Saying ‘I do’ was the worst possible decision for some husbands, as it’s what eventually led to poison and buried bodies, along with other marriage stories that went very far off the rails.
A trail of poisoned marriages
There was something strange about Nannie Doss. She kept outliving husbands. It got to the point where police decided to investigate, as Doss’s fifth husband, Samuel Doss, died in Tulsa in 1954. They found traces of arsenic in his body.Â
Doss later admitted that she’d poisoned Samuel and three of her earlier husbands using rat poison. Investigators learned that she was also responsible for killing members of her family, including one of her sisters and two grandsons, along with a mother-in-law. She pleaded guilty to Samuel’s murder in 1955. She got life in prison and died in 1965.
Insurance and arsenic
The story with Judy Buenoano started with a failed car bomb. Her fiancé, John Gentry, survived the 1983 blast in Pensacola, Florida, and it led to police digging through Buenoano’s past. They eventually found their way to James Goodyear, Buenoano’s husband who had died in 1971. It seemed as though a mysterious illness had killed him.
Police ordered that his body be exhumed, and they discovered he had been a victim of chronic arsenic poisoning. Buenoano was eventually convicted of killing Goodyear and her son Michael. She was also convicted of trying to kill Gentry. She’d done it all for insurance payouts.
Too many accidents on one farm
Everything about Belle Gunness’s farm in Indiana looked ordinary enough, but it really wasn’t. Gunness’s first husband, Mads Sorensen, died in 1900 on the only day when two of his life insurance policies overlapped. Her second husband, Peter Gunness, died in 1902. Belle claimed a sausage grinder fell on his head.Â
Surprisingly enough, neither death led to a murder conviction. It took until her farmhouse burned in 1908 for investigators to do some digging, literally. They found at least 13 bodies on the property, and they were all believed to have been murdered by Gunness. She allegedly died in the fire, but the truth is, nobody really knows what happened to her.
Antifreeze in the family
The case with Stacey Castor revolved around one household item. It was antifreeze. In 2005, her second husband, David Castor, was found dead near Syracuse after drinking the poison. It seemed like a suicide, until police did a little digging into Stacey’s first husband, Michael Wallace.
He died due to antifreeze poisoning, so it wasn’t a simple coincidence. Stacey actually tried to frame her daughter Ashley with a fake suicide note after giving her pills and alcohol, but Ashley managed to survive. Stacey was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 51 years to life in prison, but she died of a heart attack in 2016.
A teenage murder plot
Pamela Smart was just 22 years old when her husband, Gregory, was found shot dead in their New Hampshire condo in 1990. She played the role of heartbroken widow very well. Turns out, she had been having an affair with a 15-year-old student named William Flynn.
She helped arrange Gregory’s murder with Flynn, along with some other teenagers, and Flynn was the one who ultimately pulled the trigger. Smart was convicted as an accomplice to first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. She publicly accepted responsibility for her role in 2024.Â
Two husbands beneath the yard
A fishing accident. That’s what it seemed had killed Jimmy Don Beets after he vanished from his Texas home in 1983. His boat later turned up drifting with his belongings still inside. But two years later, police searched the property of his wife, Betty Lou Beets.Â
They found that Jimmy’s body had been buried beneath an ornamental wishing well, and they also discovered the remains of another husband, Doyle Wayne Barker, buried elsewhere on the land. Both men had been shot. Beets was convicted of Jimmy’s murder and executed in 2000.
Trouble after the honeymoon
The relationship between Melissa Ann Shepard and Fred Weeks declined almost immediately. The Canadian couple left Nova Scotia for Newfoundland during their honeymoon, and Weeks soon became seriously ill. Shepard later admitted crushing lorazepam and temazepam into coffee she gave him. Weeks was 75 years old at the time, and Shepard was 78.Â
She later pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance and failing to provide the necessities of life. But that wasn’t even the first serious crime, as she’d already served time for manslaughter in the death of another husband. She had convictions involving other men. No wonder she’s known as ‘Canada’s Black Widow.’
Her lover, then her husband
Kelly Cochran’s marriage actually ended up being part of two separate murder cases in two different states. Prosecutors in Michigan proved she helped her husband, Jason, kill her lover Christopher Regan in 2014. She then helped cut up and hide his body.Â
Cochran received life without parole for first-degree murder, but then later on, Jason died, too, when the pair had moved to Indiana. Cochran pleaded guilty to killing him with heroin and suffocation. She claimed it was revenge for Regan’s death, despite her being involved in his death.
Arsenic from flypaper
Several of Lyda Southard’s husbands and relatives died during the 1910s and early 1920s. But when her fourth husband, Edward Meyer, died in Idaho in 1920, that’s when police noticed. The state argued that Southard had taken arsenic from flypaper and mixed the poison into his food.
It also presented evidence about earlier deaths at trial, and in 1921, a jury convicted her of second-degree murder. She received a sentence of 10 years to life.
The guessing game
A blindfold, handcuffs, and a guessing game may not exactly sound dangerous, but it certainly was for Paul Christos. His wife, Sheila Davalloo, proposed playing a game at their New York home in 2003. She stabbed him twice in the chest while he was restrained.
Christos managed to survive, and Davalloo then drove him toward a hospital. But then she stopped in a secluded spot and stabbed him again before finally getting him medical help. Davalloo was later convicted of attempted murder, and Christos had to undergo emergency heart surgery.Â
A milkshake before murder
Robert Kissel had no reason to question a milkshake his wife gave him at their Hong Kong home in 2003. But his wife, Nancy Kissel, had mixed sedatives into it, and it left him drowsy. Nancy then struck him repeatedly with a heavy ornament.
She wrapped his body in a carpet and left him inside a storeroom before later admitting that she killed him. She claimed she’d acted in self-defense. Her first murder conviction was overturned, but a 2011 retrial produced another guilty verdict and a life sentence.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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