Murders
Gibbs' husband of 18 years, Charles Clayton Gibbs, 39, died January 21, 1966. Her youngest son, Marvin Ronald Gibbs, 13, died August 29, 1966, followed by her middle son, Melvin Watess Gibbs, 16, on January 23, 1967. She inherited $31,000 from their deaths and tithed 10 percent to her church.
The deaths had previously been attributed to liver disease, but she was eventually arrested Christmas Eve 1967 after her oldest son, Roger Ludean Gibbs, 19, died in the same fashion as his father and brothers. On October 28, 1967, Roger's month-old son Ronnie Edward Gibbs also died under suspicious circumstances.
Read more about this topic: Janie Lou Gibbs
Famous quotes containing the word murders:
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)