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Mary Wilson 68 years old got married to her third husband Ernest who was 76. Not one week after the wedding Ernest was dead. He had become the fourth victim of his serial killer bride in A 26-month span. Mary was born in 1889 and worked in the service for a family called the knolls. She fell for their son Jean, who was a chimney sweep?. They wed in 1914 and had three sons and three daughters. Two of the daughters died during infancy. John died at the age of 76 after 41 years of marriage, apparently from tuberculosis. However, Mary had already begun an affair with a painter named John Russell. He died the following year from natural causes at age 65. In June of 1957, she married real estate agent Oliver Leonard within 12 days of their marriage. He died of heart failure and pneumonia and his wife inherited money. Just 4 months later she married retired engineer. Ernest, they had only been married 14 days when Wilson called the doctor to say that Ernest had taken badly already called when the doctor arrived. His cause of was given as heart failure. Mary did not even attend his funeral. Because Mary had loose lips. The police caught wind that she may have been responsible so they exhumed the bodies of Oliver and Ernest. Once exhumed they found that both men had been poisoned. A pathologist found high levels of phosphorus in their bodies along with wheat grain which are both ingredients in rat poison. Mary was questioned for 6 hours stating she had nothing to hide and sticking to her role as an innocent widow. She claimed that the poisoning may have been caused by her husband taking sexual stimulation pills like Viagra, but this claim did not hold well and after a 6-day trial, the jury took only 90 minutes to find her guilty of both murders. Mary was sentenced to death, the last woman in Britain to be condemned . She showed little to no remorse or reaction although reports did say her cheeks were flushed. The bodies of her first husband, John Knowles and love her. John Russell were also exhumed later and also found to contain phosphorus poison. Because of her age, they later commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Back in those days they did not have the technological advancements that we do now and a lot of deaths were ruled as either natural causes or other illnesses. There are probably many more women like Mary Wilson who killed their husbands for money and pensions and got away with it.