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Mary
Elizabeth WILSON
A.K.A.: "The Merry Widow of Windy Nook"
Classification: Serial
killer
Characteristics:
"Black widow" poisoner of
husbands for profit
Number of victims: 2
- 4
Date of murders: 1955 - 1957
Date of arrest:
December 1957
Date of birth: 1893
Victims profile:
John Knowles (her
first husband) / John Russell (her lover) / Oliver J.
Leonard, 75 (her second husband) / Ernest Wilson, 76
(her third husband)
Method of murder: Poisoning (phosphorus)
Location: Windy
Nook, Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom
Status:
Sentenced to death in March 29, 1958. Commuted to life
imprisonment on June 1, 1958. Died in Holloway Prison on December
5, 1962
Mary Elizabeth Wilson (c. 1893 - 1963),
also known as the Merry widow of Windy Nook, was a
murderer and the last woman to be sentenced to death in Durham, in
1958. However the sentence was not carried out, as it was commuted
to a prison sentence.
Wilson was born at Hebburn, South Tyneside, and
married her first husband John Knowles in around 1912. They
settled at a house in Windy Nook, Gateshead. Her lover John
Russell eventually moved in with them. In 1955, Knowles died. She
waited five months before marrying Russell. Her second husband
died in 1956 (or early in 1957). The attending physician declared
that both men had died of natural causes. Wilson inherited their
money, £42.
In June 1957, Wilson married her third husband,
Oliver Leonard, a retired estate agent. He died only 12 days into
their marriage, leaving her £50. She soon married a fourth
husband, Ernest Wilson. His estate included up to £100, a bungalow
and a life insurance. He died within the year. This time, she did
not even bother to attend the funeral.
By this time Wilson had become a main figure of
local gossip, concerning both the frequency at which her spouses
died and her rather cheerful attitude towards the pattern; she had
joked at her latest wedding reception that left-over sandwiches
would be fresh enough to use in the next funeral. She had also
asked for a trade discount from the local undertaker, for
providing him with plenty of business. These instances of morbid
humor brought her to the attention of the police.
An exhumation of the bodies of her last two
husbands revealed high levels of phosphorus. Her defense claimed
the substance was contained in their medication. Wilson was
convicted of murdering two of her four husbands with beetle poison
in 1956 and 1957. The remains of her earlier two husbands were
exhumed at a later date and pointed to the same cause of death.
There was no reason, however, to have a second trial.
While Wilson was sentenced to death, her
advanced age allowed her to get a reprieve. Her sentence was
commuted to life imprisonment. She died while incarcerated at
Holloway.
Wikipedia.org
Mary Elizabeth
Wilson had been married to John knowles for 43 years when she
poisoned him with phosphorous.
Mary worked in
service for the Knowles family, striking up a friendship and
eventually a relationship with the laborer son. They married, but
the greedy Mary soon had a lover, John Russell a man that lodged
with the family at Windy Nook. In 1957 both her husband and lover
suddenly died, both from "Natural causes"? Both left their worldly
fortunes to Mary, the handsome sum of £42.
By June 1957
Mary, now 64, had married wealthy retired estate agent, Oliver
Leonard. Within 12 days of the registry office marriage in Jarrow,
Leonard was taken ill. Wilson called in a neighbour, who verified
that he was indeed not well. By the morning he was dead. An
examination by a local doctor confirmed that 75 year old Oliver
Leonard had died from heart failure. Mrs. Leaonard inherited the
princely sum of £50!
Very soon after,
Mary moved into the run down council bungalow belonging to Ernest
Wilson. She had learned that Wilson not only had £100 in the Co-Op
but also had a fully paid up life insurance. Almost straight away
Wilson was taken ill, and died of what the doctor called "Cardiac
Muscular Failure".
Mary's fate was
always inevitable. At the reception after her marriage to Wilson,
she had joked "better keep some cakes, we can use them at the
funeral". She also joked with the undertaker at the funeral,
asking for a trade discount due to the fact that she had sent so
much business his way.
The police became
suspicious of Mary, victims Leonard and Wilson were both exhumed,
the pathologist confirming that both had died from phosphorous
poisoning.
At the trial Mary
did not give evidence, but instead the defence used the fact the
there was little know about phosphorous poisoning. It was
suggested that the two men had been taking sexual stimulation
pills, which were known to contain phosphorous. The jury did not
believe this, Mary was found guilty of the two murders and
sentenced to death. Due to her advancing years she was given
clemency, and sent to Holoway Women's prison. She served four and
a half years before dying at the age of seventy.
Not surprisingly,
when the bodies of George Russell and John Knowles were exhumed,
they to were found to contain high level of phosphorus.
Mary Elizabeth Wilson
The telephone call to the
doctor on the morning of 12th November 1957 informed him that
75-year-old retired engineer Ernest Wilson was very ill. The call
was made by his wife of two weeks, 66-year-old Mary Wilson. Mary
was not quite right. Her husband was past illness, he had been
dead for several hours. Mr Wilson had been receiving treatment for
many years for heart problems and the doctor duly diagnosed the
cause of death as heart failure.
Ernest was Mary's third
husband. She had first married, in 1912, chimney sweep John
Knowles and they had lived in Hebburn-on-Tyne. He had died in
August 1955. In September of the following year she wed retired
estate agent Oliver Leonard. He had also died just two weeks into
their life together. After this she married Ernest Wilson and
moved into his council bungalow in Windy Nook, Felling-on-Tyne,
County Durham.
On the evening that her third
husband died Mary went around to the house of Mrs Grace Liddell, a
friend who lived in Hebburn-on-Tyne, and asked her if she could
spend the night with her. Mary told Mrs Liddell that her husband
was "badly" and that the doctor had attended him. The next morning
Mrs Liddell accompanied Mary back to Windy Nook. When they arrived
Mary gave Mrs Liddell the key and told her to go in first. She did
so and was stunned to be greeted by the sight of Ernest laid out
on a table in the front room. Later that day Mary went to the
hotel where she and Ernest had held their wedding reception and
told the manager that Ernest was ill in hospital. Such eccentric
behaviour was bound to arouse suspicion eventually and word got to
the local police that things were not quite what they seemed. The
bodies of Oliver and Ernest were exhumed and both were found to
contain phosphorus. Mary was arrested and charged with both
murders.
Mary Wilson appeared before
Leeds Assizes in March 1958. After a six-day trial the jury took
ninety minutes to find her guilty of both charges and she was
sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment
and Mary Wilson died in Holloway Prison on 5th December 1962. It
was thought that she was probably also responsible for the deaths
of John Knowles and of John Russell, her long-term lover and
lodger in her house in Hebburn, after phosphorus was also found in
their remains.
Murder-UK.com
Mary Elizabeth Wilson Murdered 3 Husbands &
a Male Lodger, England – 1958
UnknownMisandry.blogspot.com
British Widow May Stand Trial In Four Deaths
Associated Press
December 17, 1957
Jarrow on Tyne, England – Police asked today for more time to
prepare for a hearing to determine if Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Wilson
should stand trial on a charge of murdering her third husband.
The mild-mannered 66-year-old widow was ordered held for a further
hearing next Monday.
Mrs. Wilson, of nearby Windy Willow Nook, is accused of killing
Ernest George Lawrence Wilson, 76, a retired engineer, last month.
She was arrested after police exhumed the bodies of four men who
died in her home within 26 months. The woman had been married to
three of them in succession: the fourth was a lodger.
A formal plea has not been entered and police have not yet made
public details in the case.
Mrs. Wilson, a stout little woman, has told newsmen she gave the
four men “nothing but kindness.”
*****
Trapped by Her Tongue – Sense of Humor Leads
to Death Cell
By Alvin Steinkopf - AP
Spokane Daily Chronicle
Apr. 3, 1958
Leeds, England, Apr. 3. – A 66-year-old widow
probably wishes she had not joked about the deaths of her three
husbands.
The condemned woman is stout Mrs. Mary
Elizabeth Wilson, known as the merry widow of Windy Nook, who was
convicted of poisoning two of her mates. Windy Nook is the
community near here where she used to live and where four male
inmates of her house died in just over two years.
He Lasted 41 Years
The woman’s first husband lived with her 41
years before he expired in August, 1955. but the other two
survived the ceremony only two weeks. The fourth man was a lodger
who came between husbands No. 1 and No. 2.
One of her gruesome jests which led ultimately
to police inquiries was voiced at a reception following her
marriage last October to 76-year-old Ernest Wilson. A friend asked
what she was going to do with a large number of cakes and
sandwiches left over.
“Keep them for the funeral,” she replied.
Wilson laughed with the rest – and lived just
15 days more.
Joke Recalled
Then it was recalled the widow of Windy Nook
made another of her jokes at the registrar’s office, where she had
been married and had then returned to record her husbands’ deaths.
“There should be a discount for me,” she
quipped.
A gossip flew in earnest, police finally took
note. The bodies of Wilson and her second husband – Oliver
Leonard, who died in 1956 at the age of 76 – were exhumed. Police
pathologists found traces of phosphorous in both.
A jury last week found the widow of Windy Nook
guilty.
Then Mrs. Wilson became the subject of a twist
in Britain’s new and somewhat complicated homicide law. Killing by
poisoning is not a capital murder for which the death penalty is
imposed any more.
Law Outlined
But the death penalty can be imposed, no matter
what the manner of killing, if the accused person is convicted of
another murder done on another occasion. And Mrs. Wilson was found
guilty of two murders. In the first case of its kind since the new
homicide law went into effect a year ago, she was sentenced to
death. Her attorneys have served notice of an appeal.
The prosecution made little headway trying to
establish a profit motive. Leonard and Wilson left 200 pounds
($560), which the defense dismissed as “paltry benefits.”
“Men like me, and I like men,” the widow of
Windy Nook explained in the course of her trial.
*****
British Widow Escapes Gallows
UPI
May 31, 1958
London – The "Merry Widow of Windy Nook"
escaped the gallows today. Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Wilson, sentenced
to death for the murder of two of her three husbands by cockroach
poison, was granted a reprieve by the Home Secretary.
The first woman to be sentenced to hang under
Britain's new Homicide Act, Mrs. Wilson had already had one appeal
turned down by the court of criminal appeal.
The reprieve meant that Mrs. Wilson would serve
a life sentence, it was understood.
*****
The murderess died aged 70 in Holloway Prison
in London.
Mary Elizabeth Wilson
SEX:
F RACE: W TYPE:
T
MOTIVE: CE
MO:
"Black widow" poisoner of husbands/lovers for profit.
DISPOSITION: Condemned, 1958 (commuted on appeal); died in prison,
1961.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern
Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
