Angel of Death: Uncover The Darkness of Nightmare Nurse, Jane Toppan by Ryan GreenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Green gives a tour of the dysfunctional family roots and the killings amounting to may be a hundred or more of the innovator of the angel of mercy (or angel of death) type of serial killer.
How many patients need to die under a nurse’s care to raise suspicions?
In 1895, elderly patients were quietly dying one by one, yet no one sounded the alarm – until an entirely family passed away. All had been in the care of nurse Jane Toppan and suspicions hit the roof.
Dilated pupils, feverish bodies, and erratic rambling left doctors baffled, but these weren’t the signs of illness. They were the marks of something far more sinister. Toppan manipulated her patients' dosages, watching them drift between life and death. For her, each fatal dose was not a crime, but a twisted act of mercy—a dark salvation from suffering.
Compelled by her own dark impulses, she transformed from a healer into a merciless killer, deeply relishing the power she wielded over life and death. Angel of Death is a chilling account of Jane Toppan, who is one of America's most notorious female serial killers. This riveting narrative draws listeners into the terrifying reality faced by her victims and unravels the chilling psychology behind her horrific choices.
It is interesting because she had the opportunity to perpetrated her crimes at a time when medical institutions were just forming the shape we know to have now and a period where true, helpful pioneers were taking up roles as detailed in The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever.
Toppan found the field not merely an opportunity for slaying, but this nurse nurtured and developed a unique paraphilia as she admitted during her murder trial that she was sexually aroused by her helpless victims. She would administer a drugs like Atropine to patients and lie in bed with them and hold them close to her body as they died. We know this as Hearst luridly published all the detals to sell newspapers. This motive of such excitation is some type of factitious disorder.
Abandoned by her parents to become an indentured servant, it seems to me she had some deep-seated, organic malfunction as she was given surprising opportunity considering how she devolved into homicide. Here poisoning spree began in 1895 by killing her landlord, Israel Dunham, and his wife.[2] In 1899 she killed her foster sister Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine.[2] In 1901, Toppan moved in with the elderly Alden Davis and his family in Cataumet to take care of him after the death of his wife, Mattie (whom Toppan had murdered).[2] Within weeks, she killed Davis,[6] his sister Edna, and two of his daughters, Minnie and Genevieve.[2]
The surviving members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology e
exhumation
[I enjoyed this title as the Unabridged Audiobook well-narrated by
Steve White.]
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