
Hazle's parents were hard-scrabble farmers that eked out an existence from the rural countryside of Blue Mountain, just north of Anniston. James Hazle, the hot-tempered, allegedly abusive man that helped rear her, most probably was not Nancy's biological father.
Born in 1906, she was going by "Nannie" by the time she was five, according to her CourtTV Crime Library profile. She and her younger siblings received only sporadic schooling, as James frequently used them to work the fields. At seven, Nannie suffered a head injury that plagued her for life and, she said, eventually contributed to her murderous impulses.