On this day, May 9, in 1988, a Seattle-area woman was found guilty of killing her husband and another person by lacing Excedrin capsules with cyanide, becoming the first person convicted under the Federal Anti-Tampering Act. Stella Nickell had plotted to kill Bruce Nickell for years to be able to collect $176,000 in insurance. She checked out library books on poison and talked to her daughter about hiring a hit man.
In 1986, she laced her husband’s medicine with cyanide and then planted cyanide-laced bottles back on store shelves to make it look like her husband’s death was random. A 40-year-old woman ingested one of the tainted pills and also died.
Nickell was charged under a federal product tampering law passed after seven people in Chicago died when they ingested cyanide-laced Tylenol. Nickell was sentenced to 90 years.
Scott McCabe
