Roberta Elder, Black Widow
She mates and then she kills
I was telling my younger sister of my plans to write true crime and post it here on Medium. She was proud of me. She’s a good sister, very supportive, especially of the idea of me building a platform that allows me to get paid.
So we’re discussing the article I just posted, and she asked me what I planned to write next. I found myself hesitating, unsure of how to answer. I mentioned a story that I’d seen some years back about this efficient and sophisticated drug gang operating out of a Chicago housing project.
Even though we’d both grown up in Chicago, this story was unfamiliar to her, and I only had one vague recollection of the gang or their activities myself. We both made a face at that. People will talk about Al Capone or the mafia or H.H. Holmes until the end of time, but a sophisticated network of African-American drug kingpins eluding the police for decades, forgetaboutit.
As we were discussing this some ancient, self-righteous social media post about Black women being stereotyped as violent and criminal, but statistically being one of the groups least likely to commit a violent crime swam to mind.
Thinking about this, I mused out loud to my sister if there had ever been any Black female serial killers?
She fixed me with a look of impatient disbelief.
“Of course, there had just no one talks about them.”
I want to pause here a moment. Obviously, within the media, Black people are over-portrayed as criminals, and yes, we don’t like that. Partially it’s because of the dangerous of association of Black people and crime; conversley, there are legitimate concerns regarding the assumption that African-Americans are incapable of the criminal sophistication and cunning of other races.
For example serial killers.
Serial killers are often driven by complex psychological motives tied into familial relationships; thus, they are most likely to kill within their own race. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but if you are a Black person killed by a serial killer and yet no one thinks Black people can be serial killers, it becomes terrifically difficult for your family to get justice.
Take, for example, the case of Roberta Elder
Mrs. Bluebeard
By the time Robera Elder was arrested in the late summer of 1952, she’d already murdered at least 14 people, perhaps more. Her motive, money. Elder had life insurance policies on each victim with herself as the sole beneficiary. Her weapon of choice, arsenic. Like most female serial killers, Elder preferred to administer poison to her victims while seeming to care for them.
It is thought that Elder began killing in 1938 when her common-law husband, John Woodward , aged 36, died under suspicious circumstances that December. Not long after, James W. Thurmond, Elder’s son from her first marriage, died a short six months later in June of 1939. He was only 13 years of age. Jimmy Lee Crane Hunter,a grandson of Elder, died as well in 1941.
Over the next ten years, Elder would kill ten others, including 3 spouses, along with several of her own children and grandchildren, no one in Elder’s care was safe.
The list of Elder’s victims is long. Her murderous career spanning 14 years with an average of one murder yearly.
The First Suspicions
However, it was not until 1952 that Mrs. Elder came under suspicion when her 3rd husband, Rev. William H. Elder died from what appeared to be a case of pneumonia. William H. Elder, was primarily a construction worker; he’d fallen ill at work after eating a lunch of bananas and cheese and went home to the loving care of his wife.
The family physician was called. William Elder was given medicine for a stomach upset, and Mrs. Elder was instructed to call should he worsen. Unfortunately, by the time the doctor was called again, it was too late, Rev. Elder was dying. The family doctor noticing some unusual symptoms, decided against signing the death certificate and called for the county coroner.
The county coroner was immediately suspicious. Rev. Elder’s skin strange, reddish tinge, and his body emaciated. More than that, though, there had been two prior deaths within the Elder household in the past two years. Fannie Mae Elder in 1951, aged 15 and Annie Pearl, aged 9 in 1950, both appeared to die from pneumonia. Two young lives cut short. The appearance of Rev. Elder’s body and the frequent deaths in the household prompted the coroner to test for Mr. Elder for arsenic.
Dubbed inheritance powder, arsenic, was once a common means to murder. A pea-sized dose was enough to kill a grown man, and it was readily available. Arsenic has been sold as a beauty aid and medicinal tonic for centuries and can even be obtained by grinding apple seeds. It wasn’t until more modern forensic science developed that arsenic fell out of favor. The pink powder was also Roberta Elder’s weapon of choice.
Annie Pearl and Fannie Mae were exhumed, and both were found to have arsenic in their hair. This was enough for the coroner to declare the cause of death murder by arsenic poisoning.
The subsequent investigation determined that Elder had looked after her husband as well as her two step-daughters after they’d taken ill. She had also prepared their food and administered medicine -milk of magnesia — when they were ill. Mrs. Elder was also determined to be the only beneficiary on life insurance policies for the deceased. Rev. Elder for $550 and Fannie Mae for $500. Other living family members who had previously fallen ill with cases of what they’d believed to be food poisoning, flu, or bouts of pneumonia began to come forward.
Mrs. Elder was arrested in connection with the death of Rev. Elder on September 26th, 1952.
Pink Powder
The case against Elder though circumstantial was strong. In addition to the deaths by arsenic poisoning, there were witnesses who testified to seeing pink powder at the Elder home on Eason street.
Taken from the archives of the now relaunched Pittsburgh Courier:
Witnesses told the coroner and grand jurors that sacks of the “pink powder” would turn up at the family’s Eason Street home when Mrs. Elder took trips to her brother’s farm near Watkinsville.
The powdered poison was “to kill plant insects,” survivors said they were told.
One of the witnesses, Dorothy Lou Elder, 20, Mrs. Elder’s step-daughter, testified Tuesday that she had seen “something pink in a brown paper sack” in the Elder home prior to her father’s death.
She told the court it was located “in the bottom of a cabinet” where medicines had been kept and quoted Mrs. Elder saying it was to be used to “kill bugs.” The mixture found at the farm was a pink mixture, French declared.
Friends and Relatives were afraid to eat at the Elder home:
Willie Elder, Jr., 20-year-old son of the late minister, told the court that Mrs. Elder had administered medicine to each of the three people who died, and added that he stopped eating at the house after his father’s death.
When asked why, he replied, “I thought if she poisoned them, she might try to get me too.” He testified that he had also gotten sick twice at the breakfast table after eating.
Though circumstantial, the links between Elder and the victims, the life insurance policies, and the witness testimony were enough that Elder was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her husband William M. Elder.
What strikes me most about this case is the relatively small amount of information available. Nannie Doss, a White woman who was killing at the same time, with the same method for the same reasons, got much more media coverage both then and now.
Nannie Doss has a Wikipedia entry, we know facts about her life and her victims’ lives. People have put together YouTube stories of her crimes, and speculate that her difficult childhood contributed to her criminal behavior. Doss is humanized even as they write of her killings.
There are many photos of her unconnected to her crimes. Ironically a search for Black female serial killers turns up a list of female killers, none of whom are Black, but Nannie Doss does appear.
Conversely, there is very little known or remembered of Roberta Elder, her crimes, or her victims. A scant collection of newspaper clippings preserved from one of the few Black papers of the time. Psychologist Scott A. Bonn writes about this.
Unbalanced reporting by the news media sends a message that white victims, particularly females, are more important and deserve more consideration than racial minority victims. The biased pattern of news reporting holds true for serial murder victims just as it does for solo victims.
While Elder was finally caught and her victims given justice, the myth that Blacks aren’t serial killers prevails. Which makes the statistic of 64,000 missing Black women in the US or the decades of Samuel Little murdering largely Black women even after repeated arrest with the charge of murder ever more troubling.
As long as Black serial killers are perceived as an anomaly and their crimes forgotten, their victims will go without justice leaving families with more questions than answers.
