Lady Bluebeard: The True Story of Love and Marriage, Death and Flypaper

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 The woman believed to be America’s first female serial killer came of age in the unlikely setting of rural Idaho. Just as unlikely was the method she devised to dispatch her victims. 

Even then she could have gone scot-free had it not been for the dogged persistence of the deputy sheriff of Twin Falls, Idaho. Armed with little more than suspicion, he unearthed (literally) the evidence, then set off on a search that included a dozen states, plus Mexico and Hawaii. 

Her conviction, after a long trial, did not end the She escaped from prison and enjoyed a year and a half of freedom, during which time she continued to attract men and marry them. When she was finally returned to prison, she accumulated name was Lyda Trueblood-Dooley-McHaffie-Lewis-Meyer-Southard-Whitlock-Shaw. The newspapers of that day had their own names for her, such as “Lady Bluebeard” and “Lethal Lyda.”

This is the improbably story of her life and of the dogged efforts of Deputy Sheriff Val Ormsby to dig up the evidence that finally put her in prison.