Town note
Settlers began arriving in the 1830s and created a settlement where McHenry now stands.
about 0:05:34The story
In the summer of 1980, two healthy women in one extended family died within twelve days of each other in McHenry County, Illinois, and the deaths were put down to natural causes. Mary Lambert, who was eighty-nine, and her daughter Marian Muller, who was sixty-nine, lived together at Leisure Village, a guarded retirement complex in Fox Lake. Both were active and in good health. They ate Polish sausage and sauerkraut. Mary became violently ill that night with vomiting and diarrhoea; Marian was slightly less ill. On August 5th Mary was admitted to McHenry Hospital, and on August 6th she died. On August 16th Marian was admitted to St. Theresa's Hospital in Waukegan, having been ill since the same dinner, and on August 18th she died.
The authorities checked the water, the sewage system, the food supply and local restaurant kitchens, and found nothing. Meanwhile the money moved. The Leisure Village home was sold quickly for $95,000, well below its value. With about $150,000 in cash, the couple came into roughly $250,000. Virginia also received $6,000 in life insurance and pension money from Marian, which was used to catch up the mortgage.
Michael started Allied Die and Casting, a trophy and loving-cup manufacturer, in the 1960s. He married in 1958 and had three daughters before his first wife divorced him and moved to Wisconsin. In 1965 he was working as a car salesman at Norwood Motors in Morton Grove when he and an accomplice posed as detectives and forced their way into the home of Emmett Farrell, a sixty-one-year-old bus driver, taking $160. He remarried in the late 1960s, then went through a bigamous marriage to Virginia Muller in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend in 1972; his divorce from his second wife was finalised the following year. In the mid-1970s he went to work for his father, and by the late 1970s he was president of Allied Die and Casting, earning $60,000 a year, then $110,000 by 1980. He moved his family to Spring Grove in 1978, installed a swimming pool, leased two Cadillacs through the company and took regular holidays. Neighbours described him as a show-off.
Behind the front, he was in trouble. He was six months behind on his mortgage, owed $15,000 to the State Bank of Richmond, and was behind on child support. In July 1980 his ex-wife's lawyer filed a petition to bring him to court; he did not appear and a judgment was entered against him. In the autumn of 1979 he had asked Joe Reichle, vice president of J. W. Reichle and Sons, a metal-plating firm in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, for something to kill pests around his house. Reichle suggested arsenic and eventually gave him about two pounds, first in a small Tupperware container and then in a baby food jar.
After the two women died, the poisonings continued inside the family business. On September 8th Michael Jr. ate a sandwich brought from home at his desk, vomited violently about an hour later and spent five days in hospital. On November 14th he was ill again after lunch and was told he had an ulcer. His wife began making his lunches. Both men became ill. On February 21st, 1981, Michael Jr. drank half a thermos of canned pea soup, said it tasted strange, vomited repeatedly and was admitted to hospital. He was discharged on March 13th after three weeks, suffering from severe nerve damage, unable to walk or dress himself, and needing a wheelchair. Michael Sr. began vomiting at his desk in March 1981, where he kept a cookie jar. On April 21st he was taken to the emergency room, and on May 9th he was back in hospital, delirious, suffering spasms and needing to be restrained. Michael Sr. died early on May 16th, 1981.
A week later, at a coroner's convention, Lake County coroner Robert 'Mickey' Babcox and former McHenry County coroner Alvin Queerhammer compared notes. The bodies of Mary and Marian were exhumed. Mary had about eight times the normal level of arsenic, Marian five times, and later testing found 370 times the normal level in Mary. Michael Sr.'s body was tested and showed small doses over months. The cookie jar on his desk contained arsenic in the crumbs. He was exhumed a second time, but his fingers were too decomposed. On May 18th, 1981, the coroners took their findings to the police, who until then had shown little interest. He had been selling company zinc and scrap metal for cash, about 88,000 pounds of zinc and $9,300 of scrap, worth nearly $40,000 to him, at about sixty cents on the dollar.
Police acted when they learned he was about to fly to Jamaica with Virginia and his mother Clara; they believed he meant to kill Clara for her share of the estate.
Michael Jr. testified in leg braces, unable to button his shirt, and said he still could not pick up a coin.
The federal courts refused him in 1993 and 1994. He asked for a Roman Catholic mass, saw no visitors, and spent his last hours talking to guards about football and watching a game show. His last meal was prime rib, a baked potato, Coca-Cola, garlic bread, pistachio ice cream and coffee. He said his last words were thanks to the warden, and a prepared statement read: 'truth, justice, and the judicial system is an oxymoron'. Virginia had divorced him during the case, for financial reasons.