Amy Archer’s reign of terror inside a nursing home in the early 1900s was the basis for the play and later the movie Arsenic and Old Lace. Amy took in boarders in a nursing home and systematically killed them over the course of about 6 years. It was owing to the attention and tenacious investigative reporting of a local reporter that she was eventually found out, but was she a cold-blooded killer, insane, or just a confused old lady?
Show Notes
Sources and resources:
Wikipedia
Amy Archer-Gilligan: Entrepreneurism Gone Wrong in Windsor, Windsor Historical Society, https://windsorhistoricalsociety.org/amy-archer-gilligan-entrepreneurism-gone-wrong-in-windsor/
The Devil’s Rooming House by M. William Phelps, Lyons Press, 2010.
The Hartford Courant, Newspapers.com
Arsenic and Old Lace, Warner Brothers 1944, directed by Frank Capra
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minor-key-music-box by user darkwaryurmc (http://freesound.org/s/318908/) licensed under CCBYNC 4.0
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Cover art photos: photo, public domain.