Hello, everyone, and welcome back to then again the podcast of the Northeast Georgia History Center. I am Marie Bartlett, director of the Ada May Ivester Education center here. And today I have with me Mary K. McBriar, true crime writer, podcast host, literature professor, and killer storyteller. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Maria. I'm really excited to be here.

So today we are going to be talking about your novel, America's first female serial killer, Jane Toppin. So you write on your website that Jane Toppin was a monster, but she did not start out that way. And I think that is so interesting because when we read about these horrific things that people have done, it is so easy and almost natural for us to vilify them and to forget about their humanity and that they were once innocent kids. So can you tell us more about Horana Kelly upbringing? Because her name wasn't always Jane Tobin, which we'll get to a little bit later. So can you tell us about her upbringing and what her childhood was like?

Yeah. So thank you for introducing it that way, because, yes, she was absolutely a monster. Like a terrible, absolutely terrible human. And there's really no getting around that. But I think the more that we learn about how that happens, the more we can kind of prevent it. I like to focus on her childhood, which is, of course, the least documented part, not only because she was a child, but also because she wasn't famous for killing people yet. So her childhood, you asked about it. It was bad. I think that probably goes without saying, but it was real bad. So this is in Boston in about 1860 or 70. I wrote this book a couple of years ago. So some of the very precise details, like the years, are a little foggy, but that's the general time period.

People just have to read the book if they want the precise.

It's a secret, it's a surprise reveal. But her parents were irish immigrants to the Boston area who became very poor very quickly. Clearly, something bad happened in Ireland to make them move to America. And then things went from bad to worse. Her mother actually died from tuberculosis when Anora was, I think, two years old, or maybe not quite yet two. So that left Peter Kelly, the dad, to take care of. Depending on which records you look at either two or four children, which is a lot, just at all, but especially, like, with all the other circumstances. So he was known as Kelly the crack, aka crackpot, because he was very mentally unstable. They're not exactly sure what. They don't know how they would have diagnosed it today. Then I said that wrong. But we're not exactly sure of his diagnosis. We know that there was definitely some substance abuse and there were definitely some hallucinations. So he realized this, which good for him because that's hard to do in the moment. And he surrendered his two daughters, I think either the two youngest or the only two, I'm not sure, to the Boston female asylum. So after he realized, he was like, I can't do this, he surrendered them. And the rumor was that because he was a tailor, immediately after that, he tried to sew his own eyelids shut. Right. Seems like he made the right call, which is very sad. And also, now your daughters are not subject to that, which is probably good. But also the asylum was really an orphanage. And at the time it is a charity, but at the time when you surrendered a girl, at least to an orphanage, it was really different from surrendering your child for adoption. Now, because he surrendered all rights to visitation, guardianship, he could never contact them again. And the reason for that is because although they were going into an orphanage, ultimately we didn't have any of the government support then that we do now. So those kids, when they turn twelve, best case scenario would be indentured out as servants, as domestic servants. So no foster care system. It was like, learn these skills and then get to work, kid. She gets there when she's about six. About. Or that's what I remember at least, which is pretty young to be in that particular institution. The records on file say that they were rescued from a very unhappy home, which is probably true. Also by our standards. This sounds like pretty cruel as far as taking care of children, but it feels pretty dickensian otherwise. This is actually better than the alternative. So I like to kind of frame that out as well. Like, yeah, it was bad, but by those standards, it could have been a lot worse. So she's there. She's killing it. Everybody loves her. She's super fun to be around. Cute little irish girl. Although she was actually born in America, so her family was irish, but she was american, even. So, pretty rough. They don't really have school. They're learning the very minimum of reading and writing and arithmetic and household skills. So things you'll need to work your whole life as a domestic servant, which nothing wrong with learning that, but also no options, right? That's it. That's all she got. So from there, the typical age to get indentured out, which is the goal, right. If you did that, they succeeded. That was their job, was twelve years old. So when Anora was, I think, eight years old. So she's only been there two years, and she's four years younger than the typical age. She gets indentured out to this mean old hag, widowed Anne Toppin. And she was just the worst. She was kind of a nightmare human in general. And then she was actually way worse to anora than she needed to be. She was physically abusive, and Anora was a storyteller, right? Like, she was just the kid in class who would get in trouble for talking, but the teachers also distracted listening to the know. So she's very charming. Anne Toppin looked at that as lying, which was a sin. So she got spanked all the time, in addition to being, like, an eight year old servant. So, yeah, pretty terrible childhood. I mean, that's the bones of it. I think.

It feels almost like a Cinderella story, right? The mom dies, the dad isn't there to take care of the kid, and then she ends up being a domestic.

Breadcrumb trail to a witch's house.

Yes. With the evil wicked at this point, like stepmother almost. So, obviously, Cinderella's story has this nice, happy ending where she stays good throughout all of it somehow, and then marries a prince and lives happily ever after.

Or at least shoves the witch in the oven, right?

Yes. And Hansel and, you know, kill the witch and just kind of go on their one. Well, only one witch dies in the making of that story. But here we have Jane Toppin. So how did she get her name changed from this, I guess, more irish sounding name that her parents gave her to Jane Toppin, which I assume is the last name of the household she's working in. And Jane is just such, like, plain. Like, it's not like a fancy name for a.

Like, that's what you call a body you pull out of a river. Like, that sucks. I mean, it's a beautiful name, but at the time, I think that's kind of what they would have associated it with. But that's a great question. So Anne Toppin, although her guardian, right, never formally adopted Anora, but she did change her name. So she made her take her last name, which was her husband's last name. He's been long dead, so he's not even really a factor in this story anymore. So she made her change her last name, because you don't get much more irish than Kelly. Like, that's. That is definitely irish. And in Boston at the time, everywhere at the time, but especially, like, in Massachusetts area, there was a lot of anti irish sentiment, like, very heavily discriminated against. Like, you couldn't get a job. They put signs in the window saying they wouldn't even write it all the way out. It was like N-I-N-A which stood for no irish need apply, which is terrible. And also on what grounds? And also, she's a little kid. Even if any of that was true, which is not, she's a child. That doesn't apply to her for sure. But she was like, no, we're changing your whole. I mean, I imagine that anora at the time was like, this house is pretty sweet. Deal. You want to give me a nickname that's know she's six, right? Like, let's have a new, let's have a new name. That's fine. I think gradually she became very resentful of everything in that because, yeah, she was a super smart little girl. And I really don't know why Anne would pick someone like Kelly. Maybe she just had zero self awareness where she was like, this little girl is going to be miserable with me. The only thing I can really think of is that she was getting an extra four years of free labor because it was like at 18, that's when the contract ended. So if you start it when she's eight instead of twelve, then that's like a 50% bigger return. Yeah, that's how she changed her name.

So little Anora Kelly, her mom has died, her dad abandons her. She goes to an asylum for like two years, barely gets any type of education, and then goes, lives with this terrible woman who beats her, makes her a servant and changes her name.

Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it.

Whoa. So what happens when she turns 18 and leaves? What does she do? Where does she go?

Yeah, so that's really interesting because I assumed as well that when I'm 18, I'm out of here. That's what I assumed because it was kind of all she knew and all she was prepared to do. She stayed. She stayed for a long time after she turned 18. And my guess is that at that point she started drawing a more normal wage for her work because she had earned out that contract. But yeah, she stayed until basically until after Anne Toppin died. Because I guess she felt like, yeah, even if your mom sucks, she still feels like your know, I mean, my mom doesn't suck that much. So I'm not speaking from personal experience there, but it's know, this is who I know. This is the person who did invest a lot in me, even if it wasn't nearly enough. So she stayed for a while and Anne also had a daughter who was between their two ages, so maybe like 15 years or maybe 20 years older than anora, but in between their ages, so kind of like the go between Anne and Jane. So she had, like, a foster sister almost as well. And when Anne Toppin died, Elizabeth and her husband moved into the house. So Jane continued to work for them for about a year. So I think about ten years passed when she was no longer under contract and still working at that house. So she's about 28, which, I mean, I'm 35, but when I was 28, it would have been really hard for me to change careers. Even now, it's a lot. It's a big change. So she did, though, which is, I think, pretty cool.

So she has a daughter. Mary Toppin has a daughter. At this point, I'm equating it to a Cinderella story. So the ugly stepsister, pretty much, but she also kind of acts as a go between, you were saying?

Yeah. So I think it's one of those situations where she would have looked at Jane as a friend, but Jane wouldn't have looked at her as a friend. It would have been more like her employer, if that makes sense. So there's some tension there that I think Elizabeth doesn't really grasp. So when Antoffin dies about ten years after her contract, after Jane's contract ends, Elizabeth's like, you can stay on here for as long as you want in the same capacity. And Jane is like, I can't keep doing this now. She didn't even mention me in her will. Like, I'm supposed to be like, her kid, and she never adopted me. And it's just like, I need to get out of this situation, which totally understand. So she's about 28 at this time. It's really hard to change careers at any point in your life. It would have been hard for me at 28 to change careers. I can't imagine just the moxie that it took for her to be like, you know what? I'm going to be a nurse. And she did. She crushed it almost immediately. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

So do we know why she decided to become a nurse or how she became a nurse?

Yes, we all know now. Nursing is super hard. It demands a lot of you. You have to know a lot. You have to be kind of on all the time and doing all of these other things. So we know that Jane was super charismatic and very smart. She also already had a whole lot of domestic skills from more than a decade, really, of working in that capacity and nursing at the time was, like, equal parts nursing as we know it now and custodial work. So I think she was like. I mean, I got half of it right. Like, I already know half of, so. And then she had a lot of confidence as well, because she applied to two of the most prestigious schools, at least in the area, if not in the US. I believe they were Massachusetts general and Cambridge. And she got into both of them nice right away. Yeah. Which I think is really cool. And up until this moment, I feel like she's a real american dream story of, like, I bootstrapped myself from almost nothing, and now I'm going to be a nurse, which I think is pretty cool. Also, she was a lot older than a lot of the students there, and she was really good at it. She immediately was just, like, every doctor's favorite. And that's what cascaded into her murders. She got really good at it and bored, I think. Yeah.

So how does she go from just being a nurse? And at this point, we don't have any indication that she has malice towards anybody. We know that she has, of course, been abused and been through some horrific situations, but that doesn't seem to have made her evil yet.

Right.

How does she get to a point of deciding to harm people?

Yeah, I think, as in most situations like this. Well, first of all, we all know that psychopaths look just like everyone else, or sociopaths, and a lot of people have that trait and don't kill a lot of people, and a lot of people have terrible childhoods and don't go on to murder 30 people. So something, I don't know, perfect storm happened where it escalated in pieces, I believe, as these things do. Right? Like, you see a peeping Tom and it's like, all right, get nip that in the bud, because that is going to escalate to something much worse very quickly. So, similarly here, what she would do, the first indication is that some of her favorite patient, also hospitals at this time, disgusting. We knew about germs, but people weren't really doing enough about it. It was like, you need to wash your hands, and you need to do it for real, and you need to wash your tools. And not everyone was doing that. So a lot of people were dying, period, in the hospital. You did not want to go ever, if you could help it. So that also was kind of a mask that she could get behind. But when her favorite patients did get better, they would just leave, which, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do, right? Like, when you are done at the hospital, you go home. That's it. You don't need to be there anymore. And she didn't like that, so she started making them a little bit sicker just so they had to stay longer. And then it escalated to, well, let me see how sick I can get them, and then bring them back. I mean, that's a big jump, even just between those two. And I don't know how conscious that would have been, but it escalated in that way slow enough where people who she worked for who liked her would not notice but almost be turning a blind eye to it. And then her colleagues didn't like her anyway, so it was like, well, you need to not be saying those things about people. That's not very nice. And they're like, no, it's true. And it's like, or do you just hate her? Right? So it's dicey. And then eventually some of the patients started complaining, and then the doctors were like, we don't believe them. But now they're all kind of feeding into each other, so we'll write you a good reference. And then she went from one of those schools to the other and did the same thing. It got worse, but did the same thing. So I guess the answer is like, slowly, is how it went there. And then she got real sloppy after that. I won't go into all of that, but it's like, oh, this is embarrassing for you. All that you didn't capture, she just.

Realized she could get away with it.

She could get away with so much, and she really did. And especially in that position. Right. So many people are so sick all of the time, and everyone likes you. You can get away with a little bit. Like, maybe you made a mistake accidentally, and then you realize you get away with it, and it's like, oh, I can just do it now. I can just do that on purpose. Scary.

It's so scary. It actually reminds me of very recently, there was a serial killer nurse who essentially did almost the same thing over in great Britain, and they just caught her after she had murdered so many patients.

That was terrifying. Whereas she's actually now, like, with the technology, it's like, we got to do better, you guys. Yeah.

So we'll let people read your book, America's first female serial killer, if they are more interested in how it escalated and how she got caught. And then there was a whole trial, which seemed very sensational. So is there anything you want know, tease for the people who are interested in learning more about that?

Sure. The verdict of that trial is not what you would expect it to be. Interesting.

Now I'm incredibly intrigued, even though I thought I'm like. I thought I kind of knew how the story was going to go, but maybe I don't.

Now, you probably do know how it's ultimately going to shake out, because we have all this information now, right? Yeah. But the trial, I remember reading about it, like, reading the actual transcripts for the trial and being like, oh, this went okay. This is weird. I guess that's my main tease. Yes.

Got to find out. Read the book for yourself. Now I am interested in. How did you decide to write this book?

Yeah, so I actually heard her story first on a true crime podcast and the part about her dad and surrendering her to the orphanage. And they kind of glossed over a lot of it, because on a podcast, you only have so much time. And then they escalated so quickly, and I knew that there were some pieces missing in the middle. So, again, I knew it was a podcast, and I was like, well, I'm going to go read the book. Right? There's got to be a book about this. There's no way. There's not. And I couldn't really find what I was looking for. So I did read Harold Schechter's book about Jane Toppin, which is. I mean, I don't know if that name will ring a bell for everyone, but when you see him, you're going to be like, oh, this guy. I know this guy. He's the talking head on every documentary. He's awesome. If you are a follower of true crime at all, you've seen him before. So I knew I was in good hands when I was reading his book, but it still was like, all of the facts and none of the story, which is the part that I was interested in, because I do also have a brief background in working with. I think the phrase they used was emotionally disturbed kids or bad kids, but they were never bad kids. It was something had happened. They had that propensity to be bad, and then something happened, and they were like, I guess I'm going this way. And I just felt like there was more to her story than I was able to find, so that's why I wanted to do it.

Yeah, and then you were able to put that story out there. It's like, then this is how it happened and not just the bare bones of the story.

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious she's a monster. She's the worst person in the world. But also, I don't think she started off that way. And I think kind of trying to figure out where the train jumped the tracks is a really important piece of knowledge for us to have so that it happens less frequently.

Yes. Of just being aware, because there's so much that people are learning about psychology and how the brain works and so much about how important childhood is and having secure attachments and loving parents or caretakers. So it's definitely one of those kind of stories of, like, what if XYZ had happened? Could they have changed this to where she didn't become a monster or she didn't have that trained derailment?

Right. I also think this is revisionist, and it doesn't matter. Nothing that I'm about to say matters. It's just, like, my opinion. But I think she could have been a really good surgeon. I think she could have been really good at dissociating and actually helping people if she had had any opportunities at all. So I kind of get that where it could have gone one of two ways, and it went the wrong way.

So why do you think her story is not as well known in history as some of the other notorious serial killers? Because it sounds like she was one of the first female serial killer documented in history, and she did a lot of damage. It's not a small amount of people that she harmed.

Right.

So why do you think she's kind of gotten buried in history and people don't really know her story? And obviously, you had to do a lot of digging to get your information.

Yeah, a lot.

So can you tell us a little bit about your research process and just why you don't think she's as well known?

Sure. So you're right. I did have to do a lot of digging. Like I said, the Harold Schechter book is where I definitely. If you are a fan of crime journalism, that's the book you should go for. It's very good. He is a meticulous researcher, and also because he has that clout that opens a lot of doors. So I read his book, annotated it thoroughly, of course, and then looked at all of his sources and tried to get those sources for myself. So at the time, I was teaching at Kennesaw State, and their library system was off the chain. It was so good, I could get anything scanned from anywhere in the states. And it was amazing. I mean, occasionally you'll find a really old piece that can't sustain the scanning. And in that case, I was going to go to Massachusetts to put booths on the ground anyway, so I went to. Their libraries are gorgeous up there by the, like, it's not like the fender block thing that we have down the street here in Atlanta. So, yeah, that was stunning. I'm glad I got to go there. So that was part of it was like finding out what research had already been done and then looking at those sources and seeing sort of, because there were no facts missing. It was just some of humanity that I felt didn't quite line up. And then also, this is the turn of the century, so journalism is kind of like, take it with a grain of salt. Like they're hearst papers, right? So they're editorializing all over the place and just kind of knowing what I knew about her character, some of it, I could look at the paper and be like, there's no way she said that. Even if that was true, she's too smart to say something that would undercut what she just like. It just didn't make sense. I wasn't saying that. Not trying to say that she didn't do any of the heinous stuff that she did, because she did all of it. I'm confident she did all of it. But the way they would frame her in the papers was sometimes sketchy to me. So looking back through those and comparing notes among them, it's really interesting when you can flip through microfilm that's been scanned and not even just read the articles, but some of the advertisements are just bananas. It was crazy to see advertisements for strick nine tablets. Like, you could buy them over the counter covered in chocolate. Like, what are you all doing? That's so crazy to me. But it was a totally different time, and I think doing the adjacent research was just as interesting to me as finding the stuff about her in the newspaper. So I read a lot about what people wore at the time, which was super fun for me, because when I think of. I mean, it was gilded age, I guess that technically falls into victorian, but, yeah. So when I think of that, I think of the upper class outfits. So when I'm like, are you telling me they had her, like, building fires in a corset? I would kill someone. I would kill someone. It's just like those type of things. They thought that actually bathing was really bad for you. And it just changes the vibe to get the whole picture of the research and not just kind of what made it through. But I think there are a couple of reasons why. I think a lot of her information didn't make it all the way through. Firstly, she was american, and that's kind of what sets her apart from some of the older serial killers that we know were in America. Like, the title of the book is not exactly accurate. But my publisher was like, this is what we're doing. And I was like, you're the boss. So she's actually the first american female serial killer that we know of, which means that she does have a little bit more on the books versus I think Belle Gunnis was before her, but she was an immigrant, I believe, from Germany, so there's, like, less about her written down. So one reason why we do know a little bit about her is because she did get a little bit written down. One reason why I think that we don't really know a lot about her is because how embarrassing this middle aged woman, who is a nurse, lost count of how many people she killed in a hospital. And it took you decades to find, like, I wouldn't want that out there. Like, that's so embarrassing. Also, her trial, or, like, not her trial, but her arrest happened a few days after the McKinley attempted assassination. So it was like, assassination. Jane's arrested, McKinley dies, Jane gets indicted. So it's like, everything that happened to her was overshadowed by that. And then the cowboy is president, right? So everybody's like, what's going to happen with we? Fascinating person as well. So I think that kind of took the spotlight off of her as well. So I think those two things together also. And this is one thing that this is only anecdotal, so I don't know if that this is true. This is just, like, personal opinion, which pretty much everything I say is just my personal opinion. But the male serial killers that we know of are typically very violent, and she was a poisoner. So I think it's less, like, cinematic and it's a little bit more sinister because she's just kind of watching. She's not really doing anything. She just fed you, and it's just like watching to see what happens. I think those three things are the reason why we don't know her as well. Also, she's a middle aged woman. And who wants to pay attention to that? I do, but I think that for a long time, that wasn't the person you'd put in the spotlight, period.

Yeah. You're not the one who's going to be getting the most attention in the media just because of the way the media is and has been apparently for hundreds of years.

I mean, it worked in her favor for a long time.

I could definitely imagine doctors. And because one of the stereotypes, doctors are smart, and that is also true, because we don't let people cut into bodies who don't know what they're doing. So to think that all of these very smart doctors are just, for decades, just are unaware of this woman killing people, killing their patients. I could see how they would be very mad, frustrated, embarrassed that they didn't catch on sooner to her work of murdering.

Yeah, that's a great point. I actually just remembered when they were doing the. They had to exhume a body, which is the worst thing. I hate it when it has to happen in trial. But they exhumed one of the victims bodies and tested it for chemicals and the victim's father in law, so not even someone who, like. I mean, he knew her well, but he's like this grizzled sea captain was friends with the guy doing the autopsy, and he said, we think it was. I think he said it was poisoning by strick nine. And the guy goes, man, that just doesn't seem like she'd be that sloppy. I definitely thought it would be, like, morphine and atropine that she did at the same time. And the guy was like, maybe we should test for that, too. And then they did. It was just like, a layman who heard the evidence and was like, that just doesn't sound right to me. I had it in my head for sure that it would have been this way. And then they took his idea, and he was right. So I thought that was interesting, too. How? Yeah, science at the time as well was, like, very, I don't know, in.

Its infancy, almost trying to be like this. Forensic science was new.

Yeah, it really was. I mean, now I feel like you can't get. I mean, I'm not trying to get away with anything, but my cell phone will give me up every time. Every time. And it should. That's what it's for. And then it's just like, man, you all were really shooting from the hip. You can get away with almost anything.

I've seen funny spoof videos about old timey murder scene, and the detective is like, oh, yes, clean up all the blood. The murder bled all over this place. And then today we would be like, well, that's proof of who the murderer is. Just go test the blood, and then you'll match it to somebody, get their dna, and there's your killer. And they literally were like, but we should outline this body in Chuck, and then that'll give us a lead. And just things where you're just like, oh, my goodness. True crime in the wild west. And just early America is a lot of conjecture and guesswork, and it's scary to think how many people got away with so much for so long.

For sure. Very scary.

So can you tell us where we can find your book and any last information that you want people to know before they go read it?

Sure. Well, first of all, I hope you like it. If you like it, you can find me on all the social media. I'm just under my name. I have an author's site as well, so if you need to shop it around and see which one is your favorite place to get the book, they're all listed there. It's going to be very easy to find. And that's just my name as well. Mary kmcbrah.com that's it. I try to keep it consistent so you don't have to remember a whole lot. Yeah. So I hope you like the book. I also just dropped a new podcast with iheartradio about true crime stories in which women aren't just victims. So it's just a different slant on some stories that you may have already heard and some that you may not have heard yet. So if you like that kind of thing, which, I mean, if you listen this long, you've probably liked that kind of thing. It's called the greatest true crime stories ever told. And that's linked on my everything's on the website. So yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. And thank you so much for listening this far, and thank you for having me. And this has been great.

Wonderful. All right, so I hope everyone goes and checks out your website. We'll have that in our description box right below, so make sure you go check that out. And thank you so much.

Thank you, Maureen.

Then again, is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by media producer Guada Rodriguez. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ivester Education center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again.