Suspicious death in 1930 - making it look like murder

If a murder, poisoning with wood alcohol (methanol) might be more common than OD on laudanum, but either would work. My dad's uncle died about that time from consuming wood alcohol. The uncle was fooling around with a woman, and the charges were the woman's husband put wood alcohol in the guy's drink. But being prohibition they couldn't prove it wasn't tainted alcohol from the moonshiner and the guy was found not guilty.

Your MC would certainly have access to the local newspaper from the 1930s. The form it's in will depend on the library. In the 1980s my library had the local paper all the way back to the 1880s on microfilm and microfiche. They might have converted all those to pdf by now, but I haven't looked. I'm sure the actual papers are archived somewhere, and your MC might be able to view them with special permission.

I don't have any suggestions on other ideas to throw on him but the premise sounds promising. Good luck!


I do know from personal experience that you can go back through library archives to look through old newspaper articles, usually on microfiche (sp?).

There was a big secret in my dad's family that we (my older sisters and I) heard about in the 80's. The secret was a crime, a murder, that happened in the mid-30's. Anytime we asked one of the family members about it, they would clam up or tell us it was none of our business and to leave it alone.

My sister had a general idea of the time frame. So we went to the small town library and started rummaging through the old newspapers until we found the articles about it. We had the librarian print them out for us and finally had the full story.

If you are talking about proving a death was not natural by an autopsy done 80 years later, then alcohol and most drugs are not likely to be of value. They break down, get eaten by bacteria and seep into groundwater. (I'm assuming the person wasn't mummified and kept in an arid crypt). Probably the best thing that I can think of for them to have used for euthenasia that would easily be identified 80 years later and prove the death was not natural is cyanide. Back then it was availible in pesticides, but I don't know which brands.

GeorgeK: I'm sure you mean arsenic. Cyanide is readily metabolized as well, while arsenic--an element--persists. Didn't they dig up Zachary Taylor and test him for arsenic? You are right; it was very common in pesticides, such as lead or copper arsenates.

No, I meant cyanide. (It's been a long time since Pathology class so I might be confused) Arsenic is a good answer for a posthumus preservation method but cyanide is so deadly it kills the bacteria that would otherwise consume the body and had it gone through the bloodstream will be everywhere. It might take a while for me to look it up to double check.

Not to derail this, it's true cyanide is quick but *I don't think--I'm willing to be wrong on this* it's very persistent since it occurs naturally in almonds, flaxseed, etc.

Sometimes folks thought arsenic and mercury were good for 'alternative health' measures, too, if that helps your story any. I read about a case where a man took a tiny bit of arsenic at breakfast every morning (it builds up), yet his wife got convicted of murder by arsenic poisoning. Folks didn't like the wife.

Apparently, most folks thought it was kooky to do, but some believed it helped health problems. People still take dangerous things today, so it's not so surprising, really.

Of course, ODing on an opiate would always make sense. It's certainly going to be painless compared to the awful pain of most poisons.

(A disease I have was fatal back then, btw. Pernicious Anemia. A diagnosis was a death sentence, usually slowly and painfully. And folks went crazy first, typically [Megaloblastic Madness]. Certainly great in fiction!)

Hey inky,

If this is a crime borne from love, i.e. to stop suffering, I wouldn't feel too happy about your farmer making his nearest and dearest's last moments so... painful, I guess.

As to the drugs of the time, I've got a vague recollection of a character, a cranky old lady, in To Kill A Mockingbird. I don't know if she was on laudanum, probably some sort of opiate anyway. I think she died too.

Still, it's a nice premise.

Regards

Whacko

Two questions for you. To do an exhumation, even if it is the next of kin (which would be the husband if he was still alive, then children if he isn't), you have to show a need. And what's the need to dig up the body? What is going to convince a probate judge to allow this?

Second question is who is going to pay for all this? Even if the husband is still alive, I can't imagine a prosecutor pushing this without a lot of evidence. Digging up a body is expensive, and an autopsy costs money too.

Realize that a body that's 80 years old is going to be very difficult to have a doctor testify that death occurred from a specific cause to a medical certainty. Criminal cases require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and here the big part of the case would be proving the cause of death beyond a reasonable doubt. This is hard enough to do with bodies in the ground a quarter of the time.

Remember that a body that was properly buried is very much different than one that's been hidden in the ground. We know that externally there were no signs of a violent death, and it's going to be hard to sell that some chemical (poisoning) was the cause.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Since proving this isn't an issue, I'd go with laudanum and cancer.

Cancer is a simple disease for the writer, in that the reader has a fair amount of knowledge. It's a painful disease in a lot of cases, and this fact is also well known to your readers.

It won't have been unreasonable in the 1930s for someone to get laudanum for the pain. And laudanum is very easy to overdose on, whether by accident or on purpose. Since the person was already ingesting laudanum, she won't notice any new taste if her husband gave her an overdose. Nor would it have been unusual to commit suicide with laudanum in this sort of circumstance.

People could be suspicious at the time all they want, but if sometimes she prepared her laudanum, and other times he did, he could say it was an accident, or even that the cancer was the real cause. Death certificate could be either way.

My guess is this happened a bit without anyone knowing. If you're on the right drugs, and know what you're doing, a lethal dose can be in very small amounts. Some pills have such a small margin of error, one pill is great, two is risky, four will probably kill you, and six doesn't leave it in doubt. (And no, I'm not going to tell you the medications, which are all prescription only.)

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Don't know much about poisons, although a science teacher in high school once told the class that if you took tiny doses of strychnine, it would build up in your fat cells, then if you suddenly lost a lot of weight, it would come flooding out and kill you. I have always tried to avoid that risk. : )
But, to muddy the waters of your story, might there have been confusion as to what the husband was covering up? Local gossip may have decided he was hiding a murder, but maybe he was trying to avoid the stigma of suicide? Trying to get his wife buried in consecrated ground, stop the gossipy old cats talking, etc.
A doctor might well have had doubts, but considered his patient's physical condition, decided not to make a fuss, and labelled it an accident. Which does not generally stop people talking.

Ingested cyanide is neither quick nor painless. Read the account of Madame Bovary's death. She swallowed several tablespoons of rat poison, took 2 days to die if I recall correctly.