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From Autopsy 7: Dead Men Talking |
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The Stella Nickells Case
Seattle, 1986: A woman was found dead after taking two Excedrin capsules, which were found to have been laced with cyanide. A few days later, after a massive local recall of the product, Stella Nickells (left) notified police that her husband had taken the painkiller immediately before he died, but the coroner had attributed the death to emphysema.
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Meanwhile, the FBI sci-crime lab found tiny green specks in every one of the contaminated capsules, and traced the specks to a chemical compound used to kill algae in fish tanks. Detectives remembered seeing a huge fish tank in Stella Nickells' trailer home, and a local retailer remembered selling her the algaecide. The FBI determined that Nickells had mashed the cyanide in the same bowl as the algaecide.
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Tests showed that Bruce Nickells died as a result of cyanide ingestion. It was determined that Stella Nickells had poisoned her husband to collect $170,000 from an accidental-death policy. But after the coroner mistakenly ruled Bruce Nickells' death was from natural causes, Stella committed the other murders so that her husband's case would be re-opened. Stella Nickells became the first person in U.S. history to be convicted of murder in a product-tampering case, and was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
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