Dorothy Jean Matajke
- Victims
- 3 - the exact conviction structure is not established by accessible sourcing. The status of record is life imprisonment plus sixty years, which indicates ONE conviction carrying life and TWO FURTHER COUNTS carrying thirty years each, but no source consulted states whether the two lesser counts were murder, manslaughter or theft. All three deaths were certified at the time as natural, and the arsenic was established only after the third
- Years active
- April 5, 1985 / September 19, 1986 / February 20, 1987
- Location
- Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, USA
- Method
- Poisoning (arsenic)
- Status
- Arrested in 1987 after the third death and convicted the same year in Pulaski County, receiving life imprisonment plus sixty years on two further counts. THE COUNTS THEMSELVES ARE NOT ESTABLISHED by accessible sourcing: the sentence structure indicates one count carrying life and two carrying thirty years each, but no source consulted states what the two lesser counts were. All three deaths had been certified as natural causes at the time, consistent with the ages and frailty of the people who died, and the poisoning was established only after the third.
Matajke was born in 1930 and came from Nevada, Iowa. She presented herself as a nurse and took live-in positions caring for elderly people in the Little Rock area of Arkansas.
Three of her clients died: Opal Marie Kinsey, seventy, in April 1985; Marian Doyle, seventy-four, in September 1986; and Paul Calvin Kinsey, seventy-one, in February 1987. All were poisoned with arsenic. She took cash, cheques and property from each household, and the deaths were recorded as the failing of already frail people.
She was arrested after the third death and convicted in 1987, receiving life imprisonment plus sixty years on two further counts.
The mechanism is the one this archive records repeatedly in the carer cases: an unqualified woman moved into the homes of frail elderly people, was trusted with everything including their medicines, and their deaths were expected. The accessible sourcing is Arkansas press reporting and summary entries.