Stella Nickell
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Stella Maudine Nickell (nee Stephenson, born in August, 1943) is a Seattle-area woman who was sentenced to 90 years in prison for murdering her husband Bruce in June 1986 by lacing his Excedrin capsules with cyanide. Her May 1988 conviction and prison sentence was the first under federal product tampering laws instituted after the Tylenol murders.
Nickell, who was looking for money to open a tropical fish store, realized the construction company her husband worked for had employee life insurance policies of $71,000, with a bonus $105,000 if the cause of death was accidental.
She first dosed Bruce Nickell with hemlock and foxglove, but they had no effect on him. In her second attempt, she laced her husband's medicine with cyanide, which killed him. His death was ruled the result of emphysema, removing the option of the accidental death insurance bonus. Stella put five other bottles with cyanide back in the store hoping to make it look like the work of a serial killer. Another person, 40-year-old Sue Snow (Sue Frost), died from ingesting the tampered Excedrin. Snow's husband also consumed the poisoned Excedrin but somehow managed to be unaffected by the poison. Once the death of Sue Snow was found to be from the cyanide-laced pills and the other bottles were found in the different stores, the police released the batch numbers for the laced bottles in an attempt to warn consumers. Nickell then came forward, stating that she had two bottles of the medicine, bought from two different stores. Her husband's death was now ruled an accident, and she received the full benefit of his life insurance. The murders remained unsolved until Stella's daughter, Cindy Lee Hamilton, went to the police out of a guilty conscience. Cindy received a partial reward from the drug industry. Stella will be eligible for parole on December 7, 2017.
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.
The incident was used as the basis for an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. The episode's main perpetrator tampered with several bottles of the fictional painkiller "Necedrin" in order to murder her husband. Similarly to Stella Nickell, she did it for insurance money with which to open a children's clothing store.
Nickell was also featured in an episode of the Oxygen Channel true crime show, Snapped.
