Ordinary Wife: The true story of America’s forgotten serial killer

Ordinary Wife: The true story of America’s forgotten serial killer

Coming October 27, 2026

By Gregg Olsen

On August 3, 1932, a train pulled out of Denver carrying the most talked-about woman in America. In a private car, under armed guard, sat a small, composed figure. Lyda Trueblood was going home to prison.

A decade earlier, in frontier Idaho, Lyda had been everything a wife should be: beautiful, charming, an excellent cook. Men fell for her easily. They also died easily―poisoned by arsenic she extracted from ordinary flypaper and stirred into their meals. Her brother-in-law. Her husband. Her baby daughter. Then another husband. And another. Six victims in five years.

The 1921 trial made her a sensation―"Lady Bluebeard," the papers called her. But who was the woman behind the headlines? What turned a Missouri farmer's daughter into a methodical killer?

Now, on this train carrying her back after a daring prison escape, Lyda finally agreed to talk. What she revealed―and what she didn't―would haunt those who heard it.

Drawing on court transcripts, prison records, and Lyda's own chilling statements, for the first time, Gregg and Morgan Olsen go beyond the lurid mythology to explore how an ordinary wife became an extraordinary killer.