POISONING MYSTERY

Hokitika Guardian, 8 October 1927, Page 2

POISONING MYSTERY

BY TELEGRAPH —CRESS ASSN., COPYRIGHT,

AUCKLAND, Oct. 7. The mystery of how the late Mrs Marv Minnie Blackwell, age< , Karaka obtained the strychnine poison with which she killed herself and her two daughters, Marjory Do.een, a „ed 14, and Muriel Mercia, aged 11, was unsolved at the inquest touching the three deaths. Two verdicts were returned by Mr F. K. Hunt, S.M., who found that Mrs Blackwell committed suicide by taking poison, and that s e administered it to her daughters while in an insane condition. The tragedy happened on September 6th. Mr Iv. M. Griffin, Government Analyst, said that he found that fatal Joses of strychnine were held- by tlie stomach content of each victim. each case he found pyridine, indicating the presence of methylated spiiit, and it would appear that the strychnine had been administered dissolved in methylated spirits. Various foodstuffs in tlie house were examined for strvehnine, but none was found. “It is a mystery where Mrs Blackwell got the poison,” stated SeniorDetective Hammond. “Every chemist’s shop in Auckland and the suburbs has been visited, and every poison register searched, hut without result. F. W. Yates, manager of the farm, said that about twelve months ago Mrs Blackwell attempted a similar thing. He had strychnine at his place for poisoning rabbits. Airs Blackwell often assisted Airs Yates in the household duties at the farm. About that time she tcok a two ounce bottle of strychnine to her home. Then she took it hack to him, or most of it, and told him she had mixed some of it 'with a dinner she had cooked, but she bad come to her senses and thrown tlie dinner out. No one had touched the dinner. She had used a little of it—quite enough to poison a thousand people. Airs Blackwell had appeared genuinely sorry then for what she had done. She made him promise he would not tell her husband. After that he locked all his poison up, and had kept it under kev ever since.

“I have no idea how the tragedy could have happened” said Air Blackwell in evidence. “I cannot imagine how my wife could have got the poison, I kept no poison at the house. The news did not come as a surprise to me when the doctor told me. as my wife had been talking about it. For the past three weeks she had been threatening to do away with herself and the children. She had been in ill health for the past 12 months.”