Janie Lou Gibbs

This case was rather difficult to search adequately. Sure if you search Janie Lou Gibbs you can find plenty of websites to click on but when you start reading through them you start find a lot of inconsistencies. They are not necessarily simple and excusable ones. Later I will be blogging a case that took place in the early 1900's and in that case I expect the inconsistencies to things only because of the time period and how difficult those cases are to find consistent facts. I did not expect those same issues in this case mainly because it occurred in the mid to late 1960's. One of the biggest issues I had involved names. Several things state that Janie Lou's middle sons name was Lester so this is what I presumed was his name. Quite often in the cases that I research there will be a link to the Findagrave.com website but I do not always look over the site. Generally by the time I get to that point I have most of the information I need, but I also know that the information placed there is by contributors. Now I am not saying that all information of such is unreliable but it is not always exactly fact. I, myself contribute to the Findagrave.com site that I obtain often by visiting cemeteries in my research but in most cases I have a picture to correspond with the information but that is not always the case with every memorial. However, in this case it was by going to that site that I found the issue with “Lester's” name. The site stated his name was Melvin. There was a picture of his tombstone with the date of death that was listed in everything else I had found. The same was true when it came to the name of Janie's grandson. All other things stated his name to be Raymond but Findagrave.com showed it as Ronnie and just as in the other name issue they had the “goods” to back it up. I tell you all of this now because if you have found your way here or think you know the case you will see how and where I came up with names you are not used to hearing.

Janie Lou Gibbs was well respected and liked in Cordele Georgia. She ran her own nursery school out of her home and people clamored to get their children there. This was in the 1960's and there were not the restriction and what not we see today. It was said there were times she had twenty-five children in her home at one time. Janie Lou was also very religious and highly devoted to her church. The community was shocked when in January of 1966 Janie Lou's husband, Charles got ill and suddenly died. She was now a widow with three teenage sons, and she was only thirty-three years old. Whether Charles died at his home or at the hospital is not clear as some reports say he ate dinner on the night of January 21^st and almost immediately collapsed and died. Other reports claim that he was dying in the hospital and that she brought him a bowl of homemade soup and fed him. The doctors believed at the time that his death was caused by an un-diagnosed liver disease. Just exactly how much money Janie Lou received through insurance benefits was not clear but it was said that out of these benefits she gave a “generous” donation to her church.

Then some eight months later, on August 29^th , Janie's youngest son, Marvin who was thirteen would die. It would appear that he too had some sort of liver disease but officially it went down as hepatitis. The doctors found it odd that this young, seemingly healthy boy would suddenly develop this disease and it be similar to the disease his father had died from. But, they were not suspicious enough to look too deeply into things. Once again when Janie received insurance benefits she have a large percentage to her church. The community felt horrible for Janie and rallied around her.

Just a few months later Janie's middle son, Melvin (the one often said to be named Lester) would start experiencing headaches and dizzy spells. On January 23, 1967, at the age of sixteen Melvin Gibbs would also die. The doctors believed it was some sort of rare muscular disorder that had caused his death. If you recall recently I blogged about the case of Blanche Taylor-Moore who was convicted in the arsenic poisoning of her ex-boyfriend, Raymond Reid. When Reid had died the doctors had initially believed it was Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a nerve and muscle disease. While I found nothing that was specific on what “disorder” the doctors believed Melvin had developed, I am curious if it was this same disease or another much like it. Just as in the case of her husband and youngest son the church got their fair share of money when Janie received her benefits.

By now Janie's oldest son, Roger, was nineteen. He would marry sometime in 1967 and in September of that year he and his wife would have as son. Those in the community thought things were finally looking up for Janie and her family. She may have lost her husband and two sons, but she still had one son living and now she had a grandson, Ronnie (often said to be named Raymond), that she appeared to dote upon and show off any chance she could. Roger, his wife and their baby lived with Janie. Then suddenly Ronnie got sick and mysteriously died on October 7, 1967. His death could not be explained. An autopsy was done, apparently the first in all the deaths in Janie's family but nothing abnormal was found. Whether the term “Sudden Infant Death” had been coined at the time is unknown but what was known that sometimes babies just died with no explanation. It has always been known.

Less than a month later Janie's oldest son, Roger would die. His death on October 28, 1967 too was strange. It appeared that for some unknown reason his kidneys had just stopped working. This is the death that not only made the doctors suspicious but it was also the first death, aside from the baby, that Janie did not have complete control over. It was said that Janie had refused autopsies on the bodies of her husband and her two youngest children. There had been one on little Ronnie but no one ever thought to look for some things considering he was only a month old. However, when it came to Roger, things were different. His wife insisted on an autopsy and she trumped Janie when it came to making this decision. By now the hospital was suspicious anyway. This woman had had five family members die in less than two years. The state crime lab was called. The autopsy on Roger revealed that he had a fatal amount of arsenic in his body. On Christmas Day (some reports say Christmas Eve) 1967 Janie Lou Gibbs was arrested for the murder of her son, Roger.

Almost immediately there was an order to exhume the bodies of Charles, Marvin, Melvin and Ronnie. It was said that the medical examiner was on hand at the cemetery when the bodies were exhumed. As each body was removed it was laid on a tarp in the cemetery grounds and the new autopsy and evidence was taken right there. The bodies were apparently just as quickly placed back into the ground. Results would show that all four of the bodies exhumed had extreme amounts of arsenic. There are reports that she allegedly admitted the murders but had given no motive. Of course at least in the case of the first three deaths it could be said that life insurance benefits were the motive. It is unclear what, if anything, she gained from the deaths of her grandson and her oldest son.

Remember how I mentioned in the beginning how confusing some of the information in this case had been as I researched? Well, it only got more confusing as it went along. From the way that I would understand things it became difficult to get Janie Lou to trial. Prosecutors had believed that she had fed all of her victims arsenic (likely in the form of rat poisoning) in their food and drinks. The death penalty was not available in Georgia at the time and so the prosecutors were looking at just ensuring that Janie Lou never got out of prison. Whether she was immediately charged with the other four deaths is not clear but over time it was said that “her increasingly disturbed behavior threw several attorneys off her case” to the point that there appeared to be no lawyer in the area willing to defend her. On top of this she was being evaluated as to her fitness to stand trial. It appears that in February of 1968 a judge did declare her as unfit and confined her to a mental institution. I would like to think that the report that she worked as a cook at the institution was one of those wrong facts that I came across but I cannot be certain.

Over time people began banding together to attempt to have her declared fit and stand trial for the murders of her family. It is likely that the community now felt duped into feeling sorry for her as each of her family members died. Friends and neighbors would appeal to the prosecutor saying they were certain that Janie was not unfit to the point that she did not know the difference between right and wrong. Even a chaplain at the mental institution came forward to say the same. So, in 1976 Janie Lou Gibbs was apparently brought to trial. I found no information as to what transpired in the trial. In fact, it became confusing as I was reading through things and saw that she had been confined to the mental institution but later reports or statistics would say she had been given five life sentences. A reference later mentioned that she was convicted by the courts on May 9, 1976.

Her only living survivor was her sister who was said to visit her often throughout her prison stay. Over time it was said that Janie was denied parole seventeen times before she was released on a medical discharge in 1999. She had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and this is what had enabled her to be released, into the custody of her sister. It appears that at some point her sister was either unable to care for her or had died and Janie was sent to live in a nursing home where she was confined to a wheelchair. She would die “alone” on February 7, 2010.