AUGUST 1967. Janie could be seen around town beaming with her new grandson, a little boy named Raymond. Raymond’s parents, Janie’s only surviving son Robert and his young wife, were living at home with her in Cordele, in the same house where the family had lost a father and two brothers in the span of just two years. The town, not having forgotten the tragedy that had seemed to have engulfed the Gibbs’ family, was happy to share in the joy of a new baby. Maybe, they thought, this will bring some much needed happiness into poor Janie’s life. Though she was young to be a grandmother — just thirty-five, she was thrilled to show off her new grandson to anyone who came to visit.

So, at the end of another sultry Georgia summer, when baby Raymond became ill, the town of Cordele held its breath for the Gibbs’ family. When the baby died, it not only shocked the town, but the medical professionals too: Raymond had been a normal, healthy baby. Even the autopsy performed after his sudden death revealed nothing abnormal.

It was almost as if the Gibbs family was cursed.

In an almost unspeakable finale to the whirlwind of death that had passed through the Gibbs family from 1965 to 1967, Janie’s last surviving son, Roger died just a month after his infant son: an autopsy revealed that his kidneys had suddenly stopped functioning. Finally, the hospital, who had now seen five deaths in the Gibbs family in just two short years, called the state crime lab to investigate.

When the results came back, the shock was palpable. Roger had a fatal amount of arsenic in his body, implying that he had somehow ingested it, most likely in the form of rat poison. Suspecting the worst, authorities arrested Janie Lou Gibbs on Christmas Day for the murder of her nineteen year old son.

And just to be safe, the police ordered the bodies of her husband and three sons to be exhumed.

Medical examiners and crime scene detectives marched up the hillside cemetery in Cordele where the Gibbs family was buried. As they removed each body from the ground, they laid out tarps and the autopsies were performed immediately; right smack in the middle of the cemetery.

Car-fulls of locals parked along the dirt road and watched as each body was brought up from the grave; the shock of the small town was heavy in the air, and those who knew Janie, the generous churchgoing babysitter, couldn’t believe that she would be capable of such a crime.

Meanwhile, Janie only had a few words for the detectives that were interrogating her about the deaths of her family members: