Women Serial Killers of the 20th Century (11 page)

The Sheriff’s office produced a piece of paper taken from Anjette’s office where the name Julia Lyles had been repeatedly written, as in an attempt to perfect a signature. A handwriting expert testified that Julia’s signature on the funeral note and her will were forged.

Throughout the parade of witnesses’ the prosecution produced, Anjette made detailed notes of their testimony.

At the end of the prosecution’s case, Anjette, looking sincere and serious, took to the witness stand and gave an unsworn statement. This prevented a cross examination by the prosecution. She was dressed in a black, long sleeved dress with her hair tidily pinned up against her head. In her hand, she clutched her pages of notes. She addressed the jury, “Gentlemen of the jury, I have not killed anyone”. She then went through point by point all the witness’s testimony against her. She addressed the jury about her belief in magic, herbs, and her use of candles, assuring them there was nothing sinister in her beliefs. To explain her laughing at Marcia’s dreadful hallucinations, Anjette said, “When I get upset, I laugh. I cannot help it. I have done it all my life. Instead of crying, I laugh”.

She finished up by declaring
, “I loved Marcia. I did not kill my child. I have not given any child poison. I did not kill Ben, Julia Lyles, or Buddy. I hope that you will believe me when I say that because it is the truth”.

When Anjette returned to the defense table, she collapsed into her mother Jetta’s arms and for the first since the trial had begun
, she cried.

There followed the closing arguments by the prosecution and their appeal to the jury to find Anjette guilty as she deserved to die. The defense then
followed with their closing arguments and plea to the jury to find Anjette innocent of all charges.

The judge then gave the jury their instructions
: they had, he said, three choices: 1.) to find Anjette guilty without mercy, 2.) to find her guilty with mercy or 3.) to find her not guilty. He explained that a guilty verdict without mercy would result in the death penalty for Anjette.

The all-male jury took only an hour to deliver their guilty without recommendation for mercy verdict. Minutes later
, Judge Long sentenced Anjette to death on December the 5th in Georgia’s electric chair. Anjette was the first white woman sentenced to death in Georgia. Anjette received the verdict calmly. The only visible reaction was she bit her lip and her skin reddened slightly.

Her lawyers immediately appealed
, and a series of court hearings followed. Eventually, Anjette’s lawyers successfully won an insanity plea. A Sanity Commission diagnosed her with chronic paranoid schizophrenia. In Georgia, it was against the law to execute an insane person. It was a catch-twenty-two situation because if she recovered her sanity, she would be executed. As she confided to a friend who visited her, “They think I’m crazy as hell, and I’m going to let them keep thinking it because if they don’t, they’re going to fry my ass!”

Anjette was confined to Milledgeville State Hospital for the insane. Here, she spent close to twenty years before dying of natural causes on December 4, 1977,
at the age of fifty-two. She was buried next to her daughter Marcia.

SILENT BABIES

Marie Fikáčková was born to poor German parents on September 9th, 1936 in Sušice, a beautiful, historic city in Czechoslovakia.

In 1945 when World War II ended
, many Germans living in Czechoslovakia suffered from Czech hostilities towards them. Marie’s family was one of them. Her father was a violent alcoholic who hated the Czechs with a passion. Neither was she close to her mother with whom she often quarreled. Her one brother was mentally handicapped. Despite Marie’s dysfunctional home life, she did well at school. In 1955, she successfully passed the Secondary Medical Service School examinations in Klatovy. She then found work as a nurse at the Sušice National Health Centre. In 1957, Marie was transferred to the Obstetrics department. Marie was liked and respected by her colleagues for being amiable and industrious and within a short amount of time was being considered for promotion to Head Nurse. There was, however, one insurmountable problem for Marie: much as she enjoyed her work in the maternity ward, she had an almost complete intolerance to the crying of new born babies. Many women take to babies easily, knowing how to hold the baby in a relaxed manner that soothes the fretful newborn. Marie was not such a woman.

On February 23rd, 1960, two newborn baby girls died on the maternity ward of the Sušice National Health Centre. During the autopsies of the babies, it was found that both infants had numerous broken bones in their arms along with head trauma, which had caused their deaths.

The authorities began to interview all
of the staff involved in the care and delivery of the babies. On February 28th, 1960, twenty-four-year-old Marie was interviewed. The interview turned into a six hour interrogation as the authorities became uneasy at Marie’s answers to various questions.

During the interview, she claimed that as a child she was tortured by her mentally ill brother and abused by her father. At midnight, after six hours of questioning
, Marie finally admitted to killing the baby girls.

She said
,

To Marie, it was a solution to child quieting: when using 'pressure point therapy' the baby never cried again. In explanation, she claimed that the crying babies affected her concentration, she hated crying babies, they put her off her work, and she was intent on getting a promotion. She said she would even hit her own child if it cried very often. Luckily, she didn’t have one. She claimed that she only felt this way when she was menstruating. Marie confessed in the interrogation to having murdered ten newborn babies since 1957. The hospital and the authorities kept quiet about Marie’s confessions to the other killings.

At her trial
, she was charged with only two murders as there was no evidence to the other killings she had claimed to have committed. At her trial, a number of people testified to her explosive personality. Neighbor’s testified that she terrorized her mentally handicapped brother regularly and that she possessed a violent streak.

On October 6th, 1960, Marie Fikáčková was sentenced to death by
hanging. Her lawyer appealed the sentence twice but on each occasion, the appeals were denied.

The execution took place early in the morning of April 13th, 1961 in Pankrác prison.

Marie Fikáčková’s trial and execution were kept secret in communist-occupied Czechoslovakia, the government not wishing its citizens or foreigners to know that under their regime such crimes occurred.

Following the collapse of the communist government in 1996, many secret files were uncovered, one of which was Marie
Fikáčková’s. TV Nova, the Czech commercial television station, broadcast the story on January 4th, 2007.

JANIE LOU GIBBS

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE MUM’S COOKING
.

Janie Lou Gibbs was born on December 25, 1932, in Cordele, Georgia, known as the Watermelon Capital of the World. In 1948, at the age of sixteen, Janie married Marvin Gibbs, a farmer. She appeared in all intents and purposes to be the perfect wife, mother, and avid Christian Fundamentalist church attendee. Janie also ran the local day-care center and was popular with the mothers and children. In 1965, Marvin at the age of 38 and her husband of eighteen years, was taken ill after eating a lovingly prepared family meal. He collapsed at home and was rushed to the hospital emergency department where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. The doctors attributed the cause of death to a previously undiagnosed liver disease.

Marvin’s sudden death caused shock among the local church goers
, and there was considerable support and sympathy for the young widow and her three children. Janie was so appreciative of the support she received from the church members that she bequeathed 10% of the insurance money from Marvin’s death to the church.

Tragedy struck again a year later when Janie’s thirteen
-year-old son Marvin, Jr., appeared to have inherited the same liver disease that had afflicted his father. He, too, collapsed suffering from severe cramps shortly after having eaten one of his mother’s home cooked meals and died. Yet again, the church community was a tower of strength for Janie in this family tragedy, and Janie thankful to the church for their support, once again gave 10% of the insurance money to the church congregation.

However
, just a few months later, Janie’s sixteen-year-old son Lester became ill, suffering from headaches and dizzy spells. He was discovered dead at home in January of 1967. The doctors at the hospital attributed his death to hepatitis. Once again, the church, in disbelief at the number of tragedies befalling the young widow, rallied around in support. Janie appeared broken hearted and crushed by all that she had endured over the past two years. She told the church congregation that without their support, she could never have coped and once again gave a percentage of the insurance payout to the church.

One piece of happy news for Janie in 1967 was that her son Roger’s young wife was pregnant. In August, the church was delighted to see Janie smiling again as she held her young grandson Raymond in her arms. But before the end of October
, both her grandson Raymond and his father Roger, her son, were dead.

The doctors were mystified by the baby’s death.
He had been a healthy strong child. An autopsy failed to find anything wrong. In Roger’s case, it seemed as if his kidneys had just stopped functioning. The doctors were suspicious and called the law enforcement agency. Another autopsy was performed on Roger, and arsenic poisoning was detected. The police then disinterred the other dead members of the Gibbs family and similar results were found.

Janie Lou Gibbs
was arrested on Christmas Eve of 1967. In court, she admitted poisoning her family with rat poison. Her lawyers pleaded insanity. In February of 1968, she was declared clinically insane and sent to the state mental hospital. In May of 1974, she was declared well enough to stand trial. In May of 1976, Janie was convicted of murdering her family with poison. The judge gave her life for each member of her family. In 1999, Janie, at the age of sixty-six, was released from prison on parole into the custody of her brother on medical grounds. She was suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease. Janie Lou Gibbs died on February 7, 2010, at the age of seventy- eight.