by Jerry eBooks
* * * *
Back home in their El Reno duplex, David and Rebecca prepared the children for bed.
“Can I eat some of my candy?” Lisa said.
“Tomorrow,” Rebecca said. “It’s already past your bedtime.”
“Just one piece!” Todd said.
“All right,” David said, “just one piece.”
Rebecca sighed with disapproval but did not object.
Lisa chose one of the bite-size Hershey bars while Todd rummaged through the booty in his bag.
“Remember, you’ve got this, too,” David said, holding up the Pixy Stix. It was too long to put in the sack of candy and Todd had set it on the coffee table when they came into the house.
Todd brightened. “Yes! I pick that.”
“Just make sure you brush your teeth well before you go to bed,” Rebecca said. “Now, off to your rooms and put on your pajamas.” She put her hands on Lisa’s shoulders from behind and steered her down the hall.
“I can’t get this open,” Todd said as he struggled with the end of the long straw.
“Let me,” David said. He took it to the kitchen, retrieved a pair of scissors from a drawer, and cut off the stapled end of the straw. He handed it back to Todd and said, “Now, off to your room for your pajamas.”
On their way to Todd’s bedroom, the boy tipped the straw over his mouth to eat some of the candy, but nothing came out. He shook it a few times without success.
In the bedroom, he said, “It’s hard inside. It won’t come out.”
David took the straw again and rolled it vigorously between his hands. The hardened powder crunched and crackled lightly as it broke up inside. “Should work now. Open up.”
Todd tipped his head back and David poured some of the powder into his mouth, saying, “There you go.”
Smacking his lips, Todd screwed up his face and said, “It’s nasty. Real bitter.”
“It is? Should be sweet.”
Todd sat on the edge of his bed and wiped his mouth as a shudder of disgust passed over him.
“You want some Kool-Aid to get the taste out of your mouth?” David said.
“Yes, please.”
David went to the kitchen, took a glass from the cupboard, opened the refrigerator, and poured some cherry Kool-Aid from a pitcher. He took the glass back to the bedroom and found Todd lying on his side, knees drawn up, hands over his abdomen.
“I don’t feel good, Dad. I feel sick.”
“Here, drink this. Might help.”
The boy sat up, took the glass in both hands and drank. He gagged and pulled the glass away. Kool-Aid dribbled down his chin as he stood, handed the glass to his father, and said, “Gonna throw up,” and ran out of the room.
David set the glass on the nightstand and followed Todd out. He heard the boy retching in the bathroom before he got there.
Rebecca came out of Lisa’s bedroom and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Todd’s sick.”
They went into the bathroom together and found Todd kneeling at the toilet bowl, violently throwing up. Rebecca rushed to his side as she asked David, “What did he eat?”
“He had some candy.”
Todd stopped vomiting and slowly sat up. Then he fell over.
Her voice was high and breathy when she said, “David, he’s passed out.” As she knelt beside him, Todd’s body began to jerk and thrash. “Call an ambulance!” White foam bubbled out of his mouth as he continued to convulse. Rebecca screamed.
* * * *
In the Carmichael house, Audrey found Brian in the kitchen, wearing his pajamas, opening a drawer. She said, “Why are you still up?”
“I need a knife to open this,” he said, holding up his Pixy Stix.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You should be in bed. Give me that.” She held out her hand and Brian reluctantly gave her the straw. “This is outdoor candy. If you open this inside, you’ll get it all over the house. That’s why I took your sister’s, too. Now, go to bed.”
His shoulders sagged with disappointment as he left the kitchen.
Audrey put his Pixy Stix on the kitchen counter next to Amy’s.
* * * *
11-year-old Jeffrey Putnam lay in bed in his dark bedroom, listening for sounds of one of his parents approaching the closed door. His mother had not allowed him to keep his Halloween candy in his bedroom.
“If you keep it in there, you’ll be up all night eating it,” she’d said. “Then you’ll be too sick to go to school tomorrow.”
But he had managed to sneak the Giant Pixy Stix Mr. Strauss had given him into his bedroom and hide it under his bed. Now that the coast was clear, he leaned over the edge of the bed, reached underneath, and closed his hand on the big straw.
Mr. Strauss was a fixture at church. He was a deacon, a youth counselor, he sang in the choir and occasionally sang solos in church, and he ran the church’s bus program. Jeffrey had always thought he was kind of funny-looking and found the way he talked a little creepy, but Mr. Strauss had given him the biggest piece of candy he’d gotten that night—the biggest piece of Halloween candy he had ever gotten—so he couldn’t be all bad.
He lay back in bed and began to tug at the tab of paper on the end of the straw. It was too dark in the room to see, but he felt something embedded in the paper. A staple. It was going to be harder to open than he’d expected, but his little fingers kept working at it with determination.
* * * *
When Detective Steven Kirkland of the Warr Acres Police Department responded to the call from the hospital, he saw Todd lying dead on a stretcher with creamy foam around his parted lips. He found David and Rebecca in a small waiting room.
Rebecca was seated in a chair, her upper body flush with her lap and her face in her hands as she sobbed. David was in the chair beside her with a blank expression on his face, his hand stroking her back. Kirkland took the seat next to David.
“Mr. Strauss?” he said quietly. “I’m Detective Kirkland, Warr Acres Police. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I know this is a bad time for questions, but we need to get to the bottom of this before other children are hurt.”
David nodded slightly. “Yes, I understand. I agree.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
David told him all about their evening and Kirkland interrupted a couple of times to ask clarifying questions.
Kirkland said, “Do you remember the house where you got the candy? What street was it on?”
David’s prominent forehead creased. “I . . . I don’t remember the house. The street . . . well, we didn’t stay out long because the weather was so bad. We went down Girvan and, uh . . . Deschutes. We were with our friends the Carmichaels, Jack and Audrey. They live just off of Deschutes. Jack and his son went trick-or-treating with us.”
“Those are the only two streets you were on while trick-or-treating?”
David nodded.
“How many of the candies were there? The candy your son ate, I mean?”
“It was Pixy Stix. The giant ones. There were . . . five.”
“Do you know who got the other four Pixy Stix?”
“My daughter, the two Carmichael children, and . . . there was another. I gave it to a trick-or-treater. Jeffrey Putnam. His family goes to our church.”
“Who gave you the Pixy Stix? Do you remember the person at the door?”
“I didn’t see him. He just stuck his arm out. A hairy arm. The porch light was off, he took a little while to answer the door, then . . . he just stuck his hand out and gave me the candy.”
Kirkland stood. “I’ll be right back. I need to make a call.”
* * * *
Police fanned out in the neighborhood of Girvan and Deschutes. Late into that rainy night, and even into the earliest hours of the morning, they knocked on doors and warned parents that poison candy had been handed out to children.
Panic spread through the entire area as people called and woke their friends and told them to pass on the new
s. People spent much of that night following the TV and radio coverage of the story. They had heard stories of poison candy, but only from people who knew someone who knew someone who lived in that town. Those stories had the flimsy texture of rumors. This was a fist to the solar plexus.
A police officer knocked on the door of the Carmichael house. They had been called and were already awake. As soon as he opened the door, Jack Carmichael said, “The kids are fine. Nobody ate the Pixy Stix.”
An officer knocked on the door of the Putnam house. No one had called them and they were asleep. Mr. Putnam answered the door in his robe, eyes squinting, hair a spiky mess.
“Mr. Putnam, tonight your son was given a candy, a Giant Pixy Stix.”
“What? Yeah, the . . . the Pixy Stix, yeah. What about it?”
“Has he eaten it?”
Mr. Putnam’s eyes widened. “What?”
“The Pixy Stix, has your son or anyone else eaten the contents?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Why?”
“You know the Strauss family from church? David and Rebecca and their children?”
“Yes.”
“Their son was poisoned tonight. He’s . . . he passed away.”
“Oh, my God.” He turned and ran from the door.
The police officer stepped inside, closed the door, and followed him.
They found Jeffrey curled up on his side beneath his blue bedspread and covers, between his white sheets, the Pixy Stix held loosely to his chest with a limp arm. He had fallen asleep before he managed to open the end of the straw.
* * * *
Horrified families huddled in their living rooms to watch the ongoing television coverage throughout the next day, waiting for more information. Parents confiscated their children’s Halloween candy. Police asked local residents to bring any candy that seemed suspicious, for whatever reason, to the police station. By the time the deliveries stopped, piles of candy filled an entire room. As the story spread around the nation, a lot of parents all over the country refused to let their children eat their Halloween candy.
Detective Kirkland and another officer took David to Jack Carmichael’s neighborhood and they walked together along the streets on which they had gone trick-or-treating in an attempt to find the source of the Pixy Stix. They had walked up and down Girvan twice and now worked their way east on Deschutes.
The sky was blue between corpulent white clouds in no hurry to get where they were going and there was an autumn bite in the air. Lawns were green and speckled with orange and yellow leaves, and everything was still damp from the previous night’s rain.
“You said earlier this morning that you thought it was on Deschutes, Mr. Strauss,” Kirkland said as they moved leisurely down the sidewalk.
“I know, but . . . I’m not sure what house. And I’m not that sure that it was on Deschutes. It just . . . seems like it was. Like I said, we weren’t out for long because of the rain.”
“Do you remember anything at all about the house itself? Any details, like the color, or something unusual about the house or yard?”
David said nothing as they continued walking. They passed a mail carrier delivering mail, then two old women taking a stroll. Finally, David stopped and stared at a sandy-haired man raking leaves on his front lawn wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. The porch of his house was partially obscured by a vine-covered wall. David pointed to the man and said, “That’s the man who gave me the candy. And that’s the house.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m almost positive. I recognize the porch. And I recognize him.”
Kirkland leaned close to the other officer and said something quietly, then said to David, “Stay right here.” He walked across the lawn and greeted the man, then showed his badge, introduced himself, and asked the man’s name.
“Irving Watt. Anything I can do for you?”
“I’m investigating the poison candy that was handed out last night. Do you know about that?”
“Only what I heard on the news this morning. Pretty horrible story.”
“Did you get many trick-or-treaters last night?”
“I don’t know, I was at work.
“How late did you work last night?”
“I didn’t get home until ten forty-five. As usual.”
“Ten forty-five? Last night?”
“That’s right.”
“Where do you work?”
“Hobby Airport. I’m a shift supervisor.”
“Was anyone else home last night?”
“My wife Carolyn and our kids.”
“Did your children go trick-or-treating?”
“She didn’t want to take them out in the rain.”
“Did they get any trick-or-treaters?”
“Yes, more than they expected. They figured there wouldn’t be many because it was raining and I guess my wife didn’t get enough candy. She ran out around . . . I think she said six-thirty, six forty-five, something like that. After that, she stopped answering the door.”
Kirkland turned and looked at David chatting with the officer on the sidewalk. Turning to Watt again, he said, “I’m going to have to ask you and your wife to come down to the station to answer some questions later.”
“Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“Not at all. We’re just looking for information.”
* * * *
Fluids from Todd’s stomach were found to contain 16 milligrams of potassium cyanide and a blood test found .4 milligrams in his blood. Cyanide is fatal at a blood level between .2 and .3 milligrams.
* * * *
“It seemed odd to me, but I didn’t say anything,” Jack Carmichael said to the officer questioning him. They were seated in the Carmichael living room.
“Why did it seem odd?”
“Well, there were lights on inside, but the porch light was off, and usually that’s a sign that they’re not giving out candy. Then he came away with five Giant Pixy Stix. But the porch light didn’t come on and, as far as I could see, nobody opened the door.”
“Why didn’t you go to the door?”
“Before we went out, we agreed that I would stick to the sidewalk while he took the kids from door to door.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“David’s.”
* * * *
The manager of Oklahoma State Optical told police that David had asked about getting some cyanide. “We used it to clean gold frames,” he said, “but that stopped more than 20 years ago. He asked if I could get some cyanide because he wanted to try the old method of cleaning the frames. You know, I’ve been considering firing him.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, we’ve had a problem with theft lately and all signs point to him.”
“Theft of money?”
“Yes. I guess it’s not too surprising considering his financial problems, but I —”
“Strauss has financial problems?”
“Oh, yes. He talks about them a lot. He’s months behind on his car payments and he owes money on a few loans. That’s why they sold their house recently and moved into the duplex in El Reno. But he says he expects a large sum of money by the end of the year. Enough so they could buy another house. I was hoping he wasn’t the culprit. He’s a good worker and I’d hate to lose him.”
* * * *
On Monday evening, David and Rebecca Strauss were asked to come to the police station for more questioning. By then, after days of investigating, the police had specific questions in mind. David and Rebecca were taken to separate conference rooms. While David was questioned, Rebecca talked to Detective Sergeant Rodney Garcia. She looked pallid and in need of sleep.
“Did you have any life insurance on your children, Mrs. Strauss?” Garcia asked.
She sighed. “Yes. We joined the Outlooks Club at Warr Acres State Bank. That entitled us to purchase life insurance policies at small premiums that would be drawn from our account automatically each month. I didn’t think it was a good idea because, eve
n though the premiums were small, we don’t have much money. I didn’t think we could afford it. And it seemed silly to have so much life insurance on two small children. But it seemed important to David.”
“When was this?”
“In January.”
“What about the policies he purchased a month ago?”
Her tired eyes slowly widened. “What policies?”
“Today, we received a phone call from Jordan Webber, your insurance agent. Webber told us that, against his advice, your husband purchased a twenty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on each of your children. You didn’t know about that?”
Her head turned minutely from side to side.
“Webber says your husband asked that you not be informed.”
Rebecca seemed to shrink in her chair as her eyes wandered away from Garcia. They looked at nothing in particular as her mind worked busily behind them. Her face wilted and tears sparkled in her eyes as she whispered, “My God.” Sobs jolted her like bullets entering her body.
* * * *
David Strauss was arrested on November 5, 1974, and charged with the murder of his son Todd and the attempted murders of his daughter Lisa, both of the Carmichael children, and Jeffrey Putnam.
The evidence against him at the trial was bountiful.
Pixy Stix are always heat sealed on the ends, never stapled. A customer at Oklahoma City Optical testified that he had seen David walking to his car with a paper bag in one hand and a stapler in the other.
David had said incriminating things to a long list of people, asking about how to obtain cyanide and what amount was fatal to humans, and claiming that his financial problems soon would be over because he expected a large sum of money by the end of the year.
Police were unable to figure out how he had obtained the cyanide, but they knew he was trying. A chemical supply company salesman testified that David had inquired about purchasing cyanide. When he was told that the minimum amount sold was five pounds, he said it was too much.
David maintained his innocence throughout.
After closing statements from each side, it took the jury 45 minutes to find him guilty on all counts. An hour and ten minutes later, they sentenced him to death.
