The Anatomy of A Crime

Regarded a pillar of the community
it was thought she never told fibs
and nearly got away with impunity: 
her name was Janie Lou Gibbs.

Was born in a town called Cordele
and committed a callous aberration
that was so ghastly and unreal
as to cause the greatest sensation.
 
Poisoned five relatives in Georgia,
husband, three sons and grandson.
More deadly than Lucretia Borgia
she didn't regret what she'd done.

No suspicion of murder at first;
the reason for her hubby's demise,
liver failure, was readily endorsed  
and the verdict was no surprise

All the others were so diagnosed
till the truth was finally revealed: 
with arsenic they'd been dosed.
The fate of Janie Lou was sealed.

Question was, was she insane,
or simply a wicked individual?
a puzzler to wrack one's brain.
Could it be a macabre ritual?

Life insurance was the lure
that prompted that bloodbath.
The five deaths, we can be sure,
were at the hand of a psychopath.

She never showed any contrition.
Five victims, five life sentences.
That was the jurors' just decision 
for Janie Lou's heinous offences.

In nineteen-ninety-nine release
came because she was suffering
from gradual Parkinson's disease,
with shaking hands and shuffling.

She died in two-thousand-and-ten
with only  her sister at the bedside
but no one else  to whisper amen 
for a woman they could not abide.

© Luigi Pagano 2021