Rhonda Belle Martin
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Rhonda Bell Martin (1907 - October 11, 1957) was an American serial killer.
A 49-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.
Her fifth husband, formerly her son-in-law, was poisoned like the others but survived only to be left a paraplegic. It was his illness that led authorities to look into the strange deaths surrounding Martin.
Although she never admitted this was the case, prosecutors said collecting insurance proceeds prompted her serial killing spree.
She was convicted of murdering 51-year-old Claude Martin in 1951 by surreptitiously feeding him rat poison and was executed in the electric chair on October 11, 1957.
[edit] Resources
- "Mother Tells 6 Killings by Poison," The Associated Press, March 14, 1956.
- "Jury Sentences Woman To Death," United Press International, June 5, 1956.
- "Rhonda Bell Martin," Mind of a Killer (DVD), Kozel Multimedia [1998].
