September 10, 2024
Introduction: In this article, James Pylant concludes his story about Rhonda Belle Martin, a seemingly normal Alabama wife and mother with a dark secret. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
In late 1955, four years into Ronald Martin’s marriage to his stepmother Rhonda, he began suffering severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. He was admitted to the VA Hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi. Doctors couldn’t make a diagnosis; they ruled out stomach ulcers, among other possible causes. Finally, they sent hair samples to a Washington, D.C., lab for analysis. The results revealed the origin of the problem: arsenic. And it was no accident.
“Arsenic deposited at the roots of the hair keeps moving with the natural hair growth,” said Van Pruitt Jr., Alabama’s chief criminal investigator. “In Martin’s case, the stuff must have been ingested over a considerable period of time – two or three months.” Pruitt surmised someone fed the young man regular non-lethal doses of the poison; however, in time, the cumulative effect would’ve killed him. (1)
A Pattern Discovered
Backtracking the last few months of Ronald Martin’s life, investigators learned he became ill while living in Mobile, Alabama. They began to focus their attention on the tragedies surrounding his much-married wife. Investigators discovered that six of Rhonda’s family members had died within a short span. Different doctors treated each – none being aware of the series of tragedies. Alarmingly, the physicians reported acute diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain in each case.
In March 1956, Claude Martin’s grave was exhumed. A toxicology report revealed the corpse’s organs, hair, and fingernails contained enough arsenic to kill several people. Rhonda Martin was served with a murder warrant and sent to the Montgomery County Jail, her face showing no sign of fear or surprise. “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” she said. “There’s nothing to it at all. It’s just a lot of nonsense.” (2) Rhonda professed her love for her husband, saying that her biggest regret was that they couldn’t have children.
“Everybody always said I spoiled my husbands and children,” she said. “That’s the way I am. I always spoil anybody I love.” (3) Unimpressed, investigators made plans to exhume the graves of Rhonda’s spoiled loved ones, all buried in the same Montgomery cemetery.
I found many details of Rhonda’s case from articles in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives.
Her Confession
As this article reports, on 12 March 1956 – with several exhumations looming – Rhonda confessed to killing her mother, two husbands, and three daughters with ant poison purchased “from time to time” at grocery and drug stores. It began when her daughter Emogene asked her mother for a glass of water. Annoyed, Rhonda, on impulse, poured a dose of poison into a glass of milk and gave it to the toddler.
For her second victim, husband George, Rhonda served ant poison and whiskey cocktails for several days – giving a final dose when he came home from work ill. For six-year-old Carolyn, it was the same one-dose serving of poisoned milk as given to Emogene. For a year, Rhonda simultaneously laced her mother’s coffee cups and daughter Ellyn’s milk glasses with the same poison, watching the two writhing in agony as they lost the use of their limbs.
Fourth husband Claude Martin sipped on coffee his wife served with two poisonous tablespoons for three months. Finally, Rhonda admitted to attempting to kill her last husband. Like his father, Ronald unknowingly drank ant-poisoned coffee.
What about Rhonda’s other daughters, Mary Adelaide and Judith? She insisted both died of natural causes. (4) She also denied profiting financially from any of the deaths except for $2,000 collected for Claude Martin. “On Mr. Garrett and the children, there wasn’t any insurance payment, just burial policies.” (5)
The body of Rhonda’s mother, Mary Frances Gibbons – the sixth and final exhumation – was tested on March 29, as reported in this article.
Her Trial
The Martin case went to trial in Montgomery on 4 June 1956. The accused entered an insanity plea after a judge denied the defense’s motion for a change of venue.
Two psychiatrists testified. One for the defense told the courtroom that the accused had schizophrenia, whereas the prosecution witness stated for the prosecution that he found “nothing wrong” with Rhonda Martin. The following day, the Birmingham News announced the verdict.
However, her death sentence was appealed to the State Supreme Court, a formality required by Alabama law. She awaited that decision in the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham, as the Montgomery City Jail was deemed unsafe for prisoners under a death sentence.
Rhonda Martin’s own words don’t help explain why she did what she did, killing six members of her family. This article reports:
“I hope they’ll let me live,” she said wistfully. “I’ll be mighty thankful to them if they do. I’ll try to do some good and make up for the bad things. I think I could do good even in prison.”
She referred to the charges against her only as “this mess I’m in.”
“I don’t know why I done what I done,” she said. “I’ve been studying it, trying to figure out and I just can’t say why I done it.”
Her Execution
In June 1957, the Alabama Supreme Court refused a rehearing for the Martin case and scheduled the convicted killer’s execution for September 27. However, Governor James E. Folsom granted a two-week reprieve on September 26, as Rhonda’s defense attorney requested a sanity test.
Ultimately, the Alabama governor refused to grant clemency, and she was transferred back to Montgomery. During the noon hour of 11 October 1957, Rhonda Belle Thomley Alderman Garrett Gipson Martin Martin, strapped in the Kilby Prison electric chair, clutched her Bible as 2,200 volts of electricity charged through her body. She was pronounced dead six minutes later.
In Rhonda Martin’s Bible, prison officials found a note she wrote and signed on 14 October 1956 in which she donated her body to science. The Birmingham News published her note:
“At my death, whether it be a natural death or otherwise, I want my body to be given to some scientific institution to be used as they see fit, but especially to see if someone can find out why I committed the crimes I have committed.
“I can’t understand it, for I had no reason whatsoever. There is definitely something wrong. Can’t someone find it and save someone else the agony I have been through.”
Third husband Talmadge Gibson survived his homicidal ex-wife by more than three decades, dying in 1993 at 93. Ronald Martin, her last husband – the only victim to survive her poison – died in 1999 in Louisiana.
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(1) Jonas Bayer, “Redhead Hellcat,” True Detective, Vol. 65 (June 1976), no. 2, p. 28.
(2) Ibid., p. 88.
(3) Joe Azbell, “Jailed Waitress Vows Innocence in Mate’s Death,” Montgomery Advertiser, 11 March 1956, p. 5-A.
(4) Bayer, “Redhead Hellcat,” p. 28.
(5) Azbell, “Jailed Waitress Vows Innocence in Mate’s Death,” p. 5-A.
Wonderful read.
Thank you.
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it.