Jane Toppan: Angel of Death

She wasn’t a monster in the shadows — she was a nurse at your bedside.

In this chilling episode, we uncover the twisted life of Jane Toppan, the 19th-century caregiver who confessed to murdering at least 31 people — not out of hatred, but for pleasure. A seemingly cheerful and devoted nurse, “Jolly Jane” used her position to experiment with fatal doses of morphine and atropine, holding patients as they died… and enjoying every second.

Before Charles Cullen or Beverley Allitt, there was Toppan — America’s first documented female serial killer of the medical kind.

We dive deep into:

Her traumatic childhood and fractured identity

The experimental murders that began under hospital supervision

The intimate betrayals of her victims, including her own foster sister

Her psychological profile — and why she was declared insane but brilliant

The legacy she left behind in criminal profiling and forensic psychiatry

Trust us: this story isn’t just about a killer nurse — it’s about how easily trust can become a weapon.

Transcript

They were the ones you trusted most.

The people you handed your parents to when you couldn't care for them anymore. The professionals who promised comfort in their final days. The smiling caregivers who wheeled your grandmother to her hospital bed and whispered, “You’re going to be just fine.”

But what if they weren’t?

What if that nurse… was counting on you not to notice when the IV drip was changed? What if their kindness was a performance—and the moment your loved one closed their eyes, they leaned in… not to comfort, but to kill?

In the last two decades alone, we’ve seen an unsettling pattern emerge—nurses, caregivers, hospital aides, people in positions of deep trust—arrested and charged with multiple murders.

There’s Charles Cullen, the critical care nurse who worked in over nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and admitted in 2003 to killing at least 40 patients. Investigators believe the real number is closer to 400. He said he just wanted to “ease suffering”—but many of his victims weren’t dying. Some were recovering. Some were healthy.

Then there’s Beverley Allitt, the so-called “Angel of Death” of the British National Health Service. In 1991, she was convicted of killing four children and injuring nine others at a pediatric ward in Lincolnshire. She injected insulin and potassium into infants, watched them go into cardiac arrest, then calmly raised the alarm.

And Kristen Gilbert, a nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Massachusetts, who induced fatal heart attacks in her patients, then ran to resuscitate them—sometimes successfully, sometimes not. She enjoyed the attention. The adrenaline. The power.

These are not spontaneous crimes of passion. These are patterns. Patterns of quiet, systematic control. Murders committed not in alleyways, but under fluorescent hospital lights, often with no weapon more exotic than a syringe.

They are difficult to detect, difficult to prove, and terrifying to imagine—because they force us to ask: How many of these deaths were actually seen for what they were? And how many were buried, both literally and statistically, as “natural causes”?

But long before these modern Angels of Death made headlines…

There was one woman who perfected the method. One woman who, over a century ago, used morphine, atropine, charm, and deception to kill not just strangers, but people she lived with. Cared for. Claimed to love.

She called it “ecstasy.”

The press called her “Jolly Jane.”

And history remembers her as one of America’s first—and most chilling—female serial killers.

This is the story of Jane Toppan.

Episode 96 - Jane Toppan: Angel of Death

Born Honora Kelley in March 1854, in Boston, Massachusetts, Jane Toppan’s life began under a dark star. She would later become known as one of America’s most infamous serial killers, but the seeds of her disturbing path were sown early — in abandonment, abuse, poverty, and mental illness. The backdrop? A deeply divided post-Industrial Revolution Boston, seething with ethnic tension, religious prejudice, and economic inequality.

Her father, Peter Kelley, was a destitute Irish immigrant, a tailor by trade, but mostly remembered as a violent alcoholic with a reputation for madness. After the death of his wife, Peter was left to raise his children — including Honora — on his own. The situation rapidly deteriorated.

Accounts describe Peter as brutal and unstable, with some neighbors calling him “Kelley the Crack”, not because of drugs, but a grim nickname referring to his mental "cracks" — or even more gruesomely, to the rumor that he once tried to sew his own eyelids shut while working as a tailor. That tale, though hard to verify, was recorded by multiple biographers including Harold Schechter (Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer, 2003) and Katherine Ramsland (Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers, 2007), and serves as a chilling symbol of the household's descent into madness.

Peter's behavior became increasingly erratic. Faced with overwhelming poverty and psychological instability, he finally abandoned his children. In 1863, when Honora was about 9 years old, he dropped her and her older sister Delia off at the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage for indigent girls — not with any nurturing hope, but as an act of finality. The sisters never saw him again.

To understand Jane’s psychological formation, we must grasp the environment she was born into. Boston in the 1850s was a city in turmoil. The Irish immigrant community, to which the Kelleys belonged, faced rampant discrimination. Irish Catholics were marginalized in both employment and housing and were often depicted in the press as drunken, criminal, and dangerous. The shadow of the Great Famine still loomed over new arrivals.

Children born to these families — especially those in Irish slums like the South End and Fort Hill — often faced malnutrition, disease, and neglect. Institutions like the Boston Female Asylum, where Honora was placed, were overcrowded and harsh, focused less on nurturing and more on moral discipline and training girls for domestic service. It was here that Honora Kelley lost not only her family — but also her name.

Honora was placed as an indentured servant in the household of Ann C. Toppan, a well-to-do widow in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In exchange for labor, the child received food, a bed, and the promise of some education. As was common with “boarding out” practices, the child’s original identity was erased. She was renamed “Jane Toppan.”

But this was not a warm adoption.

Although Jane worked in the household for years, she was never legally adopted, and was treated more as a servant than a daughter. The psychological toll of being rejected by her birth family, and never fully accepted by her foster family, left a permanent scar. She grew up side-by-side with Elizabeth Toppan, the biological daughter of the house — a woman she would eventually murder in 1899, perhaps as a final symbolic act of envy and revenge.

There are no recorded violent incidents from Jane's girlhood, but biographers note that she was known to be secretive, manipulative, and prone to storytelling. She fabricated parts of her childhood later in life, often portraying her dead mother as a noble figure, and denying her Irish roots. She learned quickly how to win approval — to present a cheerful, obedient façade that hid a growing darkness underneath.

By the time she entered nursing training at Cambridge Hospital in 1885, the cheerful mask was complete. But the trauma, abandonment, and psychological distortions rooted in her childhood were already festering — waiting for the moment when trust and power would meet opportunity.

By the time Jane Toppan was thirty-one, in 1885, she had reinvented herself so thoroughly that even her orphaned, Irish past had been buried. She began nurse training at the prestigious Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts — a highly regarded institution in a city known for academic excellence, medical advancement… and an oblivious elite.

But behind the wide smile and efficient bedside manner of the nurse the hospital staff affectionately nicknamed “Jolly Jane”, was a woman conducting unauthorized experiments on human lives.

Jane quickly became a favorite among patients and peers. She was funny, attentive, and charming — always ready with a joke or an encouraging word. This carefully curated persona earned her trust and access — the two things she needed most.

But beneath the surface, Jane harbored an obsession not just with death, but with the intimate, gradual process of dying. What she longed for was not swift violence, but the power to orchestrate life and death with scientific precision.

And she had a perfect stage: the hospital ward.

At Cambridge Hospital, Jane began experimenting with atropine and morphine, two powerful drugs with opposite effects on the nervous system. Morphine, a sedative, slowed the heart; atropine, a stimulant, increased it.

What she discovered was a chilling rhythm of control: she could bring a patient close to death with morphine, then revive them with atropine — over and over, drawing out the process like a puppet master.

These weren’t medical treatments. They were clandestine psychological and physiological experiments, all done without consent or oversight.

Harold Schechter (Fatal, 2003) documents how Jane kept detailed mental notes on how each combination of poisons affected not just vitals, but emotions — especially fear, confusion, and helplessness. What she sought wasn’t a cure, but a domination of the human soul at its most vulnerable.

As her confidence grew, so did her sadism.

She didn’t just kill. She derived pleasure from being physically close to the dying. According to her later confession, she would climb into bed with her patients, cradle them as they passed, and experience what she described as ecstasy.

“I held them,” she would later say, “and watched with delight as the light went out of their eyes.”

There is strong evidence, noted in Inside the Minds of Healthcare Serial Killers by Katherine Ramsland (2007), that Toppan may have experienced a sexual thrill during these deaths, making her one of the few known female lust murderers in American history.

How did no one notice?

Nursing in the 1880s was only just becoming a formalized profession. Hospitals had little oversight, and recordkeeping was often minimal or entirely absent. When patients died, it was usually chalked up to “natural causes,” especially if the nurse on duty was beloved, as Jane was.

Moreover, poisoning was virtually undetectable without autopsy — and autopsies were rarely conducted unless a family insisted. In elderly patients, the symptoms of morphine overdose could easily be mistaken for heart failure, stroke, or senility.

Jane was strategic. She chose victims who were unlikely to be missed or questioned: elderly women, chronically ill patients, and the socially isolated.

She also started taking on private-duty nursing roles, often living with wealthy families and caring for them in their homes. This gave her not only freedom from hospital surveillance, but access to wills, medicine cabinets, and total, unquestioned authority.

Despite her charm, not everyone was fooled forever.

Supervisors at Cambridge Hospital began noticing odd patterns in patient deaths, particularly when Jane was on duty. She was eventually not invited back for permanent staff placement, though her record remained technically unblemished. From there, she moved to Massachusetts General Hospital, where similar patterns followed — and soon after, she transitioned into private practice full-time.

But the damage was already done. The years at Cambridge Hospital weren’t just her training ground — they were the laboratory of her evolving pathology.

After years in institutional nursing, Jane Toppan made a shift that would prove both empowering and catastrophic: she left hospital work to take up private-duty nursing.

This was common in the 1890s, especially among well-trained nurses like Jane who had built up reputations in hospitals. Families would hire such nurses to care for the elderly or the infirm, and they’d often live within the home of the patient, becoming part of the household for weeks or even months.

For Jane, this wasn’t just a job — it was the perfect environment for her pathology. Private care meant no oversight, no charts for supervisors to examine, no rounds or watchful doctors. In short: total freedom. And to someone who craved control over life and death, this was intoxicating.

Jane’s method followed a disturbingly methodical pattern:

Gain Trust, Isolate the Victim, Experiment, Control the Death, Kill, Then Mourn.

She described her process as both scientific and ecstatic, fueled by the thrill of ultimate power: choosing the moment when another human being would take their final breath — and doing so with calm deliberation.

Jane’s murder of Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister, was perhaps the most psychologically revealing of all her crimes.

Jane had been taken in by the Toppan family as a child but never formally adopted. Elizabeth, the biological daughter, was raised with love, education, and social standing. Jane served in the same household — loved enough to remain, but never embraced as family.

In her later confession, Jane said bluntly:

“I hated her. I was always jealous. She had everything I didn’t.”

Elizabeth had married well — Oramel Brigham, a respected deacon and widower — and lived comfortably. Jane, unmarried and increasingly erratic, saw Elizabeth’s life as a cruel reminder of what she was never allowed to have.

In the summer of 1899, Jane invited Elizabeth on what seemed like a generous getaway to Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod — a quiet, breezy vacation intended to soothe Elizabeth’s nerves.

Instead, Jane packed morphine and strychnine.

For several days, she dosed Elizabeth’s food and water. Elizabeth began to suffer from stomach cramps, hallucinations, and nausea — symptoms Jane dismissed as “the flu.” But they were classic signs of poisoning.

According to Jane’s own words, she held Elizabeth as she died, whispering to her as her body seized and failed. She later described the act not with horror, but pride — calling it “one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.”

Afterward, Jane wrote letters of sympathy to Elizabeth’s husband and even attended the funeral — weeping beside the casket of the woman she murdered.

In 1901, Jane moved into the home of the Davis family in Cataumet, Massachusetts. What followed was a methodical erasure of an entire household.

Genevieve “Jennie” Gordon – A friend and former patient. Jane had previously lived with her as a nurse. Jennie had recommended Jane to her extended family.

Minnie Gibbs – Jennie’s sister. A gentle, quiet woman who welcomed Jane in.

Alden Davis – The elderly father. Retired, respected in town.

Mattie Davis – The mother, who relied on Jane for support in her final years.

Within six weeks, all four were dead.

Jane had first gained entry through the trusted relationship with Jennie. Then, as each family member “fell ill,” she managed the care — giving her full access to medications, food, and routines.

Genevieve died first. Jane said she’d “simply slipped away,” but symptoms suggested opiate poisoning.

Then Minnie grew ill — sudden heart palpitations, confusion, and fatigue.

Mattie followed. Then Alden — who Jane is believed to have killed with a massive morphine dose while helping him dress.

What shocked the town was how rapidly the family collapsed — a seemingly healthy household consumed by death. Still, Jane offered help with the arrangements and even stayed in the house during and after the deaths.

But this time, she stayed too long. Oramel Brigham, Elizabeth’s widower, had already grown suspicious after his wife’s death. Now, with the Davis family wiped out, and Jane once again at the center, he contacted authorities.

The Davis deaths were the first to be formally questioned. An autopsy of Alden Davis revealed morphine poisoning.

Among all Jane’s victims, Mary Gibbs stands out for the sheer tragedy of it — a child, caught in a deadly adult world.

Mary was the young daughter of Minnie Gibbs, who had just been murdered by Jane. With her mother, aunt, and grandparents gone, Mary was now alone in the world — except for Jane, who remained in the home as “a friend of the family.”

Jane assumed guardianship over Mary for a short time. The girl trusted her, but also feared her. According to later testimony from surviving friends, Mary had told them:

“I don’t want to take the medicine Nurse Jane gives me anymore. It makes me sleepy and I feel sick.”

Mary’s words were prophetic. Within days, she was dead.

Jane’s rationale?

“She had nobody left. It seemed best to let her go, too.”

That quote, as recorded in Fatal by Harold Schechter, is often seen as Jane’s most chilling. Mary wasn’t a burden. She wasn’t angry. Jane simply wanted to complete the set — to tie off the narrative she’d written in poison.

Jane operated in a perfect storm of societal trust and medical ignorance:

Nurses were revered. Jane’s persona as “Jolly Jane” disarmed suspicion.

Poisoning symptoms were easy to misdiagnose as heart failure, stroke, or gastrointestinal disease.

Doctors trusted her. She often discussed treatments with them and disguised her murders as “complications.”

But her undoing came when too many people died too quickly, and one grieving man — Oramel Brigham — refused to believe the deaths were natural.

After the autopsy of Mary Gibbs revealed morphine, the rest fell into place.

Authorities ordered exhumations of the Davis family, then Elizabeth Brigham. All showed signs of poisoning.

Jane was arrested in October 1901 while preparing to move in with another family. This time, she did not get the chance.

In custody, she first denied guilt. But as the pressure mounted — and her need to boast emerged — she confessed. With no shame, she admitted to 31 murders, but investigators believed the real count may have been more than 100.

In 1902, after extensive psychiatric evaluation, Jane Toppan was found criminally insane and committed to Taunton State Hospital, where she lived until her death in 1938.

Reports from the asylum described her as talkative, proud, and entirely unrepentant. She often bragged about how many people she killed — and how easily she could have killed more.

Jane Toppan’s story is a chilling reminder that monsters don’t always hide in the dark. Sometimes, they wear aprons, carry medicine bottles, and smile at your bedside.

Her case remains one of the most terrifying in American criminal history — not because of bloodshed, but because of the manipulation of trust. She transformed the act of caregiving into an intimate theatre of death — and made herself both the director and the executioner.

When Jane Toppan was finally apprehended in 1901 and confessed to her crimes—claiming she had killed at least 31 people—her motive sent shockwaves across the country. She famously declared, “That is my ambition, to have killed more people — more helpless people — than any man or woman who ever lived.”

Her trial raised a fundamental and fiercely debated question: Was Jane Toppan insane, or was she diabolically sane, fully aware and in control of her actions?

At her 1902 trial, Toppan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Taunton Insane Hospital in Massachusetts for life. But even this ruling didn’t settle the matter.

Experts then and now have scrutinized her behavior for clues into her psychiatric makeup. She did not experience hallucinations or delusions typical of psychotic disorders. She wasn’t disorganized or irrational in the classic sense. In fact, her methods were calculated, cold, and astonishingly organized. She knew what she was doing—and she enjoyed it.

Modern forensic psychologists would likely view Toppan as exhibiting signs of:

Antisocial Personality Disorder: Lack of remorse, repeated manipulation, and violation of social norms.

Sadistic Personality Disorder: Deriving pleasure from the pain of others.

Traits associated with psychopathy, including charm, deceit, egocentricity, and a chilling lack of empathy.

Toppan's own words offer dark insight into her mind. She admitted that she would lie in bed at night, fantasizing about killing helpless people—and not just the act of killing, but the emotional domination involved. She also reportedly took sexual pleasure in holding patients on the brink of death, only to revive them, then let them slip away permanently.

Toppan’s crimes were rarely about financial gain. She did benefit materially at times—stealing from her victims or their homes—but it was the control, the godlike power over life and death, that captivated her.

As a nurse, she had access to life-saving drugs, but chose instead to use those same tools to murder. Her manipulation extended to charming patients’ families, attending funerals, and even moving in with the loved ones of those she had killed. In every setting, she placed herself at the emotional center of the story—a macabre narcissism.

At a time when the very idea of a female serial killer was nearly unthinkable, Jane Toppan stood as a terrifying anomaly. Women were expected to be nurturing, maternal, emotionally driven. Toppan shattered every Victorian-era stereotype. She weaponized her caretaker role, her femininity, and her profession to carry out methodical, sustained murder.

Her case helped form early foundations in criminal profiling. She became an enduring case study in abnormal psychology, criminology, and the psychology of female violence. And in the decades since, criminologists have looked back at Jane Toppan as one of the earliest documented examples of a female lust killer, a type so rare it's still scarcely understood.

After her committal in 1902, Jane Toppan spent the rest of her life in Taunton State Hospital. By all reports, she remained mentally active and apparently content, referring to her time in the asylum as being “in retirement.” She died there in 1938 at the age of 84, having spent 36 years in confinement—longer than her entire career as a nurse.

Jane Toppan is not as widely known today as other serial killers, but her story is arguably more disturbing. She wasn’t motivated by desperation or trauma. She didn’t act out of revenge or rage. She killed because she liked it. She killed for pleasure, for power, and because she could.

In the end, she was not a failed nurse—she was a successful predator in a perfect disguise.

Jane Toppan reminds us that monsters aren’t always cloaked in darkness. Sometimes, they smile kindly, wear a nurse’s uniform, and call themselves “Jolly Jane.”

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