Female Serial Killer of Twin Falls
Lyda Southard Poisons Husbands for Insurance Money
Her real name was Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood, born in 1886. In 1906, her family moved from Missouri to Twin Falls, Idaho. On March 17, 1912, she married Bob Dooley and settled with him and his brother Ed on a ranch. In August 1915, Ed Dooley died suddenly. The autopsy revealed he died of ptomaine poisoning. The couple received $2,000 on a life insurance policy in Ed Dooley’s name. A short time later, Bob Dooley suddenly died, supposedly from typhoid fever. She collected $2,500 on his life insurance policy.
Lyda lost no time. She married William McHaffie in May 1917. They moved to a ranch in Hardin, Montana. In October 1918, he suddenly died of flu. This time Lyda could not collect the $5,000 life insurance money because McHaffie had let the policy lapse. In March 1919, she married Harlan Lewis, a salesman who had visited the ranch. In July, Lewis died of the flu. Lyda collected on a $10,000 life insurance policy.
A few months later, Lyda married Ed Meyers, a ranch foreman, who also died unexpectedly only a month later. This time, the insurance company demanded an autopsy. The autopsy showed typhoid virus in his bloodstream, so it seemed to lay the matter to rest. However, Lyda left the area without collecting the $12,000 life insurance policy to divert attention from herself.
The deaths caught the attention of Deputy Virgil Ormsby of Hardin. Ormsby talked to Bud Taylor and Ben Squires, who worked at the ranch. They thought it odd that Meyers had gotten married quite suddenly and in secret. Meyers and Squires both got sick at the same time. Squires recovered, but Meyer didn’t. After the funeral she only showed up at the ranch for a couple hours to pick up some papers.
Ormsby talked to Dr. Coughlin, who said Lyda went running about the house wildly insisting Meyers was dying. When the doctor arrived, Meyers was having difficulty breathing. When he stopped breathing altogether, stiffened and died, she fainted. When she revived, she asked the doctor what could have killed him. Dr. Coughlin told her it might be ptomaine poisoning. She left and the doctor never saw her again.
Next he investigated the Harlan Lewis death. He went to Billings, Montana, where Lewis worked. He found the drug store where Lyda bought the flypaper. The clerk remembered how she bought all they had in stock. This was in the fall of 1918 just before McHaffie died.
Ormsby talked to Dr. W. A. Russell who had attended McHaffie. Russell said Lyda didn’t pay much attention to her husband when he lay dying. The Hannifins bought the McHaffie place in Hardin. They showed Ormsby a barrel full of flypaper in the basement. It was the evidence Ormsby needed. He believed that Lyda boiled the arsenic out of the flypaper and used it to poison her husband. Maybe all three of them. He asked Dr. Russell if arsenic would still be evident in the body if exhumed. Russell replied that it would be in the hair and fingernails and it never goes away.
On April 2, 1921, Meyer’s body was exhumed. The body was taken to the coroner’s office for examination. The body contained enough arsenic to cause death. Ormsby returned to Twin Falls and convinced the district attorney to exhume the bodies of the rest of her dead husbands. All of them contained lethal amounts of arsenic. She was formally charged with murder on April 22, 1921.
Read about Lydia Southard's trial.
SOURCE: Lady Bluebeard, The True Story of Love and Marriage, Death and Flypaper, William C. Anderson, Fred Pruett Books, Boulder, CO, 1994
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