The Infamous Lady Bluebeard
The young bride, though forbidden from entering one of the room’s in her wealthy husband’s home, turned the lock just the same, opened the door, and … was struck with horror at the grisly sight: Female bodies hanging from hooks on the walls, the floor awash with blood. She dropped the key, staining it scarlet, and fled from the nightmare.
Bluebeard, as the French folktale goes, was a not-so-noble nobleman who killed his several wives and hung them on meat hooks in the forbidden room. His last wife survived by shear curiosity at trespassing where she was told not to go. It’s not a lovely story at all, and neither is the true account of Lyda Trueblood, Idaho’s most surprising serial killer, whom history has dubbed “Lady Bluebeard.”
Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood was born October 16, 1892 in Keytesville, Missouri, and started life as other children: innocent, with the whole world at her feet. It’s the steps we take in life that lead us to our future, good or bad. Lyda chose to walk a dark path, arriving at the darkest spot a person can enter.
It began March 17, 1912 when she married her first husband, Robert Dooley, just six years after moving to Twin Falls with her family in 1906. The couple, struggling financially to make ends meet, moved in with Robert’s brother, Edward Doolley, on his ranch. It was there that she conceived their first child, Lorraine, who was born in 1914. The next year, things started to happen.
Who knows what evil thoughts lurked in her mind as she became of age? Maybe she never had them until later, after she was married. We only know that they eventually were there, somewhere, until she chose to act upon them. She took aim at her brother-in-law, Ed, who in August 1915 became severely ill and died of ptomaine poisoning. Two months later her husband, Robert, fell ill and died of what was first termed typhoid fever.
Funerals were held, burials took place, and life moved on – for Lyda and her young child, anyway. At the time, what was a young single mother supposed to do but to marry again? This she did to a man named William G. McHaffle in June 1917. The couple started out happy, it seemed, until death struck and took young Lorraine, just three years old. In hindsight, it is believed that death didn’t come naturally, but was invited by the mother. Grieving for the loss, whether for pretend or truly feeling the pull of the episode, Lyda moved with her husband to Montana, which was to be William’s place of death. According to the death certificate, he died October 1, 1918 of influenza and diphtheria.
Lyda didn’t waste any time marrying her next husband, Harlen C. Lewis, the following March. By that July he too was dead. Lyda married a fourth man, this time to Pocatello resident Edward F. Meyer. While Lyda was married several times before and didn’t seem to like it, Edward was happy with his new bride. His happiness turned sour when on September 7, 1920, not even a month since they tied the knot, he fell ill and died of typhoid fever. Or so the death certificate read.
While each of the deaths seemed natural enough, the numbers started adding up – and so did the suspicions. If the deaths really were natural – her four husbands were supposedly infected with disease as was her daughter – why did Lyda herself not become ill?
One suspicious mind was Earl Dooley, a chemist and relative of Lyda’s first husband, Robert Dooley. Taking his suspicions to the authorities, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Frank Stephens ordered the exhumation of the five bodies, which had not decayed as much as they normally should have once interred. This alone raised suspicions further, and when testing was done traces of arsenic were found in the bodies.
Lyda, it appeared, had killed her daughter and each of her known four husbands. (It is rumored that she may have married three other men but, lucky for them, she divorced them instead of sending them to their graves.)
As is always the case with such crimes, questions are asked; some of them are left unanswered, such as “Why did Lyda murder her own daughter?” There is never a reason for cold-blooded murder, but knowing a little about her husbands’ finances might shed some light on what might have caused her mind to teeter. That old crime favorite, greed, seems to be the answer.
According to an Idaho State Life Insurance Company in Boise, all four of Lyda’s own husbands had held a life insurance policy that listed her as the beneficiary. It’s estimated that she collected more than $7,000 at the passing of her first three husbands, a substantial sum by that day’s standards.
Facing criminal charges did not deter Lyda from marrying once more, this time to naval petty officer Paul Southard in Hawaii, where the murderess sought distance from Idaho law. Perhaps she married Southard – with intent to keep her fifth husband – in an effort to “prove” to authorities that she was not the culprit in the previous deaths. Or, maybe she had every intention of becoming a black widow once more. Whatever her intention, it wasn’t realized, because the long arm of the law reached across the ocean to the big island and extradited Lyda, now Mrs. Southard, back to Idaho. She was arraigned on June 11, 1921. Her trial made national headlines.
“Mrs. Lyda Southard pleaded not guilty today when arraigned before Probate [Judge] Duvall on the charge of murdering Edward F. Meyer, her fourth husband,” reads a New York Times article for that day. … Mrs. Southard, who was returned here from Honolulu, where she was arrested, was accompanied by her father, W.J. Trueblood, and her counsel. She was permitted to leave without guard to consult with her attorneys in their offices. ‘Don’t let them question me,’ said Mrs. Southard before she was taken to a cell. ‘I am not well enough to see anyone.’ The last 120 miles of the journey from Honolulu was made overland by automobile from Wells, Nev., to avoid crowds. Mrs. Southard is suffering from nervous headaches, with indications of a nervous breakdown, officials say.”
Poor Lyda.
Not!
It wasn’t for several weeks when she was convicted. “Mrs. Lyda Meyer Southard, convicted here last week of the murder of Edward F. Meyer, her fourth husband, was sentenced today in District Court to from ten years to life imprisonment,” reads a New York Times articles for November 7, 1921. “The defendant stood up, fixed her eyes on the bench, and received the sentence without a tremor. Notice of appeal was filed by her attorneys, but a stay of execution sentence was not asked.”
It wasn’t enough that she was a demented psycho, she also was impatient. Just months before her parole, Lyda escaped the Old Pen on May 4, 1931, fleeing to Colorado, where she took up residence as housekeeper for Denver resident Harry Whitlock, whom – hit me with a broom – she married in March the following year. Whitlock had some whit about him, however, and was instrumental in his new bride’s recapture. Lyda was arrested again on July 31, 1932 and returned to her empty cell in Boise that August. Almost another decade later, in October 1941, Lyda was paroled. She received a final pardon in 1942, legally anyway – but not socially. To avoid ridicule and mistreatment, Lyda eventually changed her name to Anna Shaw, but today is better known as Lady Bluebeard.
Though she did not hang her husbands’ bodies by meat hooks in a blood-soaked room, she was, according to historical hindsight, the cause of their deaths. What’s more, she allegedly murdered her own child. If all that is true, the name Bluebeard aptly applies to Lyda Trueblood Dooley McHaffle Lewis Meyer Southard. Heck, it’s even shorter and easier to pronounce!
Lady Bluebeard died at age sixty-five on February 5, 1958 and was buried in the Twin Falls Cemetery, where it is said her spirit does not rest because of the ghastly deeds she committed in the flesh. Serves her right!
The young bride, though forbidden from entering one of the room’s in her wealthy husband’s home, turned the lock just the same, opened the door, and … was struck with horror at the grisly sight: Female bodies hanging from hooks on the walls, the floor awash with blood. She dropped the key, staining it scarlet, and fled from the nightmare.
Bluebeard, as the French folktale goes, was a not-so-noble nobleman who killed his several wives and hung them on meat hooks in the forbidden room. His last wife survived by shear curiosity at trespassing where she was told not to go. It’s not a lovely story at all, and neither is the true account of Lyda Trueblood, Idaho’s most surprising serial killer, whom history has dubbed “Lady Bluebeard.”
Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood was born October 16, 1892 in Keytesville, Missouri, and started life as other children: innocent, with the whole world at her feet. It’s the steps we take in life that lead us to our future, good or bad. Lyda chose to walk a dark path, arriving at the darkest spot a person can enter.
It began March 17, 1912 when she married her first husband, Robert Dooley, just six years after moving to Twin Falls with her family in 1906. The couple, struggling financially to make ends meet, moved in with Robert’s brother, Edward Doolley, on his ranch. It was there that she conceived their first child, Lorraine, who was born in 1914. The next year, things started to happen.
Who knows what evil thoughts lurked in her mind as she became of age? Maybe she never had them until later, after she was married. We only know that they eventually were there, somewhere, until she chose to act upon them. She took aim at her brother-in-law, Ed, who in August 1915 became severely ill and died of ptomaine poisoning. Two months later her husband, Robert, fell ill and died of what was first termed typhoid fever.
Funerals were held, burials took place, and life moved on – for Lyda and her young child, anyway. At the time, what was a young single mother supposed to do but to marry again? This she did to a man named William G. McHaffle in June 1917. The couple started out happy, it seemed, until death struck and took young Lorraine, just three years old. In hindsight, it is believed that death didn’t come naturally, but was invited by the mother. Grieving for the loss, whether for pretend or truly feeling the pull of the episode, Lyda moved with her husband to Montana, which was to be William’s place of death. According to the death certificate, he died October 1, 1918 of influenza and diphtheria.
Lyda didn’t waste any time marrying her next husband, Harlen C. Lewis, the following March. By that July he too was dead. Lyda married a fourth man, this time to Pocatello resident Edward F. Meyer. While Lyda was married several times before and didn’t seem to like it, Edward was happy with his new bride. His happiness turned sour when on September 7, 1920, not even a month since they tied the knot, he fell ill and died of typhoid fever. Or so the death certificate read.
While each of the deaths seemed natural enough, the numbers started adding up – and so did the suspicions. If the deaths really were natural – her four husbands were supposedly infected with disease as was her daughter – why did Lyda herself not become ill?
One suspicious mind was Earl Dooley, a chemist and relative of Lyda’s first husband, Robert Dooley. Taking his suspicions to the authorities, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Frank Stephens ordered the exhumation of the five bodies, which had not decayed as much as they normally should have once interred. This alone raised suspicions further, and when testing was done traces of arsenic were found in the bodies.
Lyda, it appeared, had killed her daughter and each of her known four husbands. (It is rumored that she may have married three other men but, lucky for them, she divorced them instead of sending them to their graves.)
As is always the case with such crimes, questions are asked; some of them are left unanswered, such as “Why did Lyda murder her own daughter?” There is never a reason for cold-blooded murder, but knowing a little about her husbands’ finances might shed some light on what might have caused her mind to teeter. That old crime favorite, greed, seems to be the answer.
According to an Idaho State Life Insurance Company in Boise, all four of Lyda’s own husbands had held a life insurance policy that listed her as the beneficiary. It’s estimated that she collected more than $7,000 at the passing of her first three husbands, a substantial sum by that day’s standards.
Facing criminal charges did not deter Lyda from marrying once more, this time to naval petty officer Paul Southard in Hawaii, where the murderess sought distance from Idaho law. Perhaps she married Southard – with intent to keep her fifth husband – in an effort to “prove” to authorities that she was not the culprit in the previous deaths. Or, maybe she had every intention of becoming a black widow once more. Whatever her intention, it wasn’t realized, because the long arm of the law reached across the ocean to the big island and extradited Lyda, now Mrs. Southard, back to Idaho. She was arraigned on June 11, 1921. Her trial made national headlines.
“Mrs. Lyda Southard pleaded not guilty today when arraigned before Probate [Judge] Duvall on the charge of murdering Edward F. Meyer, her fourth husband,” reads a New York Times article for that day. … Mrs. Southard, who was returned here from Honolulu, where she was arrested, was accompanied by her father, W.J. Trueblood, and her counsel. She was permitted to leave without guard to consult with her attorneys in their offices. ‘Don’t let them question me,’ said Mrs. Southard before she was taken to a cell. ‘I am not well enough to see anyone.’ The last 120 miles of the journey from Honolulu was made overland by automobile from Wells, Nev., to avoid crowds. Mrs. Southard is suffering from nervous headaches, with indications of a nervous breakdown, officials say.”
Poor Lyda.
Not!
It wasn’t for several weeks when she was convicted. “Mrs. Lyda Meyer Southard, convicted here last week of the murder of Edward F. Meyer, her fourth husband, was sentenced today in District Court to from ten years to life imprisonment,” reads a New York Times articles for November 7, 1921. “The defendant stood up, fixed her eyes on the bench, and received the sentence without a tremor. Notice of appeal was filed by her attorneys, but a stay of execution sentence was not asked.”
It wasn’t enough that she was a demented psycho, she also was impatient. Just months before her parole, Lyda escaped the Old Pen on May 4, 1931, fleeing to Colorado, where she took up residence as housekeeper for Denver resident Harry Whitlock, whom – hit me with a broom – she married in March the following year. Whitlock had some whit about him, however, and was instrumental in his new bride’s recapture. Lyda was arrested again on July 31, 1932 and returned to her empty cell in Boise that August. Almost another decade later, in October 1941, Lyda was paroled. She received a final pardon in 1942, legally anyway – but not socially. To avoid ridicule and mistreatment, Lyda eventually changed her name to Anna Shaw, but today is better known as Lady Bluebeard.
Though she did not hang her husbands’ bodies by meat hooks in a blood-soaked room, she was, according to historical hindsight, the cause of their deaths. What’s more, she allegedly murdered her own child. If all that is true, the name Bluebeard aptly applies to Lyda Trueblood Dooley McHaffle Lewis Meyer Southard. Heck, it’s even shorter and easier to pronounce!
Lady Bluebeard died at age sixty-five on February 5, 1958 and was buried in the Twin Falls Cemetery, where it is said her spirit does not rest because of the ghastly deeds she committed in the flesh. Serves her right!