Sistas Who Kill: A True Crime Podcast · CAKE MEDIA

Roberta Elder | Mrs.Bluebeard | SistasWhoKill

·1 hr 17 min·2 clips

$125 policy collected 2 days after hospitalization—the pattern begins to emerge.

Sistahs Who Kill investigates Roberta Elder, suspected serial murderer documented as 'Mrs. Bluebeard.' The episode meticulously traces Roberta from illiterate sharecropper's daughter (self-taught reading by age 11) through a series of marriages. Each spouse/family member brought into her household subsequently developed mysterious illnesses and died, with Roberta strategically holding life insurance policies on each victim. Timeline: First husband Willie Thurman's children (1925, 1931) both died in infancy; common-law husband John Woodward died 1938 within days of hospitalization (Roberta held $125 policy); third husband James died 1947 (food poisoning); Reverend William Elder's wife Willie Mae died 1950 after Roberta brought her home to care for her; multiple Elder children (Annie Pearl, ages 9+) followed with identical symptoms and fatal outcomes. The systematic pattern—insurance policy purchases preceding deaths—points to calculated serial murder.

As heard by us

A poison case built on money, timing, and a detective who starts counting bodies.

This true crime episode is strongest when it follows the coroner's reasoning from what looked like pneumonia to an arsenic test, then keeps going until the pattern around the woman starts to feel plain enough to be unsettling.

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Why you'd press play

A poison case, a life-insurance trail, and a detective tallying a string of suspicious deaths.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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