In the summer of 1945, in Jacksonville, Alabama, a young boy named Robert Lee Haynes, died under mysterious circumstances. The child's life was cut short on July 7, 1945, while he was in the care of his grandmother, Nannie Doss. Initially, the cause of the male infant's death was officially listed as asphyxia from unknown causes.
At the time of Robert's death, his mother, Melvina, had left him with his grandmother after a dispute. It was later revealed that Nannie Doss had taken out a $500 life insurance policy on her grandson, which she collected two months after he died. Suspicions arose when Melvina recalled seeing her mother with a hairpin near the baby around the time of his death, a detail that would later become significant.
Years later, the unsettling truth about Robert Lee Haynes's death came to light during a much larger and more gruesome investigation. His grandmother, Nannie Doss, was arrested in 1954 on suspicion of killing her fifth husband. During the subsequent investigation, she confessed to a string of murders spanning several decades and victimizing numerous family members. Among her confessions was the murder of her grandson, Robert Lee Haynes. Doss, who would become known as the 'Giggling Granny,' admitted to killing four of her husbands, her mother, her sister, and her mother-in-law, in addition to her grandson. While she was convicted for the murder of one of her husbands and sentenced to life in prison, she was never formally charged with the other deaths she confessed to, including that of young Robert. Nannie Doss died of leukemia in prison in 1965.
