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It was a typical Wednesday morning in the Snow household. Sue Snow was preparing for another long day as vice
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president at a local bank. >> Morning. >> Morning Haley. How you doing?
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>> And her daughter Haley was running a little late, rushing to take a quick
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shower before heading off to school. >> Well, I hope you know it. >> I know it. I'll be fine. Over the sounds
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of the running water, Haley couldn't hear when her mother collapsed. [Music]
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>> Mommy. >> It was a tragedy, then a medical mystery, one which sent shock waves
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throughout the world. [Music] Susan Snow was a successful banking executive and the mother of two young
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daughters. She had recently remarried and was well known in the small suburb of Seattle, Washington.
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>> She was very wellliked. She liked to flirt, I think, with men. And probably
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used it to her advantage. She was in the banking industry, and I think that uh she had a lot of clients that dealt with
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her bank because they like Sue Snow and like dealing with Sue Snow. >> Sue Snow was only 40 years old and in
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perfect health. On the day she collapsed, >> I realized something was wrong. Her eyes
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were open and her they were rolled sort of back and her fingers were very stiff and she looked terrified. She looked
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very scared. >> Sue Snow was rushed to a nearby hospital unconscious and near death.
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She died shortly after arrival. Dr. Karen Flegner performed the autopsy attempting to identify the cause of
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death. >> The initial part of the autopsy revealed what we would call no anatomic cause of
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death. That means that there wasn't a definite pathologic finding that could
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explain Miss Snow's death. >> But Dr. Fner's assistant in the autopsy
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room noticed a tiny clue. It wasn't anything she could see. It was something
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she thought she smelled. When Janet Miller opened Sue Snow's chest cavity, she noticed the faint smell of bitter
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almonds. It was a clue that cyanide was present and a clue that under different circumstances might have gone
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undetected. >> It's just such a distinct odor. It's like when you're driving down the road
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and you smell skunk. That's a very distinct odor and you say, "Oh, a skunk was near here. Something
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happened near here involving a skunk." It's it just leaves an impression in
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your brain that that you don't forget. >> Now, with the suspicion of cyanide
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poisoning, Sous Snow's blood sample was sent for a special test, one not usually
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performed in a routine autopsy. An acid solution separated the blood from any possible cyanide molecules.
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After mixing, the test tube was sealed with a special reactive paper and then heated.
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The paper on the vial turned blue. Proof that Sue Snow had been poisoned with cyanide.
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Cyanide is one of the deadliest poisons because it kills the enzymes that transport oxygen throughout the body.
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Death occurs within minutes of ingestion. literally starving the body of oxygen. But how did Sue Snow ingest
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cyanide? It was her twin sister Sarah who made the initial discovery. On the day of Sue's funeral, Sarah
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looked for some headache medication in her sister's kitchen and found something
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suspicious. >> S and I both took Eedin tablets. When we got there, I went to the kitchen to get
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her Exedan to take and it was capsules and she never took capsules. Lab tests confirmed Sarah's worst fears. Cyanide
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was found in nine eedran capsules in Sue Snow's kitchen. Sarah Webb came within
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inches of ingesting the tainted capsules herself. The family suspected that Sue's
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new husband, Paul Webbking, put the cyanide in the eedrin. >> He was very uptight and very nervous and
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made crude jokes it seems occasionally and just it was just the way he was dealing with the situation and it just
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rubbed me wrong. I was dealing with it differently. >> Paul Webb King had been married three
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times before and had been married to Sue Snow for just 6 months. He was a longhaul trucker with a hard, gruff
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demeanor and was not as financially successful as his wife. Shortly before their marriage, Sue discovered that Paul
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was still dating an old girlfriend. >> Sue knew about it and they had a lot of
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trouble over it. And finally, he told Sue, "Well, I'm not going to see this
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girl anymore. Let's get married." And they got married and 6 months later,
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she's dead. Paul Webb King admitted that it was his idea to switch from headache
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tablets to capsules, but said he had nothing to do with the tampering of the capsules. The manufacturer of Eedrin
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capsules wasn't taking any chances. They issued an immediate recall of extra
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strength eedrin from all store shelves. Health officials feared that the death of Sue Snow was not an isolated
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incident. In Auburn, Washington, extra strength eedrin capsules are being pulled from
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the storeshelves. This after authorities confirmed that a cyanide laced capsule caused the death last week of a
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40-year-old woman. Sue Snow. >> When news reports of Sue Snow's death were broadcast throughout the country,
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one Seattle viewer, Stella Nickel, took more than a passing interest. Stella Nickel told police that her husband had
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taken some eedrin capsules shortly before he died. >> She called the King County police and
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said that her husband had died a couple weeks earlier and that she had discovered that he had taken eedrin from
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the same lot number as the eedrin that had killed Sue Snow. >> You have those capsules?
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>> Yeah, sure do. >> May I see them, please? >> Sure. A police detective visited Stella
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Nichols home to pick up the bottles of eedran capsules Bruce Nickel had been using.
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Stella asked that the bottles be tested to determine whether cyanide was present.
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>> It's just a shame about that woman. >> Yes, it certainly was. Well, I assure
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you we're checking every lead. She also wanted the coroner to reopen her husband's case to test his blood
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samples for cyanide, a test which hadn't been performed during his autopsy. When Bruce Nichols blood sample was
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analyzed, the reactive paper on the vial turned blue. Bruce Nickel died of cyanide poisoning and cyanide laced
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eedran capsules were discovered in the two bottles found in his home. Police continued to investigate their
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first suspect, Sue Snow's husband, Paul Webb King. >> He can be aggressive and fact that he
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remarried shortly after uh Sue had died, that was another thing that made the family, you know, uncomfortable and they
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wanted to blame him for whatever had happened. >> Web King offered to take a lie detector
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test to clear his name. To the surprise of almost everyone, he passed. There was
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enough circumstantial things pointing at Paul Webb King that I personally was a little surprised when he took a
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polygraph examination was administered by the FBI and passed it and was was eliminated as a suspect. With WebKing
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now cleared, authorities feared they had a random killer on their hands, some sort of pharmaceutical terrorist. All of
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the eedrin capsules removed from store shelves were analyzed with an X-ray machine. Since cyanide is more dense
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than pain reliever, tainted capsules show up as dark areas inside the bottle. Two more bottles of cyanide laced pain
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reliever were found on store shelves. Newspapers and television stations throughout the world reported the
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discovery of the tainted capsules in Seattle. The FBI feared that this case would wind up like the Chicago Tylenol
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murders just a few years earlier. A case which has never been solved. All of the tainted eedrin capsules were
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sent to the FBI lab in Washington DC for analysis. Each tainted capsule contained
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700 mg of cyanide, four times more than a lethal dose. The FBI also found something else inside the capsules. Some
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mysterious green crystals mixed in with the cyanide. The green crystals were analyzed using a mass spectrometer, a
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device which can identify the exact chemical components of an unknown sample. After the crystals were
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liquefied, a beam of high energergy electrons collided with the molecules, breaking them down into their smallest
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possible units. This produces a fingerprint of every identifiable substance in the crystals. The green
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crystals were made up of four common chemicals, atrizine, dicone, monuron, and simine. Two of these chemicals are
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used to kill algae in fish aquariums. An FBI chemist visited all of the fish stores near his home, hoping to find a
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commercially produced algicide with the same four compounds. >> Do you have any algicide?
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>> Sure. This aisle right here, other side of the big fish tank. Thank you.
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>> After looking through hundreds of products, one algicide in particular caught his eye.
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The product was called Algae Destroyer and was sold in green speckled tablets. The product had the same four compounds
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in the exact same amount as the green crystals found in the cyanide. The FBI had no idea why a fish algicide
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would be in the cyanide, but reported this discovery to Seattle authorities. One of the detectives in Seattle
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recalled an interesting coincidence. When he visited Stella Nichols home to pick up the eedrin capsules, he
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remembered seeing an aquarium prominently displayed in her living room. Was it possible that Stella Nickel
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played some role in the death of her husband and in the death of Sue Snow? The FBI visited 57 different fish and
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pet stores near Stella Nichols home. Armed with a photo montage which included Stella's picture, Tom Nunan
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recognized Stella Nichols photograph and recalled selling her the same algae destroyer product. The FBI was making
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inquiries if I'd ever remember selling her a certain product. And uh I did and
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I I told them just like I told her and anybody else that purchased this product when they would take it home to crush it
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up to make it more effective because a lot of times when you put it in the aquarium, it would not dissolve. It
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would remain rather inert in the tank and not effectively break down and kill the algae that was inside the fish tank.
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I think that that they were very suspicious of her and they knew that somehow Stella and her circle was linked to what
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happened to Sue Snow and the and what happened to Bruce. >> Bruce Nichols life insurance policies
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revealed that Stella would receive $100,000 extra if the death of her husband was accidental.
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>> Stella ever say anything about them having any um money problems? Well, yes,
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because she was going to school and not working there for a while and uh it was getting pretty tight.
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>> In fact, the Nicholls were in serious financial trouble and had recently
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received a final delinquency notice on their home mortgage and on some other loans. Just 5 days before Bruce Nichols
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death, Stella Nickel wrote a series of letters to her creditors. Dear sir, I know that I am tremendously overdue with
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my payments. There is a good reason for it. I'm having marital problems and they
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are about solved. Bruce is no longer involved. I will pay you at least $500 per month.
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Stella Nickel. When FBI handwriting expert Lee Wagner studied the life insurance documents, he
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noticed something suspicious. Bruce Nichols signature on the life insurance application differed from his known
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signature samples. The N and K were different from his normal signature. >> The initial stroke of the N begins about
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halfway up that N, whereas Bruce's N begins at the top of that N. The final stroke on the signature in question ends
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up turning to the right below the baseline of writing in the signature in question. It does not in the genuine
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signatures of Bruce, >> but it was consistent with the way Stella Nichols signed her name.
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Investigators believed that Stella forged her husband's signature on the insurance applications. But money wasn't
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the only possible motive. Stella and Bruce Nickel had always been a very social couple, regularly visiting bars
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and night spots with friends. But all of that changed after Bruce entered an alcoholism treatment program and stopped
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drinking altogether. After a period of time, it got to her. you know, it wasn't
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the life that she envisioned because even though she was 42 or 43 years old, she saw herself as a hot babe still. She
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wanted to be seen and get out there and Bruce held her back. She spent a lot of time in bars, you know, driving around,
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flirting with different men, that kind of thing. She had a boyfriend. You She wasn't u she didn't paint a
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picture of being real dedicated to her husband. >> The FBI interviewed Cindy and told her
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about the circumstantial evidence they had against her mother. >> Cindy broke down and she said, "Well,
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yes, my mom did kill Bruce. I know for sure that she did because we had talked about it." Cindy also told the FBI that
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her mother visited the library to research the subject of poisons. Records at the Auburn Public Library revealed
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that Stella signed out a book entitled Deadly Harvest, which lists various sources and methods of poisoning.
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Stella's fingerprints were found all over the sections dealing with cyanide poisoning and were also found on the
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pages of various encyclopedia describing cyanide. Investigators now had enough circumstantial evidence to charge Stella
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Nickel with the murder of her husband. And the FBI discovered why Stella Nickel murdered Sue Snow, a woman she didn't
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know. By the spring of 1986, Stella Nickel had grown tired of her money problems and
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what she considered to be a boring existence with her husband, Bruce. She hatched a plan to murder her husband and
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collect on his life insurance policies, which would pay $100,000 extra if his death was accidental. Her library
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research led her to choose cyanide, a highly toxic salt. But Stella was careless.
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She ground the cyanide in the same bowl she used earlier to grind the algicide tablets for her aquarium. But she
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neglected to wash the bowl before grinding the cyanide. She never suspected that the tiny green
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algicide crystals would mix with the cyanide and lead to her capture. [Music] After putting the cyanide into the
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headache capsules, she placed the bottle among her husband's other medications.
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Bruce suffered from chronic headaches and took pain relievers almost every day. After Bruce Nichols death, the coroner
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mistakenly ruled that it was due to natural causes, a mistake which deprived Stella of an additional $100,000 of life
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insurance money. Stella needed an excuse, some reason to have her husband's autopsy tissues
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re-examined. So, she decided to poison someone else to create the impression that a cyanide
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murderer was on the loose. She placed three more bottles of cyanide laced pain reliever on the shelves of
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two stores near her home. Someone in the Snow household purchased one of those bottles.
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>> You know that sister of yours didn't get home till this morning. >> Sus Snow took two capsules from that
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bottle one morning before work. >> I don't know what I'm going to do with
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her. >> And died a short time later. When the cyanide was discovered during Sous
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Snow's autopsy and traced to the eedrin capsules in her home, Stella Nickel had
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the excuse she needed to ask that her husband's case be reopened. She got away
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with murder once and tried to get away with it a second time. When the FBI identified the tiny green
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crystals in the cyanide as algae destroyer and located a fish store near Stella Nichols home, which sold her the
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product, the library books and forged life insurance policies sealed the case against her. The FBI never found the
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cyanide, the algae destroyer tablets, or the bowl used to mix the cyanide in Stella Nichols home. After a 4-week
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trial, one in which her own daughter testified against her, Stella Nickel was convicted of two counts of murder and
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was sentenced to 90 years in prison. It's hard for me to think that there are
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people out there who can do something like that without thinking about what kind of repercussions there are on other
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people. It's just amazing to me that there are people that selfish to to take a life and not only my
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mother's, but her her husbands. I mean, that that's almost more unimaginable to
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me than her killing a perfect stranger such as my mom, but that she would kill her own husband for that.
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[Music] [Music] [Music]