She failed and investigators narrowed their focus to her even further. Her husband, Bruce, died after taking cyanide-laced Excedrin tablets in . Colbert says that he has never seen the polygraph graph, although he has asked to. Gregg Olsen, Bitter Almonds: The True Story of Mothers, Daughters, and the Seattle Cyanide Murders (New York: Warner Books, 1993); "Update 2002" in St. Martin's Press Paperback edition, 2002. She was paid $7,500. Stella Nicholls was presumably born in the early 1950s, and when Stella was young, her mother would leave her for an unknown reason. They have a history of helping people they feel have been unfairly convicted. win all terms to run concurrently. She was sentenced to 90 years in prison for product tampering after she poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow. Paramedics found her unconscious and gasping for breath. In 1986, the Nickells lived in Auburn, Washington, a suburb south of Seattle not far from SEA-TAC airport. After building flatboats, de Soto and his 400 ragged troops crossed the great river under the cover of read more, On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) surrender to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890. [4], Stella met Bruce Nickell in 1974. Stella was indicted in federal court and Cindy testified against her at the trial. Hamilton went on to testify against Nickell at her trial two years later. But this time, it happened on the West Coast of the United States in a suburb of Seattle, Washington. They are not sure where the dialogue will lead. Death by cyanide poisoning was big news in Washington. Olsen told Insider that Snow was a random victim who "paid for Stella's greed with her life." A subsequent test of the deceased Bruce Nickell's blood sample showed that he, like Sue Snow, had died of cyanide poisoning. Her fate was sealed when Hamilton told the FBI that her mother had repeatedly talked about killing Bruce in different ways. This information would spread across the town she lived and cause her to start getting bullied because . [20] Her release date is given as July 10, 2040, when she will be 96 years old. When emergency personnel arrived, she told them that Bruce had taken Excedrin capsules and fallen unconscious. One factor was strong objections from advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, owner of the Tylenol brand of painkillers which had been affected by the 1982 Chicago case. All sentences were to run concurrently, and the judge ordered Stella to pay a small fine and forfeit her remaining assets to the families of her victims. Nickell tampered with five additional bottles of Excedrin and placed them on store shelves in the Seattle area. The detectives discovered an FBI memo that seems to support Rider's account. Name Stella Nicholls Occupation Student Gender Female Species Human Age 15-17 Status Alive Birth date c. 1951-1953 Appearances Film (s) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Actors/Actresses Portrayed by Zoe Colletti Stella Nicholls is a fictional character appearing in the 2019 film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. She belongs in prison until she is dead. "I started reaing books to find out what plants I might have on the property that would be a danger to kids and pets," Stella says. She deserves no compassion. For one thing, authorities found only five contaminated bottles of painkillers in all of King County. An appeal based on jury tampering and judicial misconduct issues was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in August 1989. [13], On December 9, 1987, Stella was indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts of product tampering, including two which resulted in the deaths of Bruce and Snow,[6][14] and arrested the same day. In inorganic cyanides, the cyanide group is present as the cyanide anion CN.This anion is extremely poisonous.Soluble salts such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) and potassium . The crime was chillingly similar to the Chicago Tylenol murders four years earlier. The government says all required documents were handed over. Stella also had more than her share of legal troubles. Then Stella Nickell's daughter, Cindy Hamilton, began talking to police. [29][30] The murders are discussed in the Jodi Picoult novel House Rules, published in 2010. According to Olsen, the police theory is that Stella Nickell crushed the algae tablets in a bowl, and then later, when she mixed the cyanide, used that same bowl without cleaning it. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence were the first . During the trial, the reward was never brought into evidence. Stella Nickell is convicted on two counts of murder by a Seattle, Washington, jury. Rushed to Harborview Medical Center, Bruce did not respond to doctors efforts to revive him. Cynthia Hamilton, Stellas daughter, came forward (possibly in order to obtain reward money) with her account of Stellas plan to kill her husband. } On December 9, 1987, a federal grand jury indicted Stella Nickell on five counts of product tampering. Nearly two weeks later, she heard about Sue Snow. I sent her to school; she told the nurse I had beat her that morning. After her death was reported in the news, Stella called police to tell them that she thought her husband had also been poisoned. The Nonprescription Drug Manufacturers Assn. They also found cyanide in two bottles of Excedrin capsules Stella turned over to the police. DARLING (born NICHOLLS) and 3 other siblings. They were married two years later. "My belief is that the polygraph was a ruse to try and coerce a confession out of her," says Stella's new lawyer, Carl Colbert. They say she was desperate to establish an accidental cause of death. A $250,000 reward will be paid to a Garden Grove woman whose testimony helped convict her mother in two killings with cyanide-laced Excedrin, a spokesman for a pharmaceutical group said Friday. Klein is featured in "American Mother," a book about Nickell published this week. The Chicago Tylenol incident (which was never solved) had a lasting impact on Stella, who decided that cyanide would be a good method of murder. Coryn I. Nicholls (Mayerson) is a Physician Assistant in Walnut Creek, CA. Stella and Steven have lived together in a single family house in Philadelphia, PA. View more. The jury convicted Stella on all counts on May 9, after five days of deliberation. She told the FBI that her mother had talked for years about killing her husband, and went to the library to research poisonous plants and cyanide. Stella Nickell, then 75, had been sentenced to 90 years in prison in 1988, after she was found guilty of product tampering. The deaths sparked a nationwide tampering scare and prompted Excedrin manufacturer Bristol-Myers Co. to recall its over-the-counter capsule medications. But U.S.. She showed them the bottle. The detectives say they simply don't know who the killer is. Sign Up. [32][33], Sources vary as to the exact amount. FBI document examiners determined that Bruce's signature on the applications had been forged. But this time, there was a suspect and an arrest. The police say Stella told them she bought them at different times, probably at different stores. Although the defense challenged her credibility, the jury believed her and convicted Stella of fatally poisoning her husband and Sue Snow. Her bar-hopping drastically reduced, Stella began to request more night shifts at her baggage-screener job at SEA-TAC airport. SEATTLE -- Stella Nickell poisoned her husband with cyanide-laced Excedrin so she could collect on his life insurance and caused the death of an innocent woman to fake 'the work of a random. [2] The former was marked as overdue in library records, indicating that she had borrowed but never returned it. Prosecutors said Stella Nickell put cyanide in capsules of Extra-Strength Excedrin and gave them to her husband. They were married two years later. Nickell was given two 90-year sentences for the murders of her husband and Susan Snow. She said she had a bottle of Excedrin in her home with the same lot number as the bottle that had killed Sue Snow. She told police that her husband had recently died suddenly after taking pills from a 40-capsule bottle of Excedrin with the same lot number as the one that had killed Snow. The case. A consortium of drug companies, alarmed about product tampering, posted a $300,000 reward. Now, private detective Al Farr and his partner Paul Ciolino are on a mission to prove what they both firmly believe: Nickell is innocent. SEATTLE -- A federal jury convicted Stella Nickell Monday of lacing pain relief capsules with cyanide, killing her husband and a random victim, in the nation's first fatal . In these documents, there are reports about other possible suspects and mysterious fingerprints on Sue Snows bottle. Stella Nichols. "She thought, 'If that murderer got away with it, I can, too,'" Olsen said of Nickell. Then there was the insurance. Rider was never called to testify. Investigators exhumed Bruce Nickells body and found evidence of cyanide. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. [23], After the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders, new FDA regulations went into effect which made it a federal crimerather than just a state or local crimeto tamper with consumer products. [2] Further tests showed that the substance was an algaecide used in home aquariums, sold under the brand name Algae Destroyer. She told police, and doctors realized that Bruce Nickell had also been poisoned. [7] On June 18, Bristol-Myers recalled all Excedrin capsules in the United States, pulling them from store shelves and warning consumers to not use any they may already have bought;[7] two days later the company announced a recall of all of their non-prescription capsule products. Noonan, the fish store manager, was paid a $15,000 reward. In June 1986, two Auburn residents were killed by painkillers laced with cyanide. [1] In the course of their ten-year marriage, Bruce entered a drug rehab and gave up drinking, which Stella reportedly resented as she later felt he had "turned into a boring man". 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