Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy on our podcast on Mother Knows Death and in the Gross Room, we've recently been talking about a lot of stories where there have been people who have been poisoning their loved ones. So I thought it would be great today if we talk to author Lisa Peren and she is the author of the League of Lady Poisoners. Welcome Lisa, thanks for being here today.
Oh, thank you. That's my pleasure.
So Lisa's book is really awesome and we'll get into it a little bit more later, but it takes us on a journey through the history of poison and the women who use them to kill. So for any true crime junkie, it is a really awesome book. In the book, you say that there's the thought of poisoning makes you paranoid, which it does to me as well. And I don't
think that people really think about it. But so many times a day or even a week, you eat prepared food, even if it's just going to the store to get coffee or fast food, and it's not really on anybody's mind usually that how vulnerable that we are all the time when someone else a stranger especially is making food for us or in some of these cases.
A loved one.
But I wanted to before we get started, I wanted to tell you a story of how I kind of always have that on my mind because something like this happened to me. Oh so I had like a friend, I want to say friend because she wasn't really a
friend anymore and she was a little crazy. But back in the day, she was making these like weed edibles that before you could buy them, yes, And she had made me a cookie and I took it from her because she was a really she was a really good baker, and I just was like, oh cool.
I'll try it. You bake really well.
And it made me so sick, like I was convinced that I was poisoned, seriously, Like I had to call my husband and Tom to come home from work because I was I was shaking and just it was bad. And I'm still not convinced that it was weed, but that yeah, it's not. So that was like the first time that I thought, well, you really have to be careful of like people could just do that that quick to you because you let your guard down with food
and stuff and after you were researching this book. Obviously, you did it change your perspective on this from how you felt before versus now.
Oh?
Absolutely, And I'm so sorry that happened to you. That sounds really scary and alarming.
It's kind of It was really scary at the time, but it's like a hilarious story to tell now, especially because I me and my husband come home.
From work in it.
He was so mad, you ate a cookie. Yeah, no, that's that's amazing. And yeah, I will say it definitely opened my eyes. And I think I say this in my introduction for the book, that it made me paranoid and new and interesting ways. I think there is a lot of implicit trust just built into our system, Like I don't think many of us would think anything of a cookie a friend made for us, And part of
me wants to say we shouldn't. We shouldn't trust most people, and most things are inherently good and you know, don't have a nefarious intent behind them. But it was definitely a sobering reminder for me that right we don't really know the story of who handled this, where it came from. I will say it's impacted me more now that I'm becoming The Poison Lady, which was not necessarily what I
said out to do. And I wrote this book and now folks are like, oh, we can't invite you to our dinner party, or oh, don't eat that Lisa made it.
Oh that's great.
But yeah, it's definitely it's and it makes me think a lot more about like the vulnerability when we eat and drink something we didn't prepare ourselves in new ways. I'm definitely aware of it in ways I never thought. I never even considered it before.
Yeah, exactly.
And it and another scary thing too, is that it doesn't even have to be intentional.
Oh it could it.
Like I don't know, if you've been hearing on the news lately that they're like children have been getting lead poisoning from the apple sauce pouches hearts, and it's just like you just don't you don't ever know, like and you're given this to your kid. It came from a factory. They don't know if it's like from a cinnamon or something. But it's no joke, right.
Actually, I was thinking a lot about accidental poisonings, and that's actually something that comes up quite a lot in my research. Some of the worst, most large scale poisonings have been pure accidents or you know, some kind of
something that happened in the factory. There was sort of a famous one in nineteenth century England called the Bradford Street Sweets poisoning, where there were two bags and one was sugar and one was arsenic and they looked the same, and I believe and this whole company made these sweets with unfortunately with the arsenic on accident and a large number of people because this was like a street vendor selling candy, became sick and it was a total accident.
So yes, there's the intentional ones and these the accidental ones.
Oh so they're they're both worth keeping in mind.
This actually makes me think of my second story of when I was a most accidental.
Oh no, it's where you have more than one.
It's it's it's this is like another one that sucked at the time. But my friend and I were at a really good restaurant in Philly, like one of the higher end ones, and we got some fancy dessert and you know that sometimes they'll like put lavender in something and me too, so and and like my my husband hates it because he thinks like it tastes like Soapuch.
I knew that he was going to say that.
Yeah, like a lot of people think it tastes like soap, but I don't.
I love it.
But I'm eating this dessert with my friend. We were sharing it and it came out and it had you know how sometimes they make like sugar sculptures and stuff.
It did have like a little bit of a weird machine to it.
And I ate it, and I was like, this tastes like soap.
Like it did taste like soap. Yes, literally, like.
Like don like a spoonful of down dischittution or something. And and yeah, sure enough, we returned it to the kitchen and and it was they had mistakenly like put it instead of a honey drizzle.
Oh like whatever, And yeah, wow.
And like the story that you're talking about that happened a long time ago, with the arsenic and the sugar being mixed. There's there's like really stringent rules as things being labeled correctly, yes, and not being stored anywhere near each.
Other, because that happened exactly.
And unfortunately some of these terrible accidents do lead to well unfortunately they lead to these kind of new legalities and new provisions that protect people because we don't want that to happen again. That was awful, And now it's like things do need to be really clearly labeled, and you wouldn't keep a serious poison in the same place where you're keeping the ingredients for cooking or baking.
But unfortunately, the way we get there is because it has to happen, and then we learn, and then we learned from it.
But I'm so sorry about the dish soap and the cookie.
Oh whatever. I'm alive to talk though, to tell the tale.
So do you have now that you've written this book, do you have people like coming up to you all the time and telling you stories like this? Do you have any good stories to share?
As far as that goes.
I will say that is one of the weird things people reach out to me now to tell me, like, oh, my grandmother poisoned a guy, or like, we'll send me the newspaper clipping and like look in like the nineteen thirties, my grandma poisoned my grandpa.
And I'm like, oh my, I don't know if I'm the person who should be telling that too, but that's quite a story. Yeah, I think it isn't been.
For the record, I don't want to scare your listeners too much. Poisoning is a pretty rare crime as far as crimes go, but I think I was surprised at how often it did come up and that people did have a connection. Oh I did know someone who that happened too. So yeah, people are definitely starting to reach out to me as my reputation as the Poisoned Lady continues to grow.
That's right, that's cool though. I think that's like a good reputation. So obviously you're a true crime junkie, and what, like, what was it about this crime of poisoning versus any other crime that you were so intrigued by that you wanted to write a.
Book about it.
That's such a great question. I think there's so many I'm like you said, I'm a true crime junkie. I listened to Dateline, to like Fall Asleep, and I listened to a lot of wonderful true crime podcasts. But I think there's something about poisoning that is different for me than any other type of specifically of murder, because it's just not as physical, it's not as violent, it's not as gruesome.
I think there is this weird disconnect.
You can be you can poison someone and not be in the room, not be in this state, not be in the country. Like there's a weird distance that I find really fascinating about it. And specifically what intrigued me the most was the connection to women as the practitioners of it. Whereas when we think of murder, and rightly so, we tend to think of male criminals. And that's because like something incredible like ninety percent of all homicides worldwide
are committed by men. But there is this sort of sociological we have this connection where we think of poisoning as something that women do, and that it's more duplicitous because women may not have necessarily, you know, they not want to strangle or stab or something that's much more visceral and much more physical. But it's sort of this just a drop Like I have this image of like just like a dainty drop out of like a ring with a hollow like container, and you just drop it in.
And there's there's something so fascinating about that story to me. And then there's a story that we've been told and that we see a lot in fiction and in TV and movies, and and then there is the reality, which is actually not always the same thing and not always lined up. But I think poison, to me was a really interesting weapon, and I was really fascinated by who we associate those crimes with and then why.
That's that's cool because I think that in forensics especially, and this could be with homicides, suicides, accidents, everything, there is a big discrepancy between male and female and like what like females don't tend to shoot themselves in the face or something like that, just because there's like all these like little cool things. So I definitely respect that that's what got you into it, because it is really intriguing.
Some of the news stories that we've covered recently on my podcast have have been really and in on my website, the Grosser Room. One particular one that has been horrendous that has to do with poisonings. I'm not sure if you heard of this one, but there was a couple that were living in Utah and the wife had poisoned her husband with fentanyl put it in his mosque amnole, And that's like whatever that itself Isn't that Isn't that horrendous, but the facts afterwards that come up about things that
she was searching on the computer. But on top of that, it within a year after she murdered her husband and the father of her children, she decided to write a children's book with her children about dealing with the death of a parent.
Yes, I did several people send me this r believe me, Like, yeah, exactly, yes, And.
That's what I was wondering with your research, Like, obviously, anytime you kill somebody, it's not cool, but but like, have you did you come across one case that you were like, man, that was really messed up.
That person's like sick.
Oh oh, yes, definitely.
And I will say one of the things I really wanted to focus on in this book was sort of the nuance of it all and really look at the culture context. And I think that there's some stories that are more sympathetic than others, where you might understand like, wow, this was a woman who was in a really impossible or abusive situation and she was acting out of desperation. But then on the other side, there are definitely the
ones who are like, Nope, that was a monster. That was a monster behaving monstrously and yeah, And I think one of the things that I talk about is that we don't associate these crimes, you know, violent crimes with women, but women are still capable of it. And unfortunately, there's some women in this book that really exemplify that.
What it made me think of, though, is not the.
Most messed up one, but I have a case in this book of a woman in Argentina whose name was Ya Morano, and just the seeking of attention for it afterwards, like with writing that children's picture book and like putting their grief out there in a very public way, Like she poisoned three of her friends for money and they died, and afterwards she became this big TV celebrity and made
all of these appearances on TV shows in Argentina. My favorite was there was a cooking show where the cost famously ate a piece of cake that she made, like on live on TV. And I'm just like, this's just so fascinating to me, like the crime and sometimes what the behavior is afterwards and how that transforms. And I was just thinking of that, like the children's picture booked when you said that, but in terms of one that's
just like absolutely like heinous. I think The first one that comes to my mind is Bella Ganeth, who is a woman in like the Victorian era in Indiana, And there's a lot more to her story, but I'll just summarize really briefly. Who basically put out an ad in the newspaper like a wealthy widow seeks a husband and plan of adjoining fortunes. My favorite line the whole thing is triflers need not apply, which I want to have embroidered on a pillow and just having like the front
of my home. Triflers need not apply. And she basically sort of was reaching out to these lonely men who were looking for companionship, which is not unlike what we still experience today with a lot of these dates eating scams and catfishing. And she told them to come to her home in Indiana, tell no one where they were going, and to see their life savings, into their undergarments, bring everything they had. They were going to live this beautiful
life together. And she just murdered all of them and and like buried them in her hog lot on her farm, poison them and then bludgeon them and then forgive me, it's gruesome, cut them into pieces, and yeah, and then buried them. And the best part, and my best, I mean most awful part of this story is that in the end, when she was close to getting caught, she set the whole barn on fire that she lived in
with her children. And there's a big mystery of if she escaped or if she went down with the fire, and I won't spoil that for you all, but yeah, that's that's one that just sticks in my memories.
You can't dream that up. Truth is stranger than fiction. It's just unbelievable.
And yeah, that's how I feel with this this particular case. It's like she was she was due to close on a house the day after she poisoned him, and she did. Could you imagine like someone that you love in your family dying and just being like, yeah, well I have this booked tomorrow, I have to go. And then she had a party to celebrate the closing of the house.
Yeah, and that tells you a lot.
Yeah, It's it's just and and I just hate in the news they have to be like, well, she hasn't been convicted yet, and I'm like, come on, what else could this be.
Let's no, Sometimes the facts speak for themselves and the behavior that's so interesting right to going.
Yeah, I had it on the agenda, so I'm still gonna do it.
Yeah, exactly. All right.
So another case that we talked about, and I'm I'm sure you've heard about this one too, because all your friends are sending these cases all the time now. But exactly there was a this is actually a man, believe it or not, there was there was a couple in the news this year of men poisoning their wives. Yes, and this was a Mayo clinic pharmacist. So he was not only a man, but he was also a poison specialist.
He specialized in poison and he went through a lot of trouble of researching certain kinds of drugs that would never really be shown up on routine toxicology, and he chose the gout medication and yeah, exactly. And afterwards it was like it was found that he was looking up like what dose would be lethal with her weight and
everything like that. But did you in all the cases that you researched, and it doesn't even have to be ones, because obviously you probably left a lot out of the book too, but did you have any cases that came up that it was a person that was like a specialist in whatever they used to poison someone with.
Yeah, totally, And I will just clarify quickly, and I think this was sort of the things shift in my research is that it's really not true that women poison people more than men, actually, because men commit murder so much more than women do. They use every weapon, including poison, more often than women. So it's that at first I went, oh, no, my thesis, and then I realized, oh, it's actually really much more interesting to explore this if there isn't as much truth to it.
So yes, you'll definitely see cases.
Of men doing it, also for the same reasons we ascribed it to women, because it's something that's easier to get away with. Potentially you could pass it off as natural causes or diseases. You don't have to have the same physical connection to harming a person. You can sort of disconnect from it in your mind. But yes, in terms of are there specialists whoever take advantage of their skills and specialty. Absolutely, there's a whole genre of murderers.
And I'm sure you've come across this before, sort of the angels of mercy, which is folks who are specifically in the medical profession, who use their access to medications and to vulnerable patients.
Unfortunately.
Oh yeah, one of my friends what great Friends at Amy Locker, and she's from the Netflix series.
The Good Nurse.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I like that's her life story that she one of her friends was poisoning his patients.
Yeah, yes, it's nuts.
Yeah yeah.
And I have a few of those, specifically in the book, where it's someone who is in the medical profession or in a caregiving situation to an older person because they have access to medications and we're just in a situation of inherent trust with our doctors and caregivers. We assume if a doctor handed me something to drink this, I would say, okay, you know, I don't think I would
actually guess it. And unfortunately that can give people who have nefarious intention a really dangerous opportunity to enact scary things.
Yeah exactly.
Wait, I have a really funny well you might think this is funny, but my speaking of men poisoning, So there was another case last year or too of a dentist who used arsenic actually to poison his wife. But in both cases, that one and the Mayo clinic pharmacists. They both used smoothies to poison their wives.
Smoothie quite smoothie.
Oh, And I was joking around with my husband and I was like, you know what, I would be so suspicious if you handed me a smoothie, if you could even figure out, like where the blender was in our house and how to put the ingredients together to even make me a smoothie, I would be like, what's up with this?
Where did you find that?
Okay?
So that so one of the last cases that you presented in the book was in nineteen fifty five, and obviously there has been like evolution in poisonings because now every single case that I've spoke about today and that ones that have been happening over the past couple of years, there's like associated Google searches. Yes, And I love how in the book you mentioned that your Google searches are probably like major oh suspicious.
Oh, I'm sure the FBI is like aware of me.
I had to search like which is the worst poison how do you where does it come from?
How do you get it?
And I'm like I know that, like some FBI agent is like, oh, we need to watch this one.
Oh yeah, I.
Mean obviously, like I write about murders and near death like all the time in my Google searches. Like sometimes I'm like, oh my god, these people are going to be like what, like what is this girl looking up?
But mine are so bad for so many years that I think.
I know, I want to Google like this is research for a book.
FBI agent, please please take me off your watch list, Like I'm yeah, I have a law abiding citizen.
I try really hard every day.
That's so great. I love that.
Another thing that I loved in your book was how you mentioned that the only difference between like medicine and poison is the dose. Yes, I say that all the time, but yeah, like I've been saying that all the time about alcohol.
It's yeah, that's the same thing.
You just are kind of like slowly poisoning you to the point where you feel a buzz. But that's what you're doing, is kind of slowly just poisoning yourself.
It's true. I low dose.
No, I think about that often the same the very same ingredient or chemical in a certain small controlled dose can be a valuable medication that can really help people and save lives. The same exact thing in a larger dose can be a poison and can kill a person. It's it's a really sobering reminder about quantity. Like is that a small amount of alcohol or reasonable amount of alcohol can be you know, a fun or safe way to wind down in the evening. But too much and
that's alcohol poisoning. And that's true with anything. That was the other surprising thing. You can poison yourself with anything. It's not easy. But if you ate like six thousand bananas in one sitting, you might get like potassium poisoning. Like, you can overdo anything. So all things in moderation.
Yeah, except barsenic, babe.
No, except arsenic, not in any quantity, please exactly.
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Sure more you.
So you're not you're not a toxicologist, You're not a forensic scientist or anything. So what what is it that? How did you get into this field?
Yeah?
No, I'm like, I'm not a criminal psychologist. I'm not a forensic scientist. I'm just a weirdo who find this stuff really really fascinating. And I happen to be an illustrator.
You're an artist by profession, really right, And I love your art. Your your book is is so beautiful.
And like, so I love it.
I actually wanted to ask you, like, are you planning on making like merch and stickers from it?
Because you probably should.
I because every person that I've shown the book to is love thinks it's awesome.
Oh thank you so much.
Yeah, this was this was sort of my magnum opus of like my dream project. I realized I usually do book covers. I'm a like primary in my freelance work. I'm a book cover illustrator, and I do other things like products and advertising and editorial and institutional work as well,
but I'm primarily in books. But this was my first chance to like make my my own book, like create the cover and all the interior illustrations for a book I researched and wrote and illustrated, so like I knew, I wanted to go all out, go big or go home, and especially on the cover. Having done maybe thirty covers for other books, I was like, everyone was.
Like, what are you gonna do for your cover? And I was like, I don't know, but it's got to be big. But I gotta go hard on this.
But yeah, I am an illustrator and I'm a professor of illustration of an art college in Maryland where I live and where I teach. I feel like I lost sight of the question on that one.
No, I mean, I just I want to I'm really curious about it. I wanted to know what the process was like. So when you when you went and kind of pitched this book or whatever where you you were always like, I'm doing all the drawings in it too, that was that was your thing.
Yeah, I actually feel like I sort of came into this. So during the worst days of the pandemic, when we were all quarantining, I finally had the time to work on a personal project and the like energy and enthusiasm to do it, which those things never line up. You either have the idea no time, or the time and no idea. And a friend of mine had sent me an article on Julia Tofana, which was a seventeenth century woman who sold poison to women in abusive relationships in Italy.
And the headline for this article was something incredible and it was like woman confesses that her poison was used to kill six thousand men in Renaissance Italy. And I was like, Wow, that's amazing. Why don't we all know that?
Why are we all talking about that? And because I'm an artist and an illustrator, my way to engage with this was I did a whole bunch of research about her, and I realized there was no existing portrait of her, and I was like, oh, and they always used these images from like paintings that were often done in the Victorian era, but there were always of like women from the medieval world. And she didn't live in the medieval world. She lived in Renaissance Italy. And so I said, oh, well,
I'm going to do some visual research. I want to make a portrait of what I think she might have looked like. And I sort of found this format where I drew her in the middle and then I hand lettered her name on the top and then had a summary of kind of her story on the bottom. And I really enjoyed doing it as a personal project, and I wondered, are there more.
Stories like this?
And I started researching other women who had connections to poison and it began as an illustration series, and I didn't know it was going to be a book or anything bigger at the time. But then when I had about three or four of these illustrations, I realized, I think I have a pitch for something, and I reached out to an editor who I was like, I dreamed of working with, and I was like, this is a I'm going to go out on a limb here and see what happens.
And she just responded really well.
And one of the conversations we had early on was do I just want to illustrate it, and should I work with an author who has more experience with this, or do I want to write it myself? And I I have an English degree from a long time ago, and I love research and I love true crime.
And my colleagues are like, do it, you can do it.
And yeah, it was the hardest, the most rewarding project I've ever worked on. And I think it really is my baby because I got to do every part of it, from the research to the writing, to the illustrating, to the cover and now all the fun stuff afterwards. It's been just an amazing journey for me. But yeah, it was definitely something where I was like, I almost talked myself.
Out of it.
I was like, I can't do that, but I'm really really glad. But it was definitely a learning curve. I had to slow down and really like learn how to do the research correctly and like how to find credible sources and then just how to organize how to tackle such a large project. It took me about three years from start to finish.
Yeah, I mean it shows it's really awesome. I love
how you dedicated the book to your parents. Yes, that was so great, and yeah, for those of you who haven't read it yet, it just said something like to my parents who thought that my first book was going to be a children's book or something like that, like it's it's just great and then and then like the opposite is, oh no, I'm just writing about a book about women who kill people, Like well, sorry, mom, yeah, exactly, it's but I'm sure they're like, they're so super proud of you.
They probably think it's like so cool, you know.
Oh yeah, they've been really excited about it too.
But my mom, I cannot tell you all many times my mom said to me, I really wanted your first book to be like a nice children's picture book.
And she's still like, you could still do it.
You could come back from this, you could still do a nice children's picture book. And I'm like, I think I'm on a journey now, and it's it's taking me somewhere darker and weirder and somewhere so much that's so interesting to me. So and again, a lot of illustrated books are for children, so I sort of like I have an idea for an.
Illustrated book, but it's for adults. It's for like true crime obsessed adults.
Like I like, so it's definitely sort of an interesting like, well, they even let me do this, and I got very lucky that I had a publisher and an editor who was like really down to let me try it.
Yeah, and I'm sure they're happy that with their decision. I can let you do it because it's because it's it's great. I love it so much.
Thank you.
That means so much to me.
So speaking of like this, then now your career is kind of taking a different turn than you probably thought even five years ago. So are you gonna Are you going to continue with this on this path?
I think so? I think, Yeah, life's funny.
I don't know if I ever couldn't dreamed that this is where I was going to be, like you said five years ago, but I'm I'm really grateful for it.
I think this is like my dream.
Like if I could talk to little Lisa from like middle or high school, and I would tell her you're like writing and illustrating about like really weird history and true crime and fascinating topics, I think I'd be like just over the moon excited and so happy about that. And I yes, I actually just spoke with my editor last night and we're working on plans to discuss what the next book is going to be. So and I won't reveal anything just yet because we're figuring it out.
But I'm really excited for this development. But I'm still going to keep doing book covers and teaching and all the other stuff that I love doing too. But yeah, I think this is like a really lovely next and forgive the pardon the pun, a next chapter for me is going to be more in sort of writing and creating my own books.
Yeah, And it's it's cool because it's the book is so beautiful and I could see there being multiple different versions that you could kind of line up on your bookshelf and it looks really pretty. But then you know, you have guests over and they pick it up and it's it's pretty.
I feel like it's I like it.
So much because it's the same kind of vibe that I wanted to have with my book, that like, it looks really pretty and then when you open it, you're like, oh my god, this is like really horrendous person you're looking at.
Yeah, well, I love.
That juxtaposition of something beautiful next to something really dark. I think that's very compelling and enchanting, and I think it also shows the nuance that many things are both. They're good and bad. There's light and darkness in most things.
And I definitely wanted to create a book that was sort of not just not just something that would be interesting to read and to look at it internally, but I wanted it to be like an art object that people would want to display and have out in their homes and be really excited, like, oh my gosh, this looks so cool next to my candlesticks or this little vial that I collected, and it's for our own little person. I'm looking at your bookshelf behind you, and I'm like,
that is the dream. Like, that's exactly where I wanted that book to live.
It looks so at home.
Oh wait, it looks great. It looks great living on my shelf. It's just like and when people come over, they just look at it and they're like.
Oh, what's this.
This is really cool?
Thank you. And I think that's the power of book covers.
Like I said, I've been in book covers a long time, and I don't believe that people don't judge a book that way. I think that's a silly expression. I think that expression relates to lots of people. We shouldn't judge people by their outward experiences or outward uh what I want to say, by their outward Uh.
Yeah, it's just like the presentation they're putting out there, like, yeah, you don't want.
To thank you, but books we totally do well.
Yeah, because who's going to pick it up off the shelf if it's not It's not like drawling you in. You know.
Oh. I believe that.
One of the one of the coolest parts of the book was that which was a little unexpected to me that I didn't think that I was going to find in the book reading it was that it was not only a history lesson on poisoning, obviously, but it was also kind of an introduction to the history of forensics and toxicology. Absolutely, I didn't really expect that you were going to touch on that in the book, but it was.
It was really cool how that came about and how you had You were talking about one of the women.
Who were convicted of murder.
She was considered to be maybe one of the first people convicted of murder due to forensic toxicology, which is so cool, and that was back in like eighteen forty or something, And I just wanted to know if you had any other unexpected things that you came across when you were researching all of these people that were doing these crimes.
No. I think that's such a wonderful point, and I think in this story the scientists end up really being the heroes in some of these cases, because, like you said, there really wasn't forensic toxicology really wasn't a field within science and within a detective investigation until the nineteenth century, we had really limited ways to like we could think a person probably poisoned someone. But I always thought this was so fascinating. There was no way to really prove
it scientifically. And the case that you're talking about is Marie LeFarge, who was the first woman convicted on forensic toxicological evidence because of this innovation by James Marsh called the Marsh test, which was able to prove the presence of arsenic and even to minute amounts in bodies tissues
post mortem. And before that, they're really that didn't really exist, and that scientist had actually been on a previous case where he was even though he found evidence of arsenic in a man's tissues, it had like disappeared by the time it came to present that evidence in court, and in that time period they needed to see it to believe it, and that person got was proven innocent and got away with it and later confessed I did it, ha ha, I got away with it, and he said, I got to.
Invent a better test for arsenic. We can't.
We can't let this continue to happen. So it really is the scientists, I think, who end up curving up this space, specifically in the arsenic murders. You don't really hear that too much anymore. Oh, I guess the occasional smoothie arsenic murder, but because now it's so easy to
test for it, right before that there really wasn't. And I was reading about what the best system they had for I'm sorry because I'm an animal lover, so I don't like this is they would feed the meal that they believed made that person sick to an animal to see what happened, and that was like that was their best scientific thing that they had. And even before that, I think the like the test in like goodness, maybe
the thirteen or fourteen hundreds. Well, so you had to throw the food in the fire and if it smelled like garlic.
Then they believed it was arsenic.
Like there just really wasn't a credible scientific system for this. So the scientists end up really having a large impact on how criminals used these poisons because, like you said, now, what they're doing is they have to research what poisons are not often searched for, oh, when they're doing these post mortem exams, because we've come so far with toxicology and you can't just poison someone with arsenic anymore because they're going to test for that.
So I think that that is so interesting.
And Marie LeFarge, I think it was just bad timing for her that she got caught. She was the first one to get caught that way, and she might have gotten away with it if she'd.
Acted even a little bit sooner.
So I always think about that, like what's going to be the test in two hundred years that they look back on and say, like, do you believe people used to do this all the time and get away with Because I know people still get away with murder all the time. Just because of the way the system is.
Like oh yeah, for example, at the medical examiner's office, sometimes they have so many bodies and if they have a person that comes in that died at home and is maybe older and has a giant scar on their chest that indicates they had heart surgery before, and they call their doctor and say, hey, your your patients died. Would you sign a death certificate and say they had heart disease or whatever? And he's like yeah, do doctor say like, yeah, they could have died from that because
I was treating them for that. Then end of story, Right, they won't look into it further. They won't look into it further. And they do do like they do like a quick toxicology, but that's only tests for like opioids and just like cocaine.
Just basic things, like three or four basic things.
Yeah, so I just look at that and I'm like, okay, but how do you how do you really know that the wife wasn't just like over him and just yeah.
And that's the thing, like there's this book is still the women poisoners, but just the women we know of or just the women who got caught. I think about that a lot that there's probably so many stories we don't know and we'll never know because they got away with it.
Yeah, it's it's it's really, it's just it's really interesting, and I just I always think about that, like we're so advanced in medicine and forensics, and then you think, like, what is what is getting what's going down the line that right now we would think is completely crazy, But it's true. Why and you were saying that poisoning isn't it's definitely now is not a common cause of murdering someone at all.
It's it's it's rare.
But I think the three or four or five maybe stories that have happened this year are probably like one of the only ones because they get so much attention because it's so shocking that people still do that.
I guess, yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's not that poisoning is a common crime. It's just a sensational crime. So when it happens, they end up, you know, in the media and really prominent.
But it's not.
Honestly, guns are responsible for a whole lot more violence, but we're so desensitized to that that the poisoning crimes really stand out. And that's why we end up hearing about them more and maybe we think they're more common than they are.
But yeah, I.
Feel like some of the people actually could have gotten this is when you work in like certain fields like pathology or like police are detective, you have to have some kind of like semi sick mind to think like how people do commit crimes in order to you know.
You got to engineer it. How did we get here? What did they do?
Yeah, exactly, like you have to try to think like them. And I look back at all of these just looking through all the case and I'm like, most of these people probably would have gotten away with this if they weren't acting so weird. And you know, like that's you're you're having like a party after your husband dies, right, so of course everyone, every normal person's gonna be like, Okay,
this is weird, what's going on? And and then start looking at your Google searches and then all of a sudden it's like okay, but yeah, exactly, like it's It's just the whole thing of it is just very interesting to me because with a normal like at the medical examiner's office, if you if you.
Die, and the normal the normal.
Panel isn't going to necessarily pick up anything unless they're keyed off to check for things because they think of poisoning suspicious.
Yeah, so that that doctor.
For example, that poison his wife with the gout medication like that, that wouldn't have come up.
Who would think to check for that.
It's so uncommon, So it's like they almost get have the perfect idea of a crime, but then they don't, but they don't finish the job.
Commit if you're gonna do the whole thing, do it right that being so flashy at the end with the parties.
Yeah, exactly, or the life insurance or this, Yes, if that's any advice that we.
Could give you, No, no, no, I'm not encouraging. But yeah.
Actually there's stories in my book like that too. And actually the last story is one of a nurse, Jane Tappin, And one of the reasons she got away with it, and there were many, was that she used two very unusual medications.
She combined atropine and.
Morphine, which had really unique symptoms where they contradicted each other, like one made the pupils big and the other one made the pupil shrink, so they ended up looking normal, but the person was experiencing all these things, and nobody would test for atropine and morphine, so it was just something that she got away with for a long time because she used less conventional poisons and she was a nurse, so she had access to these chemicals.
And how did she eventually get caught?
She overdid it. She murdered a whole family.
This is what happens.
Like. It's like if you just if you just did You're like, you're a geniush right, you thought like, okay, you destrugg to do this and destrug to do this, so the body looks okay, But then you get you get like greedy and then yeah.
No, it's just like I hate to say this because I'm not condoning what they did, but if you could have just quit when you were ahead, man and just walked away.
But they can't.
And I think it's there is a psychological component to this too. After you don't get caught, I think people get really cocky and they're like, ha ha, I'm smarter than the lam above the law.
I can do whatever I want to get away with it.
And then they get sloppy and that's usually their downfall exactly.
That seems to be a common theme.
Well, so you said that you're talking about doing another book. Perhaps, is there any other projects that you're working on.
Oh, that's a good question. So I'm just working on some book covers right now. I'm doing a romance book cover for one. It's just really really fun, like a Regency era one. And I just finished up a book cover for like a middle grade novel about like a cool magical school or like I guess it's but not quite like Harry Potter or anything like that. They're more like like grim reapers and stuff go to this school
and they all learn together, it seems. But that like, Yeah, mostly I work on book covers, and I'm working on some potential pitches for the next book, but mostly, like I said, I'm a professor and we're in finals time now for the end of the fall semester. So that's that's mostly where my head has been at.
Did you ever think.
About doing your book in an audiobook too? I know you want, because I feel like like I like audiobooks, but I also like to have the book too, Yes, just because the way, like my life's kind of hectic with kids and everything, like I like to just put it on and like, I feel like I could listen to a book and also clean my house or paint my.
House or something.
Oh yeah, cleaning and painting.
Is that? Is that something you ever considered?
You know?
It never came up. I'm also a big audiobook fan. I'm listening to like two different audible books right now, and I love to listen while I'm doing usually while I'm illustrating other things like working on projects, I love to listen. It never came up for this book. I think probably because it is so ritually illustrating that it's such a visual experience too. But it's something I can mention to the editor if it's something you think folks would like and respond to, but yeah, they know.
I think.
I definitely think so because I think that the biggest thing right now is like true Crime podcast and it's just very it's very interesting material. And I think that you have enough text in the book that it's not going to be a super huge like a huge audio book, but people would still like that too, I think, yeah, I definite and I and I think like most people I know like to have the book with with the audio book, So I know I understand that like it's
a it's a visual book and stuff. But I just thought that that would be cool because I really like, yeah, it's it's easier for me to listen to an audiobook and.
Oh, like, totally, no, I'm also a multitasker, so I'll tell it. I'll tell my editor you said so. But yeah, Actually, when I was doing research for the book, my favorite thing to do was to get both the physical book and the audiobook, and I felt like that really helped me understand it, just to have kind of both the visual and the audio together.
Me too, And you're like, I'm like a learner that does better when I hear than when I actually read, you know. But yeah, but I love the way that your book is set up because it's not it's not just like a black and white book that you're reading, because that.
They're like brutal for me.
But the illustrations and stuff makes it easy for people like me that aren't the best readers to read as well.
That's wonderful to hear.
I'm so glad because that's part of the reason why it's there is I hope to aim with the experience and to make it easier to read and move through and kind of give your eye breaks and an opportunity to sort of interpret the information in a different way besides reading. But then you get the image that sort of reflects it too. That's why I think.
Picture books for adults should totally be a thing.
Oh, they one hundred percent should, because I I am just like I'm always honest about this, Like I just don't like to I'm not good at reading.
Yeah, Like I don't.
If I just sat there and read a regular novel, it's very hard for me to absorb the information. But like with your book, for example, I'm a very like photogenic memory kind of thing. So when I see one of the pictures of these women that you draw, then it helps me visualize and remember what's happening throughout the book.
So I like that. That's so great to hear. Thank you for sharing that with me.
Yeah, because I think a lot a lot of people don't recognize that that people aren't the same kind of learner, you know.
Oh absolutely, Like I said, I'm a teacher, So I think about that a lot, and having multiple ways to get to learn something or have access to it, and people can kind of choose how or use both or as many as they want or need to help them sort of access and understand the information.
Yeah, because when I was a kid, it was like audio books were really I mean they came on tapes, right, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember, yeah exactly.
But they were.
It was frowned upon big time when I was a kid, And now I love that, Like my kids are little and learn in school, and they are really they're like, we don't care how it gets in them as long as they're picking it up.
You know, it's about the content, it's not about the vehicle. I think that's I'm really glad that that movement is happening in education because, like you said, so many people, and especially children learn in such different ways. Like why does it matter how they got the information as long as they're learning?
Yeah, exactly, I think the same way.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. It was really a pleasure.
Oh I had so much fun. Thank you so much for including me.
This was a blast, awesome.
Thanks, thank you, thank you for listening to mother nos death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without
the assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
of those subjects at the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts.
Thanks