157: Lizzie Halliday
About this episode
This episode explores the life and crimes of Lizzie Halliday, considered America's first female serial killer.
In the late 1800s, one woman left a trail of death and deception that shocked America and earned her a place among history's most notorious female killers. In this episode of Over My Dead Pod, we dive into the disturbing story of Lizzie Halliday, an Irish immigrant whose life was marked by fraud, arson, suspicious deaths, and multiple marriages that often ended in tragedy. Long before serial killers became a staple of true crime headlines, Halliday was accused of murdering several husbands and, in 1894, brutally killing two women on a rural New York farm. As investigators uncovered her past, they found a web of aliases, insurance schemes, disappearances, and unexplained deaths stretching across multiple states. Her trial sparked fierce debates about mental illness, criminal responsibility, and whether she should face execution for her crimes. The case became even more shocking when Halliday later attacked and killed a nurse while confined to a psychiatric institution. Was Lizzie Halliday a calculating serial killer who exploited a system unprepared for a woman capable of such violence? Or was she a severely disturbed woman whose crimes reflected a lifetime of untreated mental…
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