Stella had taken out $76,000 of life insurance on Bruce. Stella Maudine Nickell (ne Stephenson; born August 7, 1943) is an American woman who was sentenced to ninety years in prison for product tampering after she poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow. The crime was chillingly similar to the Chicago Tylenol murders four years earlier. Gregg Olsen, whose book "Bitter Almonds" chronicles the case, says that is why the FBI zeroed in on her. See Photos. Required fields are marked *. 48 Hours reports on the search. Stella Nicholls. In inorganic cyanides, the cyanide group is present as the cyanide anion CN.This anion is extremely poisonous.Soluble salts such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) and potassium . She discovers that the stories are coming back to life. She said she had a bottle of Excedrin in her home with the same lot number as the bottle that had killed Sue Snow. Stella Nickell, then 75, had been sentenced to 90 years in prison in 1988, after she was found guilty of product tampering. The odds of her selecting two contaminated bottles by random chance were astronomical. [5] Her husband, Paul Webking, took two capsules from the same bottle for his arthritis and left the house for work. ER 2002-12, 2014-16 Milford Haven, Dyfed, SA73. The next day, Bruce Nickell's widow Stella, a 42-year old raven-haired security screener at Seattle-Tacoma International airport, characterized by a neighbor as "a washed-up honky-tonk girl," called police. Elizabeth was born on July 31 1868. As of April 2019, Stella Nickell is housed at female-only low security/minimum security Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin in California, just east of San Francisco. Nearly two weeks later, she heard about Sue Snow. According to Olsen, the police theory is that Stella Nickell crushed the algae tablets in a bowl, and then later, when she mixed the cyanide, used that same bowl without cleaning it. Name Stella Nicholls Occupation Student Gender Female Species Human Age 15-17 Status Alive Birth date c. 1951-1953 Appearances Film (s) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Actors/Actresses Portrayed by Zoe Colletti Stella Nicholls is a fictional character appearing in the 2019 film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Olsen said that Nickell told her daughter, Cindy Hamilton, about the scheme, despite their fractious relationship, and how she was inspired by the Tylenol deaths. These included convictions for fraud and forgery and a charge of beating Cindy with a curtain rod. Tests confirmed that Snow had died from acute cyanide poisoning. Hamilton testified. Stella denies abusing her children: "(Hamilton) wasn't feeling good. Joseph was born on July 27 1873. They then looked toward Nickell. Stella Nickell (born August 7, 1943) is an American woman murdered her husband and another and tried to make it look like the work of a serial killer. Hamilton testified. FBI document examiners determined that Bruce's signature on the applications had been forged. Stella met Bruce Nickell in 1974. For 19 months, Farr and Ciolino have been traveling the country without pay, interviewing witnesses and friends, talking to anyone who may help them re-open this case. Like cyanide poisoning. [6] She went on trial in April 1988 and was found guilty of all charges on May 9, after five days of jury deliberation. Stella Nicholls. May 9, 1988, U.S. Marshall Merry Moore leads Stella Nickell from the federal courthouse after a jury convicts her on five counts of product tampering. [21] A second appeal, beginning in 2001, was filed by her new attorney, Carl Park Colbert, based on evidence obtained by private detectives Al Farr and Paul Ciolino, requesting a new trial on the basis of new evidence having been discovered that the FBI may have withheld documents from the defense. Klein was 15 when she found her 40-year-old mother lying on the bathroom floor in June 1986. } [23], After the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders, new FDA regulations went into effect which made it a federal crimerather than just a state or local crimeto tamper with consumer products. Prosecutors: Security video discredits cosplay model's story of self-defense Prosecutors said Stella Nickell put cyanide in capsules of Extra-Strength Excedrin and gave them to her husband. All Rights Reserved. Her husband, Bruce, died after taking cyanide-laced Excedrin tablets in . Stella also had more than her share of legal troubles. In these documents, there are reports about other possible suspects and mysterious fingerprints on Sue Snows bottle. Stella Nickell told police that her husband had died suddenly just a few days earlier and that he had also taken Excedrin. Correction: Death By Cyanide Coryn I. Nicholls (Mayerson) is a Physician Assistant in Walnut Creek, CA. Suspicious investigators, noting that $100,000 of that would only be paid out because the cause of death was now known to be cyanide, wondered if Stella had randomly killed Sue Snow by planting the bottle that killed her on the Pay-N-Save shelf, simply to bring attention to the fact Bruce had been poisoned and increase her take. [6] Further FBI investigation showed that Bruce's purported signatures on at least two of the insurance policies in his name had been forged. Strength Excedrin is a safe medication. Never-before-seen photos and details about accused Idaho killer The next day, Bruce Nickell's widow Stella, a 42-year old raven-haired security screener at Seattle-Tacoma International airport, characterized by a neighbor as "a washed-up honky-tonk girl," called police. A $250,000 reward will be paid to a Garden Grove woman whose testimony helped convict her mother in two killings with cyanide-laced Excedrin, a spokesman for a pharmaceutical group said Friday. "It was a means to an end," the author said. On June 5, 1986 at 5:02 p.m., Stella Nickell called an emergency volunteer fire department on the Kent-Black Diamond Road. Officers broke open the capsules and found the powdered toxin inside. Stella Nickell used Cyanide to kill her victims. Her fingerprints were also found all over other books on cyanide. Stella handed two bottles of Excedrin over to police -- supposedly bought at two different times from two different stores. Nickell was the first to be convicted. This seemed unlikely, because out of thousands of bottles checked in the entire region, authorities found only five with tainted capsules, and Stella had two of them. Police initially focused on Snows husband Paul Webking. Stella Nickell was found guilty in federal court not of murder but of product tampering on May 9, 1988, and was sentenced to 90 years. She said of Nickell, "She has no regard for what she did to other people's lives I don't know why anybody should have any regard for her now.". Stellas lawyer said nothing about the reward because a deal was made. [6] Bruce had taken them to no effect save for complaining of sudden drowsiness. America immediately thought of the unsolved 1982 Chicago Tylenol product-tampering murders in which seven people died. A more recent but undated photo of Stella Nickell. Find your friends on Facebook. The killer in that case has never been caught. The convicted killer stood before a parole board in 2017, while Klein watched the proceedings on closed-circuit TV. [5] Investigators were also able to verify that Stella had purchased Algae Destroyer from a local fish store; it was speculated that the algaecide had become mixed with the cyanide when Stella used the same container to crush both substances without washing it in between uses. [6], With contamination of the Excedrin at the source having been ruled out, investigators began to focus their investigation on the end-users of the product. Records show agents found five contaminated bottles of medicine during a search of Auburn-area grocery stores and pharmacies, prompting widespread recalls of over-the-counter analgesics in the Northwest and elsewhere as health officials and the FBI sought to uncover the source of the poison. This time it was a bottle of Maximum Strength Anacin-3 at the Pay 'n Save store where Sue Snow was thought to have bought her fatal Excedrin. Her husband, Bruce Nickell, collapsed at home in 1986 at the age of 42 after taking several Excedrin tablets for a headache, according to news accounts. Authorities alleged he put rat poison in capsules of several SmithKline Beckman Corp. products in Florida and Texas in a failed scheme to manipulate the price of SmithKline stock. [2] When her bar visits were curtailed by Bruce's sobriety,[3] she began requesting evening shifts at her security screener job at SeattleTacoma International Airport and cultivated a home aquarium as a new hobby. Less than a week later, Sue Snow, a 40-year-old bank manager took two extra-strength Excedrin capsules for an early-morning headache. Six days later, Susan Snow took one of these capsules and died instantly. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Im afraid for her life: Riverside CC womens coach harassed after Title IX suit, Want to solve climate change? They had thought it was drug overdose, but she was not a known user, and had taken only a couple of Extra - Strength Excedrin. Cynthia Hamilton, 30, the Nickells daughter who now lives in Garden Grove, testified that her mother repeatedly talked about ways to kill her husband, Bruce Nickell, who was 52 when he died. When another tainted bottle from the same lot was found in a grocery store in nearby Kent, Bristol-Myers, the manufacturers of Excedrin, responded to the discovery with a heavily publicized recall of all Excedrin products in the Seattle area,[8] and a group of drug companies came together to offer a $300,000 reward for the capture of the person responsible. Stella had an aquarium, but says she never bought algae destroyer. She showed them the bottle. Nickell poisoned Bruce so she could pocket his life insurance, and Snow died the same way in a foiled effort to cover her tracks, Olsen said. Nickell hatched another plot within a week. 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