Wife, Mother, Restaurant Owner, SERIAL KILLER: The Life and Death Sentence of Anjette Lyles

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Anjette and Ben Lyles are a young married couple with two children. Ben is a WW2 veteran and together he and Anjette work in his family restaurant in Macon, Georgia. When Ben sells the restaurant for below market value to settle a gambling debt, Anjette is furious. A few months after selling the restaurant, Ben gets very sick, very fast, and dies without doctors figuring out what killed him. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the death of Ben Lyles as well as Anjette's new husband, Buddy Gabbert, Anjette's first mother-in-law, Julia Lyles, and Anjette's daughter, Marcia. Joe explains how Anjette Lyles got away with murder, at first, and what led to her ultimate arrest, conviction, and death sentence.

Transcript Highlights

00:00.21 Introduction

02:09.23 Eating at Hospital cafeteria

05:02.11 Ben Lyles sells restaurant to settle gambling debt, Anjette is furious

06:45.30 Ben Lyles dies, doctors don't know why

09:21.66 Diagnosis by symptoms

14:43.53 Ben's mother worked at Restaurant

18:26.54 Anjette buys the restaurant

20:01.78 Anjette marries Buddy Gabbert

25:07.03 Doctors not looking for arsenic

30:08.42 Symptoms were miserable, Buddy dies

35:32.05 Anjette seen lighting black candle and talking to it

40:00.01 Coroner's Inquest

44:51.91 Coroner gets anonymous letter about Anjette using arsenic ant poison to kill

50:09.65 One month after Marcia dies, Anjette is arrested, charged with murder

51:25.26 Sentenced to death. Sentence commuted to life in prison

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:05.5	Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Moore.
0:10.1	Being a southerner, people will say, well, why do you continue to live in the South?
0:16.8	Oh, there's any number of reasons.
0:19.4	Climate.
0:20.8	I love the people.
0:23.0	I've had opportunities to live elsewhere.
0:26.7	But one of the things that I think kind of anchors, not just myself, but many of us down here, is food.
0:35.1	And it's, yeah, it's the food that's before you when you're eating, but it's also
0:40.0	the fact that so much of our life is tied up in food. I guess many people can say that, but
0:46.8	we make a, I don't know, a big deal out of just the preparation. We're not big on excluding people from our kitchens while we're preparing things.
1:00.0	Being from Louisiana in particular, you're taught from a young age how to cook.
1:05.0	And in my opinion, I probably make one of the best gumboes around.
1:10.0	I take a lot of pride in my room. But you know, food is a pathway. It's a pathway to deliver nutrition. It's a pathway to fellowship with those that you love. But many times, it can be a pathway
1:34.2	to death. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is body bags.
1:50.0	Dave, unfortunately, you and I over the past, I guess, 14 months, have spent more time than we care to mention at hospitals.
1:59.0	And there was a time, and I remember from my childhood, where after church on Sundays,
2:08.4	we would go to eat at the hospital in the cafeteria. And it sounds weird, but in our town,
2:16.0	the food at the hospital cafeteria was fantastic.
2:20.3	But, yeah, I know, right?
2:22.2	That's weird.
2:23.1	It is weird.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.