A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  In mid-September, Dr Udwin had a long conversation with Graham over the telephone. He was keen to hear how his former patient was coping with the promotion and pleased to discover that Graham seemed ‘quite well’ and in no danger of relapse: ‘Indeed, he seemed so settled that I was content to let him go forward with very little further interference.’472

  It was a cataclysmic error of judgement.

  When detectives later questioned former Hadlands delivery driver Ron Hewitt about his illness, like Diana Smart he remembered that Graham had been in the habit of collecting the morning and afternoon tea for several colleagues from May Bartlett, at 11am and 3pm respectively. May was also spoken to by police and told them that she kept her tea, coffee, sugar and milk supplies in the main kitchen in the canteen. There was a tea room in the main laboratory area in Banbury 2, where she was able to brew up; she had a key to this room and only left it unlocked while she went around the premises with her trolley. She carried a biscuit tin on her trolley and put a few on a plate as she got to each department and no one else ever handled the beverages or biscuits on the trolley. She recalled that all the staff liked to have their own cups and she would try to give them the china mugs they favoured as she went round. After each tea break, she would collect the cups and take them away for washing up in her tea room, then replace the cups on the trolley. May was at pains to point out ‘this is a very happy firm to work for’.473

  Fred Biggs had suffered no recurrence of his illness during his holiday with Annie and remained well for the first few days of his return to work. But Peter Buck – the man who had given them a lift home when Fred fell ill – was not so fortunate. Peter lived in Hemel Hempstead and, following six years working in Hadlands’ import and export section, he had been promoted to manager of the department at the beginning of the year. His office was on the first floor of the main building, next to the boardroom. During the course of his day, he visited most areas of the factory, checking paperwork and supervising the packing of equipment in the stores. He had recently become directly responsible for Graham in this respect and spoke to him about reading during work hours; Graham had been poring over a library book whose title concerned humanity’s apparent ‘preoccupation with death’. Although Peter usually took his tea breaks in his office with George Janouch, Annie Biggs and import-and-export clerk David Tilson, lately he had sometimes drunk his cuppa in the stores with Graham.

  On Monday, 20 September, Peter was in the stores during the morning tea break, working alongside David Tilson at the far end of the room. As was his wont, Graham collected three teas for them. Taking his first sip, Peter noticed that his tea had ‘a foreign taste’.474 He drank most of it anyway, but within half an hour, his head began throbbing. A feeling of intense dizziness overtook him and he sat down heavily by the door. Sharp pains shot through his stomach and he vomited. He got up and staggered to the toilets, where he vomited again. Gasping, he asked David Tilson to drive him back to Hemel Hempstead. He recalled: ‘At my home I was sick on several occasions but the violent pain in my stomach subsided.’475 The only reason he could think of that had caused him to fall ill so suddenly was the strange-tasting tea.

  Secretary Diana Smart had also been ill, suffering bouts of sickness and peculiar afflictions, including horrible-smelling feet. At first, she had been unaware of the smell, but one night in September, her husband Norman complained that he couldn’t get to sleep because of it. The following night, he shook her awake and told her that she was the cause of the smell. Indignant at both being awoken and accused, she replied angrily that he was mistaken. They continued to row about it for several nights.

  Then one evening, as Diana and Norman sat down to watch television with one of their young sons, she drew up her legs beneath her to get comfortable on the sofa and suddenly smelled it: a horrible stench. At first she thought her son’s socks were the cause and told him to take them off. He did so but the smell lingered, and she insisted that he give his feet a quick but thorough rinse with soap and water. He did so, but the pong remained and the three of them started arguing over who was to blame. Diana suddenly bent down to smell her own feet and recoiled in disgust. ‘I bloody well told you it was you,’ Norman said triumphantly.476 She asked him to smell her feet but he refused, ‘Not on your Nellie, they smell rotten.’477 She washed her feet and sprayed her shoes but could not get rid of the stink. She tried changing her tights two or three times a day, and kept her feet scrupulously clean, but it made no difference. The only benefit was that Norman was now sympathetic and suggested that she should visit the doctor.

  Diana saw her GP, Dr Arthur Anderson, on 5 October. ‘She complained of irritation and smell in her feet, being worse near the toes,’ he recalled. ‘This was thought to be a fungus skin infection and treated with a topical cream.’478 However, the cream had little effect; the stench seemed to intensify. She became depressed, feeling both embarrassed and upset because her husband could not bear to be near her. She grew short-tempered with her family and begged her doctor to find a cure. Hearing that she felt sleepy very early each evening, and had a numbness in her toes, Dr Anderson diagnosed her with diabetes. She experienced other weird ailments too, including an ability to curdle milk as soon as her lips touched the glass. An ardent coffee lover, she could no longer stomach the smell or taste of it, nor of tea either. She suffered in silence, too ashamed to pay a third visit to the doctor.

  September saw longer hours at Hadlands during stock-taking fortnight. Throughout the period, after finishing her cleaning duties at 5:30pm, May Bartlett left her tea room open so that anyone working overtime could make their own drinks. On one occasion she bumped into Graham, who bade her goodnight and explained that he was rushing to catch the 7pm bus. She remembered:

  I met him in the Banbury corridor a few minutes later. He came hurrying round the corridor and surprised me. I said, ‘I thought you went home.’ He said, ‘No, I missed the bus.’ I thought this was very odd as the next bus was 7:30pm and I didn’t think there should have been one at 7pm. Just after that I called out to him that David Boley had offered him a lift to Hemel Hempstead. When I went to look for Graham, he was in the far end of stores, in his own department, without any lights on and it was quite dark. This seemed very strange to me, but I did not go into stores or see what he was doing. He came out when I called him and I let him and David Boley out of the building and locked up after them.479

  On Friday, 8 October 1971, David Tilson was among those workers putting in extra hours during stock-taking. David was one of the newer members of staff, having begun employment four months earlier. He worked mostly with Peter Buck, engaged in paperwork, but was occasionally needed to pack cameras and equipment in the stores, where he would work alongside Peter and Graham. ‘There have been times when I was working in the stores when I’ve been offered tea and biscuits by Graham,’ he recalled. ‘I only used to have a few mouthfuls of the tea because Graham used to put sugar in it, which I don’t like.’ On this particular Friday, he had a cup of tea given to him by Graham but as usual found it had been sweetened, so left most of it.

  The following morning, David found that his toes were numb and he had sharp pains in his legs. The sensations remained and four days later he visited his local surgery, where he explained to locum Dr Susan Henry that he had pains, stiffness and pins and needles in both legs and his chest felt tight. She examined him and found no abnormality in his legs but some tenderness across his sternum and prescribed two paracetamols three times a day for the chest pains, which she thought was almost certainly ‘muscular trouble’.480 Tilson went back to work but his legs continued to be painful, leaving him with a limp.

  On Tuesday, 12 October 1971, Graham Young began keeping a diary.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE DESIRED EFFECT

  A

  STUDENT AND OFFICER’S Case Book reads the title on the cover of the loose-leaf foolscap pad Graham kept hidden beneath his bed at Maynard Road. Bought from WHSmith’s, the lined
pages of the notebook’s blue-backed boards reveal the workings of a young poisoner’s mind: the substances and methods he employed, the choosing of his victims and the dispassionate observations with a humour blacker than coal. There could be no doubt after reading the neat handwriting that the person wielding the pen intended not only to kill but to experiment on those closest to him. He referred to the people within its pages by initials, and although he later tried to pass off the diary as the manuscript of a failed comic novel, its veracity burned through the pages like acid.

  Graham’s diary begins abruptly, referring to the very recent illness of David Tilson (‘D’) and how it had played out according to Graham’s wishes. He had run the risk of being detected otherwise, especially given the similarity between David’s symptoms and those of the deceased Bob Egle:

  12th. My fears proved to be unfounded. D’s malady was diagnosed as fibrositis, which saves me the trouble – and risk – of playing the sympathetic hospital visitor in order to finish the job. Had the illness proved sufficiently serious to demand D’s hospitalisation I could not have taken the chance that prolonged observation might have revealed the true cause of the trouble. Had, as was intended, the full amount been ingested, the resultant illness would have had a fatal resolution within 7–10 days, conforming in all aspects to the Guillan Barre [sic] syndrome and the death would have been diagnosed as such. If, however, the illness had extended into weeks – as would have been the case with so small a quantity – certain of the symptoms would present an atypical picture which may have jerked in the minds of the medico’s [sic] – leading to a re-diagnosis. Had this been the case, it is quite likely that the similarity of the symptoms to those preceding the death of B [Bob Egle] may have been recognised and the death certificate subjected to close scrutiny. So, all in all I am quite satisfied with the situation. I now have time to reassess and decide upon my course of action.

  Graham’s next words make it clear that this course of action involved choosing another subject to poison and observe. There were three possibilities: storeman Fred Biggs (‘F’), laboratory worker Jethro Batt (‘J’), (with whom Graham was on good terms) or delivery driver John Durrant (‘R’). He weighed his options as objectively as a chef deciding upon ingredients for a dish, and admonished himself to be more careful with his measures, as the diary makes plain:

  I think it was probably imprudent of me to select a second subject from the same place. The similarity between the two deaths might have been commented upon. J [Jethro Batt] would be the ideal subject, living so far away [Harlow]. Access would present no problem either, but I regard him as a friend so it is out of the question.

  F [Fred Biggs] would also be easy to process, but he is too closely associated with me. It would be unwise to make too many selections from my immediate circle. Also, of course, I rather like F and would be loath to inflict so cruel a fate on him. I think R [John Durrant] is the most logical choice, so it is now merely a question of opportunity. He should visit this week and a chance should occur then. This time I must restrain my tendency towards over-liberal dosage and administer the minimum necessary to achieve the desired effect. Too much and the same will happen as with D [David Tilson]. Taste will be noticeably altered and insufficient consumed – presenting the same panolopy [sic] of problems. Also, I shall revert to the same medium as with B. Using the crystalline form renders it far easier to guage [sic] the exact dosage and also safeguards against partial decomposition as I suspect may have occurred with D’s solution.

  Graham then returned to David Tilson’s illness and muses on how he would have felt forced to act if his symptoms had given too much away:

  It should be quite amusing to see D’s reaction to his ‘fibrositis’ especially when it proves to be a most intractable ailment. Also, within 3 weeks a characteristic alopecia should occur which, to a man of D’s customary hironteness [hirsuteness] should prove a trifle embarrassing. It is this very alopecia which, had he been under the eyes of the hospital authorities, would have forced me to rapidly bring about his demise, for it may well have caused them to explore avenues which would have jeapordized [sic] me. My plan for this eventuality was to visit D in the role of commiserator [sic] and, on my first visit conspiratorially produce a Brandy miniature as a token of my sympathy for his unfortunate position. As D is a drinking man this would, I think, have been accepted and, under my direction, hastily swallowed; the bottle being returned to me on the grounds – entirely logical – that the nurses may otherwise discover the ‘breach of hospital discipline’. A precedent having been thus established, I would, upon my second visit have produced an identical miniature to be consumed in like manner. The latter, however, would have been previously ‘doctored’ and would within 48 hours have brought about a deterioration of D’s condition which, within a week would have terminated in death – astensibly [sic] from A.I.P [acute infection polyneuritis]. Had the hospital decided upon post-mortem examination, the finding would have been entirely consistent with this cause and, as the latter illness is of uncertain aetiology, certification of death would have presented no problem. However, D has not been hospitalised – a happy circumstance for him – and therefore is free to live out his allotted span, for needless to say, it would be injudicious of me to focus my attentions upon him a second time.

  He then decides upon his next victim, before blithely describing how interesting he found it to observe the effects poison was having on David Tilson and what could be expected next:

  R [John Durrant] should suit my purpose admirably, and as there is no obvious connection between us he is a most attractive proposition. In a way it seems a shame to condemn such a likeable little man to so unpleasant an end, but I have made my decision and therefore he is doomed to premature decease.

  D returned to work today and this afternoon I was able to enquire after his health. It appears that he is suffering muscular pain and stiffness from the chest downwards – of a general distribution. He has intense numbness in both feet. It would seem, therefore, that the quantity ingested was larger than I originally estimated – perhaps as much as 300mgns. The symptoms point so clearly to a polyneuritis that the competence of D’s physician is questionable to say the least. It is not certain that alopecia will later develop, but it would be quite consistent with a dose of this size. If it occurs this will doubtless drive D to the doctor again but, happily, by the time hair-loss becomes sufficiently noticeable to prompt this step, excretion of the drug is likely to have ended. Of course, it is known that excretion may continue for up to three months from the time of ingestion, but this is dependent on the size of the initial dose – in this case relatively small. Another factor, which may cause D concern and possibly worry his physician, is the protracted course of the illness. The symptoms will remit only gradually – recovery in these cases is always very slow. For full sensation to return to his feet and for the muscular impairment to resolve itself may take as long as 2/3 months. For fibrositis in acute form to persist so long is unusual and ultimately a diagnosis of polyneuritis (probably viral) may well be made. We shall see. The case interests me greatly as it affords me an opportunity to observe the effects of a sub-lethal dosage.

  In his next sentence, Graham appears to refer to the murder of his stepmother Molly and admits that his conversations with David Tilson gave him the chance to put his medical knowledge to the test:

  My previous experience of the drug has been only of lethal doses which, in both instances led to rapid deterioration and death. D will give me an opportunity to effect a more leisurely study.

  Once again I had to opportunity to engage D in conversation – this time quite lengthy. From his description of his symptoms, it seems that the damage caused by the drug is progressive. He complains of an intensification of the muscular pains and stiffness, which he describes as definitely worse than at the time of his Tuesday examination. They are, apparently, severe enough to have prevented him from sleeping last night. He also complains of feeling ‘washed out’ this se
nse of fatigue he ascribes to a sleepless night which, I think, is probably a contributing factor. However, the drug is known to produce an eunelvation [sic] and so, at least in part, the fatigue is probably due to its action. A fresh symptom has appeared – enlargement of the lympathic [sic] glands in the armpits and swelling of glands in the neck, accompanied by a degree of tenderness. I make, at present, no observations on this, for it is not yet certain whether this new manifestation has a toxic or bacillary/viral cause. It is most convenient, as it gives credence to the picture of ‘natural’ disease and will serve to obscure the true cause of illness still further. D is not satisfied with the diagnosis of fibrositis. He believes himself to have an infection – though of what nature he is unsure. He intends to apply for a fresh appointment and so a re-diagnosis might be made. It will be interesting to see the result.481