A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Five years after Graham’s death, interest in the case was revived with the release of The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, a black comedy very loosely based on his crimes. Starring Hugh O’Conor as Graham Young, Roger Lloyd-Pack as his father and Charlotte Coleman as Winifred, it is now regarded as something of a lost minor classic. The film provided spurious inspiration however: in November 2005, a 16-year-old Japanese schoolgirl in Shizuoka Prefecture was arrested for poisoning her mother with thallium. The unnamed girl, a promising chemistry student, had bought thallium on the internet and tricked a chemist into selling her a small quantity of the substance, telling him she needed it for a college project. She had become obsessed with the 1995 film and, subsequently, with Graham, after reading Anthony Holden’s 1974 biography The St Albans Poisoner: The Life and Crimes of Graham Young. In a modern-day version of his diary, she kept an online blog recording the dosages she administered in her mother’s cups of tea and the results. On 3 July 2005, she typed on her blog: ‘Let me introduce a book: Graham Young’s diary on killing with poison – the autobiography of a man I respect.’760 One month later she wrote, ‘It’s a bright, sunny day today and I administered a delivery of acetic thallium. The man in the pharmacy didn’t realise he had sold me such a powerful drug.’761 Her mother was admitted to hospital, but the girl continued to find ways of poisoning her.

  The girl’s crimes came to light when her brother became suspicious. The case was assessed in a family court, where the girl was found to be developmentally disturbed. The girl’s mother remained in a coma. A senior investigative official declared, ‘She did not hold a grudge against her mother – she just wanted to do an experiment.’762 The court ruled that a structured education would be most effective; she was sent to a reform school where the emphasis was on mental health care. In 2013, a Japanese movie based on the case was released. It was called Poisoning Diary of a Thallium Girl.

  The case of Graham Young forces us to look at one of the most unsettling aspects of our society, namely, whether someone who has committed appalling crimes can ever be safely released back into the community. Should a person be locked up forever or ought they be given a chance to start afresh, providing certain criteria – which can never be infallible – are met? At Graham’s second trial, his defence counsel asserted: ‘His release from Broadmoor was a serious error of judgement with tragic consequences. The authorities had a duty to protect Young from himself as well as a duty to protect the public.’

  There was undoubtedly a compulsion in Graham’s actions, a sense that he was unable to control his impulses where poison was concerned. He described himself as a coward, a term used repeatedly, albeit obliquely, in studies of poisoners. Those studies, coupled with the papers now released to the public on this most contentious of cases, give us greater insight into the character and crimes of Graham Young than was previously possible, and to see where those terrible mistakes were made, and why, on the part of the authorities.

  ‘Chance favours the prepared mind,’ declared scientist Louis Pasteur. Graham’s story demonstrates the veracity of his words; the poisoner has perhaps more control than any other killer over his crimes, his victims and their detection – or lack of it. Direct contact between killer and victim is not necessary; we know that poison is a stealthy, silent weapon rendering its victim totally vulnerable and oblivious to danger, permitting no defence. Forensic toxicologist John Harris Trestrail clarifies this deadly depersonalisation: ‘In the mind of the poisoner, he merely sets the trap, but the victim actually springs it. This attempts to rationalise and to lessen the guilt that the poisoner may feel by being the one who actively pulls the trigger of a gun or plunges a knife.’763

  Poisoners are less vulnerable themselves: a gunman risks being disarmed and having their weapon turned on them, but poisoners are unlikely to meet a similar fate. Nor is the weapon easily discoverable, for unlike a gun or knife, powder or fluid may be overlooked or concealed in another substance at a crime scene.

  Returning to the matter of control, poison allows the killer to determine with extreme accuracy the level of a victim’s suffering and the span of time between administration and death. The killer may single out a victim in a crowd, committing murder before an unsuspecting audience. Poison may be administered in a variety of ways: hidden in drinks, food or medicine, injected or inhaled, even absorbed through contact with the skin. Those who are subjected to acute poisoning usually die quickly, while those subject to chronic poisoning suffer results for weeks, months or even years, and when death occurs, it is often regarded as expected, the result of a long illness.

  Prior to modern forensics, murder by poison was difficult and often impossible to prove. It is still a challenging means of death for police, pathologists and other medical experts to establish. There are rarely any obvious signs of the ordeal that the victim has endured, and sometimes little or nothing to suggest that their demise was due to anything other than natural causes. Trestrail points out: ‘Bullets leave holes, knives leave cuts, and clubs leave bruises, but the poisoner covers the murder with a blanket of invisibility. Important clues are usually buried with the victim.’764 It is also a relatively uncommon form of murder, accounting for only 3–6 per cent of homicides.765

  Despite the preponderance of factual and fictional stories involving a female poisoner, most real-life cases feature a male protagonist. Nonetheless, poison has often been the weapon of choice for female killers throughout history. A study of the 49 women executed in Britain during 1843–1890 revealed that 29 used poison to kill, with arsenic employed in 23 of those cases.766 But this may be due to the fact that divorce was difficult for women to obtain during the Victorian era, when traditional gender roles also resulted in women making and serving meals, or supervising the process in middle-class households, leaving them free to add poison to their culinary creations.

  Further studies explore whether a ‘typical’ poisoner can be said to exist. John Rowland, author of Poisoner in the Dock (the 1960 book that so enthralled Graham Young), considered 12 historic cases and found a number of ‘primary characteristics’ common to poisoners. These include a ‘streak of complete ruthlessness’, which shows itself in an absolute defiance of legal authority, and ‘the refusal to accept any moral basis for life’; and a venal and egotistical nature, which convinces the poisoner they are invincible: ‘They cannot be found out, they think; they treat it as a cruel whim of fate when the doctors or the police reveal some fact that they thought could not possibly be discovered . . . The fact that they have been clumsy, that they have made stupid errors, does not ever, as far as one knows, occur to the unsuccessful poisoner.’767 Rowland suggests that poisoners are peculiarly vain and partial to media interest. In the case studies he presented, four of the 12 were connected with the medical and pharmaceutical world, but that was significant only insofar as their professions afforded them easy access to poison.

  More recent studies include Dr Robert Brittain’s work on the sexually sadistic killer. In his research, which as we know was drawn primarily from his contact with Graham Young, Brittain found a number of common elements, albeit not related specifically to poisoners as a ‘group’. He identified an individual whose fractured developmental history included problems with the mother and an authoritarian father; an introspective, solitary, prudish and socially inept character who is rarely overtly confrontational but possesses a deep, hidden aggression and enjoys cruelty, usually towards animals in childhood and later seeking out stories of black magic, torture and Nazism. As patient or prisoner, the sadistic killer can often seem rehabilitated but is likely to murder again if given the opportunity.

  Other studies and discoveries abound. Dr Malcolm MacCulloch, who worked with Graham, identifies the experience of power and control during sexually sadistic killings as the single most important factor. Alphonse Poklis, Director of Toxicology and Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in the US, states that poison is the weapon of ‘controlling, sneaky people wi
th no conscience, no sorrow, no remorse. They are scary, manipulative.’768 Author Michael Farrell finds that ‘when someone poisons, the distinctive aspect of the crime is the planning and calculation that is associated with it, implying a self-directed shaping of events.’769

  Poisoning expert John Harris Trestrail describes such killers as ‘for the most part cunning, avaricious, cowardly (physically or mentally non-confrontational), child-like in their fantasy, and somewhat artistic (meaning they can design the plan for the murder in as much detail as if they were writing the script for a play). Why does the poison murderer select this weapon as the means of getting to the goal? One of the major reasons is that they stand a very good chance of getting away with the crime. Other reasons include the fact that a poison allows completion of the assault without physical confrontation with the victim. The poisoner is truly an intelligent coward, or we could say has the mind set of an “enfant-terrible” in the body of an adult. This is a very dangerous combination.’770 Among the traits he identifies, which includes those already highlighted by other studies, are ‘a tendency to turn the victim into an object with no feelings’, a belief that they are unlikely to be discovered given their careful calculations, ‘a limited mind without sympathy’ and something in the poisoner that keeps him or her ‘permanently immature; they never seem to grow up. They try to make the world obey their will by cheating it in minor ways, and thereby stealing what it refuses to give them.’771

  Graham Young emerges forcefully from these findings; indeed, it seems possible to measure his character against the elements of the poisoner’s table: the fractured early childhood; the somewhat authoritarian father; the lack of ‘normal’ relationships as he matured; the interest in supernatural evil – black magic and voodoo – and in the totalitarian murders of the Nazi regime; the detachment of his crimes and the depersonalisation of the victims (‘I’d ceased to see them as people,’ he admitted, ‘they had become guinea pigs’); his prudism whenever sexual matters were mentioned while privately acknowledging that he had gained sexual stimulation from experimenting with poison; the cunning, preparation and sadism in administering poison over a long period in order to observe its effects, even to the extent of keeping a diary of his victims’ sufferings; the extreme vanity in his knowledge of toxicology and the need to ‘show off’ about it, which led to the discovery of his crimes; the twisted virtue of his genuine horror at the suggestion that he might have been willing to poison his beloved aunt and uncle; the desire to leave a morally deformed mark upon the world in his urging to reporters to ‘make me famous’; having fooled the authorities into believing him ‘cured’ only to kill again; the obsession with power and control (‘I could have killed them if I had wished . . . but I allowed them to live’); and, above all, his addiction to poison: ‘The doses I was giving were not fatal, but I knew I was doing wrong. It grew on me like a drug habit, except that it wasn’t me who was taking the drug.’772

  Perhaps the latter, more than anything else, goes some way to explaining why his family and friends were so remarkably forgiving of him. They felt more than a little pity for the youth who was, as his sister put it, ‘obsessed with poisons and their effects and the power it gave him, the way other young men are obsessed with football’. And in many ways, Graham forever remained that thin, pinched-faced youth in the playground, whom his classmate Clive Creager remembered habitually taking a phial of poison from the pocket of his school blazer: ‘This is my little friend,’ he’d say, and chuckle over it like a gangster over his gun.

  His crimes were exceptionally cruel, with many different kinds of torture inflicted upon the victims, some of whom died in lengthy and excruciating agony, while others survived with emotional scars as severe as the physical effects. Yet lawyer Peter Goodman stated with authority that Graham had no ‘ill will towards the people he killed. He just had no morals. The reason he poisoned those closest to him was simply that he could closely observe the symptoms. He was a deranged scientist, essentially.’ Meanwhile, Graham’s first biographer, Anthony Holden, described his subject as possessing a ‘deadness to normal human interaction. He had no compunction, no remorse, no guilt.’

  And yet there were indications that Graham desperately wanted to be ‘normal’, even to get married, as he told a social worker, and to divest himself of the ‘terrible coldness’ he felt inside, which caused him to break down completely on a visit to his sister shortly before his arrest in 1971. Winifred’s memoir, filled with love and affection as much as horror and incomprehension, includes a 1972 letter her brother sent to their cousin Sandra, while he was on remand. Aside from Graham’s nonsensical comments about his lack of guilt, the genuine warmth he felt for the small band of people he regarded as his closest family shines through almost every line:

  Dear Sandy,

  Thank you for your last two letters and for the enclosed cigs and tobacco. The tobacco was fine – indeed, if you’d sent me straw it would have been welcome in my present impecunious circumstances.

  I was really delighted to hear from you. I have yet to receive any reply to my letters to Win and Auntie Win. Perhaps they were discouraged by my grim attempts at humour. Honestly, though, I see little purpose in writing sepulchral, doom-laden epistles to them. I wish to ease their anxieties, not increase them.

  To you, however, I can be honest, Sandy. I stand a good chance of acquittal, for the Prosecution case has a number of inherent weaknesses and a strong point in my favour is that I am not guilty of the charges against me – antecedents notwithstanding. My trial will, I hope, vindicate me. If, by ill chance, it should find me guilty, that will be the end of me, Sandy.

  I’m glad the boys are well. I wonder if Andrew misses his ‘mountaineering sessions’ clambering all over me. At times I gained the impression that I was the Eiger!

  Time travels very slowly here, and tends to hang heavily upon me. There is still considerable time before my trial and a number of sessions with Counsel scheduled before then. The first should occur sometime this week.

  I am not maltreated here, it is merely a question of finding ways to pass the time. The fact that I have always been a prolific reader on a variety of subjects has stood me in good stead, although I regret that my choice of literature is somewhat limited.

  I do hope that the family are all well. When I don’t hear from them I worry but I don’t want them to feel obligated to write so do not pass this comment on to them.

  I am writing this in my cell, late at night and am a little influenced by my Nembutal night sedatives, so excuse the untidiness of my handwriting.

  The few friends which I made upon my admission here have now been consigned to their various fates, so I feel a little solitary. However, there are some advantages to solitude, at least it gives one the opportunity to reflect upon the past and to plan for the future.

  One of the things I miss in here is my intermittent sessions in the arms of Bacchus! As you can imagine, the prison is dry and no alcohol has passed my lips for many a month. I have been transformed into an abstemious person fit to grace the board of a Temperance Society!

  Well, San, I don’t have much more to say now, so I’ll sign off with love to Tony and Andrew and of course, to yourself.

  Keep well and happy, look after yourself and write to me soon.

  With all my love,

  Graham XXXXX.773

  Contemporary articles on the case suggest that if Graham Young existed today, he would probably be assessed for evidence of a spectrum disorder, but such approaches fail to understand his motivation. Dr Christopher Fysh’s analysis of the murderer aged 14 remains the most accurate: ‘As far as can be seen, he chose his relatives for his poisoning experiments because of their propinquity and he admits as much. There seems to have been no animosity towards his victims. He describes the administering of poison to them rather as an adult might describe a chemical experiment which took place in a laboratory unconnected with human victims. He describes the symptoms of his victims freely, with inte
rest, but without emotion.’

  Thus Graham was not only ‘prepared to take the risk of killing to gratify his interest in poisons’ but came to regard murder as another form of experimentation. For the unambiguous truth is simple if incomprehensible: Graham Young was a toxicomaniac. The epitome of a rare condition, he was a lover of poison, and the euphoric sense of strength that he gained from its mere presence set him almost inevitably on the path to murder, where control and dominion were absolute. ‘I miss my antimony,’ he told officers who arrested him in 1962. ‘I miss the power it gives me.’

  All that remains is a single, enduring mystery, as fitting an end to the life of Graham Young as anything dreamed up by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. It is this: when the prison guards entered his cell for the last time in August 1990, was the man lying prone on the floor killed by natural causes or had he chosen one final, deadly poison?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I

  T WAS A STRANGE experience, researching and writing this book during the lockdown imposed by COVID-19. I had been able to visit the National Archives just prior to March 2020, but a second visit was delayed until November of that year because of closures. In that time, my world, like that of everyone else, shrank considerably and during that period and after, as sole carer for my mother, who has several serious health issues, and my sister, who has severe learning difficulties, writing necessarily grew further and further delayed. I mention this because without the support of those closest to me, this book would still be unwritten.