Marie LaFarge: Pretty Little Poisoner

Marie was convicted of murdering her husband by poisoning him with arsenic. But what's most notable about that in doing so, she became the first person ever to be convicted based on direct forensic toxicological evidence, like on Dexter or CSI.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to criminal a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Maria trem Marquis. And this week we
are going to look into the life of Marie Lafarge, who,
at just twenty four years old, became the sensational central

(00:20):
figure in one of France's most notorious murder cases. Her crime,
Marie was convicted of murdering her husband by poisoning him
with arsenic But what's most notable about that in doing so,
she became the first person ever to be convicted based
on direct forensic toxicological evidence like on dexter or c
s I. She was born Marie Kapelle in France in

(00:40):
January of eighteen sixteen, and she was the daughter of
a colonel in Napoleon's Artillery of the Guard. Her mother's
lineage could be traced to France's reigning royal family. Her
grandmother was the daughter of King Louis the thirteenth, father
Philippi Galte and his mistress, Comtess Stefanie Felic. Marie was
an aristocrat. She was beautiful, cultured woman who played the

(01:03):
piano and wrote poetry in her memoirs, which weren't published
until after her trial. Though she described herself as having
an unhappy childhood, she claimed her father had often lamented
not having a boy, and her younger sister, who was
five years younger, was at least Marie considered prettier and
more charming than she was, and when her father died
in a hunting accident in five Marie was just twelve

(01:27):
and her mother remarried very quickly, But just seven years
later her mother also died, and that meant that orphaned
Marie was sent to live with her aunt that was
her mother's sister. Her aunt was also the wife of
the Secretary General of the Bank of France. Though had
said she was treated well in her new home and
sent to the best schools. As an orphan, Marie's status

(01:48):
went from aristocrat to poor cousin. She had no dowry
of significance, rumored at only about ninety francs, and in
those days, that made her a marriage liability. Her wealthy
upper class he started to marry wealthy nobleman, but because
of her financial situation, Marie was still without a husband
at age twenty three, and at this time. In France,

(02:10):
marriage for aristocratic women was a serious business, and so
her uncle went to a matchmaker for help. The matchmaker
did manage to strike a deal for Marie. Her arranged
marriage was to Charles Lafarge, who was a robust man
often described his course um, and he was merely a
matter of expedience for both. Charles needed money to repair

(02:30):
his estate and reinvigorate his business, and Marie was in
desperate need of a husband. Charles had really presented himself
as a wealthy manufacturer and a property owner with an
annual income of thirty thousand francs from his iron foundry,
but the reality was a little bit different. He had
lost almost all of his money and his property during
the French Revolution, so if Charles had offered an honest

(02:52):
matchmaking profile, it wouldn't have been very appealing. He was
a bankrupt widower with nothing but a collapsed chateau the
Atto his one asset, if we're being generous, also had
a serious rap problem, and when Marie first met Charles
during a date to the opera, it wasn't exactly love
the first sight. She found him to be common and

(03:13):
boorish and ugly, and she really didn't like him very much,
but still a short few days later they were engaged,
and just a few more weeks later, in the summer
of eighteen thirty nine, Marie and Charles were married, and
not surprisingly, when she arrived at her new home at Leglandier,
not far from Bordeaux, it turned out to be set
within the ruins of a former monastery, and Marie was

(03:35):
disappointed and asked for her new in laws. Uh. They
were not the aristocracy that she was accustomed to rubbing
elbows with. They were peasants, and they disliked her. Immediately,
unhappy and disappointed with her new reality, Marie made a
determined effort to break loose from Charles. On her first

(03:55):
night in their new home, she locked herself in her
room and wrote a letter to her new husband, egging
him to free her from their marriage, or else, she threatened,
she'd poisoned herself. This was also the first time that
she invoked this idea of murder by Arsenic, although of
course she was threatening to take her own life and
not his. Writing quote, spare me be the guardian angel

(04:16):
of a poor orphan girl, or if you choose, slay
me and say I have killed myself, But later that
night she admitted to her ruse. Charles in return, agreed
not to act on his marital privileges at him until
he had both renovated the house and saved his failing
iron works business. He kept his word, and account suggest

(04:36):
that things did seem to improve between the two of
them over the next few weeks, but that didn't last.
Charles really did seem to be trying. Charles spent a
significant amount of money on his bride during this time.
He really seemed to be doing his very best to
win her over, and he wanted her to be able
to pursue her intellectual interests and find some happiness. So

(04:57):
he had her piano ship from Paris, and he also
bought her an Arabian horse that she could ride around
on the grounds. Uh and he also subscribed her to
magazines and newspapers, and he set her up with an
account at the local library. It does seem to be
trying really hard, right, He's like, he's like, here's this
Arabian horse that I bought for you. Please don't poison yourself, honey.

(05:18):
I know what you expected, but I want to make
this palatable for you. Yet, accounts of their marriage suggests
Marie remained uncomfortable, feeling that his attentions toward her were
and we quote paid in a manner that shocked her refinement. Still,
in return, I mean Marie was not blind to the
fact that he was making an effort. She started to
take on her responsibilities as the mistress of the house,

(05:43):
and at the top of her list of things to
do is to take care of that pesky rat infestation.
Damn rats. We're gonna get into a little bit of chemistry,
but first we're gonna take a quick sponsor break. Welcome
back to Criminalia. Let's get into a pinch of chemistry

(06:08):
for a moment. Arsenic is an element of the periodic
table and it's naturally occurring state. It's not particularly toxic.
It's white arsenic, which is a byproduct of the smelting
process of various metals. That's highly deadly poisonous um. And
that's what was commonly used to get rid of rodents
and weeds, and almost anybody could buy it. In the
nineteenth century, Marie got hurt from the local druggist and

(06:30):
also just as a historical cultural level set during this
time in France, arsenic could be founded way more household
products than you would probably feel comfortable with today. By
mixing copper, arsenic, hydrogen, and oxygen together um it produced
a brilliant green, though highly toxic pigment that was used
in everything from kids toys to soaps and candles and

(06:51):
fabric eyes, even wallpaper. Pretty Much anything that was colored
this this green um during this period would have been
laced with arsenic. It could even be found in medications
that were used to treat everything from asthma to malaria
and cancer to enhancing a waning male libido. Archnic wasn't
just used to kill rats and mice. During the mid
nineteenth century, when life insurance had gained popularity as an industry,

(07:14):
arsenic took on a new identity as people saw a
new chance to supplement their income. It was nicknamed the
inheritance powder because it was so frequently used to kill
off uncles and other family members who might leave behind
a chunk of cash or some other assets. And although
men committed about spousal homicides, women were not above using
it to kill husbands. So some of this arthnic talk

(07:35):
maybe like a review for you um. And because it
was cheap and odorless and had no flavor. Artnic, as
we have mentioned before, could not be detected in food
or beverages, and because those symptoms that it caused, like
diarrhea and vomiting an abdominal pain, are all pretty common
for many other conditions, including cholera, a medical examiner usually

(07:56):
had no way to discern whether or not poison was
involved in a person death. The first sign that you've
ingested arsenic, keep this in mind, is a sharp, burning
pain in your stomach and esophagus, a symptom that comes
on any time between about thirty minutes to several hours
after you've swallowed that poisoned tea, and then comes the
nausea and the vomiting and diarrhea. Arsenic will go on

(08:19):
to damage the heart eventually, and a lot of people
poisoned with arsenic have lingered on in their deathbeds for weeks.
In fact, until the twentieth century, doctors had no idea
how to treat arsenic poisoning. Uh They fed patients milk, vinegar, linseed, sugar, water,
egg whites, you name it in order to induce vomiting
and find a cure. They would even go through the

(08:40):
contents of a victim's stomach, and eventually it was realized
that some of the reaction that happened in the human
body when ingesting arsenic. While arsenic had no odor, that
process could produce a garlic smell, so if they smelled that,
then they would suspect that arsenic had been involved. They
also used that old standby of the time bleeding, whether
by incision or more often with leeches. But it wasn't

(09:04):
just difficult to prove poison as a murder weapon, it
was also difficult to place the murderer at the scene
of the crime. Dying from arsenic poisoning, as we just mentioned,
could take hours and far longer if the poison had
been administered in small doses like in your daily meals.
Through much of the nineteenth century, it's estimated that about
one third of all criminal poisoning cases involved arsenic poison.

(09:27):
And this brings us back to Marie and Charles. Shortly
after they were married in December of eighteen thirty nine,
Marie made a will bequeathing her inheritance to Charles, with
the agreement that he was going to do the same
thing for her, and Charles did make a will bequeathing
everything of his to his new bride, But then he
made another will, a secret will, and in that secret will,

(09:52):
he instead left his entire estate to his mother. So
then just a few months into the marriage as well,
Charles began having recurring spells of vomiting diarrhea, and while
he was in a business trip to Paris, he snacked
on a cake sent from his wife and fell violently ill.
I believe it was a Christmas cake, which makes it
somehow more cruel. I believe it was Mary Christmas. Charles

(10:13):
returned home and his condition continued to deteriorate, and his doctors,
both in Paris and a home, had diagnosed him with
what they believed was cholera. But his friends and relatives
really started to suspect that Marie might be the problem
and the reason for his poor health. It just said
that she refused to leave his bedside um In fact,
as his condition worse, in Marie's mother in law had

(10:34):
the remains of a glass of eggnog analyzed by the
local druggist, who reportedly did find traces of arsenic in
the beverage. There's this part of me that loves eggnog,
so much that I'm like, how poison is it? Because
maybe I'll drink in anyway. He's like, this is gonna
kill me. The damn it's a delicious way to go. Uh.

(10:54):
Although we're being very jovial, but we get to the
very grave section next, which is less than a year
into their marriage. It was just January of eighteen forty
Charles died, and although she maintained she was completely innocent,
Marie was suspected of having poisoned him. The evidence against
her centered around the food she had offered to Charles,

(11:16):
including not only the cake that she'd sent to him
on his business trip, but nuggets of venison and truffles
were in there as well. Uh. Suspicion also swirled around
a small, mysterious box, the powdery contents of which Marie
had been seen stirring into her husband's food and drink.
Enough evidence was collected that she was arrested on suspicion

(11:36):
of his murder. I will mention if you want an
entertaining read her memoirs talk about this whole box thing
and like accidental switcheroo of powders and oh yeah, the
gum arabic and she's like it's it's good for your stomach.
So Marie LaFarge's trial, which was held during the summer
of eighteen forty, became a sensation in Europe, and the

(11:58):
fascinated public quickly divide it into pro in anti Marie camps,
and in salons plays recreated the events of the trial.
No one could get enough of this story. Marie's aunt
had secured the best lawyer in Paris, a man named
Alfonse Pier, who, with his associates Charles le Shau and

(12:18):
THEEO dol Bach, would be Marie's defense team. Because of
daily newspaper reports, Marie's case was one of the first
followed closely by the public. She became the object of
adoration for some as much as suspicion for others, and
received thousands of letters and gifts and even marriage proposals. Yeah,
she kind of becomes one of the earliest um criminals

(12:38):
to gain that weird dual notoriety where people are just
obsessed with her on both sides of the belief of
her innocence or guilt. When she entered court for the
first time on September three of eighteen forty, she was
dressed completely in morning gear, and she carried a small
bottle of smelling salts with her throughout her child Marie
had a flair for the dramatic. Her lawyer played up

(13:01):
quote the excellence of her piano playing, her delightful voice,
her competence in more than one science, her fluency in
several languages, and her ability to compose in Italian verse.
It kind of goes back to that thing we've talked
about before, like she is such a great person, and
look how adorable she is. There's no way she's bad. Exactly.
If you've seen Chicago, she's tap dancing right now. Now.

(13:24):
There is a little bit of twist that comes into
the story here because while we have been talking about
her murder trial, uh, it turned out that she actually
ended up with two indictments against her. So there is
the one that charged her with the murder of her husband,
but there was a whole second charge that came up
regarding a jewel theft. So here's the story about the

(13:45):
jewel theft. A former school friend of Marie's accused her
of having stolen her diamonds while visiting one summer before
she had met Charles Lafarge. Marie actually freely admitted that
the diamonds were in fact at her home, but she
refused is to admit that she'd stolen them. She claimed
her friend had interested the diamond necklace to her. So
people generally did start to just believe that she was

(14:07):
a thief because she had these jewels. And while some
people that were following this trial so closely because it
was a huge sort of media event, thought that, yeah,
she might be guilty of this thievery, but that doesn't
mean she's a murderous but other people just saw these
two charges as entwined in regards to her very immoral
character and thought that if she was capable of lying

(14:30):
about stealing diamonds, and of course she was also capable
of carrying out the murder of her husband, that it
wasn't popular opinion that she was convicted on Marie was
the first person convicted of murder by the use of
direct forensic evidence forensic sciences which applies science to the
analysis of physical evidence during a criminal investigation, and it
was brand new at this time. Yeah. Toxicology in particular

(14:52):
is the scientific study of chemicals, including poisons, on humans
and other living things. Forensic toxicologists D d detection and
treatment of poisons, as well as the effects poisons have
on the body. Again bleeding edge science at this point, Yes,
brand new information. So Marie never concealed her possession of arsenic.

(15:15):
She bought it openly to kill rats, she stated. And
that suspicious white powder she was seen stirring into her
husband's food and drink, she insisted that was just gum arabic,
which at the time was commonly used relief stomach complaints. Yeah,
he he doesn't feel well. I'm trying to fix it.
Unlike today, when autopsies are fairly common anytime foul play
is suspected, in the nineteenth century, that was not really

(15:37):
a standard procedure to interfere with a dead body. Often
there were religious reasons for that. So although a post
mortem was made on her husband's corpse, that was not
done until some time after the fact, when it was
insisted upon as all of these suspicions came up. Now,
before we jump into uh, sort of the development of

(15:58):
the tests that really damned Marie, we're gonna have a
little sponsor break. During the first half of the nineteenth century,
Parisian academics were debating which tests and practices for arsenic
detection were authentic and which were just bunk. But before
they settled on one they were, there were big disagreements
over the test's conclusiveness, and the debates became known as

(16:20):
the Arsenic wars. One of the ways to test for
arsenic was a procedure called the Marsh test that was
invented by chemist James Marsh in the early eighteen thirties. Marsh,
who was British, had first used this test in his
lab in eighteen thirty two in a court case that
involved a grandson accused of poisoning his grandfather. And while
Marsha's test of the evidence did produce precipitate of arsenic sulfide,

(16:44):
that compound was unstable and it broke down before the
trial so it couldn't be used. That propelled Marsh to
develop a much more robust version of his test, which
he successfully did in eighteen thirty six, that being just
a few years before Marie's came. And when it comes
to Marie's case, it was the first time the local
doctors had performed, or you know, frankly even heard of

(17:06):
the Marsh test, which was, as we mentioned, still really
quite new to scientists UM, and even in its refined version,
it was also notoriously finicky UM. Ultimately, the local doctors
performed it incorrectly anyway, and found no evidence of arsenic
in the corpse. Um. The food that had been served
to Charles, however, did test positive for the poison, and

(17:27):
when all of these results were revealed in court, Marie
in response fainted dead away and had to be carried out,
very dramatic, but not everyone believed there was no poison
in that corpse. It wasn't until one of the most
prominent scientists of the time was called in by the
defense team to help out in the case that evidence
was found that Charles had indeed been poisoned with arsenic

(17:48):
through his meals. That prominent scientist with Matteo or Phila.
And or Phila was the dean of the Paris Faculty
of Medicine and the premier toxicologist of the time. He
actually went on to be recognized as the founder of
the science of toxicology, and because he was living in France,
he was considered France's foremost expert on the Marsh tests.

(18:09):
The Marsh test was capable of accurately detecting minute quantities
of arsenic as little as one fifth, yet as little
as one of a milligram, and he could be used
on bodies that had been long dead. Orphela, asked to
verify that there was no arsenic in the corps, was
able to prove conclusively to the court that there indeed

(18:31):
was arsenic in Charles's exhumed body, which was said to
resemble a quote paste rather than flesh. Also, because soil
can naturally contain arsenic, he wanted to be very thorough,
so he also tested the soil around the burial site
to make sure that the corpse had not been contaminated
by that, and none of that soil that was adjacent

(18:53):
to his burial tested positive for arsenic. Things aren't looking
good for our hero. While this was one of the
first is where the Marsh test was successfully used to
identify poisoning by arsenic, it was far from the last.
Marsh continued to refine his revolutionary detection process, and with
modifications along the way, it was usual reliably for about
d and fifty years so, along with the enactment of

(19:14):
divorce laws that made domestic homicide less tempting, the Marsh
test and its ability to trace the murder weapon directly
contributed to arsenic poisoning falling out of fashion, and for
a little science on this test, it worked a little
bit like this. A sample containing arsenic would be combined
with sulfuric acid and zinc in an apparatus that was
made up of tubes and rods and stopcocks and nozzles,

(19:37):
just to name a few of its components. It was
complicated and reacting with the zinc, the arsenic would turn
to gas, and then when the gas was heated to
a certain temperature, it left behind a film of metallic arsenic.
That arsenic would appear as a black streak after it
was allowed to cool on a piece of glass or porcelain,

(19:58):
and that presentation came to be known in the court
as the arsenic mirror. To counter the test damning results
in Marie LaFarge's case, the defense team tried to debunk
or Fiela's findings with another expert witness. This was Francois Spy,
who also happened to be or Fila's enemy in the
Arsenic War. So there's a whole secondary drama playing out here.

(20:19):
But Respy actually got to the whole event too, late,
the verdict had already been given and he wasn't even
wanted by the time he got in the end. Uh.
The jerry deliberated for just an hour, and Marie was
found guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison. She
was also sentenced to two years imprisonment for the theft
of that diamond necklace UH time, which was merged with

(20:40):
her life sentence. Considered a murderous yet still a respectable
female criminal, and that respectable refers to her background of
aristocratic birth. Marie was not sentenced too hard labor or
to public pillory. In fact, she actually made use of
the downtime that came with her sentence. UM. While Marie
was incarcerated, she wrote two volumes of her memoirs. In them,

(21:00):
she describes her arrival at the prison by saying, my
arrival was expected. The populace crowded around my carriage. Shouts, laughter,
gross and insulting words fell on my ears. The prison
door opened. At the sound of the bolts, I involuntarily recoiled.
I made two steps backwards. Then, collecting all my strength,
with desperate courage, I crossed the threshold of my tomb.

(21:23):
She's so dramatic she's such a writer. She is. This
is why you like her. She's been my favorite. So
in June of eighteen fifty two, after twelve years in
prison and reportedly suffering from tuberculosis, Marie was finally released
by Napoleon the Third. She died just five months later.

(21:46):
In seven Marie's memoirs were adapted into the novel The
Lady and the Arsenic, and her story also got cinematic
treatment a year later with the release of the film
La Fair Lafarge. And in nineteen fifty three, more than
one years after her trial, CBS radio series Crime Classics
broadcast a version of the story of Marie called The
Seven Layered Arsenic Cake of Madame Lafarge. So as we

(22:10):
look at Marie LaFarge's case, it's worth noting that her
crime seems born of a feeling on her part that
she had no voice or no recourse in her own life.
If you read her memoirs, one of the pieces of
advice that she had received from a friend, incidentally the
friend entangled in that whole Necklace drama not long before

(22:30):
being introduced to Monsieur Lafarge, lays bare her fraught situation.
She was told quote. You have no fortune and are
almost twenty three. A good marriage can alone confer in
society that liberty necessary to your character. Listen seriously while
I remind you of certain disagreeable but wholesome truths. Your

(22:51):
health is not good, and the nature of your complaint
does not add to your beauty. You will soon be
an old maid, as dissatisfied with yourself as you will
be disagreeable to others. Avert this by becoming an amiable wife.
You would not hear me last winter, and evaded the
subject every time I attempted to speak on it. Now

(23:12):
I have caught you, and I am determined to persuade
you to make up your mind and to make you
happy in spite of yourself. That's some harshness. That is, like,
you know how people will say, like a friend will
tell you the truth, that is that might be a
little too much truth. I feel like she's like, I'm
never gonna see her again. I can just tell her everything.

(23:32):
I think. I think it's like it's a little cruel
to just be the truth in some way. I know,
it's like you're getting old, you're getting ugly. Oh my gosh.
This this section where She's like, your health is not good,
and the nature of complaint does not add to your beauty.
I was like, it's some unkind, it's an unkind. Whammo, Holly,

(23:54):
you would not hear me last winter. That rather sobering
advice from the Vicomtess Delta and relayed in Marie's memoir
makes very very clear that as a fallen daughter of
the aristocracy, fallen simply because she was orphaned, who is

(24:17):
gasp aging, She's just doomed unless she finds a husband asap.
And remember she was like twenty three without a husband.
She's right, I mean, so when is this She's like
one or twenty two, and her friends like, you're getting
old pretty much. It doesn't look good on you. Additionally,

(24:39):
per her memoirs, she really really thought she was marrying
into a much better situation than she ended up in.
Marie recounts an evening where Charles showed her and her
aunt beautifully colored illustrations of his iron works and his home,
and how it was simply told to her that all
of this was her future, as her marriage had been
decided for her, and she describes the mo meant in

(25:00):
the wedding ceremony when it was time to say yes
to a life as Charles LaFarge's wife, by saying quote,
I felt that I was giving away my life. This
is all to say that while she was a killer,
Marie was also at her core a woman who felt
very trapped. Hey Maria, it's time for what's your poison?

(25:29):
So what is your poison this week? Holly? So this
week I have one that is invented by a French person. Allegedly.
That inventor is Arid to Louse Lautrec you were recognize.
And this drink is called an earthquake. It is composed
of equal parts absinthe and Kogac delicious. Okay, let me

(25:53):
set the scene at my house. So two things, I
am a drinker. My husband is not. Um. I like
Annis and my husband does not. Just set that up
right there, right that I love Annis and drinking. Um,

(26:14):
that's two things you love about me quite a bit.
So I put together this little mixture, which is mercifully easy. Right,
an equal part drink is super easy to put together. Um.
And it was funny because my husband Brian had kind
of said, like, I doubt this is going to be
the drink for me, but I'll try it. And so

(26:34):
I had some and I kind of made a surprised
face because I honestly thought it was gonna be yucky.
But in fact, there's something cool that happens um where
the absinthe really is like the main player. That's where
most of the flavor comes in, and the knyak doesn't
undercut it. The absence kind of overwhelms it. So it

(26:55):
just sends up tasting like a super kind of liquorice
e minty thing that you know is going to get
you super drunk. Like I know, I know it's called
an earthquake because because I'm I'm pretty sure you lose
sense of ground being solid if you drink a lot,
Like I said, I said when I had it, like

(27:17):
if I had two of these, I would be stumblina
Rex even just after the second one. Yeah, and that's
after like having a sip and a half. But so
the funny thing is my husband took a sip and
like looked slightly terrified for a minute and they're like wow,
and then he was like this is not for me.
So so it is pretty fun. And if you want

(27:41):
to have a historical cocktail, it's an easy one to
throw together once you have acquired the absinthe in the Koonak.
But it seemed like a good fit because it kind
of makes me think of the duality of Marie and
Charles and they're doomed marriage. Um, so that is our
what's your poison for today? The earthquake? The earthquake. We

(28:03):
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