Fatal (31 page)

“Why, what do you mean?” Bixby exclaimed.

It was then that Jane revealed a truth so appalling that Bixby was left breathless with amazement.

The eleven names known to the police and public were only a fraction of her victims. She had been poisoning patients for many years, beginning as a student at Cambridge Hospital and continuing throughout her career as a private nurse. Altogether, she said—counting on her fingers to make sure she was not omitting anyone—she had murdered thirty-one men and women.

Apart from the attorney general, Bixby had not shared this dreadful knowledge with anyone. When,
immediately following the trial, he finally revealed the truth, even the three alienists were caught off-guard. Dr. Stedman—who was preparing a psychological study of Nurse Toppan for publication—declared that, in light of the “magnitude of the case,” he intended “to consult the attending physicians of each of the twenty additional patients Miss Toppan says she poisoned to ascertain if her story is consistent with symptoms observed by the doctors.”

On the following day—Tuesday, June 24—the news was trumpeted in headlines throughout the northeast. The
Boston Globe
labeled Nurse Toppan the “GREATEST CRIMINAL IN COUNTRY.”

“Even if only a small part of her story is true,” the story read, “Jane Toppan stands as the greatest criminal ever arraigned at the bar of the United States. It is doubtful if, as a subtle poisoner who successfully duped scores of men and women during her career, she has been equaled by anyone of homicidal mania in modern times. Certainly none of the standard medico-legal works contains a parallel case. In no volume in print have the learned authorities and investigators revealed such an inexplicable multitude of hideous offenses against law and nature.”

The
Boston Traveller
went even further, branding Jane not merely the “greatest criminal” in U.S. history but—as its headline read—the “MOST HORRIBLE CASE OF DEGENERACY WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN!” That assessment was seconded by the
Post
, which ran a page-one story ranking Jane first among the most infamous female poisoners of history. Accompanied by a triptych of portraits—with Jane’s image occupying the central position—the article declared that Lucretia Borgia
and Catherine de Medici were rivaled, if not out-matched, by the “pleasant-faced” nurse from Massachusetts:

In history’s pages, the name of Jane Toppan will be written down as one of the most noted poisoners the world has ever seen. Previous records of criminals sink into insignificance before the awful roll of victims which this smiling woman says she has hurried to untimely graves. Lucretia Borgia, Catherine de Medici, and Jane Toppan form an unholy trinity of poisoners whose doings appall the imagination. Borgia herself has evidently been outdone by Jane Toppan. Catherine de Medici had no greater fondness for the subtle poison than did this daughter of the friendly asylum. Her friends were given deadly draughts with the same indifference as strangers. It is thought that scores of people rest in their graves because of her. For 33 years, this pleasant-faced woman has led a life so horrible and revolting that its most fearful details cannot be told in public.

It was the
Globe
that came closest to revealing the “horrible and revolting” details that the public had been receiving such tantalizing hints of. Though expressed in oblique language, the description of the ecstatic “paroxysms” Jane experienced while “fondling” her dying patients left little doubt as to the perverse sexual nature of her crimes:

In the most decent language that can be used to describe her mania, Jane Toppan could only gratify
her abnormal passion by handling dying persons. So degenerate had she become that nothing short of fondling men and women in the agony of death could excite her.

These paroxysms were intermittent, she told doctors. She might nurse a patient faithfully and, being loyal to his interest, seek only to effect a cure. In the midst of this devotional attention to her duty, however, she would sometimes be overcome with a stress of passion, a craving for the satisfaction of her strange emotions. It amounted to the strongest uncontrollable impulse. When the paroxysms came, she immediately, no matter how nearly recovered her patient was, administered a poison that in a short time would make him unconscious.

As morphine generally renders a subject drowsy, the nurse reveled in the impotency of her victim, whose life was slowly being slept away. She enjoyed herself in the presence of death with the most incredible avidity. Sometimes the patient had convulsions, and then the greatest demands of that revolting passion were satisfied.

After the climax of her paroxysm came, she became normal once more.

As for the precise identity of the additional twenty people Jane claimed to have murdered in the course of her career, their names would never be made public. Asked about reports that Jane had supplied him with a complete list of her victims, James Stuart Murphy was extremely evasive, refusing to confirm or deny the story:

I have been asked several times relating to a list of supposed victims of Miss Toppan but told everyone I had nothing to say. I cannot help it if the public gets by my answers the impression that such a list exists. I have not authorized anyone to say that I had such a list, or that there was such a list in existence. Supposing there
was
a list—what is there [to] gain by its publication? Jane Toppan has been committed to an asylum for the offense with which she was charged. Further than that, I do not see how her case will interest anyone.

As one of her oldest and most loyal friends, Murphy had promised to remain by Jane’s side to the very end. He proved as good as his word. Unlike his co-counsel, Fred Bixby—who, along with other participants, departed from Barnstable as soon as the trial ended—Murphy stayed in the village overnight. Early the next morning, he arrived at the jailhouse to help Jane get ready for the journey to Taunton.

She was—as usual—in a bizarrely cheerful mood. Mrs. Cash was there, and the two women chatted merrily as Jane packed up her meager possessions. After hugging Mrs. Cash’s granddaughter good-bye, Jane left the jailhouse in the company of Murphy, Jailer Cash, and a pair of sheriffs and strolled the short distance to the depot, where a group of reporters was gathered.

She was dressed in mourning black, but her face—according to one of the newsmen—was “wreathed in smiles. She looked as happy as if she were bound on a shopping tour.”

One reason for her blithe spirits soon became clear. Despite the court order committing her to Taunton
for life, Jane seemed convinced that she would be a free woman before very long. When the reporter for the
Post
asked her how she was feeling, she smiled broadly and replied: “Oh, never better. I feel grand.”

“Don’t you dread your new life?” he asked.

“Not at all,” said Jane. “I’ll be all right again in a few years. Then they’ll let me out, the way they did Freeman.” The reference, of course, was to Charles Freeman, who—just eight years after being sent to the Danvers asylum for the sacrificial murder of his child—had been pronounced fully recovered and set free.

Displaying an unusual degree of compunction for a member of the press, the newspapermen then apologized for any embarrassment he and his colleagues might have caused Miss Toppan by subjecting her to such unrelenting scrutiny.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know but I like it.” Then—to show there were no hard feelings—she shook hands all around as she boarded the 10:30 train.

As the railroad pulled out of the station, she looked out the window and shouted to the reporters: “Come and see me.”

All the way to Taunton she seemed perfectly relaxed. She pored over newspaper accounts of the trial and watched the passing landscape with keen interest. When the trainman announced that passengers for Cataumet should change cars at the next station, Jane turned to Murphy and began to reminisce about the pleasant summers she had spent at that bayside resort.

It was early afternoon when the train pulled into Taunton. Jane was immediately taken by carriage to the asylum, where she was quickly checked in and assigned
to Ward Six, where the less dangerous class of patients was confined. Just before disappearing into the hospital she turned to the crowd of curiosity seekers who had come to catch a glimpse of her, smiled pleasantly, and gave a last little wave.

•   •   •

Later that day, Jane’s senior counsel, Fred Bixby, was interviewed at his summer home in Hyannis. The reporter, a young man from the
Journal
, told him that, just before boarding the train to Taunton, Nurse Toppan had expressed the utmost confidence in her eventual recovery and release.

Bixby pooh-poohed the notion. It was true, he said, that Nurse Toppan “was still not an old woman.” There was always the chance that “when she approaches the middle period of life, there may be a marked change for the better in her mental condition.”

Still, that possibility seemed extremely remote. If it changed at all, Jane’s mental condition was only bound to get worse. That, at any rate, was the opinion of the experts. In their view, Jane was almost certainly headed for a complete lapse into madness.

Or as Bixby put it, “The physicians all thought she would become an imbecile before many years.”

There is a mystery about me that has not been solved, and may never be.

—F
ROM THE CONFESSION OF
J
ANE
T
OPPAN

J
ANE
T
OPPAN’S STATUS AS A CRIMINAL CELEBRITY WAS
certified a few days after her trial when her full “terrible confession” (as it was headlined) appeared as a special feature in the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst’s
New York Journal
. Only once before had a killer’s own story been accorded such lavish treatment. Six years earlier, in March 1896, Hearst had published, with much fanfare, the “true and accurate confession” of Dr. H. H. Holmes, the Chicago “Arch Fiend” who had slaughtered an indeterminate number of victims in his infamous “Castle of Horrors.”

Copyrighted by Hearst, Jane’s confession was prefaced with a brief introduction that touted it as nothing less than “the most remarkable and appalling human document ever published.” According to this preface, “The confession was made just before she was taken from the Barnstable jail to the Taunton Insane Asylum. . . . In it, she relates with hideous glee how she plotted and accomplished the death of one person after another.” Several illustrations accompanied the text: a photograph of Jane at twenty-four; portraits of
four of her victims (Myra Conners, Minnie Gibbs, Alden Davis, and his wife, Mary); and a facsimile of a handwritten note in which Jane describes the poisoning of one of her patients.

It is difficult to know how much of this confession was actually written by Jane. Certainly Hearst had no scruples about tampering with facts—or even concocting them—for the sake of sensationalism. It seems likely that the confession was heavily edited, if not ghostwritten, by one of his journalists. It is clearly designed to portray Jane as a creature of sheer “malevolence” and “fiendish ingenuity” (in the words of the introduction).

Still, the facts it recounts are consistent with the truth as Jane revealed it to Dr. Stedman. And indeed, Stedman himself appears to have regarded it as a significant document, carefully preserving a copy in a scrapbook on the Toppan case that he maintained for several years. (Along with his other papers, this scrapbook now resides in the archives of the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard.)

The confession begins with a startling claim—that Jane
wanted
to be judged insane by the panel of alienists sent to examine her. Her professions of sanity were merely a ploy. She had completely outsmarted Stedman and his colleagues, cleverly manipulating them with reverse psychology:

I was advised to confess and plead guilty to the murder of the thirty-one persons whom I have sent out of the world by poisoning. But I thought of a better way than that.

When the famous insanity experts of Boston, Dr. Henry R. Stedman, Dr. George F. Jelly, and
Dr. Hosea N. Quinby, came down to the Barnstable jail to see if I was insane, I knew how to fool them.

I have been a trained nurse for fifteen years and know doctors and just how to manage them. I know that people who are really insane will always deny it. So I said to the alienists: “I am not insane.”

I knew I could fool them all if I wanted to, and make myself out insane. Dr. Jelly and the others raked me hard with questions.

They tried to play on my woman’s sympathy and asked me if I didn’t think it was a terrible thing to take those mothers, Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Gordon, away from their young children. But I knew their game and said that I just up and killed them and didn’t know why.

When I said that I killed four people in fifty-one days and set three fires, they said: “Why, Jane Toppan, you must have been insane to have done such a thing.” But I still insisted that I was not insane, and did not want them to make me out insane.