Janie Lou Gibbs

Infobox Serial Killer
name=Janie Lou Gibbs


image_size=152px
caption=Gibbs holds up picture of her dead children
birthname=Janie Lou Gibbs
alias=
birth=1933
location=Georgia (U.S. state)
death=
cause=
victims=five
country=United States
states=Georgia
beginyear=1966
endyear=1967
apprehended=1967
penalty=life sentence

Janie Lou Gibbs (born 1933) was a serial killer from Cordele, Georgia, who killed her three sons, a grandson, and her husband, by poisoning them with arsenic in 1966 and 1967.

Murders

Gibbs' husband of 20 years, Charles Clayton Gibbs, 40, died January 21, 1966. Her son, Melvin W. Gibbs, 16, died January 23, 1967, followed by her younger son, Marvin H. Gibbs, 13, on August 23, 1967. She inherited $31,000 from their deaths and tithed 10 percent to her church.

The deaths had previously been attributed to liver disease, but she was eventually arrested Christmas Eve 1967 after her oldest son, Roger, 19, died in the same fashion as his father, two brothers, and infant nephew.

Imprisonment

Despite the unusual coincidences of so many deaths in such a short period of time, she blocked insurance adjusters' requests for autopsies. Although insurance adjusters were suspicious, most of Gibbs' neighbors and friends from church could not believe that the 35-year-old grandmother who ran a day-care center could be a serial killer.

However, Gibbs' daughter-in-law demanded autopsies of her husband and child. The autopsies found fatal levels of arsenic in both bodies. The court ordered the rest of her family exhumed and each was found to have been murdered.

She admitted killing her family, but did not give a motive. In February 1968 she was found to be guilty and received five life sentences.

Gibbs, who in later years suffered from Parkinson's disease, was released April 1999 on a medical reprieve into the custody of her brother and sister-in-law after being denied parole more than 17 times. She remains on parole and is required to check in once per year due to her detiorating condition. She is confined to a wheelchair and lives in a nursing home in Atlanta, Georgia.

References

*"Janie Gibbs" "Mind of a Killer (DVD)" Kozel Multimedia, 1998.
*"Judged Insane in Poisonings," The Associated Press, February 8, 1968.
*"Woman Charged in Death of Kin" The Associated Press, January 28, 1968.

External links

* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/widows/6.html Crime Library]