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Honora Kelly, Also, And Most Famously Known As, Jane Toppan

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Honora Kelly, also, and most famously known as, Jane Toppan is one of America’s most famous serial killers. She was a woman who confessed to killing over thirty-three people, but experts say she killed around seventy more undocumented. She lived from the years 1857 to 1938. Honora’s mother died when she was very young from tuberculosis and her father was very abusive and known as the town’s alcoholic, he also was noted as a crack smoker. Her dad, Peter Kelley, died from being insane and supposedly sewed his eyelids shut when working as a tailor. The characteristics and actions of her farther will play a major role in Honora’s future as a serial killer (n.d, 2003)
At age six, two years after her mother died, Honora’s father placed her and …show more content…

She killed the mother, then the daughter, and finally the father and remaining daughter. When the remaining Davis’s caught on to what was happening they filled for toxicology of the one daughter, and found out she was poisoned. They then did toxicology on the others that were killed and it also came back positive for poison (Schechter 20003). Once Jane was arrested it took a year for her to confess to the murders. Jane even reportedly tried poisoning herself for sympathy. When it came time for trial, the jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. In one news report they quote Jane saying “ she never would have killed all these people if she had been married and had a happy family.” Jane was then sentenced for life at Taunton Insane Hospital, with multiple suicide attempts, till her early 80’s and died in the year 1938. What lead Jane to kill is still unknown, but researchers would say it was her childhood trauma and father’s neglect and abuse that truly created this famous American serial killer (Allen, Averill, Cook, 2005).

Relation:
In an article called “The Traits of A Serial Killer,” by Simon (2004), psychopaths are not “created” over night, but rather their behavior can be connected all the way to their childhood. What trauma a child experiences plays a major role in the rest of his or her life. A serial killer, most of the time,

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