A serial killer bride dubbed the ‘Merry Widow’ who murdered her three husbands and lover in the space of two years was convinced she wouldn’t get caught.
Mary Wilson was 68 when she began her two-year killing spree in September 1955 in the small Tyne and Wear village of Windy Nook.
On the day of her third wedding she was asked what she was going to do with all the spare party sandwiches. She replied: ‘Keep them for the funeral’.
Sixty years ago this month she was finally brought to justice, becoming the last woman in the UK ever to be sentenced to death.
Mary Wilson (pictured) was 68 when she began her two-year killing spree in September 1955 in the small Tyne and Wear village of Windy Nook
The unsuspecting murderous grandmother had been happily married to John Knowles for 41 years before she poisoned him.
They had three sons and three daughters together, before two died in infancy. The coroner said he’d died of Tuberculosis aged 76.
She had already started an affair with their lodger, painter John Russell. He died of ‘natural causes’ in 1956.
A year later in June 1957 she married her second husband, retired estate agent Oliver Leonard.
But within just 12 days he was dead. Experts thought it was due to ‘heart failure and pneumonia’.
Four months later Mary struck again, poisoning her third husband Ernest just a fortnight after their wedding.
She had inherited £42 for from the two Johns, £50 from Oliver and £100 from Ernest, plus his life insurance and empty bungalow.
Despite being his lawfully wedded wife, she didn’t go to her third husband’s funeral.
Even with the suspicious links between the deaths, she was convinced she was going to get away with it.
But with gossip and the exhumation of her last two victims, the woman who became the ‘Merry Widow of Windy Nook’ was rumbled.
Sixty years ago this month ‘The Merry Widow of Windy Nook’ (pictured around 1950) was eventually caught, becoming the last woman in the UK to be sentenced to death
Archivist Teresa Ashforth told the Mirror it was her jokes about saving their wedding party sandwiches ‘for the funeral’ and similar quips that were her downfall.
She said: ‘There was an awful lot of talk. It actually first came to police notice because of gossips from the town.
‘Not only were the gaps between the weddings short, the marriages themselves were brief. Looking at the statements I don’t believe she ever thought she’d be caught.
She was sentenced to death 60 years ago, making UK legal history as the last woman in Britain to be condemned to death by hanging.
Because she was 69, Home Secretary Rab Butler decided she should be jailed for life instead.
She died five years later at the notorious Holloway Prison in north London.
Her great granddaughter, mother-of-four Andria Raistrick says she doesn’t hide her relatives gruesome past from her children.
The 49-year-old told the Mirror: ‘It wasn’t something older members of the family talked about but I do remember children being told to behave or great-granny would be set on them.
‘Mary Wilson looked like a little cosy old lady – but she killed my great-granddad. It’s horrible but it is fascinating.
‘I’ve never hidden it from my own children so they know all about the Merry Widow of Windy Nook.’
Pathologist Dr William Stewart was a witness at Mary Wilson’s murder trial where she was quickly found guilty of all four deaths