Women Serial Killers of the 20th Century (4 page)

Lydia Anna Mae Southard, née Trueblood, entered the world on October 16
th
1892, in the little town of Keytesville, Missouri. In 1906, the family relocated to Twin Falls, Idaho.

Twin Falls, 1908

On March 17, 1912 when Lydia was twenty, she married Robert Dooley. In 1914, Lydia gave birth to a daughter named Lorraine. They lived on a ranch near Twin Falls with Robert’s brother Ed. In August of 1915, Ed Dooley unexpectedly died, and the cause of his death was attributed to ptomaine poisoning. Lydia had told the doctor that he had eaten salmon from a can that had been standing around open for some time.

Lydia and Robert received $2,000 on Ed’s life insurance policy.  On October 12, 1915, Robert Dooley became ill
and died. His death was attributed to typhoid fever. Lydia, through her tears, said Robert had insisted on drinking water from a cistern next to the barn. She also expressed fears to her neighbors that her daughter would, too, die of typhoid. Lydia collected $2,500 on Robert’s life insurance policy.

In June
of 1917, Lydia married a man by the name of William G. McHaffle. Shortly after the wedding, Lorraine, Lydia’s three-year-old daughter, became sick and died of typhoid. Following this death, Lydia and William moved to Montana. Twelve months later on October 1st, 1918, William suddenly fell sick of what was suspected to be the flu and died. The death certificate stated the cause of death as being diphtheria and influenza. This time, much to Lydia’s fury, she could not collect the $5,000 life insurance money because William had let the policy lapse.

In March
of 1919, Lydia married Harlen C. Lewis, and they moved into a house in Billings, Montana. In July of 1919, Harlen became sick and died of a "flu bug". Lydia collected a $10,000 life insurance policy. Following the death of Lewis, Lydia returned to Twin Falls. In August of 1920, she married Edward F. Meyer, her fourth husband. A month after the marriage, Edward suddenly fell ill with typhoid and died. This time, the insurance company demanded an autopsy. The autopsy showed a typhoid virus in his bloodstream, so the matter was laid to rest. However, Lydia decided to leave the area without collecting the $12,000 life insurance money.

A chemist
, Earl Dooley, and a relation of Lydia’s first husband Robert, began to wonder about the number of deaths surrounding Lydia. He discussed the subject with another chemist and a local doctor. Together, the three men called upon Frank Stephan, the local Twin Falls prosecutor, and reported their suspicions. Frank Stephan agreed that the number of deaths warranted an investigation. He called in the local deputy sheriff, Virgil Ormsby, to help. Their first port of call was the Life Insurance Company of Idaho State. Here, Virgil Ormsby discovered that all three of Lydia's husbands had life insurance policies in which Lydia was the sole beneficiary. Now that the prosecutor had a motive, he ordered the exhumation of Lydia’s husbands, her daughter, and her brother in law.

On April 2, 1921,
the examining pathologist discovered traces of arsenic in some of the bodies while the other bodies were well preserved, which was indicative of arsenic poisoning. It was also discovered that Lydia had a habit of buying massive amounts of flypaper. Frank Stephan and Virgil Ormsby believed, from talking to neighbors and ranch hands, that Lydia boiled the arsenic out of the flypaper and used that mixture to murder her victims.

An arrest warrant was issued for Lydia on
April 22, 1922, but Lydia was nowhere to be found.

Deputy Ormsby
, by this time, was so immersed in the case he was damned if he was going to let Lydia get away. He traced her first to Boise, then San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles where he learned that she had married a fifth husband.  Husband number five was a navy chief petty officer, Vincent Paul Southard; they met at a dance hall and married almost immediately. When Vincent was transferred from California to Honolulu, he took his new wife Lydia along with him.

A warrant was wired to Captain Arthur McDuffie in Honolulu who promptly, much to her new husband’s shock
, arrested Lydia. Vincent Paul Southard would not believe the alleged charges against his new wife and vowed to stand by her side and pay her legal costs to prove her innocence.

A media circus began as the story leaked out.
In one newspaper story, Vincent admitted to a reporter that Lydia had persuaded him to take out a $10,000 life insurance policy, which he thought, given his profession and the fact they intended to start a family, a sensible action to take.

Deputy Ormsby arrived in Honolulu on May 24, 1921. He escorted Lydia back to
Idaho on June 7, 1922.

Lydia
went to trial on September 26th in front of Judge William Babcock, charged with one murder. Lydia denied the charges, but the jury thought otherwise and after twenty-three hours' deliberation found Lydia guilty of second-degree murder. Judge William Babcock sentenced her to the state penitentiary at Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise for a term of ten years to life.

The Idaho State Prison was a tough place to serve a sentence. Its walls were high,
and it was hot in summer and bitterly cold in the winter. However, over the next few years, Lydia became a model prisoner and charmed the guards and all who encountered her. The prison guards allotted her a piece of land to cultivate a rose garden and supplied her with the equipment and trellises to grow her roses. Over time, she became friendly in particular with another prisoner, David C. Minton, who was released from prison at the end of April in 1931.

Idaho State Prison

On the night of May 13, 1931, Lydia escaped from her cell through a bar she had loosened weeks earlier. She climbed out of her window and then, with the aid of her rose trellises, scaled the prison walls to a waiting car driven by David Minton.

The escaping couple made their way to
Denver, Colorado.  The police launched a nationwide search for the pair. Lydia managed to find work as a housekeeper for a Mr. Harry Whitlock, a widower who had advertised in the local Denver paper. Before long, Harry Whitlock had proposed to her and Lydia accepted and became his wife in March of 1932.

On
July 2, 1932, the police found and arrested an embittered David Minton. The police extradited him back to Idaho to face trial for aiding and abetting in Lydia’s escape. With the information he provided, the police were soon able to trace Lydia. David was sentenced to one to five years for helping her escape.

Lydia was
re-arrested at the end of August in 1932 and returned to the Idaho State Penitentiary. Her new husband, appalled by his wife’s history, promptly divorced her.