1930s Romania may not have been a paradise for most people, but for a young Bucharest actress named Tita Cristescu, life was pretty darned good.  She was well-connected (her father, Gheorghe Cristescu, was a prominent figure in Romanian politics,) she had a successful theatrical career, and was pretty enough to be named “Miss Romania” of 1933.  Tita was engaged to be married to Hotta Cuza, a young Romanian diplomat.  She seemed perfectly happy, and was full of hope for the future.

One January night in 1936, Tita’s parents came over to her apartment for dinner, leaving about 11:30 p.m.  After her parents left, Tita told her maid, Maria, to go to bed.  As she spoke, she took a capsule from a box and swallowed it.  Maria assumed it was one of the “reducing capsules” Tita took every night.  Maria went to bed, but was awakened half and hour later by Tita’s sister, Mrs. Mikai Gregorian.  Mrs. Gregorian, her voice shaking with fear, told the maid, “Get a doctor, at once.  Tita is very ill.”

Maria hurried from the apartment, but by the time she returned with a physician, Tita was dead.  Mrs. Gregorian told the doctor that, while passing by the apartment building, she noticed that her sister’s light was still on, so dropped by for a brief visit.  Tita was wearing a negligee, and was in her usual high spirits.  However, after chatting for a few minutes, Tita suddenly went silent and stared ahead blankly.  She fell onto a chair and said, “Get me a glass of water.  Something is going on inside me.  I am thirsty all of a sudden and I have a dreadful taste in my mouth which is queer because I have just brushed my teeth.”

She gulped down the water, but then dropped the glass.  She turned very pale and gasped, “I am going to be awfully sick.  Get a doctor.”  By the time Mrs. Gregorian awakened Maria, Tita had fallen unconscious.  Several minutes later, she died.

When the police heard all this, their assumption was that, despite Tita’s seemingly ideal life, the young woman had committed suicide.  Actresses, they nodded sagely, were notoriously unstable, and beauty queens were the worst of the lot.  Besides, who would want to kill her? When the autopsy revealed Tita had died from cyanide poisoning, the authorities believed it was “case closed.”  They were ready to label the death as a tragic self-poisoning, and move on.

Tita’s parents were outraged at this verdict.  They were convinced their daughter had been murdered, and they even had what they believed to be an obvious suspect: a wealthy engineer named Liviu Ciulley.  Ciulley, they declared, had been in love with Tita, and was maddened with jealousy over her plans to marry another man.  Police scoffed at this theory.  They pointed out that Ciulley had been married for ten years, and had shown no signs of wanting a divorce.  Gheorghe Cristescu was unpopular among many circles--a contemporary newspaper described him as “a socialist demagogue of the most radical and spectacular sort”--so few people took his claims seriously.  However, the sudden and mysterious death of a beautiful young actress was like catnip to the newspapers.  Tita’s demise became a genuine public scandal.

The publicity forced the authorities to reopen the case, which included questioning Liviu Ciulley.  Ciulley told police that for five years, he and Tita had a secret affair, but more than a year ago, he became tired of the her and broke off their relationship.  He added that in recent times, Tita had financial problems, and was always pestering him for loans.  As a result of this harassment, he was positively relieved to hear of her marriage plans.  Furthermore, he could prove that for more than a week before Tita’s death, he had been with his family in Sinaia, a considerable distance from Bucharest.

Ciulley seemed sincere, and police were able to confirm his alibi.  However, investigators also turned up something that seemed to contradict the suicide theory: The night Tita died, she had asked the daughter of her apartment building’s janitor to wake her very early the next morning, as she had a lot of shopping to do.  The police were not yet convinced of Ciulley’s innocence.

A search of Ciulley’s apartment found nothing incriminating.  When police visited the home and office of his brother, a doctor named Alexandra Ciulley, they initially saw nothing suspicious there, either.  Then, a particularly snoopy detective found a glass syringe hidden under a sheaf of bills.

The detective noted that when he found the syringe, a look of fear suddenly crossed Dr. Ciulley’s face.  “What did you hide that for?” the detective asked.  The doctor hesitated, but after a bit of pressing, said that a month before, he had loaned a syringe to his brother, because Liviu said he needed to give injections to his children, who were suffering from sore throats.  Alexandra continued, “When I heard that my brother was charged with having poisoned the actress, I got frightened.  I knew that he was madly in love with Tita Critescu, and I had a terrible suspicion that he might, in point of fact, have committed the murder.  I was afraid that if the police found the syringe in his flat, they might feel justified in their suspicion that my unfortunate brother had injected the poison into the girl’s reducing capsules and would consider the syringe as decisive proof.  I wanted to remove it before the police found it, and on Friday, January 10, I went to my brother’s flat to hide the syringe somehow.”

Alexandra said that when he went to Liviu’s flat, his brother was not there.  He found the syringe in the nursery, but he didn’t know what to do with it.  He finally threw some parts of the syringe down a narrow street, keeping only the glass cylinder.  Detectives went to the place where Alexandra said he had thrown the items, and sure enough, there they were.  When police confronted Liviu, he calmly replied, “My brother is a fool, trying to destroy evidence that is not evidence or I would have destroyed it myself.”  However, after further interrogation, he was forced to admit that he had lied when he said he no longer cared for Tita.  Things became even worse for Liviu when they found witnesses who asserted that the morning before Tita died, he had made a quick trip to Bucharest.  The following day, after the news of Tita’s death hit the papers, Liviu wanted to visit her apartment, but his wife, who knew of his affair with the actress, went into such hysterics at the idea that she threatened to shoot herself.  (I would have thought that her husband would have been the one she wanted to pump full of bullets, but I digress.)

Police assumed that Liviu had wanted to go to Tita’s flat in order to remove something incriminating, but what?  If the “reducing capsule” had been poisoned, Tita had taken the last one in the box.  Then, it occurred to them that right before she died, Tita mentioned that she had just brushed her teeth.  A second, more careful autopsy revealed that her gums were deeply impregnated with cyanide.  Traces of the poison were found on her toothbrush, and her half-empty tube of toothpaste contained a massive dose of it.

The question of how Tita died was finally answered.  Someone had taken off the cap of toothpaste, used a syringe to squirt a fatal dose of cyanide into the tube, and replaced the cap.  

Unfortunately, the question of who did this dreadful deed was not solved so easily.  Liviu Ciulley was put on trial for murder, but although his actions were certainly suspicious, prosecutors were unable to bring an airtight case against him.  Under oath, his servants denied that he had left his house before Tita’s death.  The jury brought in a verdict of “Not guilty.”

After Ciulley’s acquittal, the police half-heartedly continued their investigation for a time before admitting defeat and placing Tita’s poisoning into the cold case file.  The mystery is still discussed in Romanian true-crime circles--in recent years, rumors have emerged that Tita’s maid, Maria, poisoned her employer out of jealousy—but the young actress’s peculiar murder remains as murky as ever.

Most poisoning cases--particularly serial poisonings--can be unusually murky and confusing crimes, particularly if no obvious motive is found.  A particularly stellar example is the following case, which, while nearly forgotten today, was a justifiably famous mystery in its time.

Our toxic little tale opens in the fall of 1914, in the ostensibly peaceful area of Owen County, Indiana.  Charles Surber, who was running for the job of Owen County recorder, received in the mail a sample of a substance labeled as quinine.  There was no name on the typewritten return address, just a location in Indianapolis.  Surber took some of the “quinine,” and instantly regretted it.  He fell horribly ill, but, fortunately, managed to pull through.  Tests showed strychnine in his system.  When his anonymous gift was analyzed, it was found that the quinine had been heavily doctored with the poison.  Although the poisoner was never identified, Surber believed the culprit was the same anonymous person who had been circulating typewritten letters accusing him of being unfit to serve as county recorder.  When the election for recorder was held a month later, Surber beat out his opponent--48-year-old Francis Drescher, the acting coroner for Owen County--and went on with his life.

Other county residents were not so fortunate.  Over the next seven months, a number of other Owen County residents received similar anonymous samples of “quinine” sent from Indianapolis.  Those unlucky enough to partake of these samples all felt the dreadful effects of strychnine poisoning.  Several of them died.  Owen County had a serial poisoner on their hands.  But who was sending these seemingly random packets of death, and why?

On the evening of June 2, 1915, Francis Drescher sent his two children, 15-year-old Mary and Francis Jr., 12, to the movies.  That left him temporarily alone in the house, as his wife Estella was visiting relatives.  When Estella returned home around 8 p.m., she found Francis lying face-down in the library, quite dead.  On an end table was a note in Francis’ handwriting which began, “I ate a radish and my heart has broken.  It hurts me today.  Pocketbook.  Goodbye, mom and children.”  

Although trace amounts of strychnine were found in Francis’ blood, the cause of his death remained uncertain.  The autopsy found no strychnine in his stomach, which led to the theory that Francis had injected himself with the poison.  However, no needle was found near his body.  Public opinion remained convinced that he had somehow committed suicide, particularly after it was revealed that the coroner had secretly been the prime suspect in the “poison by mail” crimes.  In fact, just before Francis died, a post office inspector had arrived in Owen County in order to question him about the matter.  The general assumption was that Francis had somehow learned of this, and resolved to “cheat the hangman.”  Drescher’s family, however, noted that he had suffered a bad bout of food poisoning shortly before his death, which they believed brought on heart failure.

"Indianapolis Star," June 4, 1915, via Newspapers.com

The accusation that Drescher had been a human viper was strengthened when it came out that there was a long history of people unaccountably dropping dead around the genial coroner.  In September 1906, a young woman named Maude Clark, who worked as a nanny and maid for the Drescher family, suddenly went into convulsions and died in front of Francis--in fact, she expired with one hand clutching the hem of his pants.  Although O.F. Grey, the doctor who was summoned to the scene, immediately suspected poisoning, Francis convinced the coroner at the time, Dr. O.G. Richards, that an autopsy was unnecessary.  He explained that the girl was often depressed, and undoubtedly committed suicide.  Why publicize such sad details?

Soon after Maude’s mysterious death, Dr. Grey and his family ate their usual breakfast, after which they all became dangerously, although not fatally, sick.  A large amount of strychnine was later found in their sugar bowl.  Although Grey hired private investigators to find the person who tried to wipe out his entire family, the culprit was never identified.

In 1911, R.H. Richards, the Owen County treasurer, sent a deputy to collect some money Drescher owed the city.  Soon after that, Richards collapsed.  He had a very bad couple of days, but eventually recovered.  Doctors confirmed he had been poisoned, but, again, the would-be murderer remained unknown.

In June 1912, one Frank Mason became ill, and was placed in the local Odd Fellows Lodge.  Among the people who helped treat him was Francis Drescher, who was by then the acting coroner.  When Mason’s condition took a sudden, dramatic turn for the worse, Dr. Grey was called in.  Although Mason was having trouble speaking, he managed to gasp out to Grey, “I’m poisoned, Doc, quick, get it out of me.”  And then he died.

A small packet of strychnine was found in Mason’s room.  Drescher ruled that the man had obviously committed suicide, and that was that.

Six months later, a young Owen County woman named Alice McHenry came down with a headache, and took some quinine which she had recently received in the mail from some anonymous benefactor.  Soon afterwards, Alice went into convulsions, and died within the hour.  When Coroner Drescher arrived on the scene, he stated that Alice had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.   Nothing to see here, move on.

One day in 1913, a traveling salesman named D.H. Johnson staggered into an Owen County hardware story asking for help.  He then fell to the floor and died in convulsions.  Francis, who happened to be nearby at the time--how convenient!--said the poor man died of heart failure.

After Francis’ death, an Owen County widow, Mrs. Strouse, went to the police with an unsettling story.  After her husband had suddenly and mysteriously died in 1914, Francis--who had conducted the man’s funeral--asked her if she lived alone.  A few days later, she received in the mail a sample of quinine.  After the “medicine” made her dreadfully ill, she brought the rest of the quinine to authorities, who found that it contained strychnine.

Owen County’s impressive body count continued.  In June 1914, one Thomas Karns died suddenly in his home.  Although he had been in perfect health and had no history of heart trouble, Coroner Drescher ruled he died of “mitral valve insufficiency.”  Within that same period of time, at least seven other county residents inexplicably dropped dead.  Drescher ruled all of these deaths were due to “heart failure.”  He took to immediately embalming the bodies before anyone had time to request an autopsy.

All of this made the late Mr. Drescher look like quite the busy Death Angel.  However, no solid evidence was ever found tying him to all these bizarre and quite untimely deaths.  The only possible motive anyone had come up with for him to turn mass poisoner was that, as an undertaker, he wished to drum up business!  And for those convinced of Drescher’s guilt, there was the inconvenient fact that well after he died, at least three more Owen County residents were mysteriously poisoned with strychnine.  Additionally, at least some of the poisoned quinine had been sent from Indianapolis at times when Drescher was indisputably at home.

Despite all these lingering questions, after Drescher’s highly suspicious death, local authorities found it convenient to just let their investigations quietly fizzle, leaving a remarkable true-crime muddle behind them.

Mary Nicholson was an orphan.  Strike One.  She was penniless.  Strike Two.  She was of limited intelligence, being described as "of very weak intellect."  In eighteenth century England, all of this generally amounted to "Strike Three, and you're out!"

Mary, however, at first seemed an exception to this grim rule.  She was given a position as a servant in the household of John Atkinson, a farmer in the village of Little Stainton.  The family was a prosperous and respectable one, and Mary proved to be a gentle-natured, industrious, and honest worker.  To any outside observer, all would appear to be very well.

The Atkinson household, unfortunately, harbored a very dark secret.  It later emerged that the head of the house had taken advantage of Mary's powerlessness by taking "great liberties" and behaving "very cruelly to her."  (It does not take much imagination to guess what these "liberties" might have been.)

Mary had no choice but to submit to Atkinson's abuse, and both of them knew it.  Someone in her position simply did not have the option of handing in her notice and finding work elsewhere.  Go to the local authorities?  What were the chances that they would take the side of a friendless servant over a leading member of the community?  And even if they did, the likely result would still be that Mary would find herself homeless and jobless, with few, if any, options.

After years of this emotional and physical abuse, something snapped in the mind of this hitherto exemplary young woman.  In April 1798, Mary went to Darlington to buy supplies for the household.  Unbeknownst to everyone in the Atkinson household, she also bought something not on her shopping list: a quantity of arsenic powder.  She told the shopkeepers it was needed for washing sheep.

When Mary returned home, she added the arsenic to the flour used to make puddings for John Atkinson--it was his favorite dish, and she knew he commonly asked for one to be prepared when his daily work around the farm was over.  However, on this particular day--just proving that some people have the devil's own luck--Atkinson lost his taste for pudding.  He said he was not hungry, and went straight to bed.

Rather than let the flour go unused, Atkinson's mother, Elizabeth, used it to bake a cake, which was shared by the family at dinner-time.  They all quickly became deathly ill.  The family doctor was able to save the lives of four of them, but Elizabeth Atkinson died two weeks later.

Nicholson was horrified by the dreadful way her murderous little plot had backfired.  She naively confessed to at least three people that she had poisoned the flour, with the intention of punishing John Atkinson for the many "bad deeds" she had suffered at his hands.  Naturally, the Atkinsons had little trouble ascertaining who was responsible for the tragic event.  However, John settled for telling Mary that if she left Little Stainton and never came back, the family would not pursue any charges against her.  (This ready willingness to ignore his mother's murder in return for Mary's silence says much about what the Atkinson patriarch must have done to her.)

Mary may have had her freedom, but there was little she could do with it.  Nicholson literally had no idea where to go or what to do.  For some days, she aimlessly wandered the countryside, surviving by begging or scavenging what food she could.  A Newfield family named Ord finally offered the starving, desperate girl shelter, but when they had heard her story, they insisted that she return to Little Stainton and face the music.  Feeling she had no other choice, Nicholson went back to the Atkinson home and begged for mercy.  They responded by having her arrested.

In the summer of 1798, Nicholson stood trial for murder at the Durham City assizes.  It was hard to imagine a more open-and-shut poisoning case than this one, leaving the jury no options other than to find Mary guilty and sentence her to death.  All very neat and tidy.

All that saved Nicholson from an immediate visit to the gallows was an irregularity in the official indictment.  Mary was charged with intentionally plotting to murder not John Atkinson, but the actual victim, Elizabeth.  This clearly was not the case.  Mary may have freely confessed to poisoning the flour with the expectation that it would kill John, but her actions ended there.  Nicholson had no intention of murdering anyone else in the household, and it was Elizabeth herself who prepared and served the fatal loaf of bread.  It could be argued that Elizabeth Atkinson's death was not premeditated murder, but an appallingly unlucky accident.  In short, a strong legal argument could be made for having the indictment thrown out of court, and the guilty verdict reversed.

Nicholson had no legal representative to make this case for her.  However, her sad story had won her a lot of sympathy, and court officials felt uneasy sending this pitiful girl to her death on dodgy legal grounds.  Her case was kicked upstairs to the Common Law Courts in Westminster to see what these judges made of the matter.

It was known that it would take weeks, probably months, for this higher court to make its ruling on Mary's fate.  In the meantime, Nicholson remained in custody in Durham's prison.

Durham prison, circa 1750

Ironically enough, this turned out to be possibly the happiest time in Mary's life. Her jailer became so fond of the unfortunate girl that he eventually entrusted her with the position of unofficial housekeeper for his family.  She soon impressed the household as amiable, capable and trustworthy.  Eventually, she was given the freedom to run errands throughout the city.  Her many dealings with Durham tradesmen and shopkeepers made her a well-known and popular figure throughout the town.  Mary never made any attempts to escape, and was evidently completely willing to accept her fate--whatever it might be.  The "Caledonian Mercury" reported that she behaved with "the utmost penitence and devotion."

Mary's legal limbo lasted for a full year, until the town's Summer Assizes met again.  The final ruling on Mary's case was the first one before the presiding judge.  The justices of the Common Law Courts had made their decision: Imperfect indictment be damned, Mary was to hang at Framwellgate Moor on the following week, July 22, 1799.

Durham was horrified, and not a little surprised, by this draconian verdict.  No one who knew Mary wanted to see her die.  However, there was no arguing with this higher court: if Westminster said Nicholson must be hanged, hanged she would be, no matter what anyone had to say about the matter.

On the morning of the 22nd, a large crowd gathered around the gallows, not to gawk, or mock, as was generally the case with public executions, but to show what support they could for a young woman they believed was being unjustly put to death.  Mary made a sad, but dignified farewell to her friends.  The last rites were read, the noose put about her neck, and Nicholson was left to hang.

Then something shocking happened.  The rope around her neck suddenly snapped, leaving the still-living woman to fall to the ground.  Everyone there thought this was as clear an example of divine intervention as one could ever hope to see.  They did not want Mary hanged, and now it was looking as if God opposed her execution, as well.

After conferring with each other over this unexpected development, the authorities present decided they had no choice but to carry on with execution.  Someone was sent back to the city to get another rope.  During the hour or so of waiting for this messenger of death to return, Mary, surrounded by her weeping friends, "prayed fervently" and remained calm.  She may have thought that, after all, there were worse things than the gallows: namely, the household of John Atkinson.

The replacement rope arrived, and the macabre performance was re-enacted.  Once again, Mary took her place on the cart and the rope was replaced on her neck.  The cart was pulled out from under her, and within a few minutes, Mary Nicholson's earthly sufferings were finally at an end.   The "Ipswich Journal" reported that the prisoner was "launched into eternity amidst the shrieks and cries of the surrounding spectators."  She would be the last woman hanged in the county of Durham.

Meanwhile, the real villain of our piece, John Atkinson, was left to live out his natural life, as free as a bird to strike terror into the hearts of other servant girls.

Just another day in this strange world of ours.

Via Newspapers.com

When someone dies in mysterious and sinister circumstances, you often see a ghost story in its wake.  For example, I present this story from the “Brooklyn Eagle,” September 3, 1878:

The usually placid town of Gravesend is in a foment of excitement in consequence of an apparition to horrify the boldest and hardiest of men.

The mysterious and sensational occurrence has for several days been the subject of much discussion and speculation. On the night of Friday last, shortly after 10 o'clock, Bartlett McGettrick, a flagman employed by the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad Company at the crossing near the Gravesend Town Hall, was startled by bearing his name called by a female voice. He started in the direction whence the sound proceeded. It led him toward the residence of the late Mrs. Maria L. Hubbard, who was mysteriously poisoned with strychnine several months ago. Only the stars were visible in the dark sky at the time; the place was lonely and deserted, and the flagman made his way cautiously over the railroad track. The house where Mrs. Hubbard lived and died is a neat frame cottage, two stories in height, with a deep porch and broad piazza, Tree embowered and surrounded by clinging vines, shooting creepers and rustic flower beds, it is altogether a pleasant place. 

As the watchman approached the house he discovered in the dim starlight a female form on the piazza.  Glancing closely at the woman, the horrified watchman discovered that the face and figure were those of Mrs. Maria L. Hubbard. Form and feature were both familiar to the trembling McGettrick; he had known her in life and had followed her body to the grave in the little village churchyard. The house of the deceased woman being near the crossing where McGettrick is stationed, he had frequent opportunities to converse with her, and it is supposed that she in some measure confided to him the story of her domestic troubles. 

When the flagman saw Mrs. Hubbard's apparition he was frightened almost out of his wits. He is a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church and he fell upon his knees, crossed himself and uttered a hasty prayer. According to his own story, Mrs. Hubbard called him again when he arose from the sidewalk, and with a sweeping gesture, beckoned him toward her. With ashen lips and trembling knees, he obeyed the ghostly summons.

Getting nearer the ghost, he saw that she wore the calico wrapper that Mrs. Hubbard was in the habit of using every morning. There was no doubt in the mind of the flagman that the poisoned woman's spirit was before him. She accosted him in a hollow but kindly voice.  McGetttrick was so smitten with fear that he hardly dared look at the ghost.

He says that supernatural light gleamed from her eyes and that her face was as pale as death, while the habiliments of the grave were near her on the piazza, as though had just escaped from the sepulture. McGettrick says that Mrs. Hubbard inquired about his health and asked him some questions concerning the death of a dog a few weeks ago. She is believed to have intimated that the dog was poisoned. She had some further conversation with the flagman, the details of which he absolutely refuses to divulge.  He says that he will tell the story at the proper time, and that when he does divulge the secrets of the conversation some startling revelations may be expected. 

While McGettrick was conversing with Mrs. Hubbard, ex-Justice of the Sessions Andrew McKibben, and a barber named Bauer, who lives nearby, were passing the house. They saw the ghost of Mrs. Hubbard and heard part of the conversation. Suddenly, as they drew nearer, the apparition seemed alarmed, resumed the grave clothes, and vanished in a cloud of blue smoke. This is the story told by McGettrick, and is corroborated by the testimony of McKibben and Bauer.

Some of the Gravesend people are inclined to believe that there was something supernatural and portentous in the apparition of Mrs. Hubbard, and that new developments may possibly occur in the case. McGettrick, as might be expected, was greatly alarmed. He has not the least doubt that the ghost was that of Mrs. Hubbard. Early yesterday morning he arose and went to church. He heard mass, confessed his sins, and obtained some holy water. He is in great trepidation lest the spectre return any night and carry him off.

Although there was a great deal of justified suspicion directed against Mrs. Hubbard’s husband, her murder was never officially solved.  I’ve been unable to learn if McGettrick ever revealed the “secrets of the conversation” he had with the obviously restless spirit.

When someone is murdered by poison, it can often be difficult to determine who was responsible for the fatal dose, but at least investigators generally are able to find possible motives for the crime.  However, if it is hard to determine not only who poisoned the victim, but why…then you really have a problem.  Such was the mystery plaguing the police of Sydney, Australia in 1932.

33-year-old Dorothy Florence Thorne lived with her husband of ten years, Reginald, who was a successful motor engineer, and their infant daughter Joan.  A recent addition to the household was a boarder, Alfred George Lockyer.  Lockyer was an English-born commercial artist who was having trouble finding work, which led to him falling into a deep depression.  Reginald became friends with Lockyer, and, out of sympathy for his plight, invited the artist to room with his family.

The small household appeared to be an enviable one.  Dorothy was a charming, amiable woman who was extremely popular in the neighborhood.  Her marriage was happy, and both she and Reginald were deeply devoted to their little girl.  Lockyer seemed an ideal boarder--good-natured, unobtrusive, and helpful around the house.  He readily did little chores around the house, such as preparing the morning tea and toast for the family.

On the morning of July 5, 1932, Dorothy happened to be the first one awake.  As she passed Lockyer’s room, she playfully called to him, “I’ve beaten you to it this morning!”  A few minutes later, she returned to Lockyer’s door in a much changed mood.  She told him that she had taken a seidlitz powder from the tin in the kitchen, and it tasted strangely bitter.  Lockyer took a small taste from her glass, and was startled by the extreme bitterness.  They both shrugged at the little mystery, and Dorothy returned to the kitchen.

Lockyer brought Reginald, who was still in bed, a cup of tea and a slice of toast.  When he went back to the kitchen, he was shocked to see that Dorothy was having some sort of fit.  She was staggering wildly around the room, her face was twitching, and her eyes had gone blank.  Assuming that her sudden illness was related to the strange-tasting seidlitz powder, he sat her on the chair and gave her an emetic of mustard and water.  By the time he called Reginald into the kitchen, Dorothy was suffering agonizing convulsions.  The family physician, Dr. Pawlette, was instantly summoned.  As soon as Pawlette saw Dorothy, he wasted no time driving her to the hospital.  However, before he even reached the hospital, the poor woman was dead.

Naturally, there was an inquest, where the city coroner, Dr. May, soon realized he had a fine mess on his hands.  It was quickly determined that Dorothy had died as a result of drinking a seidlitz powder that had been liberally laced with strychnine.  That proved to be the one undeniable conclusion in the case.  Suicide was safely ruled out.  It was established that when Reginald bought the powders from a local chemist, they were poison-free, meaning that someone with access to the Thorne household had subsequently tampered with them.  Only one package of the powders in the tin had been doctored with strychnine--the one Dorothy had the appalling bad luck to swallow.

The source of the strychnine was never found.  Neither was the motive.  Reginald Thorne seemed genuinely shocked and heartbroken by his wife’s sudden death.  Dorothy’s relations with Lockyer appeared to be friendly, but with no hint of, in the words of the time, “undue familiarity.”  Dorothy came from a well-off family.  In her will, she left Reginald all her property, which amounted to some shares in the businesses operated by her husband and her father, as well as a small amount of money in the bank.  It was not seen as worth killing her for it, especially as Reginald was making a good living of his own.  It was not even clear that Dorothy was the poisoner’s intended victim, as she only rarely took seidlitz powders.  Was the strychnine meant for Reginald?  Or Alfred?  No one could say.

After all the witnesses had testified, the coroner admitted defeat.  “In all my experience,” he sighed, “I have never had a case more mysterious than this. I intend to exclude the husband and the boarder.  I have watched them carefully. Their whole attitude, from the time before the doctor was sent for and since, seemed to point to nothing else but innocence. I also exclude any idea of suicide. The extraordinary thing is: How did this poison get there as it did?"  

He concluded, “I am wording my finding in such a way as to leave an open verdict. The husband and the boarder are exonerated.  In so far as the firm and the chemist are concerned, there is nothing to show that there was any tampering with the powders before they set out. The whole thing is a mystery, and we would be very pleased if that mystery could be solved.”

He found that the poison had been accidentally self-administered by Dorothy but the evidence did not enable him to say whether the strychnine was “feloniously mixed” with a seidlitz powder.

That was the last official word on the case.  In 1934, Reginald and his daughter went back to his native England, where they lived with his sister until his death in 1945.  He never remarried.

The poisoning of Dorothy Thorne is one of those cases where the story feels only half-told.  Unfortunately, the other half seems likely to be permanently unrevealed.

Thomas Swope

A classic plot device in murder mystery novels is when the rich, elderly head of a family announces that he or she is updating their will.  Naturally, all hell subsequently breaks loose.

It is a great pity that Thomas Swope was evidently not a connoisseur of such books.  It might have saved him from disaster.

Swope was born in Kentucky in 1827.  When he was thirty, he moved to Kansas City, where he immediately saw the area’s potential for growth.  He snapped up every bit of real estate he could get his hands on, eventually owning most of the land which is modern Kansas City.  From subdividing his land and reselling it to others, his prescience soon made him an extremely rich man.  As so many wealthy entrepreneurs do, he “gave back” to the community--and got himself good publicity in the bargain--by donating generously to hospitals, civic organizations, and the local Humane Society.  He gave the city 1,300 acres of land which became the massive Swope Park, which still remains one of the largest municipal parks in the country.  (It must be said that cynics mutter that Swope’s motive for this particular gift was a desire to avoid paying property taxes on the undeveloped land.)

Swope was a shy, reserved man who never married.  He lived alone for much of his life until, in his later years, he moved into the Independence, Missouri mansion which had been owned by his late brother Logan Swope.  There, he had plenty of companionship in the form of Logan’s widow Margaret and her seven children.  (However, he spent much of his time alone in his upstairs bedroom, drinking and smoking cigars.)

The Swope mansion

As Swope aged, his thoughts naturally turned to how he would dispose of his $3.6 million estate.  He drew up a will leaving generous bequests of $140,000 (about $4 million in 2024 money) to each of his nieces and nephews, with the rest of his money going to various charities.  If any of the beneficiaries died unmarried and childless, their share of the estate would be divided among the survivors.  However, late in 1909, just a few years after writing this will, Swope began expressing a change of heart.  He made no secret of the fact that he was now thinking that the charities should be getting a greater share of his fortune, with his nearest and dearest accordingly getting much less.

If you wish to find a reason for Swope’s sudden reversal, it might be wise to look at the other major figure in our little tale:  31-year-old Kansas City physician Bennett Clark Hyde.  Hyde was a good-looking fellow, with a suave manner that delighted the ladies.  He sang beautifully and was fond of reciting Shakespeare’s soliloquies.  Alas, Bennett balanced out these attractive qualities by being a complete dirtbag.  He had a history of charming elderly women out of their life savings.  In 1898, he was arrested on the charge of hiring a gang of grave-robbers to procure corpses for the local medical college.  (He somehow managed to talk his way out of that trouble.)  When serving as Kansas City’s police surgeon, he was accused of physically abusing Annie Clemmons, a woman he was supposedly treating for a morphine overdose.  (The scandal caused him to be discharged from his position.)

In 1903, Hyde met Thomas Swope’s 23-year-old niece Frances.  Frances apparently didn’t know or didn’t care about Hyde’s unfragrant past, because before long, Frances was hopelessly infatuated.  When Margaret Swope--evidently a better judge of character than her daughter--refused to allow Frances to marry Hyde, the young couple eloped to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where they were wed in June 1905.  The infuriated Margaret cut off all communication with her errant daughter.

The newlyweds remained family outcasts until October 1907, when Margaret’s brother was badly injured in a mining accident.  For reasons that frankly completely escape me, it was Hyde that Margaret turned to for her sibling’s medical care.  After that, Mr. and Mrs. Hyde were both accepted back into the family fold.  Thomas Swope bought the young couple a house, and thanks to his influence, Hyde was made president of the Jackson County Medical Society.

After the prodigal couple’s return, things seemed to jog along quietly for the Swope clan.  And then Thomas Swope began dropping those comments about revising his will.  Soon afterwards, on October 1, 1909, Swope’s cousin and closest friend, J. Moss Hunton, suffered a stroke.  Hyde and the family doctor, George Twyman, were immediately summoned.  The two physicians decided on a course of bloodletting--a slightly antiquated practice even then, but still occasionally used.  Hyde made the incision, and Hunton’s blood began to flow.

That was not considered the alarming part.  The alarming part was that once Hyde began bleeding his patient, he did not seem inclined to stop.  Even though the Swopes--including Frances--began to express unease about the amount of blood Hunton was losing, Hyde did not bandage his patient until about two quarts of blood had been removed.  Minutes later, Hunton died.  Tragic, of course, very tragic, but, well, these things happen.

Two days after Hunton’s demise, Thomas Swope’s personal nurse, Pearl Virginia Keller, brought Swope his breakfast, along with a digestive pill Hyde had prescribed.  About twenty minutes after finishing his meal, Swope suddenly broke into a cold sweat, and began shaking violently.  He told Keller, “Oh my God, I wish I were dead.  I wish I had not taken that medicine.”

Those were his last words.  Swope fell into a coma, from which he never emerged.  The 81-year-old died that night.

Two sudden deaths in a family within 48 hours is unusual enough for people’s minds to wander in some uncomfortable directions.  Swope’s kinfolk recalled Thomas’ plans to change his will.  They reflected on the fact that J. Moss Hunton had been the executor of Swope’s current will, the one leaving his fortune firmly in the hands of his family.  Nurse Keller found herself dwelling on how, before Hunton’s body had turned cold, Hyde was volunteering to be Swope’s new executor.

And then it emerged that, two weeks before Thomas Swope ate his final breakfast, Hyde made two calls to a local drugstore.  In the first call, he put in an order for Fairchild’s Holadin, a common digestive compound.  In the second, he asked for several capsules of potassium cyanide.

Despite all this interesting information, the Swopes--apparently not fond of making a fuss over life’s little issues--went on as usual.  Then, just one month after Hunton and Swope died, tragedy again struck the family.  Two of Margaret Swope’s children, Margaret and Chrisman, fell ill with typhoid.  The dread disease quickly spread throughout the whole household, including the servants.  The family was so afflicted, they were forced to bring in not just doctors Hyde and Twyman, but five nurses.  No one else in Independence had come down with typhoid for many months.  The outbreak was exclusive to the Swopes.  Odd, that.  The family's water supply was uncontaminated, so it was a mystery how everyone became sickened.

31-year-old Chrisman was the sickest of the family, with a high fever.  On December 5, Hyde gave him a pill that he said would control the fever.  In a sense, it did.  Within half-an-hour, Chrisman went into convulsions and fell into a coma.  By the following night, he was dead.

When a bacteriologist named Dr. Edward Stewart heard of the plague striking the Swope family, he felt uneasy.  Typhoid was a common ailment at the time, but it was rarely fatal, especially for young people like Chrisman.  Dr. Stewart had not forgotten that in early November 1909, Hyde had requested his help in setting up his own laboratory.  To get Hyde started on his research, Stewart gave him samples of common bacteria--including salmonella typhi, which causes…typhoid fever.  One day when he knew Hyde was out of town, Stewart went into Hyde’s lab, just to see what he could see.  He was appalled to find that Hyde’s entire supply of typhoid culture had disappeared.

While Stewart was playing amateur detective, Nurse Keller was becoming increasingly unnerved by Dr. Hyde’s way with a sickbed.  She, as well as the other nurses, were particularly troubled by Hyde giving the patients frequent shots of strychnine.  In those days, strychnine was given in small doses as a stimulant, but the nurses felt that with the Swope invalids, such measures were unnecessary.  Keller and the other nurses went to Margaret Swope and stated flatly that if Dr. Hyde was not banished from the house, they were quitting en masse.  Margaret agreed to their terms.  It did not go unnoticed that as soon as the patients ceased to be treated by Hyde, they began to recover.

The Swopes had been hoping to avoid a public scandal, but after what must have been a singularly grim Christmas, the family decided they had no choice but to have Chrisman and Thomas Swope exhumed and autopsied.  These examinations found that both bodies were chock-full of strychnine.  When this news reached the ears of the public, along with the revelation that Thomas’ nephew-in-law was the prime suspect in their deaths, newspaper editors across the country wept with joy and slept with sweet dreams of lurid headlines and booming circulations.

In February 1910, a coroner’s jury affirmed that both Swope men had died of strychnine poisoning.  The following month, a grand jury indicted Hyde on eleven charges, including first degree murder and (in the case of J. Moss Hunton) manslaughter.  He was also accused of poisoning a number of other Swopes with typhoid germs.  

Hyde during his trial

Hyde’s trial--solely for the alleged murder of Thomas Swope--began in April, 1910.  The prosecution’s argument was exquisitely simple and glaringly obvious: Hyde wanted wife Frances to split the Swope loot with as few people as possible.  Accordingly, he plotted a wholesale massacre of his in-laws.  The defense was equally straightforward.  Hyde--with his wife remaining loyally at his side--asserted his complete innocence.  He declared that all the incriminating testimony against him was either taken out of context or a simple pack of lies.  He explained that he had bought capsules full of poison solely to kill some dogs.  After deliberating for less than three days, the jury found him guilty.  However, his lawyer immediately filed an appeal with the Missouri Supreme Court.  The Court overturned the verdict, ruling that the prosecution had not found “causation” (that is to say, they failed to prove that Hyde’s actions directly and deliberately led to Thomas Swope’s death.)  The Court also disapproved of the fact that, although Hyde was essentially on trial only for the demise of Thomas Swope, evidence relating to the other deaths was allowed to be presented to the jury.

The state of Missouri resolved to try, try again.  However, the second effort to convict Hyde abruptly ended on a bizarre note, when a juror became homesick and fled the hotel where the jury was sequestered.  The judge declared the escapee to be "mentally unsound" and declared a mistrial.  Trial number three had a hung jury.  After that, Margaret Swope--who had spent $250,000 trying to get Hyde convicted--threw up her hands and gave up.  Early in 1917, Hyde was officially a free man.

Frances divorced Hyde in 1920.  She gained full custody of their two children, and reconciled with her family.  She told her divorce attorney that she wanted nothing more to do with her husband, as he had become increasingly “sullen and irritable.”  However, she maintained her conviction that he was not a murderer.  Hyde moved back to his hometown of Lexington, Missouri, where he worked as a truck driver and mechanic before returning to the practice of medicine until his death in 1934.  As far as is known, he left no further suspicious body counts in his wake.

The Swope Mystery has remained a well-known part of Kansas City history, with a solid number of people willing to argue that Hyde was an innocent man who unfairly suffered a seven-year legal ordeal.  However, I suspect that Frances Swope Hyde made a very fatal elopement.

In 1898, a Yorkshire solicitor named Harold Greenwood and his wife Mabel moved to the small Welsh town of Kidwelly.  The couple eventually had four children, and their household was further supplemented by Mabel’s unmarried sister, Edith Bowater.  Edith furnished a small room for herself and contributed to the family expenses.

Greenwood’s practice in nearby Llanelly was not very successful, perhaps at least partly because of his unpopularity--gossipers thought he was too much of a bon vivant with an eye for the ladies.  In contrast, Mabel was well-liked, and active in the social pastimes of the area.  Despite Harold’s marginal income, the family was able to keep a fine mansion, Rumsey House.  Mrs. Greenwood came from a wealthy and prominent family, and had her own private income which kept the family in more than comfortable circumstances.  Although the residents of Kidwelly never warmed to Harold, he and Mabel were considered to be a happy and affectionate couple.

Mabel Greenwood was a bit of a hypochondriac.  Although the doctors never found much of anything wrong with her, she thought of herself as “delicate” with a “weak heart,” and lived in terror of developing cancer.  From the beginning of 1919, Mabel told the family doctor, Thomas Griffiths, that she frequently had pains around her heart and abdomen.  He shrugged it off as the symptoms of “change of life,” and gave her various innocuous potions.  However, her health continued to deteriorate.

Life in Kidwelly puttered along in an unremarkable fashion until Sunday, June 15, 1919.  The day began pleasantly enough.  Mabel wrote letters and did some reading.  Harold tinkered with his car.  The couple, along with their 21-year-old daughter Irene and 10-year son Kenneth (the other two Greenwood children were at boarding school) met for lunch at 1 p.m.  Their cook had prepared a joint with vegetables on the side, with gooseberry tart and custard for dessert.  A bottle of burgundy was provided for the adults.  Harold did not have any of the wine, but Mabel enjoyed a glass.  After the meal, Mabel had a brief nap, after which she rested on a deck chair on their lawn.

Around 6:30 p.m., Mabel began to complain of heart pains.  Harold gave her some brandy, after which she had spasms of vomiting.  She thought the gooseberry tart had disagreed with her.  Dr. Griffiths was called in.  He diagnosed Mabel’s malady as an ordinary stomach upset.  He prescribed sips of brandy and soda, along with a bismuth mixture.

An hour later, Mabel’s closest friend, Florence Phillips, came to visit.  After learning from Harold that Mabel was ill, Florence asked the District Nurse, Elizabeth Jones, to examine Mabel.  Nurse Jones thought that something was very wrong with Mrs. Greenwood, but Dr. Griffiths continued to insist it was merely a temporary stomach bug.  Sadly, Nurse Jones was proven correct when, at 3 a.m., Mabel died, aged only 47.

Mrs. Greenwood’s strange and sudden end had many people in Kidwelly giving Mr. Greenwood the side-eye.  Even so, the matter probably would not have been pursued any further if not for the fact that, after enduring a whole four months of lonely widowerhood, Harold married one Gladys Jones, the daughter of an old friend.  It was widely rumored that their romance had begun some time before Mabel’s untimely death.  (As a side note, while Harold was preparing to marry Gladys, he also proposed to Dr. Griffith’s sister May.  It’s always prudent to have a backup plan.)  The scandal that erupted from this whirlwind marriage was so intense that it was felt that an exhumation of the first Mrs. Greenwood was called for.  The autopsy found no sign of heart disease, but it did discover a grain of arsenic in Mabel’s body.  The next thing Harold knew he was standing trial for murder.

Greenwood had the great good fortune to be represented by Edward Marshall Hall.  Hall has made previous appearances on this blog, always in the role of “The Murderer’s Best Friend.”  During his long and distinguished career, this brilliant barrister managed to save an impressive list of accused villains from the hangman--whether they deserved to be saved or not.

Greenwood during his trial

During the trial, Hall did his usual masterly job of destroying a seemingly open-and-shut case.  He argued that Mabel succumbed to chronic, but perfectly natural health problems that went overlooked thanks to Dr. Griffiths being an obvious quack.  The presence of arsenic in Mabel’s body was undoubtedly due to the medicines Griffiths had prescribed.  Also noted in Harold’s defense was the fact that with Mabel’s death, her private income, on which her husband had so heavily depended, went into a trust fund for her children.

The prosecution’s case was a simple one:  Harold, wishing to marry another woman, doctored Mabel’s lunchtime Burgundy with weed killer.  However, this theory instantly crumbled into dust when young Irene Greenwood testified that she also had a glass from the bottle of wine at lunch, and two more glasses at supper.  That, as they say, was that.  The prosecution could mutter all they wanted about Irene committing perjury to save her father’s neck, but, of course, they couldn’t prove it.  (Oddly, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Crown lawyers that Harold might have put poison in one of Mabel’s many bottles of patent medicine--bottles which all mysteriously vanished after her death.)

Harold may have been acquitted in a courtroom, but the jury of public opinion thought otherwise.  He became such a pariah, he and his new wife changed their name to “Pilkington,” moved to a tiny village in Herefordshire, and earnestly hoped the world would forget about them.  Unfortunately for Harold, the controversy over his first wife’s death lingered for the rest of his days.  In 1922, he won £150 in damages after a waxworks exhibit in Cardiff included his effigy in their Chamber of Horrors.  Later that year, he wrote for “John Bull” an account of the murder trial of his fellow accused wife-poisoner, our old friend Major Herbert Armstrong.  Facing bankruptcy, Harold applied for the position of Clerk to Ross Urban Council, but was rejected.  Broken in his finances, his reputation, and his health, 55-year-old Greenwood died a sad death in January 1929.  Whether Greenwood was innocent of his first wife’s death or not (true-crime authors still argue over that question,) he certainly paid a high price for his hasty remarriage.

In 1902, an Irish-born barrister named Cecil Lincoln built a sprawling hotel in the hills above Mussoorie, India, which he named “the Savoy.” Its flamboyant Edwardian elegance soon made it one of “the” stops for travelers wealthy enough to afford such in-your-face opulence.  The Savoy was also highly popular among British expats seeking a refuge from the heat, dust, and noise of the crowded towns below.  So many authors frequented the hotel that its bar became known as the “Writer’s bar.”  The Savoy would have been the ideal setting for an Agatha Christie tale of mysterious murder among the jet-set.

And according to some, it was.

In the summer of 1911, a 49-year-old Englishwoman named Frances Garnett-Orme came to the Savoy, along with a companion, Eva Mountstephen.  Garnett-Orme had been engaged to a British Army officer who died before the wedding.  This tragedy led her to become deeply involved in spiritualism (in those days, a fashionable form of self-therapy among the bereaved.)  She and Mountstephen spent most of their time at the Savoy holed up in their rooms, crystal-gazing, holding seances, and the other usual activities done to contact the dearly departed.

On September 12th, 1911, Mountstephen left for Lucknow on what she described as “urgent” business.  On the morning of September 19th, Garnett-Orme was found lying on her bed.  Sometime during the night, she had joined the dead souls she had been so anxious to contact.  An empty glass was on the nightstand near her bed.  All the doors and windows were locked from inside, and there were no other signs of any disorder.  The autopsy revealed she had died from a considerable dose of prussic acid.

Suicide does not seem to have been seriously considered.  The dead woman had been in good spirits, and was making various plans for her future.  Authorities believed Garnett-Orme was murdered, and the obvious chief suspect was the dead woman’s companion.  When a woman suddenly skips town soon before her dear friend dies an unnatural death, people will talk.

Mountstephen was easily traced to Lucknow, where she was put under arrest.  She was accused of poisoning the bottle of medicine Garnett-Orme sometimes took for stomach upsets.  Unfortunately for the prosecution, aside from the suspicious nature of it all, there was no conclusive evidence against Mountstephen.  The defense argued that the victim’s spiritualistic experiments had convinced her she had not long to live, leading her to commit suicide.  Given the vague nature of the case, the court had no choice but to return an acquittal.  In another odd turn of events, the doctor who performed the autopsy on Garnett-Orme died of strychnine poisoning just a few months later.  His murder was never solved.  As for the late Miss Garnett-Orme, the Allahabad High Court declared that her death was murder done by person or persons unknown, and that was that.  Unsurprisingly, this pair of mystifying poisonings led to a drastic drop in the Savoy’s popularity for some months afterward.  There are also the inevitable accounts of Garnett-Orme’s ghost still haunting the hotel.

Back to Agatha Christie.  The Garnett-Orme mystery attracted the notice of Rudyard Kipling, who passed the story on to Arthur Conan Doyle.  Doyle, in his turn, shared the case with Christie, who, it was said, used it as inspiration for her first novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles.”  Personally, that last statement strikes me as folklore--aside from a woman being fatally poisoned, there is little resemblance between Christie’s novel and the Garnett-Orme case--but the alleged link has kept alive the memory of this enigmatic death.

[Note:  In 1912, Mountstephen applied for probate of her late friend’s will, which left her virtually all of Garnett-Orme's estate.  The trial--Garnett-Orme’s relatives contested her claim--elicited some curious details.  For instance, evidence was presented that Mountstephen had stolen money and jewelry from Garnett-Orme, as well as other wealthy acquaintances.  It was broadly hinted that she had planted the idea in Garnett-Orme’s mind that “the spirits” were saying Frances did not have long to live.  Most startling of all, there was testimony that shortly before Garnett-Orme’s death, a fellow guest at the Savoy went to the authorities declaring that Mountstephen intended to poison her “friend.”  Mountstephen’s application was dismissed on the grounds of “fraud and undue influence in connection with spiritualism and crystal-gazing,”  and Garnett-Orme’s brother was granted probate.]

For me, the most interesting thing about studying old newspapers is that you uncover so many remarkable stories that at the time had considerable publicity, only to soon disappear into the mists of time, never to be heard from again--except, occasionally, on the pages of this blog.  The following poisoning case from Manchester, England, is a perfect example.

On the afternoon of June 30, 1828, a woman carrying a small child stopped a little girl named Janet Frame who was walking down Butler Street.  She introduced herself as “Mrs. McCann,” and offered Janet a shilling if she would deliver a cake to the shop of Mr. S. Drummond, a nearby flour and provision dealer, and tell him that Mrs. McCann had sent it.  Janet later described the woman as  “of middle size, with small features, and remarkably prominent fore-teeth.”  It must have been a tempting offer for the child, but as she was in the middle of doing an errand for her parents, she had to decline.  Mrs. McCann then accosted an eight-year-old boy named Thompson with the same request.  He immediately agreed.

When the boy arrived at the shop, he found Drummond’s wife, and gave her the cake and the message.  As Mrs. Drummond did not know any “Mrs. McCann,” and could not imagine why she, or anyone else, would be sending them cakes, she told the boy that there must be some mistake.  She told him to take the cake back to the woman, and ask her again where the gift should be delivered.  After a few minutes of fruitless searching for Mrs. McCann, Thompson returned to Mrs. Drummond, insisting that he was quite sure that this was where he was told to bring the cake.  Mrs. Drummond, still convinced there had been a mix-up, put the cake in a safe place, assuming that eventually either Mrs. McCann or the dessert’s proper recipient would come by to claim it.

The boy then went to see his mother, Grace Thompson, who was then at her job in a factory.  He proudly showed her his little windfall, explaining how he had obtained it.  Mrs. Thompson must not have had the highest opinion of her son’s probity, because she instantly suspected that he had actually stolen the money.  She sent a girl to accompany him back to Drummond’s shop, with orders to return the shilling.

On their arrival, the girl found that the boy had been telling the truth, but she left the money with Mrs. Drummond anyway, explaining that Mrs. Thompson was sure it was intended for the Drummonds.  (It is not recorded how young Master Thompson felt about being wrongly accused of theft and losing his lawfully-earned cash, which is probably just as well.)

When Grace Thompson heard this news, it occurred to her that Mrs. McCann must have meant to give him the cake for carrying the shilling, not the other way around.  That evening, after she got off work, she went to the Drummond shop and demanded the cake.  Mr. Drummond initially refused, but after a moment’s consideration, either he concluded that Mrs. Thompson was likely correct, or he didn’t think the damn cake was worth any more fuss.  In any case, he gave it to her.

On her way home, Grace gave a small piece of it to a girl named Wellins whom she met in the street.  She gave the rest to her own two children, the two children of the woman who shared the house with the Thompsons, an elderly woman named Margaret Mason, and a couple of other neighborhood youngsters--nine people in total.  Grace herself did not eat any of the cake, “though she wished to do so, as it seemed very nice.”

It did not seem nice for long.  Very soon, everyone who had eaten the cake were all attacked by a burning sensation in their mouth and throat, which was quickly followed by severe vomiting.  When Grace saw what was happening, she ran for Drummond’s shop, where she demanded the shilling back.  She used the money to buy an emetic, which she gave to the sufferers.

It was very fortunate that the cake caused such intense and immediate vomiting.  Although--as later examination of the remnants of the cake showed--it had contained an immense amount of arsenic, most of those afflicted expelled enough of the poison to be able to recover.  The one tragic exception was four-year-old Susannah Rigby, who died the following day.

It was obvious that the elusive Mrs. McCann did not mean the Drummonds or their five children well.  But why?  Mr. Drummond was a law-abiding and well-liked merchant, who could not imagine who would want his family dead.  After giving the matter some thought, Drummond remembered that the wife of a man he had recently evicted for non-payment of rent somewhat matched “Mrs. McCann’s” description.  However, when Janet Frame was taken to see this woman, she unhesitatingly declared that this was not “Mrs. McCann.”  Besides, the woman proved to have the proverbial iron-clad alibi for the day when the cake was delivered.

During the inquest on Susannah Rigby’s death, a more promising suspect emerged.  Living next door to the Drummonds was a family named Macdonald.  About eighteen months earlier, one of the Macdonald sons married a young woman named Elizabeth Brown.  Elizabeth’s parents had opposed the marriage, on the grounds that they were considerably higher on the social scale than the Macdonalds.  They felt their daughter could have made a much better match.  Unfortunately, the marriage soon became so unhappy that at the time of the murder, Elizabeth was back living with her parents.  The Macdonalds pointed out that Elizabeth matched the published description of “Mrs. McCann,” and she had a child about the age of the one the poisoner had been carrying.  Perhaps, they suggested, the Thompson boy was supposed to leave the lethal cake with them, and not the Drummonds?

Elizabeth Macdonald was taken into custody.  Janet Frame agreed that the prisoner did resemble “Mrs. McCann,” but could not state positively that she was the same woman.  Also, like the previous suspect, Elizabeth was able to account for her activities at the time when the malevolent “Mrs. McCann” was stalking the streets with her Cake of Doom.  Accordingly, she was discharged from custody.

And that was that.  After the Rigby inquest concluded--with the expected verdict of “murder by person or persons unknown”--the mystery disappeared from the newspapers, never to return.

“Mrs. McCann”--whoever she was--may not have been a very successful murderer, but she was certainly a very lucky one.

As I’ve mentioned before, murder by poison can be some of the most difficult crimes to solve, for the simple reason that the murderer does not have to be anywhere near their victim in order to kill them.  Seemingly random, motiveless slayings are usually equally baffling.  Combine these two factors, and you may well see a mystery would leave Sherlock Holmes baffled.  Such was the tragic situation that haunted Ohio State University in early 1925.

When the University’s students needed medicine, they went to the health service office, where a doctor would write a prescription to be filled at the College of Pharmacy’s dispensary.  On January 29, a student named Timothy McCarthy, who was suffering from a bad cold, obtained a prescription for the standard remedy of the time--capsules filled with aspirin and quinine.  However, the supposed cure just made him feel worse.  Immediately after taking a capsule, he began suffering from terrible pain and cramps throughout his body.  Fortunately, McCarthy had the sense not to take any more of the capsules, and after a few days of misery, recovered his usual good health.

The dispensary in the early 1900s. Via Ohio State University Archives

On January 31, two other students with colds, Harold Gillig and Charles Huls, also took medication from the dispensary.  Like McCarthy, both young men instantly fell gravely ill.  Gillig pulled through, but Huls died while suffering violent convulsions.  Campus doctors ruled that Huls died of tetanus.

Charles Huls

On February 1, yet another student, David Puskin, got cold medicine from the dispensary.  Twenty minutes after taking a capsule, he was dead.  The doctors decided the unfortunate young Mr. Puskin succumbed to meningitis, and placed all his friends in quarantine.

Two days after Puskin’s death, OSU student George Delbert Thompson took cold medicine he had received from the dispensary.  He immediately fell so spectacularly ill that campus officials were finally forced to realize that something very weird was going on.  An analysis of the contents of Thompson’s stomach revealed that he had swallowed strychnine.  Campus doctors, sheepishly muttering that, after all, it would be easy to confuse the symptoms of meningitis or tetanus with those of strychnine poisoning, admitted that Huls and Puskin had also been poisoned.  Four other students were sickened by the dispensary “cold medicine,” but fortunately, all survived.  And it became obvious that strychnine could not have been added to the cold medicine by mistake: the poison was found in only a few capsules.  In any case, strychnine could easily be differentiated from quinine.  The University realized they had a serial poisoner on their hands, one who lived or worked in the campus, and the police were brought in.  

The obvious suspicion was that the killer worked at the dispensary, but no one could understand how, even under those circumstances, he or she could have tampered with the capsules.  All dispensary medications were made up under the close supervision of faculty members in the College of Pharmacy.  The sixty-four students who had been working at the pharmacy just before the poisonings began were all questioned by police.  Nearly all of them expressed utter bafflement at how the poison could have been added, considering how no prescription was filled without faculty looking on.  The one exception was a young woman who admitted that she had filled the aspirin-and-quinine capsules so often over the last two years that she stopped bothering to bring in supervision when that prescription was made up.  She pointed out that the bottles of quinine and aspirin were always stored together in the same place, so making a mistake with them was virtually impossible.

Chemical analysis of the remaining stock of cold medicine found that the majority of the capsules were harmless--except for one, which contained pure strychnine.  This discovery proved it was impossible for the poison to have mixed in by accident.

Unsurprisingly, every student who still had cold medicine they had obtained from the dispensary wasted no time giving their capsules to investigators.  Among them was one capsule which contained enough strychnine to kill someone four times over.  Taking into consideration the number of students who had been sickened by the capsules, it was calculated that of the three hundred capsules that had been recently made, eight had contained poison.

The State Pharmacy Board looked at all recent legal sales of strychnine, and found nothing suspicious.  On the night of February 4, Dr. Clair Dye, the dean of the College of Pharmacy, inspected the dispensary in hope of finding something that might shed light on the mystery.  In the back of a shelf in the chemical storeroom, he found a small bottle of strychnine.  However, it was nearly full and covered in dust, suggesting that it had sat there, forgotten, for some time.  This potential clue turned out to be a red herring: the bottle had belonged to William Keyser, who belonged to the pharmacy’s faculty.  He had on two occasions taken strychnine from the bottle to use in his classes.  

For a while, it looked like a pharmacy student named Nelson Rosenberg was a promising suspect.  He admitted to having bought strychnine tablets off-campus, as a stimulant to help him concentrate on his studies.  (Yes, back in the good old days, many people took minute doses of strychnine and arsenic as a “health tonic,” and if you are thinking that this must have led to a lot of unpleasant unintended consequences, you are perfectly correct.)  Rosenberg told police that a bottle of strychnine had been kept in a campus laboratory, easily accessible to anyone who had murder in mind.  However, all the other students insisted that they had never seen such a bottle, and Rosenberg himself admitted that he had no idea what happened to it.  All this emitted a very strong odor of fish, but Rosenberg must have somehow managed to persuade investigators that he was not a maniacal mass poisoner, because the police appear to have lost interest in him.

Another odd figure who emerged from the investigation was a 19 year old pharmacy student named Louis Fish.  When questioned, Fish admitted that he had given David Puskin the killer capsule.  He explained that he and Puskin had been friends, and when Puskin fell ill, he asked Fish to fill his prescription for him.  He confessed that he had sneaked into the pharmacy “without authority,” in order to get the medicine.  He had not told anyone about this before, as he had no wish to get mixed up with a murder investigation.  Fish had been the first student to work in the dispensary the week the fatal capsules were circulated.  Furthermore, on the night of January 30 Fish suddenly left campus to go to his home in Canton, 100 miles away.  However, as soon as he arrived in Canton, he drove straight back to the University.  When asked about this curious behavior, Fish could only say that “I didn’t want to stick around Canton.”  Fish was put under arrest, only to be released the following day.  Police presumably had some good reason to drop both Fish and Rosenberg from their investigation, but if they did, it was evidently never publicly recorded.

"Atlanta Constitution," June 3, 1934, via Newspapers.com

In July 1926, the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy released its report on the mystery, and it was one long salute to Captain Obvious: the poisonings were deliberate and the strychnine had been obtained off-campus.  The End.

That was also The End of any official investigation.  Not only do we not know who the killer was, we cannot even say why the poisonings were done.  Did the evildoer intend to murder just one person, and distributed the other fatal capsules to hide who the real target was?  Or was it a case of some secret psychopath getting their kicks by poisoning people at random?  In either case, they got away with murder.  Perhaps not for the first time.  Or the last.

"Chicago Tribune," October 1, 1978, via Newspapers.com

Poisoning cases are often inscrutable.  They are particularly frightening when it is impossible to tell if the poisoning was by deliberate action or by accident, and even the nature of the toxin is unknowable.  Such was the deadly puzzle which plagued a family in Pevely, Missouri.

In September 1978, Eva Sims and her husband Alvin had their home exterminated for pests.  To get away from the fumes, they planned to spend the night of September 19 at the home of their daughter, Bonnie Boyer.  However, on that day, they were unable to contact anyone at the Boyer home.  Their repeated phone calls were met with only a busy signal.  

When Eva drove to the Boyer home to investigate, she was met with something both terrifying and mysterious.  The first person she encountered there was Bonnie’s husband Robert.  He “didn’t let on like he knew me,” Mrs. Sims said later.  When she asked where Bonnie was, “He looked back at me and shook his head as if he didn’t know.”

When she began searching the house, she soon found the dead body of her daughter.  Bonnie was lying on the bedroom floor, covered with a blanket.  Robert--still in his weirdly dazed condition--went to the bathroom and vomited.  He started to cry.  Mrs. Sims called the police.

When authorities arrived on the scene, they knew something was obviously terribly wrong, although they had a hard time figuring out what it was.  The Boyer’s two dogs and cat were found inside the house, in a curiously weakened state.  (The dogs eventually recovered, but the cat was euthanized in order to obtain tissue samples.)  The two Boyer children, 16 year old Tonya and 14 year old Barry, were semi-conscious and having seizures.  Their father continued in what one policeman called “a spaced-out condition,” unable to say anything intelligible other than his children’s names and ages.  The first officer to enter the Boyer home, Colleen Fitzpatrick, instantly became so nauseated, she collapsed.  Another officer thought he smelled a “gaseous substance” in the basement.  He too began feeling ill.

There were no gas appliances in the home.  There was a sewage line hooked up to the house, but no trace of methane gas was found.  A team of Army epidemiologists could find no trace of any nerve gas contamination.  

Toxicologist Dr. Howard Schwartz assembled a team of specialists to examine the Boyer home.  These experts were able to quickly rule out all the “usual suspects”: carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane, cyanide, strychnine, arsenic, drug overdoses and food poisoning.  The Boyers tested negative for viral or bacterial agents.  Bonnie Boyer’s autopsy found “no obvious cause of death.”

On September 21, Barry Boyer died.  And Dr. Schwartz admitted to reporters that so far, his team had “come up with zilch.”  The only possible clue they had to work with was that one unusual thing was found in the bodies of Bonnie and Barry: a breakdown product of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO,) a solvent commonly found in various household products.  While not toxic itself, it can cause other, more dangerous chemicals to be more easily absorbed through the skin.  However, DMSO was not found in any notably high amount, and Dr. Schwartz was skeptical that it had anything to do with whatever it was that sickened the Boyers.

On September 22, a dog, a kitten, and a rat spent the night in the Boyer home, with no noticeable ill effects.  E.P.A. agents found no sign of any toxic gases that might have seeped into the home.  The residents of Pevely were getting understandably nervous about everyone’s inability to figure out how their neighbors died.

The investigation turned to a set of 30 styrofoam insulation panels that were stored in the Boyer home.  Robert Boyer’s nephew, Steve Reisner, had been planning to install them before winter came.  Reisner had acquired them from the Dow Chemical plant where he worked.  The panels were “uncured”; that is to say, they had not gone through the 7-day storage period required to make sure any industrial fumes dissipated from them.  It was speculated that the panels released methyl bromide into the home, as a related molecule, methyl chloride, is used in the making of styrofoam.  However, while traces of methyl bromide were found in the air of the Boyer home, no levels of any significance were found in tissue samples taken from Mrs. Boyer.  Dr. Schwartz admitted that he was only considering methyl bromide as a suspect in the Boyer poisonings because they were unable to come up with anything else.  Dow Chemical experts pointed out that within the past ten years, Dow employees had suffered no fume-related injuries, and that it was impossible that the styrofoam sheets could have emitted methyl bromide in levels sufficient to be toxic.  The CDC did an experiment where they kept lab animals among uncured styrofoam in amounts proportionate to what was found in the Boyer home.  The animals stayed perfectly healthy. 

Yet another blow to the Styrofoam of Death theory was that on September 17--the day the Boyers began to show symptoms--a friend of Barry’s, Tim Weibking, spent eight hours in the house with no ill effects.  On the other hand, Robert’s 10 year old niece, Suzie, spent the night of the 17th with them, and subsequently became so sick her father brought her to the hospital.  The cause of her illness also proved to be a complete mystery.

In short, the experts had to admit that they were well and truly stumped.

In 1979, Tonya Boyer, who had never recovered her health, died.  Robert Boyer was left permanently impaired.  In 1981, Robert sued Dow Chemical for 3.6 million in damages, using the argument that the styrofoam panels had indeed been responsible for the deaths.  The case was settled out of court, with the judgments in the matter permanently sealed.

As far as I have been able to find, the riddle of what invisible agent so horribly ravaged the Boyer family has never been definitively answered.

[A footnote: as you may have noted in the photo, the Boyers were living in what was intended to be the basement section of the house Robert was in the process of building.  It is unknown whether the unfinished state of their residence had anything to do with the tragedy.]