Rhonda Belle Martin
Rhonda Bell Martin (1907 – October 11, 1957) was an American serial killer.
A 49-year-old waitress in Montgomery, Alabama, she confessed in March 1956 to poisoning her mother, two husbands, and three of her children. She denied killing two other children.
Her fifth husband, formerly her son-in-law[1], was poisoned like the others but survived only to be left a paraplegic. It was his illness that led authorities to look into the strange deaths surrounding Martin.
Prosecutors said collecting insurance proceeds prompted her serial killing spree, although this is unlikely, since she only collected enough to cover burial costs, and she never admitted this was the case.[2]
She was convicted of murdering 51-year-old Claude Carroll Martin in 1951 by surreptitiously feeding him rat poison[3] and was executed in Alabama's electric chair on October 11, 1957.
[edit] References
- ^ Not legally her stepson, since when she married his father, she was not yet divorced from her third husband.
- ^ Jaffee, Al (1979). The Ghoulish Book of Weird Records. Signet. pp. 37–40. ISBN 0451086147.
- ^ Some accounts say ant poison.
[edit] Resources
- "Mother Tells 6 Killings by Poison," The Associated Press, March 14, 1956.
- "Jury Sentences Woman To Death," United Press International, June 5, 1956.
- "Rhonda Bell Martin," Mind of a Killer (DVD), Kozel Multimedia [1998].
- Shipman, Marlin (2002). "Murdered Family Members and Other Schemes". The penalty is death: U.S. newspaper coverage of women's executions. University of Missouri Press. pp. 46–51. ISBN 0826213863. http://books.google.ca/books?id=UTr5PomgUcEC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=Rhonda+Belle+Martin&source=bl&ots=q2NYlTW7PS&sig=rqXJQa-LvHOxbLjMXPmEomxyIXg&hl=en&ei=5lbgS_KvEIK8lQeDy83yCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Rhonda%20Belle%20Martin&f=false.
[edit] External links
- "Black Widow" executed in Florida electric chair - Times-Herald Record (Archived March 31, 2003 at the Wayback Machine)
- 03/14/57 RHONDA BELLE MARTIN v. STATE ALABAMA FindACase
- Grisly Momma - The Malefactor's Register
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- 1907 births
- 1957 deaths
- People from Montgomery, Alabama
- Female serial killers
- Executed serial killers
- Poisoners
- People executed by electric chair
- 20th-century executions by the United States
- American female murderers
- People executed by Alabama
- Executed American women
- People convicted of murder by Alabama
- Filicides
- Crime biography stubs
