Anjette Lyles

The story begins with the comfort of small-town ritual: a packed lunch counter on Mulberry Street, a hostess who knows every name, and a city that believes it knows its own. Then the pattern breaks. A husband collapses with mysterious convulsions, a second falls to a sudden fever, a mother-in-law fades under watchful care, and a child is tormented by vivid hallucinations no medicine can explain. We follow the arc from gentle hospitality to hard suspicion, from porch whispers about black candles to the cold permanence of arsenic in the lab.

I guide you through Macon’s mid-century world—where rail lines, church bells, and business deals shaped daily life—and into the charged space where folklore and forensic science meet. Staff recall strange habits and shifting stories. An anonymous letter nudges a coroner to test a common ant poison. Exhumations confirm what the town couldn’t say out loud, and handwriting analysis tears the mask from a forged confession and a suspect will. Inside a crowded courtroom, the narrative widens to include gender, race, and power, as Georgia weighs the first execution of a white woman against its own history and ultimately declares the convicted murderer insane.

What emerges is more than a true crime timeline; it’s a study of how communities sense danger before they can name it, how charisma can disarm logic, and how forensic toxicology reshaped the way we understand domestic murder. Along the way, we ask uneasy questions: When does intuition become evidence? How do bias and reputation bend justice? And what does accountability look like when charm is the camouflage? If this story gripped you, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves Southern history and true crime, and leave a review to help more listeners find the porch light.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Southern Stage
• 4:10 Welcome To Anjette’s On Mulberry
• 5:45 Front Porch Tales And Warnings
• 6:55 Anjette’s Early Life And First Marriage
• 10:10 Death Of Ben And A Fresh Start
• 13:10 Reopening The Restaurant And Buddy
• 15:10 Whispers Of Candles And Conjure
• 16:40 Buddy’s Sudden Sickness And Death
• 18:20 Fame, Fortune, And Social Backlash
• 20:00 Julia Moves In And Tensions Rise
• 22:40 Julia’s Illness, Will, And Death
• 25:10 Rage At Home And Marcia’s Decline
• 27:30 Hospital Omens And Hallucinations

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

Small southern towns in the nineteen fifties were exactly as you might picture. Friendly people, a slower pace, and a kinder way of life. And you'd be right. Unless, of course, you looked in the corners and under the road. But that the communities were tight. Churches held up on every street. In every family. Relatives didn't live far away. It was as good as your work. And you weren't sure. Even though for the most part, Georgia is a perfect example. What a small 75 years ago. It's the seat of big family in the central Georgia. Macon and the surrounding area remain as pristine as when DeSoto discovered the area back in 1540. But the Americans changed all that. You see, this land originally belonged to the creek, but land-hungry Americans were eager to plow that land into cotton fields. In the 1950s, the population of Macon was about 70,000 people, and the area remained largely rural. In the 1800s, the city was the commercial hub of a productive agricultural region, and its fortunes were tied to a southern cotton culture that brought substantial wealth, and then war, then subsequent genteel poverty to the area. In 1941, the United States reluctantly entered World War II, and the Macon economy again boomed with military preparation and the money that inevitably comes with it. The city came into her own as an important stop along the rail line and the main center of trade in central Georgia. A small town that grew into a busy trade center. Many things changed, but one remained the same. And that was true of most small towns back then. The movers and shakers would meet, and they would talk and laugh and scheme in a gathering place. And in 1950s, Macon, that place was Angette's on Mulberry Street. On weekdays, white-collar workers, businessmen, lawyers, local politicians, would meet there for some fine southern cuisine and down home hospitality. And it didn't hurt, of course, that Anjette herself, the owner of the restaurant, was a beauty who dressed a little too flashy and was a little too friendly with the customers. In truth, the food at Anjette's wasn't the best, but there was just something about that woman. It was almost as if as if she had some delicious secrets. We begin in childhood, huddled around campfires, whispering of things best spoken in the dark, confiding in our small, trusting circles. Why is that, do you suppose? I have researched and investigated Southern history for more than twenty years, and I believe it has to do with this region itself. There's a lot that hangs in the ether here, and much that is buried deep in the soil. There's beauty here in the South, and shame, and courage. And make no mistake, there is evil. There's always been the element of the unexplained, the just out of reach, that we can all feel but can never quite describe. And the best place for telling tales about such things is the comfort and safety of an old front porch. So I invite you tonight to come up here with me, settle back into a chair and get comfortable. Pour yourself a drink if you like, and I'll share with you some of the tales best told in the company of friends. Tales that prove that truth really is stranger than fiction. And I'll turn on the light. You're gonna want that. I'm Carol Townsend. Welcome to my front porch. The following podcast contains material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Anjette Lyles was well known in Macon, having been born there in 1925 and having grown up there. She had been given the best education. Fellow students, however, seemed to remember Angette as being a charming, if rather manipulative, young woman. In 1947, she married Ben Lyles, a young man who, like so many, had fought in World War II. Ben's mother owned a restaurant, and in 1948, Angette went to work there to help her mother-in-law out. The extra money didn't hurt the young couple's household income, and as it turned out, Anjette had a knack for that kind of work. She was friendly and engaging, and when daughter Marcia was born, the baby became the darling of the restaurant. Angette's home life, however, was far from perfect. Ben had come home from the war with a nagging sore throat and fever, which grew to be rheumatic fever. The condition left him in terrible pain and unable to work. He was able to draw a veteran's pension, but his condition left him irritable and eventually drove him to drink heavily. He also picked up a gambling habit that forced his mother to sell the family restaurant in 1951 for a paltry$2,500. Angette, who had just given birth to their second daughter, was furious as Ben hadn't even discussed the move with her, and the couple began to argue often. To make matters worse, the Veterans Administration decided to cut Ben's pension to a tenth of what it had been, as he was finally deemed fit to work. Angette insisted that he find a job that paid well, and Ben, deep in his alcoholism and gambling habit, refused. Then in December 1951, as if to prove the veterans' administration wrong, Ben fell ill again. Doctors were baffled. Ben's illness wasn't a recurrence of rheumatic fever, that much was clear. The symptoms were different. He had nosebleeds and convulsions, and eventually he had to be hospitalized. In January, he slipped into a coma. Doctors decided that he had encephalitis, but by that time it was too late for effective treatment. Ben never regained consciousness, and he died on January 25th, 1952. As a result, Angette and her two young children were forced to move out of the small apartment that was their home and back into her parents' house. She soon got a job working at a new restaurant, and she spent the next few years learning all she could about the business. Determined and focused, Angette saved every penny she could with one single goal in mind: to buy back the Lyles Family restaurant. And in April 1955, she bought that very restaurant for$12,000, nearly five times what Ben sold it for just a few years earlier. Understandably, she reopened that restaurant under a new name, Anjett's. The young mother had learned a great deal about the restaurant business while working in other such establishments. One of the first things she did was to hire Ben's mother back to give the place some continuity. Within no time, Angette's was more popular than the Lyles family restaurant ever was. She hired a skilled and friendly staff, but make no mistake, Angette was the face of the new restaurant. With an airport nearby, the restaurant soon became popular with the pilots who flew in and out of Macon. One of those pilots was Joe Neil Cabbert, who everyone called Buddy. Buddy and Unjette immediately hit it off, and before long, the two were seeing each other. In June 1955, they announced that they were going on holiday, a trip to New Mexico and Texas. Imagine everyone's surprise when the couple returned to Macon married. The new marriage seemed to be a very happy one, even though the pair were still living in Anjette's parents' house. Of course, with Buddy being a pilot, he certainly couldn't laze at home drinking and gambling. He stayed gone and a lot. And as is to be expected in small southern towns, the gossips made a lot of Buddy's absences and Anjette's antics. She's having affairs, they would whisper, but then even more sinister accusations surfaced. She's conjuring, they accused. Was Anjette involved in magic and the dark arts? One woman claimed to have seen her whispering to a black candle, an act of the dark arts which is supposed to bring protection from evil or from consequences. Whatever the reason, such actions were considered highly scandalous in the South. Where did these accusations of magic and witchcraft come from, though? Some said they arose simply because Angette would drag friends and family members to see fortune tellers at local fairs. But others, including her own restaurant staff, whispered that they saw her lighting candles of different colors and whispering to them when she thought no one was around. Sometimes they said yes, she would whisper to a black candle. In October 1955, Buddy went into the hospital for a minor operation on his wrist. At first the procedure seemed to go well, but shortly after being discharged from the hospital, he developed a fever and a skin rash. Over the next few days, the fever worsened and the rash quickly spread all over his body. Angette insisted he go back to the hospital and he did, but doctors were confounded. Not knowing what his ailment was, there was no way they could come up with a treatment. Buddy died on December 2nd, and Anjette was a widow again. Doctors were eager to perform an autopsy to find out just exactly what had killed him, but Angette refused. She said Buddy wouldn't want to be cut up into pieces after his death. Well, needless to say, Angette's suspicious behavior raised more than a few Macon eyebrows. To make matters worse, within a few months she had changed her surname from Gabbbert back to Lyle's, and she had started dating another handsome young pilot. Angette was also the beneficiary of Buddy's rather hefty life insurance policy. With that money, she finally bought a house for her and her girls. She also bought herself a fancy sports car, and let me tell you, that move did not go over well with the respectable ladies of Macon. Of course, Anjette couldn't have cared less. In time, Julia, who was Anjette's mother-in-law, moved in with her, taking care of her grandchildren while Anjette worked her magic at the restaurant. The arrangement worked out very well. Anjette was able to rub elbows with Macon's movers and shakers, and Julia was able to spend time with her beloved grandchildren. In time, though, the pair's relationship became strained. It seems that Julia, having a tough time facing her own mortality, refused to have a will made. This might sound like an odd reason for a mother and daughter-in-law to be at odds, but consider this. Julia had just one other son, Joseph. And Jette was concerned that if Julia died into state, Joseph would inherit everything she had. Imagine Ann Jet's concern then when in 1957 Julia fell ill. At first, it seemed that she just had a summer cold, but when she started vomiting blood, she had to be hospitalized. Her daughter-in-law remained by her side, visiting her often and bringing her some of her favorite dishes from the restaurant. Secretly, Angette didn't believe that Julia would survive the mystery illness, and she would be right because Julia died on September 29th, 1957. As luck would have it, Angette was able to produce Julia's will shortly after her passing. The documents showed that Julia had left one-third of her estate to her son Joseph, one-third to Anjette, and one third to her granddaughters. Julia's entire estate amounted to about$11,000, which was a considerable amount of money back in 1957. Perhaps that's why Angette didn't seem overly emotional about the loss of her loved one. Still, the ever-watchful and judgmental eyes of Macon stayed on Anjette. Something just didn't seem right about that woman and her flashy, flirty ways. It was positively scandalous the way she was behaving. Some thought the gossipy Maconites could have been wrong about Angette. She did seem troubled after losing both her husband and her mother-in-law. She would have terrible outbursts of anger, and they were usually directed toward her daughter Marcia. She would scream at the young girl, berating her and telling her how much she looked like her father, a fact that Anjette hated. Sometimes she would even threaten to kill her, her own child. Carla, Marsha's sister, would try to intervene and calm her mother, but she was rarely able to do so. In March of 1958, it seemed that all the stress and sadness young Marcia had endured finally caught up with the poor girl. One day, while working in the restaurant, Marcia began coughing and complaining of a headache. Her mother gave her the usual country remedy for a sick child, which was a spoonful of whiskey and some sugar. But instead of calming the cough and the headache, Marcia began vomiting and then Jette took her home. But just a few days later, the poor girl was hospitalized. The ominous coincidence was that Marcia was placed in the same hospital room that her father, her stepfather, and her grandmother occupied before they died. Perhaps because of this very omen, Anjette seemed convinced that Marcia would surely die. She brought her daughter fruit drinks and tea in the hopes that these would ease the child's discomfort. Instead, they seemed to make matters worse. It was around this time that people began to get suspicious of Anjette and her uncanny streak of bad luck. Those suspicions were stoked when Marcia had been in the hospital for about three weeks, and Angette began making funeral arrangements for her while she was still alive. When Marcia's condition improved dramatically for a brief spell, the rally didn't last long. Her kidneys began to fail, and she began having hallucinations. Sweating and writhing in pain, Marcia would beg to be protected from beasts that were chasing her, insects attacking her, and worms crawling out of her fingers. Of course, doctors and nurses found the child's hallucinations and other sufferings quite disturbing. When Anjette laughed at her child's fear and delusion, she explained her bizarre behavior as being simple nervous laughter. Marcia's caregivers, however, found it to be inappropriate and very incriminating. Marcia Lyles died on April 5th, her mother by her bedside. An autopsy was conducted, but no cause. Of death could be identified. A few days after the autopsy was performed, the coroner received an anonymous letter. Later, detectives learned that the letter was sent by one of Anjette's restaurant employees. It seems that this woman had been speaking with Angette's maid, who said that she saw that Anjette kept ant poison in the house. Angette explained that she kept the poison handy at home because of an ant infestation at the restaurant. Restaurant employees knew that there had been no such infestation. This knowledge, combined with Anjette's inappropriate behavior at her dying child's bedside, prompted the restaurant employee to write the letter to the coroner. Well, the coroner went right out and purchased a bottle of the same ant poison that Angette had in her home, and he noticed right away that one of the ingredients was arsenic. The man knew that arsenic poisoning could cause the very symptoms poor Marcia had suffered. He sent the bottle of poison along with the sample of Marsha's hair and kidneys off to the state lab for investigation, and he called her mother right away. He told her that he worried that Marsha had accidentally ingested ant poison while she was at home. Concerned, Angette brought along a bottle of the poison, her daughter Carla, along with her, to discuss the matter. Carla told the doctor a story about how she, Marcia, and two other children were playing doctor and dosing each other with quote medicine. That medicine was ant poison. The coroner remembered that Carla's story sounded rehearsed, but other than that, the child's story seemed plausible. Concerned, the doctor told Angette that she should call the mothers of the other two children and warn them to watch for symptoms of arsenic poisoning. While still in his office, Anjette looked up a name in the phone book, called the number, and told the person on the other end of the line about the incident. Later, the mother of the two girls said she never received such a phone call. In fact, her name wasn't even listed in the phone book. Suspicious indeed. As luck would have it, Angette herself was hospitalized shortly after her daughter's untimely death. She had an inflamed varicose vein and was in a great deal of pain. It was when she was leaving the hospital in a wheelchair that she was arraigned on four counts of murder for both of her husbands, her mother-in-law Julia Lyles, and her own child. Now, Angette was only indicted for trial for the murder of Marcia, but the arraignment allowed the prosecution to bring in evidence of the other three murders. They did this to prove that Angette had a deliberate system of killing. You can imagine the frenzy that Angette's arrest caused in Macon and across the state of Georgia. A glamorous platinum-haired widow. Murder. And listen to this: when the police searched her house, they found books about voodoo and magic and the assorted paraphernalia that go along with it. And then there were the stories about her whispering to flaming black candles. All of this was delectably juicy to the press who swarmed the courthouse for trial. In October 1958, onlookers stood in line to get a glimpse of the dazzling Black Widow blonde. Now, arsenic is a very effective poison. Unfortunately for Anjette, it is a metallic element, so it leaves a footprint. It can be found in a human corpse long after death. Julia, Buddy, and Ben had all been exhumed, and all three victims had traces of arsenic in their bodies. Samples from Marsha's autopsy also contained arsenic. The prosecutor even thought to be proactive and counter the argument that arsenic could have been introduced during the embalming process. It was not possible, according to the local undertaker. Angette's defense attorneys presented the argument that Julia poisoned Marcia and the other two victims. Supposedly Julia had made this claim in a suicide letter found by Anjette's maid. This defense was deflated, however, when that same maid testified for the prosecution, saying that Anjette had tried to coerce her into claiming to have found the letter, which was proven to be a forgery. And that discovery led to a more serious matter. Analysts proved that the same person who forged that letter also forged the signature on the will that Julia finally had prepared right before her death. With the letter of confession undercut so thoroughly, Angette then claimed that Ben simply drank himself to death. These were weak claims that couldn't be substantiated, so it's no surprise that the jury took just one hour to convict the glamorous murderess. Of course, Anjette's attorneys appealed the conviction, but the appeals failed. She was sent to Reidsville State Prison to live on death row. Now, Governor Ernest Vander granted Anjette a stay of execution. Why? Well, you see, Anjette would have been the first white woman executed in Georgia history. There were those who just weren't willing to cross that line. Even though thirteen years earlier, Lena Baker was executed for killing a man who had held her as a sex slave. She killed him in self-defense, she said, when he tried to murder her. She was black, you see, and the man was white. That was also a line that people weren't willing to cross. The question remained, what to do with Anjette Lyles? Governor Vandever appointed a sanity commission to examine the convicted murderer, and they decided that she was schizophrenic and therefore couldn't be put to death by the state. Anjette was then transferred to Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she would live for the next 18 years. She was rather popular with other prisoners as she would tell their fortunes using a deck of plain playing cards. And in an ironic twist, Anjette became the cook for the criminally insane women at Central State Hospital. Anjette Lyles died of a heart attack in 1977 at age 52. In another rather strange twist of fate, she was not buried on the grounds of the hospital, as were other deceased inmates, but rather she was interred in the family plot in Wadley, Georgia, right alongside the bones of Ben and Marcia, whom she had poisoned. It seems that death truly is the great equalizer. I'm Carol Townsend, veteran newspaper journalist and six-time award-winning author. You can find me on social media and check out my website at Carol Townsend.com. As always, thanks for listening, and if you're enjoying these tales of Southern history and lore, I hope you'll tell your friends. Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Play, iHeart, and anywhere you listen. The book Whispered to the Black Candle by Jacqueline Weldon White.