Della Sorenson: Serial Poisoner

On this day in 1918, Nebraska native Della Sorenson murdered her first victim by poisoning her infant niece, Viola Cooper. It would take seven years and six more deaths for anyone to realize that Sorenson was a serial poisoner.

Two years after the murder of Viola Cooper, Sorenson poisoned her mother-in-law. Over a two-week period in September of 1920, she poisoned her husband Joe and her daughter Minnie. Within four months of their deaths, she remarried and moved to the village of Dannebrog, Nebraska. During an August 1922 visit from her former sister-in-law, she poisoned the woman's 4-month-old son with a piece of candy, the same as she had done with Viola. Her sister-in-law, failing to realize what had caused her son's death, visited Sorenson again a few months later with another of her children. Luckily, Sorenson's poisoned candy did not work this time around.

In 1923 Della Sorenson poisoned her daughter Delia on the child's first birthday. A week later Sorenson poisoned her friend's infant daughter during another deadly visit. After her second husband fell ill, authorities began to think that the deaths surrounding Sorenson were more than a coincidence. In 1925, she was finally arrested after trying to poison two neighborhood children with tainted cookies. She confessed to the crimes, saying “I like to attend funerals. I’m happy when someone is dying.” As for her victims, she told authorities “they bothered me, so I killed them.” Doctors diagnosed her as schizophrenic and she was sent to the state mental asylum, where she passed away on June 24, 1941, at the age of 44.