Saturday, September 6, 2014, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

Meet the Author

Deborah Blum was born in 1954. Her father was an entomologist, and her mother was a freelance writer, so it seems only natural that she would become a science writer. She started out with McClatchy Newspapers in Fresno working for The Fresno Bee and then moved to Sacramento and worked for 13 years as a science writer for The Sacramento Bee. Since then, she has written five books and numerous articles for numerous publications. She now writes a column called "Poison Pen" for the New York Times. Her complete bio and a full list of her books and other publications can be found at her website.

In this YouTube clip, Deborah Blum talks about The Poisoner's Handbook.



In her email, Milli-Ann also pointed us to a two-hour American Experience/PBS documentary based on The Poisoner's Handbook, which provides a great review of the book for those of us who read the book several weeks ago and also provides pictures of the people and places mentioned in the book.

The Heroes

Alexander Gettler (left), and Charles Norris

The Guilty Who Escaped

The Hotel Margaret in Brooklyn

In one of Alexander Gettler's first expert testimony cases, the manager of the Hotel Margaret and the hotel's fumigator were acquitted of manslaughter in the cyanide poisoning deaths of Fremont and Annie Jackson because the science was too new, requiring the prosecution to inform and educate the jury at the same time and failing to convince the jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.

Mary Frances and John Creighton (center)

 In 1923, Mary Frances (Fanny) and John Creighton were acquitted of the arsenic poisoning of Fanny's brother based on the fact that the only source of arsenic found in the home was too weak to account for the large amount of arsenic found in the body. In addition, the dead man had easy access to stronger arsenic at work, and his sister testified that he had been despondent. Fanny was acquitted two weeks later of the arsenic poisoning of John's mother as Alexander Gettler demonstrated that the arsenic in the dead woman's system probably was introduced as a contaminant of the bismuth stomach medication that she took. Years later, facing yet another murder charge, Fanny admitted to poisoning her brother, but she could not be tried for his murder due to double jeopardy considerations.


The Guilty Who Were Convicted

Mike Malloy's killers.

 Conspirators (clockwise from top left) Daniel Kreisberg, Joseph Murphy, Frank Pasqua, and Tony Marino.were convicted of the muder by carbon monoxide of Mike "The Durable" Malloy after taking out an insurance policy on him. They were convicted partially on testimony from co-conspirators and partially on testimony from the medical examiner's office that Malloy had too much carbon monoxide in his system to have died from accidental inhalation.

The wife/mom/housemate from hell.

 In 1935, one of the housemates of Mary Frances Creighton, a woman named Ada Applegate, died suddenly and under suspicious circumstances. Based on Fanny's history, the viscera of the corpse were sent to Alexander Gettler to be tested for arsenic, which was found in large quantities. It turned out that Fanny and the woman's husband had conspired to murder his wife so that he could marry Fanny's daughter. Each of the conspirators said it had been the other's idea, but they were both sentenced to die in the electric chair.


The Innocent Who Were Exonerated

Among the innocent who were exonerated by toxicological evidence were Charles Webb, who had been the victim of a smear campaign by his wife Gertie's family insinuating that Charles had killed Gertie via mercury poisoning. Immigrant fisherman Francesco Travia was also exonerated of the charge of murder in the case of a neighbor, Anna Fredericksen, after he was caught in the process of dismembering and disposing of her corpse. The medical examiner was able to demonstrate that Anna had died of carbon monoxide poisoning before her corpse was dismembered, and an overturned coffee pot having extinguished a gas burner was identified as the source of the carbon monoxide. The only picture of the exonerated that I could find though was a stamp-sized picture of Frederick Gross, who had been charged with the thallium poisoning of his wife and children. Gross' wife was found to have died of natural causes, and the testimony of neighbors pointed to her as the likely poisoner of the children.

Frederick Gross