“Poisoning her Passion! Jane Toppan confesses to killing thirty-one persons” read the headline on July 22, 1902, from the Clinton Morning Age newspaper.

It would go on to describe how a seemingly caring nurse had purposely poisoned her patients and became one of the United States’ first serial killers. Investigators even spoke of her confession to her crimes, stating that “she has told of the death of her victims as if she were talking about a summer picnic where she enjoyed herself, of the fiendish subtlety she employed in ending human lives. The patience she maintained during the paroxysm’s proceeding dissolution.

The exuberance and joy that came to her as she watched their eyelids press down. No ghost has come to her in the midnight hours to disturb her dreams; no smarting of conscious visited her unnatural brain that excited either tears or sorrow”.

This podcast is hosted by Joshua Waters, the queer & sultry “Not so Evil Queen”

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