Poison and Progress
Modern science's race to stay ahead of global terrorists and political assassins began with some devious poisoners in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
By DEBORAH BLUM
WSJ
In 1906, Belle Gunness started running personal ads in Midwestern papers. She described herself as an attractive widow with a lush Indiana farm property, interested in an equally affluent new husband. She included a tart postscript: "Triflers need not apply."
Suitors answered her call by the dozen—and disappeared at a similar rate. After Ms. Gunness herself vanished in 1908, the La Porte, Ind. police department eventually set the body count at more than 40. This figure included her children and stepchildren, pieces of whom were found buried around the farm.
A conspirator later detailed Ms. Gunness's favorite method for murder: a little chloroform in a tumbler of whiskey, followed by a strychnine chaser. Once her gentleman callers dropped dead, she would wait for dark to dismember and bury the bodies.
Ms. Gunness was one of the most successful poison killers to belong to the era historians call the golden age of poisoning, from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. The rise of spectacular poisoners like Ms. Gunness—or Mary Ann Cotton in Britain, who was hanged in 1873 for eliminating more than 20 people with arsensic—drove a sense of urgency among scientists, eventually leading to the creation of forensic toxicology. Unfortunately, that didn't mean the end of homicidal poisonings. Under pressure, killers simply became more secretive and creative in their plans.
(More here.)
By DEBORAH BLUM
WSJ
In 1906, Belle Gunness started running personal ads in Midwestern papers. She described herself as an attractive widow with a lush Indiana farm property, interested in an equally affluent new husband. She included a tart postscript: "Triflers need not apply."
Suitors answered her call by the dozen—and disappeared at a similar rate. After Ms. Gunness herself vanished in 1908, the La Porte, Ind. police department eventually set the body count at more than 40. This figure included her children and stepchildren, pieces of whom were found buried around the farm.
A conspirator later detailed Ms. Gunness's favorite method for murder: a little chloroform in a tumbler of whiskey, followed by a strychnine chaser. Once her gentleman callers dropped dead, she would wait for dark to dismember and bury the bodies.
Ms. Gunness was one of the most successful poison killers to belong to the era historians call the golden age of poisoning, from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. The rise of spectacular poisoners like Ms. Gunness—or Mary Ann Cotton in Britain, who was hanged in 1873 for eliminating more than 20 people with arsensic—drove a sense of urgency among scientists, eventually leading to the creation of forensic toxicology. Unfortunately, that didn't mean the end of homicidal poisonings. Under pressure, killers simply became more secretive and creative in their plans.
(More here.)
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