Stella Nickell

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Stella Nickell is a Seattle-area woman who was sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing her husband in June 1986 (when she was 42 years old) by lacing his Excedrin capsules with cyanide after buying him life insurance policies amounting to $176,000. She had put three other poisoned bottles back in the store to make it look like the work of a serial killer, killing another woman, 40-year-old Sue Snow, in the process. She had been inspired by the Chicagoland Tylenol scare of 1982. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence was the first where product tampering was the charge.

Seattle author Gregg Olsen wrote about the Nickell case in his book, Bitter Almonds: The True Story of Mothers, Daughters and the Seattle Cyanide Murders.

[edit] Trivia

• The Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Poison" and the Monk episode "Mr. Monk Goes Home Again" seem to be based on this incident.

[edit] External links

• CBS broadcast article detailing recent developments of the case
• Article describing events of the original case