Jane Toppan — Jolly Jane, the Nurse Killer

Jane Toppan was an American serial killer and nurse who admitted to murdering 31 people during the late 19th century, primarily patients under her care in Massachusetts. She poisoned her victims with combinations of morphine and atropine, and later admitted that she derived pleasure from lying in bed with the dying patients. Toppan was charged with murder in 1901 following the suspicious deaths of four members of the Davis family. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to the Taunton Insane Hospital, where she died in 1938.