Bertha Alice Graham Gifford Research Papers

Very little is known about Bertha Alice Graham Gifford. We know she was born Bertha Alice Williams to William and Matilda Williams, as one of ten children, in October 1872. Bertha was born in Grubville, Missouri, and later married Henry Graham in December 1894, in Hillsboro, Missouri. After Graham’s death, Bertha married Gene Gifford, a man who was ten years younger than her, in 1907, and they moved to Catawissa, Missouri.
What is know about Bertha Gifford is the horrible acts she committed while living in Catawissa. In 1928, Bertha was arrested for the murder of three people - Ed Brinley and Elmer and Lloyd Schamel. By the time it was over, Bertha would be charged for three murders, with the prosecution claiming she had poisoned her victims

He had been working for them, and claimed he had been underpaid by about $200. The Giffords did not seem phased, and any hard feelings disappeared when Ogle fell ill with what was diagnosed as malaria. Bertha hurriedly came to assist in taking care of Ogle. On November 17, Bertha went to the drugstore and purchased more arsenic. The rats were back, she said. On November 18, Ogle took a turn for the worse, experiencing terrible stomach cramps, which the doctor claimed were due to the ravages of malaria. Ogle died on November 20, with the cause being written as “gastritis.”
During the winter of 1915, the Stuhlfelfers lost their baby son, Bernard, to illness. Two years later, almost to the day, their two year old daughter Margaret fell ill with pneumonia. The doctor came, prescribed medicine, and Bertha came to nurse the sick child. She told Mr. George Stulfelder that Margaret seemed very sick, and that she did not think she would get better. By the end of the second day, Margaret was experiencing terrible stomach cramps. She died after three more days of being sick. This made two Stulfelder children dead, and no one said

Gene joined her, saying she had been made nervous and that is why she confessed. The next week, her lawyer entered a “not guilty” plea on her behalf. In September, Brinley and the Schamel boys were exhumed for an autopsy, where massive amounts of arsenic were found in their organs. The defense wove a tight story, tracking the poison from the drugstore to Bertha and to the victims, mainly Brinley. He was seeking the death penalty, and prosecution was struggling to loosen the noose around Bertha’s