Rhonda Belle Martin

Rhonda Belle Thomley[1] Martin (1907 – October 11, 1957) was an American serial killer.

Rhonda Belle Martin
Born

Rhonda Belle Thomley


1907
unknown
DiedOctober 11, 1957(1957-10-11) (aged 49–50)
Kilby Prison in Montgomery, Alabama
Resting placeMontgomery Memorial Cemetery
NationalityAmerican
OccupationWaitress
Known forFemale multiple murderer
Criminal charge(s)Murder
Criminal penaltyExecution by electrocution
Spouse(s)
    W. R. Alderman
    (
    m. 1922⁠–⁠1926)
      George W. Garrett
      (
      m. 1928⁠–⁠1939)
        Talmadge John Gipson
        (
        m. 1939⁠–⁠1939)
          Claude Carroll Martin
          (
          m. 1950⁠–⁠1951)
            Ronald Martin
            (
            m. 1951⁠–⁠1957)
            ChildrenEmogine Garrett (1934-7), Ann Cajolyn Garrett (1934-40), Ellyn Elisabeth Garrett (1932-43), Mary Adelaide Garrett (1930-4), Judith Garrett (1938-9)
            Parent(s)James Robert Thomley, Mary Frances Grimes (d. 1944)

            Murders

            A forty-nine-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. According to LIFE Magazine in an article published at the time, she loved getting the get-well cards, and later the sympathy cards that came when the victims died, as well as taking great care to have them buried side by side in a private plot.

            Her fifth husband, formerly her step-son,[2] was poisoned like the others, but survived and was 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 killing spree, although this is unlikely, since she collected only enough to cover burial costs, and she never admitted this was the case.[3]

            She was convicted of murdering fifty-one-year-old Claude Carroll Martin in 1951 by surreptitiously feeding him rat poison[4] and was executed in Alabama's electric chair on October 11, 1957. She was the last woman executed in Alabama until 2002, when Lynda Lyon Block was executed for the murder of a policeman.

            gollark: Wait, what? How do *those* work?
            gollark: I assume they're saying that if we become "enlightened" somehow we'll just coordinate loads better somehow and fix it?
            gollark: It doesn't seem like a very actionable (or problematic, as you have been vague about it) problem.
            gollark: I mean, if you memorize lots of information on a topic, but are incapable of making inferences from it, you don't "understand" it.
            gollark: Not exactly?

            See also

            References
            1. "Little Mrs Arsenic". Argosy Magazine. v346 (#4). April 1958.
            2. Not legally her step-son, since when she married his father, she was not yet divorced from her third husband.
            3. Jaffee, Al (1979). The Ghoulish Book of Weird Records. Signet. pp. 37–40. ISBN 0-451-08614-7.
            4. Some accounts say ant poison.

            Resources
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