Murder on the Menu
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In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. Listen up. I'm Liza Traeger. And I'm Cara Clank, and we're the hosts of the true crime comedy podcast, That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast. Every Tuesday, we break down an episode of Law & Order SVU, the true crime it's based on, and we chat with an actor from the episode.

Over the past few years, we've chatted with series icons like BD Wong, Kelly Giddish, Danny Pino, and guest stars like Padgett Brewster and Matthew Lillard. And just like an SVU marathon, you can jump in anywhere. Don't miss new episodes every Tuesday. Follow That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Dun-dun!

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hi, Paul. Hi, Kate. How's it going? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm doing well. This is a very special day because my mom turns 80. Oh, wow. I have a mom who's 80. It's amazing. I'm so grateful for that, too. She is so incredibly important. She's a big fan of the show and of yours, Paul. So I wanted to wish her a happy birthday because she is a really wonderful woman. I know that I...

I poke fun at her sometimes on this show, but I just adore her. And she really is someone who likes to talk about true crime. She listens to all these different podcasts. I don't even think mine's the favorite. I think she's got some other favorites, too. Right.

So I wanted to wish her a happy birthday. Well, what's her first name? Lynn. She's a beautiful redhead who does not look 80 at all. I'm not sure what 80 looks like typically, but she is lively and in good shape. And yeah, she's great and a huge, huge true crime fan. Well, hi, Lynn. I'm wishing you a happy birthday. Oh, my goodness. That made her day, I'm sure, Paul. Yeah.

I'm sure she can't believe that this is what I do for a living and that she gets to hear my voice. I suspect she thinks she already hears my voice enough. I mean, I talk to her every day. I see her all the time. And actually, I've been spending the night sometimes, you know, if one of my kids, you know, wants to have a sleepover, I'll spend the night at their house. So it's weird to kind of be in my own bedroom, my old bedroom growing up because they live in

the same house where I grew up. They've had it for 50 years. They've had that house. I'm with one of the girls in, you know, a bed that I used to sleep in and it's very surreal. It's pretty cool, actually. Yeah, you know, I don't, because I was a military brat, I don't have anything like that. I moved around all over the place.

So what do you do? Is there anything that you bring with you when you guys move? I know, you know, in California and then you move to Colorado or you just reestablish everywhere and you don't have a piece of furniture or anything that really makes you feel settled? Well, you know, of course, as I've moved around as an adult,

You know, I've kept the furniture from one location to another and just moved it with me and, you know, acquired other things. And I have various objects from my childhood that I've kept with me. But in terms of actually a house, you know, I've been I've lived in too many different places, you know, so I don't have necessarily like what you've got where I would go back in and go, oh, this is this is home from my childhood. Nothing like that exists for me.

Yeah, you don't have those memories, which for some people, you know, a house can be wonderful and some people it can be awful depending on how you grew up. And I was lucky to have a good childhood. And then, you know, there's the farm, what I call the farm, which is where my dad lived with my stepmother.

The one that I said is haunted, I believe very much is haunted. So I'm very attached to both my mother and the house. And so it's nice to have them, you know, that close by. So it's, you know, it's a great experience. And so my mom is a wonderful woman. And so I wanted to give her a really good shout out and thank you for showing my mom some love. I hope to reach age 80. That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, boy. And she is just as smart as a whip. And she's really wonderful.

This is a family story that I'm getting ready to tell you. So in journalism, when I say family story and I'm sort of a general reporter, usually people go, oh, great. What's the feeling? That must be great. And in true crime, when I say family story, oftentimes it's terrible. And this one is a terrible family story, unfortunately, which is a mixture of restaurant life and Southern style and a little bit of magic.

So let me just jump into it and let's go ahead and set the scene.

So the central character of this story is a lively woman named Angette Lyles, and she is in Macon, Georgia. I love the Southern Gothic setting, so I think that this is going to be a really interesting one. So Angette is at the center of this. She is an only child of a very prominent local couple that run a produce store, so she's already sort of, I think, destined to be involved in the food industry. But here's some interesting descriptions, and I have not told you if she's a victim

or a killer or whoever in this story. But the newspaper reports, when this story really catches hold of the media, describe her in what I think are some interesting ways. Okay, good looking, we're used to with women. That's the first thing they focus on, which is the stupidest thing ever. Charismatic, a people person, she was very charming. And then they also say, the newspaper reports say that Angette was an unremarkable student.

And I highlighted this because I thought, who cares? What is the point? Have you read things like that? I mean, how do you think that these sort of adjectives, whether the person is a victim or a murderer, unremarkable student, what does that mean? That she would not be a brilliant killer? Or is that it's no big loss if she's the victim? Well, yeah, it's kind of hard to determine what the writer's intent

by using that description would be. You know, on one hand, learning as much as possible about the victim. How old is she? She is, at the time, I would say kind of the central part of this story. She's in her early 20s. So she's 22, 23. So she's not like still in high school.

Or is she a college student? No, not a college student. She's about to get married in 1947 to a man who owns a restaurant. So to use that descriptor for somebody who's not even a student at this point in her life does seem odd. I'm not sure what the intent is there. Okay, well, maybe we'll be able to figure it out. So in 1947, as I mentioned, Anjette is 22 years old, and she meets a man named Ben Lyles, Jr.,

And Ben is running his family restaurant in downtown Macon. And before long, Anjette, when they get married, is working beside him. And they seem, you know, a pretty obvious pairing because they're both from well-established local families. They seem happy. And Ben is running his family restaurant in downtown Macon.

She's been in the produce business. He's in the restaurant business. And they both enjoy running the restaurant. She is, again, the newspapers always like to play up the looks. She's very charming and beautiful. And they say so beautiful that she is luring in customers, which makes it sound very tawdry, but it's not. I mean, people go to this restaurant because the food's good, and they think that the hostess slash owner is great to look at and great to talk to. Yeah.

She is said to have been able to easily placate their most difficult clientele. So she sounds like a great person to be around. But by mid-century Southern standards, Anjette is a little bit eccentric. She, you know, on the outside, she's very warm and hospitable. She's a former beauty queen person.

But she does some things that people think are odd. She goes to fortune tellers. She is interested in learning about spells and magic. And the restaurant workers have caught her several times burning ceremonial candles and speaking to the flames. So...

I am not going to get into a discussion about whether magic is real or not or about the philosophy behind it. I am just introducing this information because I think it gives us a little bit more detail on either the criminal profile of her or the victimology of her, that this is someone who believes in something other than, it sounds like, a traditional, structured, you know, religion. Yeah. Any aspect of the victim's life could have...

contributed to whatever crime we're going to be discussing, you know, coming up. So understanding that, you know, she has this successful business, that's part of it. Understanding that she has, for the time, some eccentricities, right?

You know, that could draw some bad attention her way, depending on, you know, who runs across her path and what their life philosophies are. So it's just learning all of this, you know, so however this plays out, you know, for me, it's just something I tuck away. It may have nothing to do with whatever happens, but it could have something to do with it. So it's good to know.

Good. Tuck it away, because I do think we're going to have to talk about it later. So Anjette and Ben, as I said, seem to have a good time running the restaurant together. Pretty soon they have two kids. They have a little girl named Marcy who's born in 48, so about a year after they got married. And then Carla, who is born three years later. Anjette is still very young. She's 25 and under here, you know, during these things that happen. But...

In 1951, right after the birth of Carla, who is the youngest, Ben starts to experience a very sharp decline in his health, feeling bad to a point where he doesn't even tell Anjette that he puts the restaurant on the market, which really ticks her off.

Even though he's sick and doesn't feel well, she does not understand why he would want to get rid of the family business. But he says, I just, I can't do it. And she says, I can do it on my own. And he says, no, you can't. And he puts the restaurant on the market and his condition just never improves. And on January 25th, 1952, Ben Lyles dies at a local hospital. The hospital, the doctors are really struggling.

with this because he seems to have died from an illness that they don't quite know 100% that they could diagnose.

Eventually, his death certificate says that he died from encephalitis. I don't know much about encephalitis. So what would those symptoms even be that we can expect to hear that Ben was experiencing? Yeah. So, you know, encephalitis, again, this is a general term, but it's an inflammation. And, you know, somebody who has severe encephalitis, you're dealing with headache, fevers, stiff neck, you know, confusion, you know, possibly even hallucinations. It can be a

very quickly life-threatening depending on how severe it is. But again, there's multiple things such as a viral encephalitis. There's potentially a bacteria that could cause it. Right now, it sounds like they really don't know what the true underlying cause of his encephalitis is.

It's just that, well, he's got this inflammation and it's what caused his death. So keep the inflammation part in mind also. So now you're going to be pretty full. You're going to have to think about magic and you're going to have to think about the encephalitis. So this is not surprising to me. Angette and her husband have life insurance policies on each other. She collects his $10,000 life insurance policy, which is these days would be about $115,000. Not a massive policy, but...

But for a guy who's running a restaurant, enough to probably keep her afloat. So it makes sense, you know, that this is kind of that size. And Jet and the two kiddos move into her parents' house. And she quickly, because the restaurant I think is still on the market, she starts saving money. She has the $10,000 life insurance policy.

But she gets another restaurant job, and she starts saving money because she wants to buy the restaurant that they once owned. So by 1955, which is three years later, she is working at these restaurants, saving money. She has saved enough cash to buy back the restaurant that Ben had put on the market and then subsequently sold, and she renamed it Ann Jett's.

She had to work very hard for this. She was very committed to this. And probably you know where this is going, life insurance slash mysterious illness. I'm not going to throw red herrings in here. She will be accused of eventually poisoning Ben. My point in bringing that up right now is I was expecting her to take that $10,000 and blow it on

on stupid stuff. And she didn't. She decided, this is what I want. I love this restaurant and I can do it by myself. I am not defending her, Paul. I'm just saying I'm a little bit thinking, you know, she is goal focused and for good or for bad, that's what she wanted was that restaurant. Yeah. So you're saying that if she was responsible for Ben's death through some sort of poisoning,

that you would think that she would, you know, skip town. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, work so hard to reestablish this restaurant that was so important to her. Okay, again, I'm just tucking this all away. No, it's good. It's good. So she has this restaurant, which is more popular than the last restaurant that she and Ben owned. People, of course, are drawn there because of her looks and her charming personality, blah, blah, blah. But she also serves good food.

And she runs a good business. This restaurant, Anjet's, becomes sort of the headquarters for local city leaders and lawyers, businessmen, pilots, because there's a hotel that is close by and by the airport. And so there are all these people coming. And then there are rumors that begin to swirl that Anjet has an exciting new love life. This is three years after her husband's died. And the men that she's linked to around town, a couple

of them are married, and one of them is kind of the cream that rises to the top. So in spring of 55, she begins dating this handsome 26-year-old airline pilot named Joe Neil Gabbert. His name is Buddy. It goes by Buddy. To her family's shock...

He is someone that she marries that June, so just a couple of months later. And Buddy and Anjet move into her home with the two kiddos that she had with Ben and with her parents. So she meets this guy. She dates him, Buddy, and he's a pilot, and they get married. She moves him into the family home, and

A few months later, he begins having some health problems. 26 years old, and he begins having these health problems. Do you want to talk about the health problems now, or do you want to comment on this whole scenario of then dying, three years later she marries somebody else very quickly, and now this guy starts to feel sick?

The question that comes to my mind is, after Ben dies, was there any suspicion on Ann Jett at that point in time? No, sir. Okay. Not a bit. So, yes, let's start talking about Buddy's health issues. They're confusing, and they won't be confusing to you, probably, but they are to me. Okay. So, Ben...

Doctors have no idea what's going on with him, so they go through the list of symptoms. He says, one day before my symptoms developed, I had this real simple outpatient surgery on my wrist. And when he got back the next day, he said he had a high fever. He was having a weeping skin rash.

Could a simple procedure have caused something so terrible, I guess an infection from the procedure, and then it could have kind of come out in different ways in his body? Is that right? So, you know, a weeping skin rash? Yeah. That's the only way they describe it. And is it, you know, around the, is it localized to the site of where he had the procedure or is it throughout his body? It

It seems like throughout his body because the doctors become suspicious by this rash. And it's weeping. Mm-hmm. Now, you know, something that is systemic like that, that's interesting. You know, who knows what he's exposed to during the procedure. But I'm assuming that now there's going to be some sort of suspicion that Angette had something to do with him developing these health issues. Yeah.

Yeah, but he goes to the doctors and he says, I feel terrible. Look at everything that's happening. I have a fever. I obviously have some kind of infection. They say they don't know. And they, I'm sure, try to treat the rash however they can. But the situation gets worse.

Buddy goes to the Veterans Hospital in Dublin, Georgia, and he dies there. So the doctor looks at this and says, this rash could have been attributed to arsenic. So they become suspicious based on this rash because I guess it's darker and this is something that was commonly found with long-term arsenic poisoning. And Jett says, oh, you think I poisoned him? Go ahead and do an autopsy.

And so they do it, and it's not arsenic. It comes back clean. So she is moving on, and she changes her name back to Lyles from, I think she must have changed it initially, to Gabbert. She goes back to Lyles, so she's now Injet Lyles again.

And she gets her husband's life insurance payout, which is $20,000. So think double of what she got before. So, you know, $200-something thousand dollars. She gets a car. She gets a split-level house. And within a few months of her husband's death, she starts dating one of his buddies at the airline, this guy named Bob Franks. I'm not going to judge, number one, how people spend money after somebody dies.

Well, yeah. Yeah.

You know, is she one of these black widow type killers, you know, who ends up going after these men that potentially have decent sources of income? You know, she likes to live the high life and comes up with a way to be able to move on from them as well as financially benefit. If you and I had a type relationship,

in the world of true crime, I think the Black Widow would have been one of our types. I like a good Black Widow. I find it interesting, especially because they're unassuming and they can get away with this for a very long time. And I think they're unusual. I don't know if they're as unusual as we think they are, because you could get away with so much in the 1800s and even the 1900s. Oh, no, definitely. Especially if you space things out

If your spouse, you know, if your spouses, you know, end up dying, if you have the ability to move around and to be able to kill in a manner that would limit suspicion on how the person died, that, yeah, you could have numerous victims under this scenario.

But when you start killing the spouse in the same location and everybody's going, hey, wait a second, her first spouse died weird. Her second spouse died weird. There seems to be a pattern here. Then that's when they get caught.

A pattern here is an understatement for this case. So we're worried about Bob, but I'm not sure we should be that worried about him just yet because someone else who could cause big problems for Angette moves in.

So her first husband, Ben Lyles, who died, you know, we know early on, has a mom and her name is Julia Lyles. And she visits with Anjette and says, hey, I would like to move in with you because I want to spend more time with my two granddaughters and I'm getting older. And so Anjette looks at her and says, OK, and has her move in, even though she doesn't like her very much.

and quickly discovers that Julia is sitting on a lot of money and doesn't have a will. And Anjet, of course, because now I think we have a good beat on Anjet and her character, starts pressing her mother-in-law, former mother-in-law, for her to make a will and to leave everything to Anjet and the girls. And the mother-in-law is saying, I don't really want to do that right now. I would like to go out and hang out with my grandkids. In the summer of 56,

So this is a year after her second husband dies, and Jett makes a particularly disturbing and, I mean, haphazard, as far as I'm concerned, comment to a friend who's staying at the house at the time. Julia, the mother-in-law, walks through the living room, and then Jett whispers to her, "'The old devil. I hate her. I wish she were dead.'"

Now, you know, people say mean things all the time and people say it comes back to haunt them. I've wished her dead. It doesn't mean you're going to kill that person. But this seems particularly ominous when coming from a woman who has two husbands who have died from mysterious illnesses.

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, and I wonder if she's making that comment as she'd been drinking that night, you know, she'll lose the tongue because if she's plotting to kill Julia, she's making a huge mistake by making that statement to this witness. I agree. And I think that this is a time when Julia should be on guard and she's not.

Because not long after Anjette makes a statement, her mother-in-law gets very sick. She goes to the hospital. And Anjette is at her beck and call, which I'm sure has never happened before, for a month straight. I cannot imagine being ill with...

probably long-term arsenic poisoning in a hospital. How much discomfort, nausea, diarrhea, pain, abdominal pain, probably she's getting this rash, all of this. And we are going to assume that NJET, because she is tending to her, is feeding her this over this month somehow. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand. In

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

So during this month, there's a cook at the restaurant in Anjette's restaurant that sees Anjette pour buttermilk into a container that's intended for Julia at the hospital. She pours the milk. She grabs her purse. She's holding the container. She leaves the kitchen. I mean, Anjette is not like a criminal mastermind here. She doesn't seem to be trying to cover things up.

The cook doesn't say anything about this, doesn't raise a red flag because he doesn't know enough about the two dead husbands for context here. I have just a practical question. I don't know what arsenic tastes like. I imagine it must be pretty nasty and acidic. I can't think that.

that buttermilk would really cover that up. But just from a chemistry standpoint, is that a good source for you to cover up a poison like that? Well, right now I'm looking up the solubility of arsenic. Arsenic, even though there's various forms of

It appears that it's really not very soluble in water. You know, when you think about something like buttermilk, you have, in essence, it's not just water, but you have the fats in there. So that could potentially be something that helps dissolve the arsenic. Plus, it's opaque.

So if you have any undissolved solid within the buttermilk, you won't see it. Whether or not the buttermilk taste would cover up the potential taste of the arsenic, I don't know. But I could see where this buttermilk may allow for a more efficient mechanism to deliver a stronger concentration of the arsenic than just stirring it up in water based on what I'm seeing with its solubility.

Well, I'll say this. She is poisoning all these people. I mean, just straight out. And this is going on for a month. Julia is in tremendous pain at the hospital. She has nausea, edema, and her hands, the doctors say, are so swollen that she has had no use of them. I still don't quite understand. So arsenic would have caused all of that, right? Those symptoms tally with what would happen with a poisoning like this.

Well, it appears, yes. It appears that arsenic could cause all these symptoms. You know, and different people respond to toxins differently. So it's not surprising that you possibly could see the differences. You know, like we're seeing Julia having different symptoms than Ben.

We have the rash, the skin lesions, and now, you know, Julie is responding differently. There may be different concentrations of arsenic that are being applied to her. This is outside my area of expertise. This is where I would be having to rely on medical professionals. If I'm trying to build a case against Angette,

you know, part of the questions, just like you asked, is, well, how come I have different symptoms? You know, right now, I think arsenic is being involved, but how come the different symptoms? And now I have experts telling me, well, this is what they see when they are dealing with, you know, either accidental ingestion or purposeful poisoning of arsenic. Well, whatever it is, it

It kills her in late September of 1957. One week after Julia's death, Angette says, oh, she did do a will. Okay. And the will, of course, leaves her entire estate, this $15,000, to Angette and her daughters. Now we have two husbands and a mother-in-law who have all died.

I would have thought with the husbands, because this is in the 1940s, there were diseases, but we're not talking about the 1800s here or even turn of the century. This is a little further on. And of course, we did have a doctor with the second husband with Buddy who was suspicious. Bob Franks is still hanging around. He hasn't died yet. And it's

And Jett has mostly avoided suspicion until she does something cruel and, I mean, stupid, frankly. In the winter of 1958, her nine-year-old daughter, Marcy, gets sick. After a long and mysterious illness...

She's in the hospital and she dies three months later. I mean, good Lord, that's a long time. The doctors are really alarmed by Anjette because they're looking at her behavior towards her nine-year-old and they said she is cold. She is not mothering at all. Now listen to this symptom, Paul, because we haven't heard this yet. The doctors are reporting to police that Marcy would have the occasional fits in

and complain that there were yellow bugs crawling over her and growing out of her fingernails. She's having, it sounds like, hallucinations. Which is one of the symptoms of cephalitis that Ben was dealing with. I mean, that's amazing. It must have been terrifying for this little girl, Marcy, to experience that.

And then, and Jet, when she hears about these hallucinations, laughs at her. She also purchases a small coffin two weeks before Marcy died. And the doctors had said, she's probably going to make a recovery. Don't worry about it. I think everything's okay. And Jet seems to be going off the rails. As I said, not a criminal mastermind to begin with.

But she was holding it together and avoiding suspicion until she is focusing on a nine-year-old who probably has no reason to be sick at all.

And it seems like to me, Anjette is starting to get sloppy here. To eliminate the child, you know, that's interesting. And that's where you start getting into, is there a Munchausen by proxy type of scenario, psychology, where previously had been, you know, financial motive? But is Anjette actually enjoying that?

the killing. And this daughter is somebody she has access to. Or is she wanting to change her life circumstances and now is eliminating her family so she doesn't have, you know, this baggage, so to speak, of kids and she can go on and live whatever life she wants.

Well, I know that money at least is a motive because they have insurance on their nine-year-old. And that's a red flag. Well, so then part of it, yes, and part of it, no, because a lot of times people in those times and a little bit earlier, too, would have tried to put insurance on kids.

in case something happened and they could at least afford to pay for the funeral. But this is a lot of money. I mean, $1,750, which would have been $10,000 to $15,000 maybe right now. And she collects it, of course. So this is what's interesting. So there's an anonymous call to the police before Marcy died, right before the little girl dies.

And this is Julia Lyle's sister. So this would be Marcy's great aunt who calls and says, what are you going to do to save Marcy Lyle's life?

Yeah, that's sad. Yeah.

So now you have four victims at this point, right? Yep. We've got two husbands, a mother-in-law, and then the nine-year-old daughter. And she still has another kid in the house. And Bob. What's going to happen with Bob? I mean, he seems primed for it, but she hasn't married him yet. You know, I'm sure that's the first thing she does when she marries somebody is says, let's get this life insurance. I'm sure it's on her too, but it will never be used. Right.

So as we are moving forward here, the police, after getting that phone call, are alarmed and they start finding out more information. So they launch in Macon a secret investigation into this little girl's death. They have specimens of her body tissues sent to the state's crime lab without Anjette's consent. Can we do that now without telling the family if they're under suspicion? Oh, yeah.

You know, they've got a criminal investigation going on for sure. Now these specimens become physical evidence and they're now investigating a crime and there's no reason to let the family know. Okay. So they send this off two days later. We're not going to be shocked when we find out that she had been poisoned with arsenic. So now it's definite. This is what's happening. They search her house and they come up with a plan to try to catch her.

They have, and Jet's doctor, who has been treating her for thrombosis, and I need you to tell me what that is in a second. They want the doctor to urge and Jet to come in for an overnight stay. Now, I know this is blood clotting, but I don't know anything else about thrombosis. Is this a disease that would have affected somebody under the age of 30?

Yeah, I believe there's probably a congenital aspect. Thrombosis is a clotting of the blood within the blood vessels themselves. Different conditions can cause it. I mean, it can be very serious. And this is where what I do is I fly a lot.

And you get the possibility, if you're sitting on a plane for a long period of time, you have the possibility of getting that deep vein thrombosis, that DVT. That's where they recommend getting up, walk around, wear the compression stockings to improve the circulation through the lower extremities.

Because if you get a blood clot, it's possible it could come loose. It could lodge in the heart. You know, you could have basically a heart attack. It could get a pulmonary embolism. You know, you literally just drop dead from something like this. You know, so she's being treated for thrombosis. So chances are she's being given something that is, you know, thinning the blood and trying to prevent, you know, this clotting from occurring internally. Yeah.

Well, this is all very alarming to Injet, and she runs to the hospital and decides to spend the night. While she's at the hospital, investigators obtain a warrant, and they search the house. Here's where all the magic and the voodoo comes in. In the house, they find considerable equipment.

for voodoo rites, candles in an assortment of colors and recipes for love potions and herbs and powders and printed invocations. This is interesting. They also find a man's sock that was pinned to her bed

The matching sock was in a drawer wrapped around a man's photograph, and the man is Bob Franks, who, you know, she has been dating. So at least he's still alive, but she's doing something. I don't know if it's working, but she's doing something, and it completely freaks out the police in Macon at this point. This almost sounds like those voodoo dolls, you know, where you can cause pain by putting a needle in the doll. You know, so obviously she has...

I don't know if you want to call them religious beliefs, but definitely some spiritual beliefs that, you know, in addition to the arsenic, she is going through these rituals that are, in her mind, aiding in her accomplishing what she's trying to do. Well, as weird as that is, it's not...

I'm not sure it's even circumstantial evidence yet. But in the kitchen, investigators do find some strong evidence. Three empty bottles of arsenic-laden ant poison. And out

outside the house, investigators are canvassing, and they talk to some folks who had heard some pretty disturbing exchanges between Anjette and Marcy, who had died. Two employees of the restaurant overheard Anjette say to Marcy at nine, I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do. I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do. To a nine-year-old, so her character, this facade...

is something else that she built this charming Southern woman, welcoming, beautiful, someone who invites you into the restaurant and you're eating her food. And she is telling a nine-year-old, I'm going to kill you if it's the last thing I do. What a...

Yeah, no. I mean, it's becoming very apparent. You know, Ann Jett, there is a pathology there. And, you know, whether or not there's a psychopathy going on, she obviously is lacking a level of empathy for her spouses, for her family.

former mother-in-law for her children. You know, she is very centrally and selfishly focused. And it's all about what is going to be best for Ann Jett. And, you know, money is a big deal for her, for sure. And this is typical for these Black Widow type of killers. You know, there's that financial aspect and they're looking for a shortcut to

and utilizing their personal skill sets. With Angette, it's her physical appearance, it's her personality. She's able to trick people because of who she is and lure them into a trap. Yeah, she really is the definition of a black widow.

So there are other people who come forward and just say there are some very odd things. You know, there's the employee who finally says, yes, I saw her putting weird things into the buttermilk. Another one says she saw Marcy drink a glass of lemonade that Angette had given her, but Angette put something in the lemonade, it sounds like. Eventually, they're able to tie the deaths of her first husband, her second husband, and her mother-in-law together.

All suspected to be the result of arsenic poisoning. And now Bob Franks has concerns, of course. He had been dating her and then he broke up with her. And this was a big problem. And this is why we have the weird sock around his photo thing. Because...

She reportedly is accused of manipulating him through hexes and spells into continuing dating her. And this has completely freaked him out, and he's trying to distance himself. Eventually, in 58, she's charged, arrested and charged with four counts of murder. And they search her purse, and they find two more empty bottles of ant poison for...

And Jett's part, she says, I own a restaurant. Of course I have ant poison. The police respond with, you bought way too much for your restaurant. There's no way you should have this much ant poison, which is something that has tripped up many poisoners. When she goes on trial for the murder charge related to Marcy's death, the daughter's death in 58, late 58, she's

She has to admit, proudly it sounds like, that she is interested in magic and voodoo. She testifies. Never a good idea. She does not apologize for her belief in magic or voodoo. But she says that she feels like she's being framed for Marcy's death. She didn't do anything to her. She said that her first husband had a heart attack.

and drank too much. The second one had always had that weird rash, and that her mother-in-law had always been a sickly woman. And she denies tampering with anything that anyone drank. And then here's the financial part, and now this will be interesting. So this is all nuts and bolts, the stuff that we would go through in a trial. And I have read this before. She says, "'What financial motive are you talking about?'

It costs $4,700 just to treat Marcy. And her insurance payout was only $1,750. She said, I had nothing to gain from killing her. She said, I spent more money on all of these people than their insurance policies could cover.

So are we back to now the psychopathy aspect of this or the Munchausen, as you had mentioned? Well, if that is truly the case, there's the cost associated with the medical treatments. There's the cost associated with the burial. However, the family was interred, if you will, whether there's cremated or buried. But there's also other factors that could have financial benefit.

And that's where, you know, digging into somebody's life and assets, you know, such as, you know, I've got a case in which life insurance wasn't the issue. It was in case if one of the, if a spouse died, that the small business loan was forgiven. Oh. You know, so you have something that kind of is sort of silent financially, but it actually is huge to the person. So, you know, there could be more going on, but...

If she is not financially benefiting, then yes, there is the possibility. I mean, these life insurance policies she's utilizing just to offset the cost that she knows she's going to be incurring when she starts poisoning, you know? And so this life insurance policy is really a mechanism to preserve her finances so she can kill. So yes, there is a psychopathy there.

Well, that actually comes to play in just a few minutes. So she goes on trial. All of this is presented. Experts say we've connected these other deaths, but she's only on trial right now for Marcy's murder. The prosecutors keep slipping in the other murders. The jury is convinced, even though they're all male, all male jury, usually they don't like to convict really pretty women of murder. But there was too much evidence. And after 35 minutes of

of deliberation. She's found guilty and sentenced to death. The first woman sentenced to death in the state of Georgia. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, 35-minute deliberation is fast. Very. Yes. Yeah. It must have been a very convincing case that the prosecution put on. That would be fast for the 1800s, where the trials are a day and a half at the most. It was pretty convincing. And I don't think, as I had

Slightly mentioned before, she probably did herself any favors. That again is egotism. I can't imagine that any attorney would say, oh, go ahead and take the stand. She must have really felt like she could convince all of these men with her looks and her charm that she was telling the truth. Yes, I believe in magic, but there is nothing definitive to say that aside from owning a lot of ant poison that I did any of this and they didn't believe her.

Well, she has an ego. It almost sounds like there's a narcissistic aspect to her personality where she feels like even earlier when she says, yeah, go ahead and autopsy. She feels that she is so good at what she's doing that the autopsy is not going to uncover how she is accomplishing the crime. So she has a lot of self-confidence in herself.

And for sure, her personality, this is, again, victimology is huge. Her personality plays into how she is navigating through the crime, but also through the criminal justice system.

Her going, "I will testify and get up on the stand," you know, she has so much self-confidence, she feels that she is going to be able to convince the jury of her innocence. Well, she's convicted, she's set for execution, but there is a massive political backlash, as you can imagine. This, I'm sure, is not the woman they pictured being the first woman executed. And there are appeals that are eventually exhausted. It seems like she will be executed.

But then the governor appoints a sanity commission, which I've written a lot about. And these commissions are made up of health care professionals. And their job is to establish the quote unquote sanity of somebody who is going on trial or set to be executed. So they talk to her. They interview her. They look at all of the evidence in the case.

And they come up with this. I'm going to give you the quote, but we know that we don't say someone is diabetic. We say somebody who is living with diabetes. I'm giving you the direct quote, though. She was determined to be psychotic, insane, and a chronic paranoid schizophrenic.

That was their diagnosis in the 50s. Yeah, you know, and this is where the primary issue that I'm having is the insane part. Yeah. The amount of planning that Angette is demonstrating by killing four people.

shows a level of mental competence. And for me, I scoff at the idea that she has a true psychotic aspect to her mental health.

Whether or not she has a level of schizophrenia, you know, I'm wondering if they're focusing in on the magic practices, you know, this alternate life philosophy, if you will. Who knows? You know, that's something where I'll leave it up to the, you know, the forensic psychiatrist to be able to, you know, determine.

But just because somebody does have a certain mental health issue does not mean they are mentally incompetent to be tried and convicted of a crime such as this.

Well, you know, we're not going to talk about the death penalty and debate that and whether or not it's right or not. What we do know is that whatever she said to them worked, and they recommended commuting her death sentence to life in prison. Okay. Which is what happened. She was transferred to Georgia State Hospital for the insane – terrible phrase –

where she died of heart failure in 77. She was 52 years old. So that was her ultimate end. And I want to give a little side note here because I was curious about Carla, who was the youngest daughter of

She was three years younger, so when her sister died at age nine, she was six. We don't know much about her, except that in 1959, she was a ward of the court, and her father, who was Ben Lyles, his family had wanted to get custody of her. So I'm crossing my fingers that that's actually what happened, and that this little girl out of this whole mess...

who lost her grandmother, who lost her stepfather, who lost her father, and now her mother's gone, hopefully ended up in a better situation than her mother, who took everything away from her. Everything. Yeah, no, for sure. You know, hopefully there was something that, you know, positive that happened with Carla.

Well, we're transitioning now from a very, very bad mother to my wonderful mother, who, once again, I want to wish a happy birthday. And I adore so much. And I would like another 80 with her here crossing my fingers. We'll see. Maybe with a little magic, a little something, a little voodoo. Maybe I'll see if I have a sock. I think that was a bad voodoo, not a good one, though. See you next week. Thanks, Paul. All right. Sounds good.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.