The Purcell Nicotine Poison Puzzle

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 720 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Or, Death of a Composer

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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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