Criminal Poisoning: Investigational Guide for Law Enforcement, Toxicologists, Forensic Scientists, and Attorneys (5 page)

1.2.2. Edward William Pritchard, MD,

“The Philandering Poisoner” (1865)

In 1865 in Glasgow, Scotland, Dr. Edward William Pritchard took a mistress. To eliminate his wife Mary Jane Palmer, he poisoned her and her mother, Mrs. Taylor, by using antimony in the form of the compound “Tartar Emetic.” As the attending physician, he then conveniently certified the deaths of both women as resulting from gastrointestinal (GI) disturbances. An anonymous letter sent to the authorities eventually led to the arrest of Dr. Pritchard, and having been found guilty of the crimes, he was hanged on July 28, 1865, the last public hanging in Scotland (Roughead, 1925).

1.2.3. George Henry Lamson, MD,

“The Slight-of-Hand Poisoner” (1881)

Dr. George Henry Lamson was an English physician who, after the Crimean War, suffered from an addiction to morphine and was in need of funds. To bring family estate funds into his domestic control, in December 1881, he selected as his victim his 18-year-old handicapped brother-in-law, Percy Malcolm John. While visiting John, and having tea and a Dundee raisin cake, he made a big deal of showing his relative a new American invention, the gelatin capsule, stating that it would make taking medicine much easier.

To illustrate his point, he filled a capsule with sugar and asked John to take it.

A few hours later, after Dr. Lamson left by return train for London, John began to suffer from severe stomach distress and soon died. Dr. Lamson was eventually caught and charged, after trying to bribe the newspapers with inside knowledge of John’s death. How did the poison get into the victim? Not in the capsule; Dr. Lamson had carefully tampered with some of the raisins in 10

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the slice of Dundee cake given to John, using the powerful alkaloidal poison aconite. His reward for this crime was his death by hanging on April 28, 1882

(Adam, 1951).

1.2.4. Thomas Neill Cream, MD, “The Lambeth Poisoner” (1891)

The case of Dr. Thomas Neill Cream presents us with a rather unique motive. Dr. Cream was a sadist and moral degenerate who took out his per-verse feelings on prostitutes in the Lambeth area of London. His modus oper-andi was to offer capsules containing strychnine to the unfortunate victims under the guise that it was a medication to improve their complexions. The victims quickly died agonizing deaths. London, in its post-Jack-the-Ripper climate, soon named this unknown and demented serial killer the “Lambeth Poisoner.” Cream eventually drew attention to himself when he offered to reveal to the authorities the identity of this infamous killer for a sum of many thousands of pounds. Cream was placed on trial, and it took the jury only 12

minutes to return a guilty verdict. He was hanged on November 15, 1892

(McLaren, 1993).

1.2.5. Cordelia Botkin, “The Scorned Poisoner” (1898)

A femme fatale, Cordelia Botkin chose to poison her feminine rival, the wife of her paramour. In San Francisco, California, Cordelia had begun a romantic relationship with John Dunning, a correspondent for the Associated Press. In 1898, John was assigned to cover the breaking Spanish-American War in Puerto Rico and Cuba and informed his mistress that he would not be returning to San Francisco, but to his wife (the daughter of John Pennington, a congressman and former state attorney general) and family in Dover, Delaware. On August 9, 1898, an unsolicited box of chocolate candies addressed to Mrs. Dunning arrived with the mail at the Pennington home in Delaware.

Mary Dunning shared the candies with her sister Mrs. Ida Henrietta Deane and two children. Shortly thereafter, they all became violently ill, and subsequently the two women succumbed from severe stomach ailments. With four people becoming ill at the same time, the candies became suspect, and some of the remaining candy, as well as the victims’ bodies, were found to contain large quantities of arsenic. John Dunning quickly returned from Cuba, and he identified the handwriting on the package as Cordelia Botkin’s; she was quickly arrested in California. After a jurisdictional fight between the states of California and Delaware, the trial was held in California, the location of the poisoner. Cordelia was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. She eventually died in San Quentin prison in 1910, from “soft-Poisoners Throughout History 11

ening of the brain due to melancholy.” This was the first known case of the US mail being used to transport a poisonous weapon to be used to commit murder (Alstadt, 2001).

1.2.6. Johann Otto Hoch, “The Stockyards Bluebeard” (1892–1905)

Johann Otto Hoch was an opportunistic serial killer who used arsenic as his weapon of choice. Between 1892 and 1905, in various US states, he is thought to have murdered possibly 12 of his 24 wives, in order to obtain control of their financial assets. Hoch moved from town to town, gaining the affections of new widows; endearing himself; marrying them; and, soon after, taking control of their finances. Each new wife would soon become ill, suffering from tremendous GI upsets. After the wife’s death, Johann would leave town with all the assets of the deceased. He would then move to a new town, check the obituaries in the local newspaper for widows, select a new target, and begin the process again. Eventually, authorities were alerted to the similarities in the deaths. Hoch was arrested, whereupon it was found that he carried in his pocket a hollow fountain pen containing a white powder, which proved to be arsenic. He claimed that the poison was his “exit dose” to be used when he intended to commit suicide; however, on further interrogation, he confessed to the many murders. Hoch stated: “Marriage was purely a business proposition to me. When I found they had money, I went after that.” He was found guilty of homicidal poisoning and was hanged on February 23, 1906, in Chicago, Illinois (Gaute and Odell, 1979, p. 128).

1.2.7. Hawley Harvey Crippen, MD,

“The Mild Mannered Murderer” (1910)

The Crippen case is one that contains many unusual aspects, and many unanswered questions. Dr. Crippen, born in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1862, eventually went on to represent the firm Munyon’s Homeopathic Remedies, in London.

Dr. Crippen was a relatively small man, standing only 63 inches tall, and very quiet in demeanor. His second wife, Kunigunde Mackamotzki (a.k.a.

Cora Turner, a.k.a. Belle Elmore), on the other hand, was a rather loud and brassy woman, with a very domineering personality. For several years prior to the disappearance of his wife, Dr. Crippen had been carrying on an affair with his office secretary, Ethel Le Neve. Sometime after the evening of January 31, 1910, Cora simply vanished. Things might have gone better for him if his mistress Ethel had not quickly moved into the Crippen home and begun to wear Crippen’s wife’s clothes and jewelry. Soon, social acquaintances of the 12

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Crippens became suspicious and took their concerns to Scotland Yard. On questioning, Dr. Crippen changed his story of his wife’s whereabouts numerous times, at first claiming that she had returned to America and died. Eventually he said that she had left him for another man. He might have gotten away with the crime if he had not panicked after being interrogated and made a dash for Canada by ship. Ethel traveled with Crippen disguised as his young son, with her hair cut and dressed in a young man’s suit of clothes. On returning to the empty Crippen home, Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard serendipitously came upon pieces of human tissue wrapped in a man’s paja-mas, along with hair in hair curlers, buried under the floor of the coal cellar.

An alarm quickly went out all across Europe for Crippen and Le Neve.

On board ship, Dr. Crippen and Le Neve were soon identified by the cap-tain, and a radio message was sent back to England alerting the authorities of the fugitives’ presence among the passengers. This was the first time in history that the newly developed Marconi radio wireless was used in the apprehension of a criminal. Inspector Dew boarded a faster ship and was waiting for the fugitive pair as they were ready to disembark in Canada.

They were arrested and taken back to England to stand trial for the murder of Mrs. Crippen. The case is interesting in that no head, no limbs, no bones, and no organs of gender were found, and the case hinged on the fact that the tissue discovered was found to contain the toxic alkaloidal compound hyoscine (scopolamine), which had not been known ever to have been used in a poisoning homicide up to that time. It was also proven that Dr. Crippen had purchased hyoscine, to use—he claimed—in the preparation of his homeopathic formulations. Ethel Le Neve was found not guilty of any involvement in the death of Mrs. Crippen, but Dr. Crippen was found guilty, and he was hanged on November 23, 1910.

More than 37 books have been written on the Crippen murder, and the name Crippen has even become a synonym for poisoner in the British lan-guage. Many students of the case have asked, why did Dr. Crippen not simply walk away from his unhappy marriage in the first place? Also, why did he apparently dismember his wife’s body, which certainly did not point to a natural death? Hyoscine was used at the time, in certain institutions, for a sedative effect. It is possible that he might have found it difficult to be sexually involved with two women at the same time and in an effort to depress her sexual appe-tite by giving her hyoscine he had accidentally overdosed her (which would not be a hanging offense). Perhaps he had shot her—there was a gun in the home (which never came out at the trial)—and then realized that he had to get rid of the body. We probably will never have the true answers to these questions. But Crippen and Le Neve have been immortalized in wax in Madame Poisoners Throughout History

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Tussaud’s Waxworks’ “Chamber of Horrors” in London, for all visitors to look upon their visages and wonder.

I was a member of the London research team investigating the many unanswered questions about the Crippen case in a documentary made for the History Channel’s
The Real Dr. Crippen
and am now involved in a research project to utilize mitochondrial DNA to examine the actual remains removed from the grave from the Crippen property (Cullen, 1977).

1.2.8. Frederick Seddon, “The Poisoning Miser” (1911)

Frederick Seddon was a miser. In an attempt to gain easier access to the financial assets of another person, he took a boarder named Elizabeth Barrow into his London home. Frederick soon convinced the woman to assign him controlling interest in her annuities in exchange for his promise to care for her for the rest of her life. After several episodes of severe stomach distress, Elizabeth died in the Seddon home on September 14, 1911. Suspicious relatives soon arrived to take possession of the dead woman’s estate, but Seddon told them that there was nothing left to turn over. They went to the police with their suspicions, and it was soon determined that the victim’s body contained massive amounts of arsenic. Frederick and his wife, Mary, became prime suspects in Elizabeth’s untimely death. It was proven that Mary Seddon had purchased a large number of insecticidal fly papers, which contained arsenic, and it was speculated that the deadly poison had been soaked from the product and given to the deceased. Mary was eventually found innocent of any crime, but Frederick was found guilty and was hanged on April 18, 1912 (Adam, 1913).

1.2.9. Henri Girard, “The First Scientific Murderer” (1912)

The case of Henri Girard is important in this collection because it represents one of the first known uses of biological agents to carry out a poisoning homicide. The financial manipulator Henri Girard, purportedly a rather dash-ing-looking Parisian, made it his practice to insure the lives of various acquaintances and have himself listed as their primary beneficiary. These people soon died under mysterious circumstances by his hand. Girard’s poisonous weapons of choice were the natural toxins from the mushrooms of genus
Amanita
, as well as various pathogenic bacteria. Soon after the deaths of Girard’s acquaintances Louis Pernotte and Madame Monin, the insurance companies became very suspicious, and an investigation ensued. Girard was taken into custody in 1912 but cheated the French court by taking one of his own toxic germ cultures (most likely typhoid), which he had secreted in his personal effects (Kershaw, 1955).

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1.2.10. Arthur Warren Waite, DDS, “The Playboy Poisoner” (1916)

The first dentist in our collection, Dr. Arthur Warren Waite was a good-looking raconteur who most likely preferred playing tennis to practicing den-tistry. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and after graduating from dental school went to South Africa to practice. Waite eventually left South Africa after receiving suspicious accusations and returned to Michigan, where he wooed and married the daughter of John and Hannah Peck. John Peck was a millionaire pharmacist who owned a reputable drug company in the city. The grateful Pecks furnished the newlyweds with posh accommodations in New York City. There, Arthur spent much of his time dabbling in the area of bac-teriology and also took on a Mrs. Horton as his mistress.

In January 1916, shortly after Hannah Peck arrived to visit the Waites in New York, she suddenly became ill and died. Her body was immediately cremated and returned to Michigan for burial. In March of the same year, John Peck also went to New York, to console his daughter and her husband over the death of his wife. He, too, soon became ill and died. However, before his body could be cremated, his son received an anonymous telegram , in Grand Rapids, stating “suspicion aroused, demand autopsy.” Surprisingly, the autopsy indicated that John Peck was loaded with arsenic, and an investigation ensued. The accusing finger eventually pointed to the playboy dentist, and the police took him in for interrogation. A search of his dwelling revealed numerous bacterial cultures, as well as texts dealing with toxicology. While under interrogation, Dr. Waite changed his story numerous times. First he stated that he had obtained arsenic for his father-in-law, who wanted to commit suicide to end his grief over the loss of his wife. Then Dr. Waite claimed his own body was inhabited by the spirit of an evil Egyptian priest who had instructed him to kill his in-laws in order to gain their wealth. Eventually, Dr.