A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Graham’s fear of undergoing any medical procedure sparked a crisis when he was sent for a check-up at the dentist. He fled the waiting room at the first opportunity and was brought home by a Harlesden police officer. Graham claimed to have been abducted by a man who drove him around Willesden before suddenly releasing him. The constable said sternly that there was no truth in the matter and Graham burst into tears, admitting he had made the story up, hoping that Molly would excuse him from his dental appointment. Sympathetic to her stepson, she arranged for him to have an orthodontal examination at hospital under anaesthetic. She also took the opportunity to make him an appointment with a psychiatrist, ostensibly because of his fears and occasional truanting, but largely to discuss his escalating ‘strangeness’.74 The psychiatrist found ‘little wrong’ and instead recorded that Molly was ‘rather tense, over-conscientious and over-protective’.75

  But Molly was right to be concerned, and particularly about her stepson’s most persistent habit: smoking ether and sniffing toxic substances. When she asked him about a hole that had appeared in his school blazer, he admitted it had been caused by a small bottle of acid he had found in a bin behind the chemist shop on Neasden High Road. Molly searched his room. After discovering several similar bottles, she led Graham down to the chemist shop, warning the proprietor that she would report him if he didn’t dispose of his toxic products correctly. Distraught, she spoke to both Winifred and Sandra but said nothing to her husband. ‘Aunt Molly knew more about Graham’s tinkering with poisons than my Uncle Fred,’ Sandra states. ‘She used to try and shield Graham.’76 Molly hated the idea of upsetting Fred; his mother Hannah died in October 1960 and he felt the loss of his beloved mother deeply.

  Graham’s night terrors returned with his grandmother’s death. He later told Broadmoor medical superintendent Dr Patrick McGrath that he experienced ‘peculiar frightening attacks’ just before going to sleep, where phrases would repeat themselves and images would recede then grow in size.77 He spoke to no one about it but became more frequently in trouble at school. On one occasion he started a vicious fight with two older boys in the playground, which Harry Merkel broke up. Graham then snapped his heels together and gave Merkel a Hitler salute. The headmaster promptly got hold of Graham’s ear and marched him to his office. ‘We treated it as a joke,’ Clive Creager said of his friend’s obsession with Hitler. ‘Graham would comb his short black hair over to one side and hold the top of a comb to his upper lip. Then he’d strut about, repeating some Hitler speech in German. We all laughed.’78

  But Graham’s behaviour was spiralling. To supplement the two-and-sixpence pocket money his father gave him, he took a weekend cleaning job at a local café for another five shillings. He spent part of it on fireworks: dismantling them in an old hut on the Welsh Harp allotments, he extracted the gunpowder, then packed it into cardboard tubes to make ‘bombs’. Watched by friends, he planted the tubes on the bank of the reservoir and set them off. He was almost rumbled when one of his ‘bombs’ destroyed most of what was left of the hut, where he also kept poisons. Police investigating the explosion found the tubes and bottles but failed to trace them back to Graham.

  Chris Williams recalled how Graham used his ‘bombs’ to take revenge on twin lads in Neasden whom he disliked: ‘He made up some stuff – explosives with sugar and weed-killer – and blew up their garden wall.’79 On another occasion he put a substance on the deputy headmaster’s car, which burned through the paintwork. ‘He was only thirteen then,’ Williams remembered.80 Graham had no friends among the neighbourhood teens, largely because parents disliked his habit of ‘lurking’ and the glare he gave those who told him to move on. He preferred being alone with his books and bottles most of the time, regardless. Winifred recalled: ‘He was reading a book in particular on William Palmer, an infamous poisoner of the Victorian period. He kept drawing this book out of the library. I can remember Graham saying what a clever man he was.’81 Palmer was the only person Graham admired more than Hitler; he read sections from the chapter about him in Sixty Famous Trials to Winifred, explaining that Palmer’s poison of choice was antimony. Tiring of hearing her brother describe Palmer as brilliantly clever, she retorted that he hadn’t managed to avoid the hangman. Graham replied that in modern times that wouldn’t be an issue. When Winifred pointed out that he would have been jailed for life nonetheless, Graham shrugged, ‘That’s nothing.’82

  True crime had been his genre of choice for some time. His favourite book appeared in 1960: Poisoner in the Dock: Twelve Studies in Poisoning was written by John Rowland, who made the same point regarding Palmer’s fate in his introduction:

  Every convicted murderer in the past was automatically condemned to death, even though the jury might have recommended him or her to mercy; now only certain categories of murder must inevitably lead to the death sentence, and so many people who would, in a previous era, have been hanged, will not now go to the gallows . . . The death penalty has been retained for those murderers who kill by the use of firearms; but it has been abolished for those who kill by the use of poison. Yet to most people it will seem that the man who discharges a revolver in a moment of evil temper, driven well-nigh to madness, perhaps, by an unfaithful wife, is in many respects less morally guilty than the poisoner, who mixes some deadly substance with the food prepared for another member of the household. In the vast majority of cases, when murder by poison is proved, the person concerned has worked steadily and with premeditation, over a period of months or even of years; his or her purpose has been to ensure the death of someone, but to ensure that it seems due to natural causes.83

  It was the second chapter (‘Antimony’) of the book that gripped Graham most. Nineteenth-century Glasgow physician Dr Edward William Pritchard had poisoned his wife and her mother and was executed in 1865 before a 100,000-strong crowd. The chapter begins:

  It is not easy to say why arsenic has featured in so many poisoning cases and antimony in comparatively few. The two poisons are very closely related, both in chemistry and toxicology; their symptoms and their effects are much alike. Even in the realm of theoretical chemistry, arsenic and antimony are classified together. Yet for every case of poisoning by antimony, there must be a score of cases of poisoning by arsenic. And, as arsenic poisoning appears to have become less common in recent years, antimony poisoning seems to have vanished altogether from the scene . . . 84

  Over the course of 17 pages, Graham learned that antimony belongs to the same chemical family as bismuth, phosphorus and arsenic. A fragile semi-metal, odourless and colourless, it consists of crystals or granular powder, and is soluble in water or alcohol and sweet tasting. For centuries it has been used, along with other salts of antimony, in the production of cosmetics, paints, glass, rubber and medicine, but it was discontinued as a component in cough remedies due to its toxicity. A slow-working poison, antimony causes persistent vomiting, cramps and diarrhoea. Such symptoms are often mistaken for other ailments, but the regular administration of poison over a sustained period leads to muscle weakness, inability to pass water, collapse and convulsions, culminating in death. At the close of the chapter, Rowland considers what might be learned about the mind of the poisoner from the Pritchard case: ‘There is, of course, the typical ruthlessness, the fact that he did not care at all whether he caused suffering – the fact, indeed, that as a doctor he must have known the suffering to this wife and mother-in-law, which was caused by the long and systematic process of poisoning which he had embarked on. There is certainly something much crueller in a slow process of this kind than when a single large dose of poison is given . . . ’85

  Shortly after his first reading of the book, Graham told his friends that one day he would be a famous poisoner along the lines of Pritchard, Palmer or Crippen. ‘We treated it as a joke,’ Clive recalled.86

  A few days later, Graham was again involved in a playground tussle, this time provoked by his jealousy over Chris spending more time with their friend Richard Hands, who lived a few
doors down from Graham. After spotting the two boys out in the neighbourhood, Graham challenged Chris to a fight at school. ‘I’ll always remember that fight,’ Chris admitted. ‘It was all over very quickly. Graham was much smaller than me. As he lay on the ground with me standing over him, he looked up and said to me, “I’ll kill you for that.”’87 Chris merely laughed and offered Graham a hand: ‘It’s the sort of thing kids say when they’ve lost a fight. But some time afterwards – we’d patched it all up by then – Graham said to me, “You know, I really could kill you.”’88

  Unlike other kids, Graham meant it.

  Chapter Three

  MY LITTLE FRIEND

  I

  N HIS REMAND INTERVIEWS with Dr Donald Blair, Graham confessed to targeting Chris Williams in February 1961. Over a period of three weeks, he secretly administered five two-grain doses of sugar of lead (lead acetate) to his friend, telling Dr Blair, ‘apparently with regret’, that it only caused constipation.89 Where and how Graham obtained the substance remains unknown, but he had already amassed a lethal collection.

  Following his fight with Chris, and despite their reconciliation, Graham’s intentions turned truly deadly. On Friday, 28 April 1961, he visited Reis pharmacy on Neasden Lane, where he spoke to the pharmacist himself. ‘I supplied him with 15 grams of antimony and potassium tartrate,’ Geoffrey Reis recalled. ‘The young man told me he wanted the poisons for laboratory work. I did not ask him his age, nor did he tell me, as far as I recollect.’90 Graham was four years below the minimum legal age for buying poison. Each sale had to be registered, and when Reis produced his ledger for detectives almost exactly a year later, it showed the sale was made to ‘E Young, 768 North Circular Road, NW10’.91 Further sales under the same name and address were recorded the following Thursday and the Friday after, on 4 and 12 May 1961 respectively.

  There were no more transactions because Molly found out that Graham was still hiding toxic substances in his room. This time she told his father, resulting in a fierce argument between Fred and his son. ‘He swore to me . . . that he had finished with all that sort of thing,’ Fred confirmed. ‘As a father I had forbidden him to bring home poisons. My wife used to go through his clothes. I don’t know what exactly he brought home.’92 The row culminated in another trip to the pharmacy for Graham in his stepmother’s company, as Reis recalled: ‘His mother came and spoke to me and I have never supplied him with poisons since.’93 Graham was more careful where he stored his poisons afterwards, splitting them between the old hut by the Welsh Harp reservoir and under a hedge.

  In his subsequent police statement, Graham described how ‘within a couple of weeks’ of buying antimony potassium tartrate he had ‘tried out this poison’ on Chris Williams: ‘I gave him two or three grains at school. I can’t remember how I caused him to take it, I think it was probably on a cream biscuit or a cake. He was sick after taking it. I gave him a second dose in May in the same way and in the following month I gave him another two doses, always two or three grains and always on food at school.’94

  Chris remembered vomiting at school one Monday in May after the onset of sharp, sudden stomach pains. He recovered about 6pm that night but fell ill again every Monday thereafter for at least five weeks. He later suspected that Graham had slipped the poison into a packed-lunch sandwich he insisted on swapping, or in a bottle of free school milk distributed during morning break. He recalled how Graham would ‘look after me when I was ill, watching me all the time. He always wanted to know what I felt, my pains and everything. It used to take me about a day to recover.’95 Clive Creager remembered Graham remarking to him one morning that Chris would be absent that afternoon: ‘I realised that he meant that Williams would be sick and that he knew beforehand.’96

  Winifred knew that her brother’s friend had been ill but had no idea Graham was responsible: ‘He came home and said, “Chris was very sick. They got a bucket out for him. I saw and watched.”’97 Following the incidents at school, Graham invited Chris to Regent’s Park zoo, ostensibly to cheer his friend up. As the two boys strolled towards the enclosures, Graham expressed sympathy for Chris, then produced a large bottle of lemonade from his rucksack. He told him it would help his stomach. Chris drank from the bottle, unaware that Graham had laced it with antimony. ‘I was sick straight away,’ he recalled. ‘We got on and off four different buses for me to be ill. I was staggering and shaking and finally we got home.’98

  Chris’ mother had already taken him to see their local GP, Dr Wills, but he was unable to find anything wrong. After the incident at Regent’s Park, Chris experienced severe headaches as well as vomiting and general pains. On Friday, 9 June, Mrs Williams took her son to Willesden general hospital, where he was seen by Dr Goldfoot, who diagnosed migraines and prescribed treatment: ‘According to my case notes, he had an attack in July and one in August. These attacks were headaches with vomiting.’99 Goldfoot saw Chris again in October and the following February after further spells, but ‘was not able to find out what was wrong with this boy . . . My impression was that all these attacks were alike. I came to the conclusion that he was giving pretty typical symptoms of migraine.’100

  Unfortunately for Chris, his parents suspected him of malingering as the illnesses continued, but the doctor could find nothing wrong other than migraines. ‘We thought Chris was simply playing up,’ Mrs Williams recalled unhappily. ‘We were told we ought to take him to a psychiatrist.’101 They decided not to put their son through psychological testing, however, and Chris recovered when Graham turned his attentions elsewhere. But as he and other members of their group grew more suspicious about the possibility of Graham being the cause of the illness, they felt unable to speak to an appropriate adult.

  Misplaced loyalty was one reason; sharing poison was another. Chris later explained that he, like the rest of his chemistry-mad friends, had a ‘laboratory’ at home where he would run experiments using both ‘stuff’ he had bought himself from a pharmacy and the more restricted substances that Graham had given him, including digitalis, iodine, barium chloride, arcanite solution and atropine.102 Richard Hands, whose friendship with Chris had caused Graham’s poisonous jealousy, later admitted having in his possession digitalis and antimony, which he had been given by Graham. Similarly, Clive Creager told detectives that he had at home jars and phials of phosphorus, barium chloride, morphine, lead acetate, cyanide, tartar emetic, antimony and cocaine. All were given to him by Graham, who had bought them from high-street pharmacies. ‘I used some of the cyanide as a weed killer,’ Clive recalled. ‘I gave him back some of the lead acetate and some of the barium chloride, that was last year.’103

  Evidently, Graham had purchased poison from several pharmacies using different names. He told Clive that he sometimes used the surname ‘Harvey’ when signing the poison register.104 Detectives later attempted to track down all those pharmacies who had sold substances to him, but it proved impossible.

  Chris found it hard to believe that Graham would administer anything toxic to his friends but admitted: ‘There were some other boys at school he used to have a go at. We used to swap sandwiches and Graham would pass his over, all doped up. Then in a coffee bar on the way home, he would pass the cups around too.’105 Richard Hands recalled falling ill after visiting the coffee bar with Graham, but again thought it unlikely his friend was responsible for his own ailment: ‘I think it was due to the bad coffee we had.’106

  Thus, Graham’s small group of friends were all of one mind: young chemistry boffins who swapped small amounts of toxic substances in order to conduct their own experiments at home. They knew that Graham’s interest in the subject was the most extreme, that he was capable of obtaining substances illegally and experimenting in some small degree on people, but they could not bring themselves to believe he would poison a friend. They knew that he was never without at least one toxic substance in his possession. Clive remembered that Graham habitually carried ‘a phial of antimony potassium tartrate or some other drug’ in the
top left-hand pocket of his school blazer, referring to it as his ‘little friend’: ‘He would often get it out and pass it round. “This is my little friend,” he’d say, and chuckle over it like a gangster with his gun.’107

  Graham was several months into puberty. He subsequently admitted that there had been a sexual element to his passion for poison, as Broadmoor medical superintendent Dr Patrick McGrath confirmed: ‘From about the age of 12 he realised that experimentation with poison stimulated him sexually. He always carried poisons, referring to the phial as his “little friend” as he derived a sense of power and security from knowing that he had lethal doses on his person.’108 A global sexual revolution was on the horizon, but most British households did not discuss such matters openly as yet. Graham told Dr Peter Scott in 1972 that his stepmother’s attitude towards sex had been ‘Victorian’ and ‘puritanical’, with sex itself regarded as ‘disreputable and unmentionable’.109 He remembered ‘being reprimanded by her for masturbating at six’.110 Curiously, Winifred remembers the puritanical one among them was Graham. A friend of her brother agreed: ‘Graham always got angry over talk of sex, home life or parents. If someone told a dirty joke, he would storm off and sulk. He got so angry once in the school lab that he tried to chloroform another boy.’111