The Purcell Nicotine Poison Puzzle
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Episode 86 involves the body of a songwriter and real estate speculator found tied to a chair with an expression of surprise frozen on his dead face and suspicions of suicide. - Wait. What? - Suicide tied to a chair? - The evidence is so jumbled, police are at a loss to explain, but the backstory to the incident and a foray into the worlds of traveling musicians and actors, hints at motives deeply hidden, and possibly scandalous. - This is one that will keep you guessing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular |
| 0:02.0 | The Purcell nicotine poison puzzle |
| 0:07.8 | or death of the composer |
| 0:10.5 | Chicago, Illinois, September 23rd, 1919. |
| 0:23.6 | A woman's fingerprint on the back of a silver mirror. |
| 0:29.6 | The remains of a camouflage breakfast for three. |
| 0:34.6 | These are the only clues in the hands of the police for solving one of the most |
| 0:40.5 | mysterious cases in the history of the department. The victim was Elias H. Purcell, real estate |
| 0:49.1 | owner and song publisher, said by relatives to be worth $500,000. He was found early yesterday, bound by a chair in the |
| 1:00.2 | kitchen of his home by a clothes line. A dishcloth was jammed into his mouth. In the dining room of |
| 1:07.3 | the apartment on the first floor of the building at 661 Rosco Street, which Purcell owned, |
| 1:13.3 | they found the table set for three. Bits of buttered toast lay on each plate. In the bottom of each |
| 1:21.0 | cup was a small amount of coffee. The detectives called from the town hall station were baffled. In various rooms lay bundles of rugs, |
| 1:31.1 | blankets, old clothes, Mexican pottery, which had appeared as though they had been prepared for removal. |
| 1:36.8 | But the more valuable articles of the apartment were in their usual places. |
| 1:41.8 | Wife of a nephew of the dead man turned detective. |
| 1:46.0 | She showed the police officers how the different pieces of toast fitted together formed |
| 1:51.2 | a perfect slice, how the sides of the coffee cups were unstained, tending to prove that the |
| 1:57.2 | cups were not used. |
| 1:59.2 | She showed them how the butter on each plate had been placed there with a butter knife |
| 2:03.1 | and not touched afterward. |
| 2:05.7 | Why the knives and forks are placed on the wrong side of the plates, she exclaimed. |
... |
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