Hello, my lovely Bitrixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here once more to make sure that everything is above board and safe,

I'm sensible, I'm sane. Because this is your fair do's warning. Fair do's, this podcast contains adulty themes spoken to adults by other adults about adulty subjects, and you should be an adult too.

And if you continue to listen after that warning, then you can't even get mad. You can't even get mad if you happen to get upset because of tits.

You were want.

1950s America, the peak of the cult of the housewife. So if you happen to be in a kitchen in Oklahoma and there is a pot bubbling away on the stove and lovely smells

wafting towards you from the oven, you might be forgetting for thinking you were in for a yummy treat. You might say, what's the dinner, Kate? Well, you don't want any part of what this housewife is cooking up to you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because we are in the kitchen of Nanny Doss, a serial killer who murdered her husband Samuel with arsenic-laced crums. Crums that she later put into a cake, and he wasn't the only husband that she killed.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It's thought that she bumped off four out of her five husbands. Why? What was the reason for this? Well, she later told the police she did it because she was looking for the perfect partner.

Huh. But it can't have been about romance. It just can't, because as well as partners, it believed that she killed about ten people, including her grandson, her daughter, her mother-in-law, and her mother.

Known as the Giggling Granny, Nanny Doss got her nickname and reputation from a series of interviews that she gave to the police and the press, where she spoke with a smile on her face, and a really disturbing twinkle in her eye.

Why are you in the same century now? Well, the time's up here in the whole of London.

Pretty sure your last husband? Yeah, sure. Did they say you'd killed any more? Yeah. For your other husband? For each other? Very evident.

Chilling indeed. Today, we are betwixt the sheets to find out about her backstory and how she came to be one of the most notorious serial killers in American history.

Why do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs. I just turn in the knob and push the button.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beard looked bad. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Darius.

Close your eyes, dear betwixters, and join me in a thought experiment. Show your eyes, do it right now, unless you're driving, unless you're driving.

Don't do it if you're driving, but if it's safe, close your eyes. Okay, now I want you to imagine a serial killer. Don't get too scared. If you're too scared, open your eyes and just have some sweeties.

But, but if you can do this, what do you see in your mind's eye? What does this figure look like? What are they doing? What are they wearing?

I'm going to guess that you're picturing a man, right? And it's no wonder that you would be picturing a man.

When so many of the most well-known infamous serial killers are men, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. Do I have to go on?

But they're all men, right? So why wouldn't you be thinking of a man? Now, as feminist causes go, I want to be very careful here before suggesting we need more female serial killers.

That's a weird cause, and I'm not saying that. But, doesn't that show us there are very, very gendered narratives around how we imagine crime?

And the topic of gendered narrative and female serial killers is fascinating.

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