not for profit.
36:23He learned that before she murdered her family, Janie had a fateful appointment.
36:29Janie had gone to a doctor in Albany, Georgia, because she wasn't feeling well.
36:35The doctor diagnosed her with myotheogravis, Lou Gehrig's disease.
36:44Lou Gehrig's disease destroys muscle control.
36:49It's always fatal.
36:53Janie went back home with her very fundamentalist beliefs.
36:58She decided she would send her husband, her children and grandchildren on to heaven in advance.
37:07Because she knew she was going to die.
37:10And she was just going to send them ahead so they'd all be reunited in heaven.
37:24In La Porte, Indiana, the crimes of Belle Guinness paid handsomely.
37:31When they tried to tally up how much money she might have gotten, because this was all about money,
37:37they thought it was probably close to $52,000, which would have been hundreds of thousands today.
37:45We're standing at the grave of Andrew Helgeline.
37:48We're standing at the grave of Andrew Helgeline.
37:51He was the last male victim that Belle killed here.
37:57As Norwegian Torget Sturseth pays respect to his countrymen, he struggles to find forgiveness.
38:05Everybody has to be forgiven.
38:07But you can't forgive what she really did to those men.
38:14She had to be sick or mentally ill in a way. I don't know.
38:23I think there was a lot more motivating Belle than simply money.
38:33And I think that's exhibited in the method of death that she chose.
38:38A painful poisoning.
38:39Then, chopping up their bodies and throwing the body parts into a pig trough shows utter contentment for men.
38:51I would say it was men in general she had a problem with.
38:56Maybe hated men because the father abandoned her, as the rumor says.
39:05Torget still has questions.
39:07The biggest of all, was Belle really killed in the farm fire?
39:12There was a real division within the community as to whether or not she died in the fire,
39:20or whether she escaped and basically was on the run.
39:26I absolutely believe that she escaped.
39:29The head was never found to that female body.
39:32She had a whole week to get away.
39:34Between the time when the fire was discovered and then the first body in the ground was discovered.
39:4123 years later, a local newspaper speculated that this Californian murderer,
39:47fitting Belle's projected age, could be her.
39:51Then they sent a picture back here, taken in a very strange pose with her hands like this.
39:57Why would you take a picture that way? I think that's why she did it.
40:00She's clever.
40:04If Belle did feign her death, there could well have been more victims.
40:09It is unlikely that her murderous behavior would stop.
40:15Being a fairly young woman at the time, less than 50, she was into it.
40:21So I'm guessing she simply relocated and resumed her activities elsewhere.
40:26So I'm guessing she simply relocated and resumed her activities elsewhere.
40:50Many in the Liverpool syndicate survived prosecution,
40:53but new insurance laws put an end to their business.
40:58I think that this case resulted in a lot of the policies that we see today.
41:03For example, if I was running a boarding house, renting out rooms,
41:07I could not get a life insurance policy on the guy that I'm renting out to room 103.
41:12I have no what's called insurable interest in him.
41:16Someone has to have an insurable interest in an individual now
41:20to get a life insurance policy.
41:22And the individual being insured has to sign for the policy.
41:32Amy Archer Gilligan left a legacy too.
41:35Helping create nursing homes, now a common concept across the United States.
41:42You know, when you look at Amy Archer Gilligan from the outside,
41:46she was really an entrepreneur of her day.
41:47She really was.
41:51But when you look beyond that, and you look at the facts and the evidence,
41:56you see someone who was shrouded with evil.
42:03On the face of it, they killed for money,
42:07for economic survival, or handsome profits.
42:12But for criminal profiler Candice DeLong,
42:14there was probably something more.
42:18One of the things that always comes to my mind
42:21when we are looking at female serial killers
42:24who say they just did it for the money,
42:28I have to ask myself if they weren't also enjoying the killing.
42:34Because it becomes what almost appears to be a compulsive behavior.
42:40Again and again.
42:42Again and again and again.
42:46Doing something as serious, the most serious behavior in our society,
42:51criminal behavior, taking someone's life.
42:59For Janie Gibbs, the compulsion to consign her family to heaven proved doubly tragic.
43:05After all the killing, Janie learned her doctor's diagnosis was wrong.
43:11She wasn't fatally ill.
43:14Instead of heaven, Janie went into custody,
43:18where she remained for nearly 40 years.
43:41For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov