Nurse Jane Toppan was arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
Toppan ended up confessing to 31 murders, and is quoted as saying that her ambition was “to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived.”
Toppan began training to be a nurse in 1885 and used her patients as guinea pigs in “experiments.”
In 1901, Toppan moved in with the elderly Alden Davis to take care of him after the death of his wife (whom Toppan herself had murdered).
She quickly killed Davis and two of his daughters.
Toppan then began courting her own late foster sister’s husband, killing his sister and poisoning him so she could prove herself by nursing him back to health. By this time, the Davis family ordered a toxicology exam. The report found that Davis’ youngest daughter had been poisoned and police launched an investigation.
Toppan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Taunton Insane Hospital.
