Sun, Birds, Gentle Breeze And A Serial Killer's Twin Falls' Grave

I'm incredibly fascinated with all things macabre. or having to deal with the afterlife. That's what led me Wednesday during my lunch hour to attempt to locate the Twin Falls' final resting place of one of America's first known serial murderers.

Maybe my childhood has something to do with this obsession of mine. You see, I've lived with a ghost, or at least that's what my mother and father explained to me when I was old enough to calmly accept such unexpected news. As the story goes, my hard-drinking, hard-disciplining, unsubtle, Italian "Grandpa Nick" (father's dad) used to visit my childhood Santa Ana home quite frequently.

From the television room on the second story of the house, the front door could be heard opening up late at night, followed by the sounds of keys landing on the kitchen table, which was Nick's nightly routine just prior to pouring himself a glass of red wine. My brother, who's five years older than me, remembers hearing the sounds, which would then inspire us to spend the night upstairs.

Over the years in Twin Falls, the name Lyda Southard has come up in conversations I've had with locals. I visited the Idaho State Penitentiary in 2019, and remember reading about the woman known as "The Black Widow," who was sentenced to 10 years there for the deaths of a couple of husbands and family members, according to historichorrors.com.

Although Southard died in Salt Lake City in 1958, her body was buried at the Twin Falls Cemetery. I passed by the area that the Internet told me was her plot number (441), but couldn't locate it. The older, flat, grave markings are heavily faded, but I'm quite sure I was in the general vicinity of Idaho's most notorious female serial killer's burial site.

It made for a rather nice lunch break in case you're wondering. My hats off to the ground's keepers at the Twin Falls Cemetery. I could see myself quite dead there.