Marybeth Tinning was born on September 11, 1942 in Duanesburg, New York. She was an average student at Duanesburgh High School and ended up being a nursing assistant at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady, New York. She met Joe Tilling on a blind date in 1963 and married him in 1965. Her father died of a sudden heart attack in October 1971 and a seried of tragic events for the Tinnings began.
She is notorious for killing several of her nine children by somehow strangling them then taking them to the hospital to late for them to do anything about it. The doctors thought it was genetic disease and called it the "death gene" after the Tinnings lost five children in five years. After her first child died, family and friends remembered the funeral as more of a social event then a funeral and said Marybeth wanted to be the center of attention. They all started to suspect something because Marybeth was never really that upset at the funerals. She would get upset if she wouldnt get any attentions at the funerals of her other children. During the years she lost her children, her and her husband were not getting along that well. Marybeth put some pills she got from a friend with an epileptic child in Joe's grape juice who rushed to the hospital beacuse of a near fatal dose of barbiturate poisoning. After losing their children, they though adoption would be a better choice. Afer their eighth child died, Marybeth was paranoid about what people were saying about her so her and her husband decided to move.