Stella Nickell
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Stella Maudine Nickell (née Stephenson, born August 7, 1943)[citation needed] is a Seattle-area woman who was sentenced to 90 years in prison for product tampering after she allegedly poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce and of Susan Chapman Snow. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence was the first under federal product tampering laws instituted after the Tylenol murders.[1]
She allegedly laced her husband's medicine with cyanide, killing him. Initially, his death was mistakenly ruled as a result of emphysema, meaning the accidental death insurance bonus was not liable to be paid to the widow.
It is said that Stella's next step was to plant three other Excedrin bottles (each one contaminated with cyanide) back on store shelves, to make it appear like the work of a serial killer, hoping Bruce's death would be reclassified as accidental. It was inevitable that at some point an innocent member of the public would enter the store, unknowingly purchase a bottle of poisoned Excedrin, and ingest the contents. That person was 40-year-old Sue Snow, who died after swallowing poisoned Excedrin allegedly planted by Stella Nickell. Snow's husband also consumed the poisoned Excedrin, but survived. After Snow's cause of death was found to be the cyanide-laced pills, and the other two bottles were found in different stores, police released the batch numbers for the contaminated bottles in an attempt to warn consumers of the danger. Stella Nickell then came forward, stating she had two bottles of the contaminated medicine. However, she was soon suspected of being the source of the tampered pills because she possessed two of the five known bottles. Stella failed a polygraph test, which she had continuously refused to take for a few months. Her daughter, Cindy, later testified her mother had talked about killing her father for the insurance money; the daughter later received $250,000 in reward money put up by the drug industry for information that would solve the tampering case. In addition, the police found Stella's fingerprints on various books from libraries which she had borrowed to read about poisons. She was also proven to have forged her husband's signature on two insurance policies.
Stella will be eligible for parole on December 7, 2017, and is serving her term of imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.
Seattle author Gregg Olsen wrote about the Nickell case in his book, Bitter Almonds: The True Story of Mothers, Daughters and the Seattle Cyanide Murders. The case was also featured on episodes of Forensic Files, Snapped, New Detectives and Deadly Women.
An episode of the TV show Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Poison, has plot elements resembling the Stella Nickell case.
[edit] References
- ^ Associated Press (June 18, 1988). "Nickell gets 90 years for cyanide murders". Tri City Herald. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=W680AAAAIBAJ&sjid=nIcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6074,546178&dq=stella+nickell&hl=en.
