Poisoned History

Today we are doing our annual Fake Crime show, this time it’s a short story by Agatha Christie called the Chocolate Box. We are switching roles for this episode; our resident Christie/Poirot expert Mary Ann is going to host. Sources and resources: Poirot, Season 5, Episode 6, The Chocolate Box. Episode aired Feb 21, 1993. Broadcast by PBS and A&E; Starring: David Suchet as Hercule Poirot; Prod...

Mary Ann Geering was a British woman who poisoned her husband and three of her adult children, seemingly out of nowhere. But as the case progressed, some details came out that made her reasons more clear.

Mary Blandy was a fine young lady who got involved with the wrong man, who despite his title was quite ignoble. Her attempt to convince her father he was a great guy ended in tragedy.

Sarah Ann French was a young wife with an older husband who took a fancy to a younger man, with disastrous results. Sources and resources: Teresa Geering, The Guestling Murderess, 8 February 2008, https://tgeering.blogspot.com/2008/02/guestling-murderess.html William French Family Tree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/French-11772#:~:text=Biography,poisoned%20her%20husband%20and%20sons Walton, G., O...

Martha Place was a middle-aged woman with a tragic life story and a fearful temper. One day her husband brought out the Jersey girl in her, leading to more tragedy. Sources and resources: National Center for Biotechnology Information (2026). PubChem Compound Summary for CID 176, Acetic Acid. Retrieved April 24, 2026 from https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Acetic-Acid. National Center for Bi...

Mary Alice Livingston Fleming was a single mom from a wealthy family who allegedly killed her own mother in 1895 but denied having anything to do with it. Her family and this case were a large part of history and a huge story in the sensationalist press of the time. Sources and resources: Livingston, J; Arsenic and Clam Chowder: Murder in Gilded Age New York. The Gotham Center for New York City Hi...

Adelaide Bartlett was a young French woman living in England, who got into a love triangle with her husband and another man. When her husband turned up dead one day though, the whole arrangement fell apart and she suddenly became a murder suspect. Sources and Resources: “The impossible case of the Pimlico poisoning,” The CutPrice Guignol, https://thethreepennyguignol.com/2024/04/17/the-impossible-...

Dr. Edward Pritchard was a doctor (of sorts), viewed as a quack by many of his contemporaries, who decided that killing would solve all his problems most efficiently. He was right, for a little while at least. Sources and resources: Loney, G; How the Huan Crocodile met the Glasgow hangman for the last public execution in Scotland; Glasgow Live, 18Nov2018, https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history...

Thomas Neill Cream was a good-looking man about town in the late 1800s, who was poisoning many of the people he treated and blackmailing anyone he thought could afford to pay. He was eventually caught when the family of one of his victims denied that she could possibly have committed suicide as was suggested by a note she wrote. But that’s not the end of the story. Sources and Resources: Wilson Sm...

Time for another fake crime episode! In this episode of Columbo, a restaurant owner is murdered by a restaurant critic who had been charging him for good reviews. Columbo suspects the writer from the start, but doesn’t have any proof yet. He hounds the restaurant writer, popping up everywhere, in an effort to wear him down. This show, if you’re not familiar with it, is a how-catch-em instead of a...

Time for another fake crime episode! In this episode of Columbo, a restaurant owner is murdered by a restaurant critic who had been charging him for good reviews. Columbo suspects the writer from the start, but doesn’t have any proof yet. He hounds the restaurant writer, popping up everywhere, in an effort to wear him down. This show, if you’re not familiar with it, is a how-catch-em instead of a...

Robert Buchanan was a doctor in New York in the late 1800s who divorced his first wife in order to marry a brothel-owning woman from Newark, New Jersey. When she turned up dead, it seemed like it had been from natural causes, but his friends and acquaintances had some pointed questions and some suspicious letters to share with the police. Sources and resources: Peole v. Buchanan, Court of Appeals...

Jane Toppan, aka Jolly Jane, was a nurse in the late 19th century who cared for the elderly and also murdered at least 31 of them. She admitted to taking pleasure in watching them die and her deeds were drooled over by the public. William Randolph Hearst’s sensationalist newspapers had a field day with her. Sources andresources: Wikipedia The Clinton Morning Age, July 27, 1902,Page 3, https://news...

Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian writer (and chemist!) in the 1960s and 70s whose writings against the Soviet Union and Bulgaria got the attention of that government and led to his targeting for assassination. Sources and resources: Umbrella Assassin. PBS, Secrets of the Dead, Season 5, Episode 5, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/umbrella-assassin-background/1546/ Georgi Markov refused to be silent a...

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...

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 c...

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 col...

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,...

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...

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 t...

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 t...

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, Ele...

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, Ele...

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 su...

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...