Born October 23, 1932, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen. The stories are refuted categorically by seven siblings, who deny all charges of abuse in any form, by either parent, and it must be granted that Margie's early development seemed normal for the given time and place. Dropping out of high school in her junior year, she eloped with Thomas Burke at seventeen, settling in Paxton, where she bore two children without incident.

The trouble started after fifteen years of marriage, when Burke's luck turned sour almost overnight. Discharged from his job and subsequently injured in a car crash, he began drinking heavily to drown his sorrows, the ever-present liquor an affront to Margie's fundamentalist religion. Marriage became a sort of guerrilla warfare, with Margie hiding her husband's whiskey, sometimes pouring it down the sink, finally committing him to Dorothea Dix Hospital, in Raleigh, as an alcoholic. Working at a local mill to support the family, she relied on prescription tranquilizers for peace of mind.

Thomas came home from the hospital sober and sullen, bitter at his wife's "betrayal." In 1969, when he burned to death in bed, authorities dismissed the death as accidental, caused by careless smoking, but later, with the advantage of hindsight, there would be dark suspicions of foul play.

In 1971, Margie married Jennings Barfield. He lasted six months, his sudden death ascribed to "natural causes," but exhumation and autopsy in 1978 would reveal lethal doses of arsenic in his system.

By the time she murdered Barfield, Margie was already dependent on prescription drugs, carelessly mixing her pills, with the result that she was four times hospitalized for overdose symptoms. In contrast to her addiction, she maintained an active interest in religion, teaching Sunday school at the local Pentecostal church on a regular basis.

Short on cash, Margie was writing rubber checks to cover her "medical" expenses, and her several trips to court produced judicial wrist-slaps. In 1974, she forged her aged mother's name to a $1,000 loan application, panicking when she realized the bank might try to contact the real Lillie Bullard for verification. Margie eliminated the problem by feeding her mother a lethal dose of insecticide, and again the death was attributed to natural causes.

Two years later, Margie Barfield was employed by local matron Dollie Edwards as a live-in maid. A fringe benefit of the job was Dollie's nephew, Stuart Taylor, who began dating Margie on the side, but their romance did not stop Barfield from poisoning her employer in February 1977. Her motive remains unclear -- there were no thefts involved -- and physicians ascribed the sudden death to "acute gastroenteritis."

Margie next moved in with 80-year-old John Lee and his wife Record, age 76. After forging a $50 check on Lee's account, she sought to "make him sick" and thereby gain some time to cover the shortage, but her plans obviously went awry. First poisoned in April 1977, John Lee lost 65 pounds before his eventual death, on June 4. After the funeral, Margie began feeding poison to Lee's widow, but she gave up her job in October 1977, leaving a frail survivor behind.

Moving on to a Lumberton rest home, Barfield was twice caught forging checks on Stuart Taylor's account. He forgave her each time, but they argued fiercely after her third offense, on January 31, 1978. That night, Margie spiked his beer with poison, keeping up the dosage until Taylor died on February 4. Relatives rejected the diagnosis of "acute gastroenteritis" and demanded a full autopsy, resulting in the discovery of arsenic.

Under interrogation, Margie confessed the murders of Taylor, her mother and second husband, Dollie Edwards and John Lee. Aside from the motiveless Edwards slaying, they were all "accidents," bungled attempts to cover up for forgery and theft. A jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Barfield of first-degree murder, and she was executed by lethal injection on November 2, 1984.