Another $300,000 was shared by nine people who helped police arrest a Florida man in 1986. O n this day, May 9, in 1988, a Seattle woman was found guilty of killing her husband and another person by lacing Excedrin capsules with cyanide. The crime was chillingly similar to the Chicago Tylenol murders four years earlier. Officers broke open the capsules and found the powdered toxin inside. To fill the now empty hours at home, she began keeping a home aquarium. What happens next? Now some top sleuths are trying to prove her innocence. By age 16 she was pregnant with her first daughter, Cindy Hamilton. Bruce's insurance paid an extra hundred thousand dollars if he died by accident, including poisoning. Stella Nicholls. [5] On June 27, Washington State put into effect a 90-day ban on the sale of non-prescription medication in capsules. May 08, 2013 12:00 AM. She told police, and doctors realized that Bruce Nickell had also been poisoned. When Cindy was 9, Stella was charged with hitting her with a curtain rod, bruising her legs. According to Cindy, Stella had pointed out that if Bruce died, she and Cindy would have the cash they wanted to open a tropical fish store, or perhaps a ceramics store, another of Stella's hobbies. I think, 'Say her name, lady.'". Stella also alleges that the evidence actually points to another person as the killer, and that the testimony about various smaller details in the case, such as the store owner who testified about her having purchased Algae Destroyer, was influenced by promises of payment. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The doctors said it was emphysema, but Stella says that never made sense, because he didnt have that disease. All sentences were to run concurrently, and the judge ordered Stella to pay a small fine and forfeit her remaining assets to the families of her victims. Stella is a young teenage girl living in a high school for her 1968-69 school year. Noonan claimed she bought so much algae destroyer, he had to special order it just for her. One June evening in 1986, he came home with a headache and four Excedrins. [2] Further tests showed that the substance was an algaecide used in home aquariums, sold under the brand name Algae Destroyer. President Nixon, at a news conference, defends the U.S. troop movement into Cambodia, saying the operation would provide six to eight months of time for training South Vietnamese forces and thus would shorten the war for Americans. She'd heard a thump and the sound of water running over the sink. According to Stellas daughter from a previous marriage, Stella had begun planning Bruces murder almost from the honeymoon. Stella is not perfect: She once served four months in jail for check fraud. But he took a polygraph, passed, and was eliminated as a suspect. On the basis of their new findings, Stella's legal team today filed a request for a new trial. Stella, who was ordered to go to counseling, says her daughter was jealous of her. When emergency personnel arrived, she told them that Bruce had taken Excedrin capsules and fallen unconscious. Trending News In the next 12 years, there would be a failed marriage and a second daughter. Farr and Ciolino talked to other people who were also rewarded for their role in the case. After the war, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City. had offered the rewards for information leading to an arrest in the June, 1986, killings, which led to the nations first trial in a product-tampering death. She refused to help the defense team. Still, hard evidence against her was hard to come by until January 1988. Later, however, he entered rehab and gave up the bottle. That case moved Congress to enact tough tampering laws. I sent her to school; she told the nurse I had beat her that morning. The killer in that case has never been caught. [6] Concrete evidence proving that she had ever purchased or used cyanide was lacking, and despite their relative certainty that she had orchestrated the poisonings as either an elaborate cover-up for an insurance-motivated murder of her husband or a desperate attempt to force her husband's death to be ruled an accident to increase her insurance payout, they were unable to build a strong case supporting arrest. They exhumed her husband's body and determined that he too, had been poisoned. Stella Nickell grew up poor in the Pacific Northwest. Because of product tampering legislation passed in response to the Chicago killings, these murders became a federal case. [2] Investigators examined the contents of the Snow-Webking household and discovered the source of the cyanide: the bottle of Excedrin capsules that both Snow and Webking had used the morning of Snow's death. The FBI found Stella's fingerprints on several books. For one thing, authorities found only five contaminated bottles of painkillers in all of King County. Rat poison found in Taco Bell takeout order, authorities say, Twitter auctioning its bird statue and other office trinkets, Need a new cookware set for the new year? Your email address will not be published. They say she was desperate to establish an accidental cause of death. After the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-6), Ulysses S. Grants Army of the Potomac marched south in the drive to take Richmond. She became eligible in 2017 after serving 30 years of her 90-year sentence. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Like last weeks case, this week deals with murder by poison. [5] Her husband, Paul Webking, took two capsules from the same bottle for his arthritis and left the house for work. Sues husband also took two capsules from the bottle for his arthritis before leaving for work. Ramn Morales : Hospitals have records. But U.S. District Judge James Robart on Thursday found that Nickell, who has already twice been denied parole, doesnt qualify for compassionate relief. All Rights Reserved. Her bar-hopping drastically reduced, Stella began to request more night shifts at her baggage-screener job at SEA-TAC airport. Snow's daughter, Hayley Klein, told Insider about her years of heartache following the crime. FBI document examiners determined that Bruce's signature on the applications had been forged. At the end of the movie, she won the prize for the scariest story ever. [6] Bruce had taken them to no effect save for complaining of sudden drowsiness. She said she had a bottle of Excedrin in her home with the same lot number as the bottle that had killed Sue Snow. Stella Nickell grew up poor in the Pacific Northwest. She told authorities that her husband had died suddenly after taking Excedrin. Search for birth, death, marriage, divorce, US Census, and military records. America immediately thought of the unsolved 1982 Chicago Tylenol product-tampering murders in which seven people died. [1][2] Stella soon found herself in various legal issues, including a conviction for fraud in 1968, a charge of spousal abuse for beating Hamilton with a curtain rod in 1969, and a conviction for forgery in 1971. Reports said Snow died after swallowing cyanide-laced Excedrin. In early 1974,. She was the first person to be found guilty of violating the Federal Anti-Tampering Act after putting cyanide. Stella Nickell, then 75, had been sentenced to 90 years in prison in 1988, after she was found guilty of product tampering. Milford Haven, Dyfed, SA73. She is evil. [12] The FBI identified her fingerprints on cyanide-related pages of a number of the works she had checked out during this period. "48 Hours": Brooke Skylar Richardson case He was taken by helicopter to a Seattle hospital. Nickell was convicted after police and FBI agents, following months of investigation, concluded she had laced her husbands Excedrin painkillers with cyanide to collect on his insurance, then planted poisoned pills in stores to throw off investigators. They have a history of helping people they feel have been unfairly convicted. A second autopsy proved her right. She maintains her innocence, claiming her daughter lied for the reward money. [18] She was denied parole in 2017.[19]. AIM was founded in 1968 by read more, On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. But Tom Noonan, who managed the local fish store at the time, says she did buy algae destroyer. Gregg Olsen's, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, "Case 93: Sue Snow and Bruce Nickell - Casefile: True Crime Podcast", "Killing Her Husband Wasn't Enough for Stella Nickell; to Make Her Point, She Poisoned a Stranger", "Mystery Involving Failed Mother-Daughter Relationship, Product Tampering and Murder, CBS", "Poisoned Painkiller Panic: The Snow-Nickell Cyanide Murders", "Poisoned Excedrin Suspected in 2D Seattle Death", "Ninety-year prison term in tampering deaths", United States Food and Drug Administration, "Husband of cyanide poisoning victim questioned", "Woman is Held in Deaths from Excedrin Laced with Cyanide", "Woman Guilty of Killing 2 With Poisoned Excedrin", "Woman Guilty of Killing 2 in Poisoned Excedrin Case", "Possibility of Mistrial Raised In Product-Tampering Case", "Stella Nickell, serving 90 years for planting poisoned pills, killing 2, seeks release from prison", "AUBURN WOMAN SERVING 90-YEAR TERM SEEKS NEW TRIAL IN HUSBAND-POISONING CASE", "The Federal Anti Tampering Act: Criminal Offense To Tamper With Consumer Products", "Nickell gets 90 years for cyanide murders", "TV film canceled after drug maker objects", "USA Network Pulls Movie After Advertiser Protests", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stella_Nickell&oldid=1130965489, People convicted of murder by Washington (state), Articles with dead external links from November 2021, Articles with permanently dead external links, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Pages using infobox criminal with motive parameter, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 1 January 2023, at 21:57. Stella had an aquarium, but says she never bought algae destroyer. At 6:30 a.m., Snows 15-year-old daughter, Hayley, found her lying on the bathroom floor, unresponsive and with only a faint pulse. A year and half after Bruce Nickell died, Stella Nickell was arrested and stood trial in federal court. Nickell was the first to be convicted. "I am not guilty," says Nickell. As any songwriter would, Sebastian first tried working that title into his read more, On May 8, 1963, with the release of Dr. No, North American moviegoers get their first lookdown the barrel of a gunat the super-spy James Bond (codename: 007), the immortal character created by Ian Fleming in his now-famous series of novels and portrayed onscreen by the read more, Claiming that its athletes will not be safe from protests and possible physical attacks, the Soviet Union announces that it will not compete in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. One of the bottles happened to be purchased by Snow. "It's entirely possible that the real killer is walking around somewhere out there," says Farr. She said that she didnt testify for the reward. He was taken by helicopter to a Seattle hospital. In 1988 in Washington state, Stella Nickell was convicted of killing her husband Bruce, and Sue Snow, a bank manager, by putting cyanide in Excedrin capsules. It was also featured in episode 93 of Casefile True Crime Podcast in August 2018. Examination showed that Bruces signatures on at least two of the policies in his name were forgeries. Nearly two weeks later, she heard about Sue Snow. She told the FBI that her mother had talked for years about killing her husband, and went to the library to research poisonous plants and cyanide. In inorganic cyanides, the cyanide group is present as the cyanide anion CN.This anion is extremely poisonous.Soluble salts such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) and potassium . 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