Blanche Taylor Moore
Encyclopedia
Blanche Kiser Taylor Moore (born February 17, 1933) is a convicted murderer and probable serial killer
from Alamance County, North Carolina
. She was convicted of killing her boyfriend by slipping arsenic into his food, and is suspected of killing three other people and nearly killing another in the same manner.
minister and alcoholic, who later forced her into prostitution
to pay gambling debts. At least in part due to this, she was known to switch from quoting Scripture to sexually explicit topics in the same breath. In 1952, she married James N. Taylor; she bore him two children, one in 1953 and another in 1959.
In 1954, she began working at Kroger
as a cashier. By 1959, she'd been promoted to head cashier (roughly the equivalent of a customer service manager today), the highest job available to a female employee at Kroger at the time.
lawsuit
against Denton and Kroger in 1985. Denton was forced to resign, and Kroger settled
the case out of court two years later for $275,000.
In 1985, Moore also accused an unknown "pervert" of starting two fires that damaged her mobile home
. On Easter Sunday, she met Rev. Dwight Moore, the new pastor
of the Carolina United Church of Christ
in rural Alamance County, who was divorced, and they began meeting for meals. At the time, Moore was still dating Raymond Reid.
. He was hospitalized in April of that year, but by October, he had developed what doctors believed was a severe case of Guillain-Barré syndrome
. Reid died on October 7, 1986.
Blanche and Reverend Dwight Moore began seeing each other publicly shortly after Reid's death. They planned to marry, but in 1987, Blanche Moore developed breast cancer
. The wedding date was pushed back to November 1988, but Moore developed a mysterious intestinal ailment that required two surgeries to correct. In April 1989, the couple married and honeymooned in New Jersey. Returning home on April 26, 1989, Dwight collapsed after eating a pastry
. After two days of suffering, he was admitted to Alamance County Hospital on April 28. For the next two days, Moore was transferred between that hospital and North Carolina Baptist Hospital.
Finally, he was admitted to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, and doctors David Wohns, Jonathan Serody, Mark Murphy and George Sanders, after discussions with the hospital toxicologist, ordered a toxicology screen
after Blanche told them he'd been working in the yard after getting back from their trip. On May 13, the results came back and showed that Dwight Moore had 20 times the lethal dose of arsenic in his system—at the time, the most arsenic found in a living patient in the hospital's history. However, Dwight Moore had a particularly robust constitution, and survived. He has never been able to regain full sensation in his hands and feet.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation
was notified, and exhumations occurred on Moore's ex-husband, boyfriend, father, and mother-in-law. Subsequent autopsies
showed elevated levels of arsenic in all of the bodies. It also emerged that doctors at Baptist Hospital had ordered a toxicology screen for Raymond Reid. The results showed a massive amount of arsenic in his system. However, on the day the test came back, the resident
responsible for caring for Reid rotated to another hospital, and the new resident never passed the results up the chain of command. As a result, Reid received the final, fatal doses of arsenic in his hospital bed.
The SBI got suspicious of Blanche Moore when they found out she had tried to get Dwight Moore's pension
changed so she would be the principal beneficiary. They also knew she had lied about how much money she had received from Raymond Reid's estate. During interviews, Blanche Moore mentioned that both Dwight Moore and Raymond Reid felt depressed and had probably been taking arsenic—something that was found highly improbable. Additionally, it emerged Moore had still been sleeping with Reid around the same time she began dating Dwight Moore. Blanche also had Dwight's hair cut in an attempt to prevent hair samples from being obtained by the SBI, but pubic hair samples were used instead. On July 18, 1989, Blanche Taylor Moore was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Raymond Reid. Prosecutors opted to charge her with killing Reid rather than trying to kill Dwight Moore because they felt they'd be able to show her spooning arsenic-laced pudding to Reid. In Dwight Moore's case, doctors had recognized the signs of arsenic poisoning early on, making it more difficult to find out who was poisoning him.
for wrongful death thrown out because they were able to prove that Blanche, as executor
of Raymond Reid's estate, should have been the person to find out about the toxicology screen. The Reid family argued that Moore fraudulently prevented them from finding out about the test.
Under the terms of a deal between the Forsyth County
district attorney's office and the Reid family's lawyers, most of the evidence against Blanche was gathered by the Reid family's lawyers. Although the courts have interpreted the Fifth Amendment
protection against self-incrimination very broadly for criminal cases, such protections usually don't apply in civil cases. Civil law also allows much more latitude for searches and subpoenas.
She was convicted on November 14. On November 17, the jury recommended the death penalty. On January 18, 1991, the presiding judge concurred with the jury and sentenced Moore to die by lethal injection
. She currently resides at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
. She is prisoner # 0288088.
Because of the automatic appeal
s in progress, Moore has been able to stave off execution for almost 20 years. She maintains her innocence to this day.
Moore has been charged for the murders of James and Isla Taylor, as well as the attempted murder of Dwight Moore. However, authorities have decided not to try her because they felt it wasn't worth the effort to win more verdicts against someone already sentenced to death. They also opted not to charge her with the death of P. D. Kiser because the manner in which he treated Blanche as a girl might have made her seem like a sympathetic figure. Charges are pending in the deaths of several other speculated victims.
starred as Moore in the made-for-TV movie based on the book entitled The Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story.
The Dwight Moore case was also featured in an episode of the series Diagnosis Unknown which has been recently aired on the Investigation channel.
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
from Alamance County, North Carolina
Alamance County, North Carolina
Alamance County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It coincides with the Burlington, North Carolina, Metropolitan Statistical Area...
. She was convicted of killing her boyfriend by slipping arsenic into his food, and is suspected of killing three other people and nearly killing another in the same manner.
Early life
She was born Blanche Kiser to P.D. Kiser, an ordained BaptistBaptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
minister and alcoholic, who later forced her into prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
to pay gambling debts. At least in part due to this, she was known to switch from quoting Scripture to sexually explicit topics in the same breath. In 1952, she married James N. Taylor; she bore him two children, one in 1953 and another in 1959.
In 1954, she began working at Kroger
Kroger
The Kroger Co. is an American supermarket chain founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It reported US$ 76.7 billion in sales during fiscal year 2009. It is the country's largest grocery store chain and its second-largest grocery retailer by volume and second-place general retailer...
as a cashier. By 1959, she'd been promoted to head cashier (roughly the equivalent of a customer service manager today), the highest job available to a female employee at Kroger at the time.
Personal problems
In 1962, she began an affair with Raymond Reid, the manager of the store where she worked. After her husband's death in 1971, the two began dating publicly. By 1985, however, the relationship had soured. There are indications that she began to date Kevin Denton, the regional manager for the Triad area; however, that relationship ended, and Moore filed a sexual harassmentSexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
against Denton and Kroger in 1985. Denton was forced to resign, and Kroger settled
Settlement (law)
In law, a settlement is a resolution between disputing parties about a legal case, reached either before or after court action begins. The term "settlement" also has other meanings in the context of law.-Basis:...
the case out of court two years later for $275,000.
In 1985, Moore also accused an unknown "pervert" of starting two fires that damaged her mobile home
Mobile home
Mobile homes or static caravans are prefabricated homes built in factories, rather than on site, and then taken to the place where they will be occupied...
. On Easter Sunday, she met Rev. Dwight Moore, the new pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
of the Carolina United Church of Christ
United Church of Christ
The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination primarily in the Reformed tradition but also historically influenced by Lutheranism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC...
in rural Alamance County, who was divorced, and they began meeting for meals. At the time, Moore was still dating Raymond Reid.
Murders
In 1986, Reid developed what was initially diagnosed as a case of shinglesHerpes zoster
Herpes zoster , commonly known as shingles and also known as zona, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a limited area on one side of the body, often in a stripe...
. He was hospitalized in April of that year, but by October, he had developed what doctors believed was a severe case of Guillain-Barré syndrome
Guillain-Barré syndrome
Guillain–Barré syndrome , sometimes called Landry's paralysis, is an acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy , a disorder affecting the peripheral nervous system. Ascending paralysis, weakness beginning in the feet and hands and migrating towards the trunk, is the most typical symptom...
. Reid died on October 7, 1986.
Blanche and Reverend Dwight Moore began seeing each other publicly shortly after Reid's death. They planned to marry, but in 1987, Blanche Moore developed breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
. The wedding date was pushed back to November 1988, but Moore developed a mysterious intestinal ailment that required two surgeries to correct. In April 1989, the couple married and honeymooned in New Jersey. Returning home on April 26, 1989, Dwight collapsed after eating a pastry
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
. After two days of suffering, he was admitted to Alamance County Hospital on April 28. For the next two days, Moore was transferred between that hospital and North Carolina Baptist Hospital.
Finally, he was admitted to North Carolina Memorial Hospital, and doctors David Wohns, Jonathan Serody, Mark Murphy and George Sanders, after discussions with the hospital toxicologist, ordered a toxicology screen
Forensic toxicology
Forensic toxicology is the use of toxicology and other disciplines such as analytical chemistry, pharmacology and clinical chemistry to aid medical or legal investigation of death, poisoning, and drug use...
after Blanche told them he'd been working in the yard after getting back from their trip. On May 13, the results came back and showed that Dwight Moore had 20 times the lethal dose of arsenic in his system—at the time, the most arsenic found in a living patient in the hospital's history. However, Dwight Moore had a particularly robust constitution, and survived. He has never been able to regain full sensation in his hands and feet.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is a state-level law enforcement agency in North Carolina. Within the state, the agency acts as a criminal investigation bureau, similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the federal level. The SBI is a bureau of the North Carolina...
was notified, and exhumations occurred on Moore's ex-husband, boyfriend, father, and mother-in-law. Subsequent autopsies
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
showed elevated levels of arsenic in all of the bodies. It also emerged that doctors at Baptist Hospital had ordered a toxicology screen for Raymond Reid. The results showed a massive amount of arsenic in his system. However, on the day the test came back, the resident
Residency (medicine)
Residency is a stage of graduate medical training. A resident physician or resident is a person who has received a medical degree , Podiatric degree , Dental Degree and who practices...
responsible for caring for Reid rotated to another hospital, and the new resident never passed the results up the chain of command. As a result, Reid received the final, fatal doses of arsenic in his hospital bed.
The SBI got suspicious of Blanche Moore when they found out she had tried to get Dwight Moore's pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
changed so she would be the principal beneficiary. They also knew she had lied about how much money she had received from Raymond Reid's estate. During interviews, Blanche Moore mentioned that both Dwight Moore and Raymond Reid felt depressed and had probably been taking arsenic—something that was found highly improbable. Additionally, it emerged Moore had still been sleeping with Reid around the same time she began dating Dwight Moore. Blanche also had Dwight's hair cut in an attempt to prevent hair samples from being obtained by the SBI, but pubic hair samples were used instead. On July 18, 1989, Blanche Taylor Moore was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of Raymond Reid. Prosecutors opted to charge her with killing Reid rather than trying to kill Dwight Moore because they felt they'd be able to show her spooning arsenic-laced pudding to Reid. In Dwight Moore's case, doctors had recognized the signs of arsenic poisoning early on, making it more difficult to find out who was poisoning him.
Trial, conviction and sentence
The trial opened in Winston-Salem on October 21, 1990. Moore adamantly denied ever giving Reid any food. However, the state introduced fifty-three witnesses who testified about her daily trips to the hospital, bearing food. The state had an easier time than expected in making such a complex case because Reid's ex-wife and sons sued Baptist Hospital for malpractice. They were able to get the normal statute of limitationsStatute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
for wrongful death thrown out because they were able to prove that Blanche, as executor
Executor
An executor, in the broadest sense, is one who carries something out .-Overview:...
of Raymond Reid's estate, should have been the person to find out about the toxicology screen. The Reid family argued that Moore fraudulently prevented them from finding out about the test.
Under the terms of a deal between the Forsyth County
Forsyth County, North Carolina
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 306,067 people, 123,851 households, and 81,741 families residing in the county. The population density was 747 people per square mile . There were 133,093 housing units at an average density of 325 per square mile...
district attorney's office and the Reid family's lawyers, most of the evidence against Blanche was gathered by the Reid family's lawyers. Although the courts have interpreted the Fifth Amendment
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects against abuse of government authority in a legal procedure. Its guarantees stem from English common law which traces back to the Magna Carta in 1215...
protection against self-incrimination very broadly for criminal cases, such protections usually don't apply in civil cases. Civil law also allows much more latitude for searches and subpoenas.
She was convicted on November 14. On November 17, the jury recommended the death penalty. On January 18, 1991, the presiding judge concurred with the jury and sentenced Moore to die by lethal injection
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...
. She currently resides at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women also known as NCCIW, is the primary North Carolina Department of Correction prison facility housing female inmates on a 30 acre campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, and serves as a support facility for the six other women's prisons throughout the state...
. She is prisoner # 0288088.
Because of the automatic appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
s in progress, Moore has been able to stave off execution for almost 20 years. She maintains her innocence to this day.
Speculated murders
During the investigation that led to Moore's conviction, exhumations were also performed on several other people. Subsequent examinations showed that her father, P. D. Kiser, and her first husband, James N. Taylor, had both died of arsenic poisoning. There are other speculated victims, including several close friends and relatives who died mysteriously showing some signs of arsenic poisoning, but none of them have been exhumed for further evaluation. Other possible victims include her mother-in-law Isla Taylor.Moore has been charged for the murders of James and Isla Taylor, as well as the attempted murder of Dwight Moore. However, authorities have decided not to try her because they felt it wasn't worth the effort to win more verdicts against someone already sentenced to death. They also opted not to charge her with the death of P. D. Kiser because the manner in which he treated Blanche as a girl might have made her seem like a sympathetic figure. Charges are pending in the deaths of several other speculated victims.
Book and movie
In 1993, author Jim Schutze wrote a book about the murders, entitled Preacher's Girl. Schutze found evidence that seemed to indicate that Moore set up Denton in the sexual harassment suit, and may have intentionally set the two fires. Later that year, Elizabeth MontgomeryElizabeth Montgomery
Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery was an American film and television actress whose career spanned five decades. She is perhaps best remembered for her roles as Samantha Stephens in Bewitched, as Ellen Harrod in A Case of Rape and as Lizzie Borden in The Legend of Lizzie Borden.-Early life:Born in Los...
starred as Moore in the made-for-TV movie based on the book entitled The Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story.
The Dwight Moore case was also featured in an episode of the series Diagnosis Unknown which has been recently aired on the Investigation channel.
Victims list
Bold indicates a victim who died.- P. D. Kiser - (1968), exhumations showed arsenic poisoning
- Isla Taylor - (1970), exhumations showed arsenic poisoning
- James N. Taylor (1971), exhumations showed arsenic poisoning
- Raymond Reid - (1986), death by arsenic poisoning
- Dwight Moore - (1989), poisoned by arsenic, recovered