Cordelia Botkin
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Cordelia Botkin (1854-1910) was an American murderer who sent a box of poisoned candy to her ex-lover's wife.
In 1895, Cordelia met John Preston "Jack" Dunning while he was bicyling in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Although Cordelia was then 41, nine years his senior, and both were married, he was smitten. A highly-regarded reporter for the Associated Press, after overseas assignments in Samoa and Chile, he had been promoted to superintendent of the AP's Western Division bureau in San Francisco.
In 1896, Dunning's religious wife, the former Mary Elizabeth Penington, apparently upset by his marital indiscretions, returned with their little daughter to the home of her father, former Congressman John B. Penington, in Dover, Delaware. By then Cordelia had become Dunning's paramour and constant companion. She was estranged from her own husband, grain broker Welcome Botkin in Stockton, California, but he supported her with regular remittances. Dunning, a heavy drinker, was soon fired by the Associated Press in 1896 for embezzling $4,000 in office funds to pay his gambling debts. Subsequently let go by newspapers in Salt Lake City and San Francisco for habitual drunkenness, he moved into Cordelia's hotel in a room down the hall.
The affair lasted for nearly three years but ended when Dunning, whose skills hadn't been forgotten at the Associated Press, was rehired in March 1898 as the agency's lead reporter in outstanding coverage of what would become the Spanish-American War. However, as he left San Francisco, he told the weeping Cordelia that he would not return. Then he reconciled with his wife before leaving for Cuba.
Cordelia sent anonymous letters to Elizabeth regarding her husband's affairs. On August 9, 1898, Elizabeth opened a box of candies anonymously signed as "With love to yourself and baby." "Passionately fond of candy," according to Dunning, she took at least three herself and shared the bonbons with others on the porch of her father's home. Arsenic in the chocolates killed 35-year-old Elizabeth and her older sister, 44-year-old Ida Harriet Deane, after two days of agony. Four other partakers survived. Alerted when Elizabeth's father noted similar handwriting on the note and the taunting letters he had kept in a drawer, authorities traced the candy to a shop in San Francisco and from there, to Cordelia Botkin.
Never admitting guilt, she was convicted of murder in December of 1898 and convicted again at a retrial in 1904. She was sentenced to life. She died in 1910 at San Quentin State Prison. Dunning, his career shattered, had died two years earlier in Philadelphia.
[edit] References
- Transcript on Appeal: People of the State of California, respondent, versus Cordelia Botkin, defendant. Complaint 12,579. San Francisco Superior Court Criminal Case 632. Filed 29 February 1900, with Supreme Court of State of California. Item W.P.A. No. 29080 and 27069, California State Archives, Sacramento, CA. (Original trial records were destroyed in the earthquake and fire in San Francisco in April 1906.)
- Alstadt, John R., Jr.: "With Love to Yourself and Baby," Pittsburgh, Pa., Dorrance Publishing Co., 2001. John R. Alstadt, Jr.
- Offord, Lenore: "The Gifts of Cordelia: The Case of Cordelia Botkin" in "San Francisco Murders," ed. Joseph Henry Jackson.New York: Dual, Sloan, and Pierce, 1947.
- Tales of Love and Hate in Old San Francisco, Millie Robbins. Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1971 ISBN 0-87701-071-8 OCLC 206797
