The mask: “church lady,” daycare operator, trusted neighbor In Cordele, Georgia, Janie Lou Gibbs blended into the safest kind of small-town scenery: a mother, a churchgoing woman, and a caregiver who ran a daycare. People trusted her—because everything about her life looked ordinary, even admirable. That’s what makes this case so chilling for true crime listeners: the danger didn’t arrive from outside the home. It lived at the center of it. Between 1966 and 1967 , multiple