Born in Tarheel on February 17, 1933, Blanche Kiser was the daughter of a Baptist minister, a heavy drinker who forced the young woman to prostitute herself to pay off his gambling debts.

She married James Taylor at a young age to escape her father's abuse, and their first daughter, Vanessa, was born in 1953, the same year Blanche went to work as a head cashier at a Kroger supermarket in Burlington. In 1959, another child, Cindi, arrived, but life did not continue peacefully: James turned out to be a compulsive gambler and alcoholic who disappeared for entire weekends, spending all the family's money.

Blanche meanwhile had numerous affairs with co-workers, sparking violent arguments at home. In 1962, the woman focused her attention on twenty-seven-year-old Raymond Reid, who arrived as the new assistant manager of Kroger, at the time married with two children. Three years after the first meeting between the two, they began a relationship, despite her sporadic flirtations with other men.

In September 1966, Blanche attempted to reconcile with her father, but his health deteriorated soon after her arrival. She forgave him and remained at his side to care for him until his death, attributed to a heart attack. However, doctors ignored other symptoms such as violent stomach cramps, vomiting, delirium and a bright blue face that in light of subsequent events would have indicated something else.

In 1968, James Taylor, after a mild heart attack, decided to clean up his life and became, according to Blanche, a perfect husband and father. However, the change did not distract her from her relationship with Raymond Reid that continued in parallel with her marriage.

In 1970, Isla Taylor, Blanche's elderly mother-in-law, was confined to bed due to age-related problems and cared for by her daughter-in-law. When Isla died on November 25 of the same year, doctors attributed her death to natural causes, ignoring a number of symptoms that were far from coincidence.

In 1971, Raymond Reid left his wife, moving into an apartment where Blanche often spent time, and the news spread. Reid filed for divorce, obtaining it in 1973, and asking his partner to do the same. Suddenly, James Taylor fell ill with what seemed like the flu, with strange consequences, such as hair loss and painful blisters on his hands and feet. Hospitalized, he died just an hour after Blanche brought him ice cream from home. Taylor left a modest property, but Blanche soon bought a new house in Burlington and began to live her relationship with Reid in the open.

The relationship seemed to be going swimmingly, even though the wedding was continually postponed, until Blanche began yet another clandestine affair with store manager Kevin Denton. The relationship soured over time, however, and reached its peak when she sued Denton and subsequently Kroger in 1985, accusing him of sexual harassment at work. Denton was forced to resign, and Kroger paid Blanche a $275,000 settlement.

On January 23, 1985, a mysterious fire broke out in her Burlington home. She blamed a vagrant, and fire officials confirmed arson as the cause, although the perpetrator was never found. Blanche collected a small amount of insurance by investing the money in a trailer, which burned down a month later, allowing her to collect another insurance check.

Towards the end of the year, another man entered Blanche's life: the Reverend Dwight Moore, a divorced and highly respected man in the community, who became her new target. Raymond Reid, who was pressing to get married, developed shingles in early 1986 and his condition rapidly worsened. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, but a suspicious doctor ordered a test for heavy metal poisoning; the results, however, were lost. Meanwhile, Blanche helped him draft a new will, naming herself executor and beneficiary of a third of his estate. During daily visits to the hospital, she brought him food, including homemade puddings and milkshakes. Despite her "loving" care and the doctors' best efforts, Reid's condition worsened to the point where he was moved to intensive care, where he died three days later.

After a period of mourning, Blanche and Reverend Moore were married on April 21, 1989. On their return from their honeymoon, Dwight fainted after eating food on the Cape May ferry. In Burlington, under the care of his wife, he worsened dramatically, swelling from the fluids retained in his body. Admitted to the North Carolina Memorial Hospital, doctors finally ran some tests and the results were shocking: Moore's body contained a dose of arsenic one hundred times higher than that considered lethal.

When the police were alerted, the Reverend attempted to deny the accusations against his wife, declaring that he had inhaled the poison while spraying pesticide on plants in his garden.

Despite Moore's loyalty, Blanche was immediately subjected to a long interrogation, also relating to past events, where she repeatedly denied having brought food to the clinic to Raymond Reid when he was sick. It was later discovered that she had attempted to alter Dwight's pension so that she would be the primary beneficiary.

The bodies of Reid, Taylor, her mother-in-law, and Blanche's father were exhumed and significant concentrations of arsenic were found in all of them. After a brief search, Reid's toxicology screen was found, results that would have shown an extremely high level of the poison in his nervous system even at the time.

Following the new evidence, Blanche stated that both Moore and Reid were feeling depressed and that they were probably taking arsenic for this reason. Her justifications were to no avail and on July 18, 1989, she was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of James Taylor and Raymond Reid and assault with a deadly weapon in the poisoning of Dwight Moore.

The trial began on October 21, 1990 in Winston-Salem where 53 witnesses claimed to have seen the woman bringing food to the hospital on a daily basis. It also emerged that during Reid's stay, Blache had also offered a cake to the nurses in the ward: almost all of them had intestinal problems, fever and vomiting, except for the only one who had not eaten the cake. Hair tests on the exhumed bodies revealed that multiple doses of arsenic had been administered to the victims over a long period of time, as opposed to a single large fatal dose.

The defense presented a handwritten letter in the name of Garvin Thomas, a homeless man who according to the lawyer had become infatuated with the woman, in which he confessed on his deathbed to the murder of Reid by poisoning. The state's handwriting experts, however, certified that the letter had been written by the defendant.

Blanche Taylor Moore, now known to all as "the Black Widow", was convicted on November 14, 1990 of first-degree murder against Reid and on the 17th of the same month the jury requested the death penalty, which was granted on January 18, 1991 by the court, to be carried out by lethal injection. The woman currently resides at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women and at 88 years old is the oldest inmate: in 2010 she and the other eleven death row inmates of Forsyth County filed a motion to convert their sentences to life imprisonment based on the Racial Justice Act of the state. Dwight Moore, who died in 2013 of natural causes, declared to the Winston Salem station WXII-TV that he had no objections to the matter.

In 1993 the film "Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story" was released in theaters, directed by Alan Metzger and starring Elizabeth Montgomery as the protagonist. Continue reading