Poisoned History

Graham Young was a psychopath chemist who killed or injured many people who he came in contact with. He was fascinated with chemistry, poisons, and the Nazis, and had a habit of poisoning co-workers who annoyed him...as well as co-workers and friends he liked.

Sources and resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Young

Bowden, Paul, Graham Young (1947-1990); the St Albans poisoner: his life and times, Criminal Behaviour and Men...

Marie Lafarge was a reluctant bride who was accused of murdering her husband in the late 1830s by poisoning him with arsenic. At the time the arsenic tests were often inconclusive, and murderers could get off by sowing doubt in the minds of jurors about the methods used for detection. But the Marsh test changed all that since was a much more definitive test for arsenic. The ups and downs of this case will amaze you.

Sources and reso...

Part Two of two: Amy Archer’s reign of terror inside a nursing home in the early 1900s was the basis for the play and later the movie Arsenic and Old Lace. Amy took in boarders in a nursing home and systematically killed them over the course of about 6 years. It was owing to the attention and tenacious investigative reporting of a local reporter that she was eventually found out, but was she a cold-blooded killer, insane, or just a...

Amy Archer’s reign of terror inside a nursing home in the early 1900s was the basis for the play and later the movie Arsenic and Old Lace. Amy took in boarders in a nursing home and systematically killed them over the course of about 6 years. It was owing to the attention and tenacious investigative reporting of a local reporter that she was eventually found out, but was she a cold-blooded killer, insane, or just a confused old lad...

Rasputin was a prominent figure in the Russian royal family just before the Russian revolution of 1917. The nobility felt that he had too much power over the czar and czarina, and wanted him gone. He was murdered by nobles in the basement of Prince Yusupov’s Moika palace, on December 30, 1916. Stories of his indestructible nature have been passed down over the generations, but what really happened? How did a peasant rise through th...

Fiction Episode!

This episode contains spoilers.

In the novel Sparkling Cyanide, a young heiress dies unexpectedly from cyanide poisoning during a birthday dinner. Although the official verdict of an inquest is suicide brought on by depression after influenza, her husband and sister have their doubts. There are many suspects, all of whom could possibly have had it in for her, but determining who the murderer is, or even if there is...

Fiction Episode!

This episode contains spoilers.

In the novel Sparkling Cyanide, a young heiress dies unexpectedly from cyanide poisoning during a birthday dinner. Although the official verdict of an inquest is suicide brought on by depression after influenza, her husband and sister have their doubts. There are many suspects, all of whom could possibly have had it in for her, but determining who the murderer is, or even if there is...

Florence Bravo was a wealthy widow before she married Charles Bravo, a barrister in the 1860s and 70s in Victorian England who was angry that she wouldn’t share her inheritance with him. When Charles died, there were multiple people in his household who were suspects, because so many of them had a beef with him. This story was referred to in several Agatha Christie novels: Ordeal by Innocence, Elephants Can Remember, and The Clocks...

Florence Bravo was a wealthy widow before she married Charles Bravo, a barrister in the 1860s and 70s in Victorian England who was angry that she wouldn’t share her inheritance with him. When Charles died, there were multiple people in his household who were suspects, because so many of them had a beef with him. This story was referred to in several Agatha Christie novels: Ordeal by Innocence, Elephants Can Remember, and The Clocks...

Dr. William Palmer was a physician in the mid-1800s in England who was a little too fond of gambling. So fond, in fact, that he was willing to kill multiple relatives for the life insurance payouts he took out on them, sometimes without their knowledge. He is famous for Palmer’s Act, the law that later prevented someone from taking out life insurance on someone unless they could show they would suffer a financial loss if that perso...

On April 28, 1908, in La Porte, Indiana, Belle Gunness’s house burned to the ground and four bodies were found inside, one of them headless. The victims were allegedly Belle Gunness and her three children. Was this a terrible accident, murder, or a faked death? What was subsequently found on the farm would give some answers but also generate more questions.

Sources and resources:

Wikipedia

"United States Census, 1900", FamilySearc...

At 2am on March 23, 1857, Emile L'Angelier came back to his boarding house in a terrible state, complaining of stomach pain. His landlady helped him inside and to bed. She was worried about him because he had had these symptoms off and on for the past few months. Later that morning he died, and letters from a wealthy young socialite were found in his room. Was this murder?

Sources and resources:

Wikipedia

The Elements of Murder by...

From September 1914 to January 1915, seventeen residents of a nursing home for the elderly in New York died. During the investigation Frederick Mors confessed to murdering at least eight of them, claiming he had put them out of their misery. Was it all his idea, or was he bullied into it by management?

Sources and resources:

Wikipedia

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Debor...

Episode 8 – Iron Mike Malloy

Iron Mike Malloy was given unlimited access to drinks in a bar in New York City in the 1930s. But the reason behind this generosity was not as friendly and generous as it sounds, and hid a more despicable purpose.

If you would like to suggest topics for the show, you can send them to poisonedhistorypodcast@gmail.com.

Sources and resources:

Michael Malloy - the Irishman in The Bronx that could...

William Taylor was a farmer who died in excruciating pain from what was thought to be tetanus. Was it actually strychnine poisoning, and was his wife Virginia the culprit?

Sources and resources:

“The Strychnine Exhumation” by Raychelle Burks, Chemistry World, 22 April 2017, Royal Society of Chemistry, https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-strychnine-exhumation/3007131.article

Richmond Dispatch, December 27,1888, https://eshor...

Mary Ann Cotton was one of the most prolific poisoners in British history. Over the course of about 20 years she murdered between 16 and 20 people, all of them close to her, before she was found out and stopped.

Show Notes:

Sources and resources:

The Elements of Murder by John Emsley

Wikipedia

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Ann-Cotton

Mary Ann Cotton: Britain’s First Female Serial Killer by David Wilson

“The baby bor...

Christiana Edmunds was a woman who poisoned or attempted to poison multiple people using strychnine added to chocolates. Was her behavior due to jealousy of her crush’s wife or just a love of mayhem? This story has some similarities to the Tylenol poisonings of the 1980s.

Sources and resources:

Wikipedia

Francisco, S-V; Reina, G. The chemistry of Marchand’s test for strychnine identification, https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio...

James Maybrick died on May 11, 1889 after showing signs of poisoning for weeks. Did his young wife poison him or did he just take too many "medicines?" And was he actually Jack the Ripper? This month I have my first guest (future co-host?) on the show, John. Sources and Resources: Full text of the Maybrick case: a treatise on the facts of the case, and of the proceedings in connection with the charge, trial, conviction,...