By all accounts, Janie Lou Gibbs was a popular member of the community in Crisp County, Georgia, back in the 1960s. The devoted wife and loving mother of three sons, Roger, Melvin, and Marvin, ran a daycare center out of her home. She was also extremely active in her local church, often volunteering her time. She was the type of woman who was always there when the doors were open. She even volunteered in the community, helping those who were less fortunate, usually by cooking and bringing them meals. As a matter of fact, Gibbs loved to cook almost as much as she loved her Christian faith.
One night, while the Gibbs family was gathered around the table for dinner, Janie's husband, Charles, developed severe stomach pains and went to the emergency room. While he was in the hospital, his wife visited regularly, fussing over him and bringing him some of her homemade soup. Sadly, Charles never recovered. When he died in January 1966, Janie said she was too upset at the thought of someone cutting him up for an autopsy, so he was buried without one. His doctors decided that his cause of death was undiagnosed liver disease.
Of course, no one batted an eye. Their church community rallied to support the new widow and her three sons, and in turn, she donated some of the life insurance money she received to her church.
But here's where things start to get a little suspicious, though apparently no one else thought so at the time. In August of 1966, the youngest Gibbs son, Marvin, began having severe stomach pains as well. He wound up in the hospital just like his father, but sadly, at the age of thirteen, he died. Janie told everyone that it was just an unfortunate coincidence, that Marvin had inherited his father's liver problems. Again, the church community rallied around the family, and again, Janie donated some of Marvin's life insurance money to the church. Because it's totally normal to have a life insurance policy on your healthy teenage son, right?
And if that wasn't odd enough, in January 1967, a year after his father died, 16-year-old Melvin, Janie's middle son, also dropped dead after a brief illness. Once again, there was no autopsy. Doctors determined that he must have had a rare muscle disorder. And once again, Janie gave some of the life insurance money to the church. Apparently, the donations combined with Janie's reputation were just enough for no one to suspect a thing.
Friends and neighbors saw Janie as a hard worker and a devout Christian who'd just encountered an unbelievable streak of bad luck. In an old newspaper article, the wife of the minister at Janie's church called her a "wonderful person" and said she was "very considerate, kind, congenial." Other called her "courageous" for the way she handled the loss of her husband and two sons.
Later in 1967, it looked like things were turning around for the Gibbs family. Janie's oldest son, Roger, and his wife had a baby, and people say Janie was thrilled to become a grandmother after suffering so much loss. But what do you know, that baby, Ronnie, got sick and died in September of that year. The baby's mother was obviously upset and questioned doctors, but the story goes that she was ignored because of the family's alleged health history. However, a month later, Roger died as well, and this time a family doctor agreed that an investigation was needed.
Roger's autopsy revealed that he had arsenic in his system, as did his infant son. Authorities exhumed the bodies of the other three members of the Gibbs family members, and they also found arsenic in their bodies (shocking, I know). As it turns out, Janie's delicious home-cooked meals that she poured her heart and soul into had an extra ingredient. And because she was such an upstanding member of the community, no one suspected a thing.
Janie Lou Gibbs was arrested on Christmas Day — which also happened to be her birthday — for murder. She confessed without hesitation, and initially, she was found mentally unfit to stand trial. Instead, she was sent to a mental institution, and get this, while she was there, she worked as a cook. Yes, they let the woman who killed her entire family via her cooking work as a cook. I don't know if poor judgment was prevalent everywhere in the 1960s or not, but it was definitely alive and well in Crisp County, it seems.
Gibbs did eventually go to trial and was sentenced to life in prison until she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1999. She was released to her sister's custody and eventually died in a Georgia nursing home in 2010.
While Gibbs isn't quite as notorious as some of her fellow serial killers, she's somewhat well known in Georgia, but I'd be remiss if I didn't share how I came to learn about her. Back in the 2000s, my mom and her sisters had to put my grandmother in a nursing home, and one day, my mom called me from there with a sense of urgency. "Can you look something up for me?" she asked. I told her I could. "Look up a serial killer called Georgia's Black Widow — someone named Janie Gibbs," she whispered into the phone. As it turns out, my grandmother had gotten a new roommate at the nursing home that day, and it was none other than Gibbs herself.
