Is Jane Toppan the first example of an Angel of Mercy serial killer? I don’t know, but I do know that “Jolly Jane” (as she was called, due to her cheerful demeanor) was a nurse who really, really liked killing people.
Now, I didn’t know about Jolly Jane when I was writing the Killers books — I stumbled upon her more recently. But holy crap does she justify some of the choices I made in those books! Like Billy, she’s a happy killer, seemingly fulfilled by her fatal choices. Like Ugly J, she apparently got a sort of sexual thrill from her murders.
(I don’t know if I should be impressed or horrified by my ability to craft true-to-life psychopaths. 🧐)
Anyway, Jane moved through the society of late nineteenth-century New England, happily nursing away at hospitals, blithely picking out patients and “experimenting” on them with varying doses of medications. And, of course, killing a good number of them.
Finally, she went a bit too far when she *checks notes* killed four members of the same family within a matter of weeks! The police caught on, caught her, and in the early days of the twentieth century, Jolly Jane landed in Taunton Insane Hospital (how’s that for a name?), where she spent the rest of her life, dying right around the same time Superman was born.
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