26-05-2025
The disturbing case of Jane Toppan, the 'jolly' nurse who killed people for a sickening reason
Jane Toppan was one of America's first and most prolific female serial killers, murdering at least 31 victims, snuggling them in bed and getting a twisted sexual thrill while they gave their last breaths.
She had become a crutch to the prominent Davis family in 1901 as they were struck by tragedy after tragedy. They had welcomed their longtime friend and adored 'jolly' nurse into their idyllic Cape Cod home.
But, one by one, the family members suddenly dropped dead. Something sinister was going on and Toppan was harboring a macabre secret.
In just over a month, four had died - succumbing to a seemingly unrelated illnesses.
Family matriarch Mary 'Mattie' Davis was first, with her death explained away by her diabetes. Days later, her daughter Genevieve Gordon was dead from apparent heart failure.
After losing his wife and one of his daughters, Alden Davis - who made the family fortune running the railroad from Boston to Cape Cod - suffered an apparently fatal stroke.
His other daughter Mary Gibbs would also be dead within days due to of 'a broken heart'.
But to Gibbs' father-in-law, the sudden wipeout of the entire Davis family was oddly suspicious.
Modus operandi: As a nurse, Toppan (killed patients and anyone else who got in her way with lethal doses of morphine
Some of Toppan's victims were injected with a fatal dose of morphine while others were poisoned with her special laced bottles of Hunyadi mineral water.
In a sick twist, she reveled in toying with her victims' lives by bringing them to and from the brink of death with alternating doses of morphine and atropine.
As her victims lay dying, the nurse would curl up in bed with them, getting a twisted sexual kick while they passed away.
By the time 'Jolly' Jane was exposed as one of America's first female serial killers, she had claimed the lives of at least 31 people, according to her own confession letter.
But many fear the number could truly top 100.
'She really was probably the first woman serial killer,' Diane Ranney, the former assistant director of the Jonathan Bourne Public Library in Massachusetts who has researched the Toppan case for decades, tells 'But it seems odd to me that the fame really never reached her.'
Despite her sadistic murder spree, Toppan is a serial killer that few have heard of.
Even in the Cape Cod town of Bourne, Ranney says the chilling past is a little known tale among the community.
Born Honora Kelly in Boston's south end in 1854 to Irish immigrant parents, Toppan's start in life was turbulent, to say the least.
Her mom died when she was only a small child, leaving her and her sister to be raised by her alcoholic father.
Her dad sewed his own eyelids shut and abandoned his two daughters at the Boston Female Asylum.
Honora was later taken in as an indentured servant by the wealthy Toppan family and her name changed to Jane Toppan.
'I'm probably the only person who's been researching her who feels sorry for her,' Ranney says, adding: 'Everyone else calls her a monster, which in a way she was, but the more I looked into things, the more I thought, she's a very interesting person.'
Through her years of research, Ranney says it's 'a question of why she was like she was'.
It's a question Toppan gave a curious answer for after she was caught.
In her young adulthood, Toppan was jilted at the altar by her fiance. She went on to blame her lover for sending her down her dark and deadly path.
Toppan claimed: 'If I had been a married woman I probably would not have killed all these people.'
Rejected by her lover, Toppan decided to train at Cambridge Hospital to be a nurse - a vocation that would give her the knowledge of drugs and position of trust that she would later exploit.
When Toppan started working as a nurse, she became an instant hit, earning her the nickname Jolly Jane as she would always joke with her patients.
'She had a rather strange way of expressing her love for her patients. She took very, very good care of them… But in the end, she wound up killing them,' Ranney said.
It is unclear exactly when the killing spree started. During her time at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Cambridge School of Nursing, many patients mysteriously died in her care.
When she then turned to private nursing, providing her rich patients with home visits, there were also several suspicious deaths.
But surprisingly, the deaths were always explained away by some illness or another - and no alarm was raised.
Several years would pass before anyone suspected the nurse of killing the patients she had doted on with such care.
For other victims, Toppan's murders were far more personal.
She also murdered her best friend Sarah Connors whose job she wanted to take at a theology school.
Toppan also didn't spare her love interest's sister Edna Bannister who she felt was getting in the way of a romance.
And she also killed her former landlords Israel and Lovey Dunham.
Toppan's luck only ran out when she murdered the Davis family in summer 1901 after they had dared to ask her to finally pay the $500 in overdue rent she owed.
Even Toppan went on to admit this may have finally been a step too far, declaring: 'That was the greatest mistake of my life.'
Following pressure from Gibbs' father-in-law, Mary was exhumed and a fatal dose of morphine discovered.
Toppan's depraved killing spree was a secret no more and in October 1901, the 47-year-old was arrested for murder.
Ultimately, she only stood trial for the murder of Gibbs in a case that hit headlines across the U.S. as the media.
Victims who lived to tell the tale came forward with their shocking stories.
One patient described Toppan plying her with a mystery drink and then clambering on top of her, kissing and caressing her while she lay suffering in a hospital bed.
At the time, the woman passed the bizarre encounter off as a dream - only learning how close she came to being another victim when Toppan was arrested.
While suspected of 11 murders, a bombshell confession letter published in the New York Journal revealed Toppan's actual death toll was at least 31.
In the shocking declaration, she boasted that her goal was 'to have killed more people - helpless people - than any other man or woman who lived'.
She also described being driven by an 'uncontrollable passion' for death, writing that: 'No voice has as much melody in it as the one crying for life; no eyes as bright as those about to become fixed and glassy; no face so beautiful as the one pulseless and cold.'
Ranney says there is no indication that Toppan deliberately chose a career in nursing to give her the opportunity to kill. She explained: 'I don't think it started out like that. I think she may have accidentally killed someone without realizing… she may have just decided, 'oh, look what I can do. Wow, that really gave me a thrill.' But I don't think she became a nurse for that reason,' she says.
'I think part of it was a sense that she was powerful.'
More than a century on, however, questions remain as to whether it was really Toppan who penned the shocking confession letter. Ranney isn't so sure.
She said: 'I've always wondered whether it really was [her]. It did not strike me that it was her writing… just the way it's written. I don't think she would have been quite so blunt about things. It just seems to me that her nature was to be more secretive.
'But then again, by that time, she may have decided that she was just going to confess because it brought her more notoriety.'
Toppan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Massachusetts psychiatric hospital in Taunton. She lived there until her death in 1938.
Somewhat ironically, Toppan would often refuse to eat and drink at the facility - paranoid that someone was trying to poison her.
