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Biography & Personal Stories
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The Waitress Who Served Death: The Chilling Case of Rhonda Belle Martin
Rhonda Belle Martin, a Montgomery waitress, was a serial poisoner. Her two-decade spree, claiming her mother, husbands, and children, ended only when her fifth husband—her stepson—survived an attempt. She was executed in 1957 after confessing to the murders.
A Killer in Plain Sight
In the 1950s, Rhonda Belle Martin was a familiar face in Montgomery, Alabama. A seemingly ordinary waitress, she was known to her community as a caring, if unusually unlucky, woman. Behind her sweet demeanor, however, lurked a secret so dark it would unravel the lives of everyone she claimed to love. For nearly two decades, Martin had been systematically poisoning her own family, a chilling spree that only came to light through a shocking twist of fate involving her final husband.
A Trail of Bodies
The pattern of death began long before anyone grew suspicious. It started in 1937 with the death of her six-year-old daughter, Emogene, from a mysterious “stomach ailment.” More tragedies followed. Her mother, Mary Schultz, died in 1940. Two more of her daughters, five-year-old Ann Carolyn and eleven-year-old Ellyn, passed away in 1943 and 1945, respectively. The deaths were often attributed to vague illnesses or food poisoning, tragic events that earned Rhonda Belle sympathy from her community.
In 1951, her fourth husband, 50-year-old Claude Martin, fell ill with a paralytic disease and died. The string of fatalities surrounding Rhonda Belle was staggering, yet no one connected the dots. The common thread in all these deaths was a slow, agonizing illness characterized by stomach pain and paralysis—the classic signs of arsenic poisoning.
The Unraveling
After Claude’s death, Rhonda Belle did something truly audacious: she married his son from a previous marriage, Ronald Martin. Within months of their wedding in 1951, 28-year-old Ronald also fell gravely ill with the same paralytic symptoms that had claimed his father. This time, however, he survived. Ronald’s survival was Rhonda Belle’s undoing. Alerted by the suspicious circumstances, doctors ran tests and discovered lethal amounts of arsenic in his system. The investigation that followed quickly exhumed the bodies of her previous alleged victims, revealing arsenic in their remains as well.
Confession of a Poisoner
Faced with overwhelming evidence, Rhonda Belle Martin confessed. She admitted to poisoning her mother, three of her children, and two of her five husbands. Her motive, she claimed, was not to kill but to make them sick so she could care for them and keep them close. In her confession to the police, she explained her twisted logic:
I started putting it in their coffee... I gave it to them to make them sick, not to kill them... just to have them at home with me.
Despite this claim, prosecutors argued the motive was financial, pointing to life insurance policies she had taken out on her victims. The jury agreed, finding her guilty of murdering her husband Claude Martin. Though she confessed to at least six murders, she was only tried for one. The judge sentenced her to death in Alabama's electric chair, nicknamed “Yellow Mama.” On October 11, 1957, Rhonda Belle Martin was executed. She remains the last woman to be executed in the state of Alabama for nearly half a century, leaving behind a horrifying legacy of betrayal and cold-blooded murder disguised as motherly love.