Jane Toppan (17 August 1854 - 29 October 1938), born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer, nicknamed "Jolly Jane". After her arrest in 1901, she confessed to 31 murders. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people--helpless people--than any other man or woman who ever lived".
Video Jane Toppan
Early life
Though scant records survive of Toppan's early years, it is known that her parents were Irish immigrants, and her mother, Bridget Kelley, died of tuberculosis when she was very young. Her father, Peter Kelley, was well known as an alcoholic, very abusive, and eccentric, nicknamed by those who knew him "Kelley the Crack" (as in "crackpot"). In later years Kelley would become the source of many local rumors concerning his supposed insanity, the most popular of which being that his madness finally drove him to sew his own eyelids closed while working as a tailor.
In 1863, only a few years after his wife's death, Kelley took his two youngest children, eight-year-old Delia Josephine and six-year-old Honora, to the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage for indigent female children founded in 1799 by Mrs. Hannah Stillman. Kelley surrendered the two girls, never to see them again. Documents from the asylum note that they were "rescued from a very miserable home".
No records exist of Delia and Honora's experiences during their time in the asylum, but reportedly Delia became a sex worker, while their older sister Nellie (who was not committed to the orphanage) was committed to an asylum. In November 1864, less than two years after her father had left them, Honora Kelley was placed as an indentured servant in the home of Mrs. Ann C. Toppan of Lowell, Massachusetts. (Indentured servitude was a labor system in which people paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a fixed term of years. It was widely employed in the 18th century in the British colonies in North America and elsewhere, and was a way for the poor in Britain and the German states to obtain passage to the American colonies.) Though never formally adopted by the Toppans, Honora took on the surname of her benefactors and eventually became known as Toppan. The Toppan original family already had a daughter, Elizabeth; she and Toppan got along.
Maps Jane Toppan
Motives
An article in the Hoosier State Chronicles published shortly after her arrest reported that Toppan would fondle her victims as they died and attempt to see the inner workings of their souls through their eyes. When Toppan was questioned (after her arrest), she stated she derived a sexual thrill from patients being near death, coming back to life and then dying again. Toppan would administer a drug mixture to the patients she chose as her victims, lie with them and hold them close to her as they died.
Toppan is often considered an 'angel of death', a type of serial killer who takes on a caretaker role and attacks the vulnerable and dependent, though she also murdered for seemingly more personal reasons, such as in the case of the Davis family. It is possible Toppan was also motivated by jealousy, in the case of the murder of her foster sister. She later described her motivation as a paralysis of thought and reason, a strong urge to poison.
Toppan used poison for more than just murder, reportedly poisoning a housekeeper just enough so that she appeared drunk in order to steal her job and kill the family. She even poisoned herself to evoke the sympathy of men she was courting.
Murders
In 1885, Toppan began training to be a nurse at Cambridge Hospital. While she was there she had a lot of friends, and was well liked. Unlike her early years, where she was described as brilliant and terrible, at the hospital she was well liked, bright and friendly, evoking the nickname 'Jolly Jane'. Once Toppan became close with the patients, she picked her favorite ones. The patients were normally elderly, and very sick. During her residency, she used her patients as guinea pigs in experiments with morphine and atropine; she would alter their prescribed dosages to see what it did to their nervous systems. However, she would spend considerable time alone with patients, making up fake charts and medicating them to drift in and out of consciousness and even getting into bed with them.
She was recommended for the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital in 1889; there, she claimed several more victims before being fired the following year. She briefly returned to Cambridge but was soon dismissed for administering opiates recklessly. She then began a career as a private nurse and flourished despite complaints of petty theft.
She began her poisoning spree in earnest in 1895 by killing her landlord, Israel Dunham, and his wife. In 1899, she killed her foster sister Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine. In 1901, Toppan moved in with the elderly Alden Davis and his family in Cataumet to take care of him after the death of his wife, Mattie (whom Toppan herself had murdered). Within weeks, she killed Davis, his sister Genevieve, and two of his daughters, Minnie and Edna.
The surviving members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology exam on Alden Davis' youngest daughter, Minnie. The report found that she had been poisoned, and local authorities put a police detail on Toppan. On October 29, 1901, she was arrested for murder. By 1902, she had confessed to 31 murders.
Soon after the trial, one of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, the New York Journal, printed what was purported to be Toppan's confession to her lawyer that she had killed more than 31 people and that she wanted the jury to find her insane so she could eventually have a chance at being released. Toppan insisted upon her own sanity in court, claiming that she could not be insane if she knew what she was doing and knew that it was wrong, but nonetheless she was declared insane and committed. On June 23, in the Barnstable County Courthouse, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life in the Taunton Insane Hospital.
Victims
Victims Toppan identified are:
- Israel Dunham: patient, died 26 May 1895, aged 83
- Lovely Dunham: patient, died 19 September 1897, aged 87
- Elizabeth Brigham: foster sister, died 29 August 1899, aged 69
- Mary McNear: patient, died 28 December 1899, aged 70
- Florence Calkins: housekeeper for Elizabeth, died 15 January 1900, aged 45
- William Ingraham: patient, died 27 January 1900, aged 70
- Sarah (Myra) Connors: patient and friend, died 11 February 1900, aged 48
- Mattie Davis: Wife of Alden, died 4 July 1901, aged 62
- Genevieve Gordon (Annie): daughter of Alden and Mattie, died 31 July 1901
- Alden Davis: died 8 August 1901, aged 64
- Mary (Minnie) Gibbs: daughter of Alden and Mattie, died 13 August 1901, aged 40
- Edna Bannister: sister-in-law of Elizabeth, died 26 August 1901, aged 77
Fictional portrayals and legacy
In the independent film American Nightmare, written and directed by Jon Keves, Debbie Rochon portrays a serial killer named "Jane Toppan" who manages to kill numerous characters throughout the course of the film by various means. The character is also employed as a nurse. This character was inspired by Toppan.
Toppan was the subject of one of six monologues in the play Murderess by Anne Bertram, which premiered in St. Paul, Minnesota, at Theatre Unbound. She was portrayed by Laura Wiebers in the segment The Truth About Miss Toppan, directed by Mishia Burns Edwards. The play opened to favorable reviews. Minneapolis StarTribune theater critic William Randall Beard called the Toppan segment "a chilling portrait of a sociopath nurse."
Toppan was featured in an episode of Deadly Women and episodes of the podcasts Criminal, My Favorite Murder, an episode of Hellevator, and Lore.
References
Sources
- Schechter, Harold - "Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer" (2003)
- Lane, Brian and Gregg, Wilfred - The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (1995)
External links
- Profile, crimemuseum.org
- Profile, murderpedia.org
Source of article : Wikipedia
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