The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

This chapter focuses on a number of high-profile arsenic poisoning cases that Gettler and Norris investigated in the early 1920s. The first case Blum discusses is a spate of poisonings that occurred at the Shelbourne restaurant on July 31, 1922. Sixty diners had fallen ill after eating lunch at the Shelbourne that day, and doctors soon discovered that “almost all had eaten either blackberry or huckleberry pie for dessert” (76). The medical examiner office quickly arrived to investigate and discovered that the piecrust had been poisoned with arsenic. Such mass poisonings of food had occurred in the past, such as in the case of Jean Crones, who poisoned a soup served to a group of Catholic bishops at a 1916 luncheon.

Arsenic was frequently used throughout history as a poison, due mostly to the fact that the chemical was typically tasteless when added in a small amount to food or drink. In spite of arsenic’s infamy, its effects on the body were still poorly understood in the 1920s, and “scientists were still not sure how arsenic killed” its victims (81). However, arsenic was easily detectable in a corpse because the chemical remains in the body for a long time after it is ingested. For the Shelbourne murders, Norris conducted autopsies while Gettler analyzed the body’s organ tissues, and both confirmed that arsenic was the killer. However, police struggled to identify who had poisoned the dough; they suspected one of the Shelbourne’s bakers to be the culprit but were unable to procure enough evidence to make an arrest.

In 1923, Gettler provided chemical analysis as a private consultant for Mary Frances Creighton, who had been accused of using arsenic to poison her brother and mother-in-law. Mary had lived with her husband, John, and his parents in Newark. After both of her in-laws died, Mary invited her brother, Charles Avery, to move in. In April 1923, Charles Avery suffered a seizure and died, with doctors believing the cause of death to be a particularly severe case of gastroenteritis. However, an anonymous letter mailed to the police claimed that Mary had poisoned Charles, and a subsequent autopsy revealed that Charles had died of arsenic poisoning. While the prosecution claimed that Mary had poisoned her brother to receive a $1,000 life insurance payment, the defense argued that there was not enough evidence to connect the poisoning to Mary.

Though Mary was acquitted, the trial led police to investigate the deaths of her in-laws, and an autopsy on Mary’s mother-in-law, Annie, also revealed signs of arsenic poisoning. The defense team hired a number of scientific experts, including Gettler, to argue that the mother-in-law had not been poisoned. Gettler performed a chemical analysis on the body and discovered that while some trace arsenic was present, most of the supposed arsenic was actually the chemical bismuth. Annie had been proscribed a bismuth formula by her doctor, and Gettler argued that the arsenic was merely “evidence of contamination in the medicine proscribed” (101). The jury found Gettler’s analysis convincing and once again voted to acquit Mary Creighton. 

This chapter focuses around Gettler’s involvement in a high-profile case of alleged mercury poisoning. In 1923, Charles Webb was accused of poisoning his wife of less than a year, Gertrude Gorman. Webb had “courted Gertrude Gorman for eight years” before the two had finally wed, following the death of Gorman’s disapproving mother (103). While on vacation at the Westchester County Club, Gertrude had suddenly fallen ill. Though the doctor William Meyer initially believed that Gertrude had developed pneumonia, he began to suspect that someone could be poisoning her due to the “waxy yellow tone to her skin, the breathy weakness of her voice, and the inexplicable way her health worsened under treatment” (109). Meyer immediately suspected Webb to be the poisoner and forbade him from having any contact with Gertrude. As Gertrude’s condition worsened, Webb finally had a lawyer force Meyer to allow Gertrude’s usual physician to observe her. However, Gertrude died before the doctor could see her.

Gertrude’s death was originally thought to be due to natural causes. However, Gertrude’s uncle hosted a press conference the day after her death and proclaimed that Gertrude had been poisoned with “bichloride of mercury” (104), a mercury salt that is easily ingested by the human body. The salt’s toxicity was well-known due to the accidental death of Hollywood actress Olive Thomas, who had mistakenly drank a chemical solution of bichloride of mercury. Gertrude’s family believed that Webb had poisoned Gorman to access her substantial fortune. Such suspicions were only increased by the fact that Gertrude had altered her will after falling ill to leave the entirety of her assets to Webb.

After the district attorney decided to bring the case before a grand jury, Gettler was called upon to perform an autopsy on Gertrude’s body. Blum describes bichloride of mercury as a “messy killer,” as it causes severe damage to the body’s internal organs that is easily spotted during an autopsy. When Gettler performs the autopsy, however, he saw little evidence of bichloride of mercury poisoning. However, Gettler also used tests he had developed to identify increasingly small amounts of bichloride of mercury in a corpse. The results revealed the presence of mercury in Gertrude’s body, “but in such miniscule amounts that it was barely detectable, far below a lethal dose” (114). Gettler determined that the trace amounts of mercury were from a medicine Gertrude had been taking, called calomel. With Gertrude’s death thus proven to have been due to natural causes, the jury exonerated Webb. 

Blum describes several cases of deaths caused by exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) in which Gettler’s chemical analysis played a crucial part in identifying the cause of death. By the early 1920s, the gases carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide could be found everywhere throughout New York City due to their use in machinery and other industrial applications—particularly in the relatively new invention of automobiles. When car engines work normally, they emit the mostly harmless carbon dioxide. However, car engines in the 1920s frequently failed to burn the fuel “cleanly,” resulting in “incomplete combustion” and the release of the deadlier carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Carbon monoxide’s deadliness stems from the fact that it latches onto blood in the human body, “muscling oxygen out of the way” and causing “chemical suffocation” (137-38). In addition to car engines, carbon monoxide was also found in illuminating gas, used to light fires in home appliances. In New York, individuals frequently died from accidental exposure to carbon monoxide stemming from gas leaks.

Murderers would sometimes use these everyday carbon monoxide sources as means for killing their victims, often hoping to portray the death as an accident. Blum discusses Harry Freindlich, who murdered his wife Leah by suffocating her with a pillow, afterward leaving the gas running so as to make the murder look like an accidental death. After Leah’s baby woke up and began crying, the neighbors called the police, who discovered Leah’s body. Upon their arrival, the police realized that the amount of gas in the apartment was too little to have killed Leah and sent Leah’s corpse to the medical examiner’s lab for closer examination. Though carbon monoxide typically makes the body’s organs “gleam with crimson” (138), the autopsy of Leah’s body revealed no such red coloring. Gettler also tested Leah’s blood, which should have still contained “blood red” carboxyhemoglobin if she had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Gettler’s chemical analysis showed that Leah had not died of accidental suffocation and instead led the police to arrest Harry for the murder of his wife.

The case of Leah Freindlich prompted Gettler to further investigate how carbon monoxide acts upon the human body. In one experiment, Gettler sought to discover whether a dead body can continue to absorb carbon monoxide. Gettler exposed a number of corpses from the morgue to carbon monoxide and discovered that the body ceases to absorb carbon monoxide after death. Such information became relevant in the police investigation of Francesco Travia. Police believed that Travia had murdered his landlord, Anna Fredericksen, after discovering her dismembered body in Travia’s apartment. However, Gettler’s chemical analysis showed that Fredericksen’s corpse had absorbed a lethal amount of carbon monoxide. Due to Gettler’s experiments showing that “corpses didn’t absorb the gas” (148), Gettler concluded that Travia could not have been the murderer.