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Welcome back, bingers, to our two-part story about Great Britain's teacup poisoner, whose crimes bookended England's swinging 60s period and actually inspired the 1995 movie The Young Poisoner's Handbook.
which is sadly not currently available anywhere to watch. Hopefully that will change someday soon. But in our previous episode, we were exploring Graham Young's childhood and the mysterious illness that was affecting every member of his household, eventually culminating in the death of his stepmother, Molly, who was a mother of three.
After which, the health of his newly widowed again father, Fred, also began taking a dive with the same symptoms as his late wife. And that's where we'll pick back up. So, with the death of his second wife, Fred Young had become a widow again.
All the while, the cause of his late wife's crippling illness remained a mystery. And the pathologist's findings made the situation all the more puzzling when the cause of death was ruled to be a prolapsed bone at the top of Molly's spinal column, which was believed to be the result of a freak accident that she'd had the previous summer. Now, 14-year-old Graham Young appeared to be absolutely wrecked by his stepmother's death.
shutting himself inside her bedroom to play with her music boxes and cry. And Graham outwardly expressed worry for his father, as Fred had been experiencing symptoms similar to what Molly had suffered in the months leading up to her death. Really wanted his dad to take it easy. So he suggested that rather than going through the trouble of burying another wife,
he should have Molly cremated. It would be the easiest and best choice for everyone concerned. And so the following Thursday, family and friends gathered to pay their respects to Molly Young as her coffin disappeared into the crematorium's furnace. That afternoon, the mourners reconvened at the Young House on North Circular Road.
And while there, Graham's uncle John became violently ill with symptoms much like what had been circulating in the Young household. By late evening, fortunately, he had recovered enough to be able to drive himself home. In the weeks that followed, Fred was regularly stricken with increasingly severe attacks of whatever had been plaguing the Young household.
agonizing stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, general weakness. Usually these episodes would begin on Monday, preceded by Sunday evening visits to the local pub for a pint of beer, where Graham, his son, would usually join him. Not for beer, obviously, he was only 14, but just to tag along. He'd usually have a soft drink while his dad nursed a pint of beer next to him. And as the trajectory of Fred's condition began following a path similar to that of his late wife,
Graham's doting interest in his father only intensified. He began tending to his father's meals, making sure he ate regularly. You know, so he could preserve his strength amid his battle with this mysterious, invisible foe. Meanwhile, Fred, fearing his death might be too imminent, called a family meeting.
"We've got to muck in and keep the family running," Fred told his family. Now, muck in, by the way, is British slang that means everyone shares or contributes to something equally. Now, Fred reminded his family that he'd spent the last decade working overtime to make sure the mortgage was paid off. And now that it was, it was very important to ensure that if anything happened to him, his children would be secure, inheriting the home in which they'd now spent the most of their lives.
And on top of that, Fred had a pension that would kick in to help his family if indeed he did die. After that point, Fred's condition just grew worse and worse. And just like Molly, he was losing weight at a rapid, progressive rate. His sister, Graham's beloved aunt, Wynne, began voicing her suspicions to the family.
Suspicions that Graham may in some way be responsible for the mystery ailment that was tormenting the young family and had claimed Molly's life. Graham's sister, Winnie, had actually already suspected Graham as well, but that didn't go over so well when she voiced them. And so Aunt Winnie...
Grant Wynn has now come forward with her suspicions, and she'd been harboring these for a while, but had kept them to herself, especially since her husband Jack had actually scoffed at the idea that 14-year-old Graham might in any way be responsible for harming his own family members. Graham was smart enough to handle his chemicals responsibly, Jack reasoned, and certainly wasn't evil enough to cause deliberate harm to his loved ones. I mean, kill his stepmother.
His aunt, Wyn, couldn't bring herself to imagine that Graham would poison anyone deliberately either, but she still couldn't shake the idea that he was somehow behind all of this. And so Wyn made sure that their daughter, Sandra, avoided eating anything that came from the Young household and to abstain from dining whenever Graham was around. And honestly, this seems reasonable to me. If I was anybody, I would not even be stepping foot in the Young household at this point.
But despite the steady deterioration in Fred's condition, he insisted on not seeing a doctor because privately he thought that the doctors themselves may have had something to do with poor Molly's death.
But he finally begrudgingly gave in at the urging of his daughter Winnie and his sister Wynne. And this was only after he had become deathly ill following a mill at Wynne's house. So Fred went to the local hospital and just as with Molly, doctors couldn't find a single thing wrong with him. So they sent him home.
Winnie thought his sickness might simply be the result of his grief and trauma. But these systems just kept persisting, and Fred was losing more and more weight. So his family made him go back to the doctor, not long after having been discharged from his last visit. And this time, the doctors found something. In Fred's blood, they detected traces of arsenic.
and in his urine, they discovered antimony. The doctors then took Winnie and Graham aside and informed them that their tests indicated their father was suffering from the effects of poisoning from either arsenic or antimony, and by this time, he had sustained permanent liver damage. Now, Winnie was absolutely shocked. The doctors seemed to think Fred was attempting suicide. So profound was his grief over Molly's death.
And Graham, of course, readily signed onto this idea, suggesting that Fred was just seeking to be reunited with Molly. Yeah, yeah, dad's so sad that he's poisoning himself. But this just didn't make sense to Winnie. It didn't track. And on the way home from the hospital, Graham was unusually chatty, even manic.
talking nonstop, almost as though he were engaging in a monologue with himself. And he was saying the strangest things, things that just didn't fit with how a normal person would behave in such a situation. How ridiculous, Graham exclaimed, to say you can't tell the difference between the symptoms of antimony or arsenic.
And I will say that arsenic poisoning and antimony poisoning do seem to share a lot of symptoms in common with each other. Both cause abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. And both also cause spots to appear on the skin. But see, there are also some subtle differences between the two sets of symptoms. And Graham Young seemed to know about all of them. This was, in fact, all he talked about the entire ride home from the hospital. And
And it was then that Winnie, his sister, finally decided to confront Graham for her father's welfare and also her own. She just couldn't avoid the topic any longer. Now look here, Graham, she said, cornering him. Are you doing anything? I don't want you to be silly about this. So tell me if you're doing anything. Graham looked her dead in the eye and promised. No, I'm honestly not.
And yet Graham was never not spot on in predicting what symptoms his father Fred might suffer next. Using long-winded medical terminology, only Graham seemed to understand. He'd sit at his father's bedside and jot down notes before going on to predict, for example, that Fred would be developing symptoms A, B, and C. And then sure enough, the next day, Fred would develop the exact symptoms that Graham had predicted.
While Fred may have felt Graham was just looking out for him, Winnie began to see Graham's excessive attention as being clinical and detached, as though he were studying his father like an insect in a laboratory experiment. Suddenly, the family's suspicions about Graham began to darken. No one wanted to believe that 14-year-old Graham might be poisoning people around himself on purpose.
but it was reaching to a point where there was simply no other logical conclusion. But it's probably already obvious to you, isn't it? Graham was deliberately poisoning his family members, and his friend from school, John, too.
And here's the thing, Graham was not exactly discreet about what he was doing either. Each person close to him had at least a fragment of knowledge that should have already put them on high alert. And in at least one instance, it did.
Graham's friend, Clive Krieger, who was, aside from John, one of Graham's only real friends at school. Now, Clive knew about their mutual friend, John, coming down with stomach illnesses on a regular basis. But then one day, Graham actually opened up to Clive, quite casually, actually. It was more like he was bragging than confiding about the fact that he was poisoning his stepmother, Molly. Again, this was before she had died. Graham's friend, Clive Krieger,
Graham even showed Clive a graph he had drawn with one axis representing the development of Molly's symptoms and the other axis representing the dosages of poison and dates. Now, after Graham shared this with his friend, Clive reached the conclusion that Graham was a dangerous and evil individual. And from that point on, he avoided him as much as possible. And then one of the local chemists who'd cut Graham off also had suspicions.
Graham had been requesting toxic substances from this chemist, claiming that he was 17 years old because that was the minimum legal age allowed to purchase such substances. But the chemist didn't buy it. Somehow, though, all these people with their suspicions kept them to themselves or limited to their social circles.
Although Fred, once he was in the hospital and knew he was being poisoned, made it clear he didn't want Graham at the hospital again. It was on a Monday morning on May 21st, 1962, that Graham's science teacher, Joffrey Hughes, who was already aware of Graham's obsessive interest in poisons and also knew about his stepmother's death and his father's illness, decided to take a peek into Graham's desk. Everyone was becoming suspicious.
And when he did, he found an array of small bottles and vials containing poisons and books on poisons, such as Handbook of Poisonings, Diagnosis and Treatment.
and handwritten odes to and poems about poisoners, illustrated essays on famous or infamous, more appropriately, poisoners, and a stack of doodles depicting poisons and death. Hughes took his findings and concerns to the school's headmaster, who then phoned Fred Young's doctor. That's when they decided to contact the police. The
The following day, a police psychologist showed up at school and met with Graham under the guise that he was with the child guidance unit conducting a careers interview. He sat down with Graham and opened the interview by flattering the young man, speaking of his incredible gift for chemistry, hinting at a possible university scholarship. Graham, so proud and enamored of his own knowledge, took the bait and spoke openly about his broad ranging knowledge of poisonous substances.
After the meeting, the psychologist developed a report and submitted it to the local police. Later in the afternoon, two detectives showed up at Graham's school and seized the incriminating contents of his science room desk. They followed this by conducting a search at the young household located at 768 North Circular Road and even found more information.
incriminating items there. The detectives next went to Graham's aunt and uncle's home where they were welcomed by his aunt, Wynne, who then told them of her own suspicions. And when Graham showed up at Wynne's house while the police were there, he was surprised when they demanded to search his pockets. In them, they found two small vials of white powder. They asked him what they were and he told them that one was thallium, while he claimed not to know the contents of the other bottle.
So thallium is a heavy metal that is one of the most toxic substances known to humans. It can be easily absorbed through the skin and exposure to even minute amounts of this substance can be lethal. A single teaspoon of thallium can kill more than 20 adult human beings. Symptoms of thallium poisoning include fever, gastrointestinal distress, delirium, convulsions, hair loss, leg pains, limb weakness, vision loss, headaches, and nerve damage.
And the thing is, thallium had never been known before this point to have been used to poison anyone in Britain. So that's one reason that no one, not even doctors, suspected thallium poisoning. Thallium had mainly been used as a pesticide and the rare instances of thallium toxicity resulted from people mishandling it. It's also a very difficult poison to detect.
disappearing from the body quickly after consumption. But Graham acknowledged that that's what one of the bottles police found on him contained, claiming he didn't know the contents of the other.
Now, during the Second World War, thallium had been used in the Netherlands to poison the water supply of Nazi installation. And that could have been where Graham first picked up the idea by reading about this. Whatever the case, the detectives confronted Graham and asked if he would accompany them back to the station to answer some questions. And Graham readily agreed.
Once they arrived and sat down in the interview, Graham changed his mind about the other bottle and volunteered that it contain antimony. "I suppose you would have found out anyway," he said. Now as the interview began, Graham denied ever giving these or any other poisons to any member of his family. He claimed that he had restricted his usage to experiments with plants.
And because his stepmother had been cremated, it wasn't possible at that time to prove that she'd been given thallium. But then he revealed that he'd kept a cache of poisons hidden in a hut down by Welsh Harp Reservoir, some beneath a hedge and others hidden in his bedroom. Those locations were then searched and authorities ended up finding, get this, enough poison to kill 300 people.
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Use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode. Now, meanwhile, Graham was charged with administering poison to his father. When his sister and aunt, the two Winifreds, visited him that night and asked why he had done it, Graham refused to talk.
But then all that changed two days later when Detective Inspector Crab sat down with Graham at the police station where he was being detained. Suddenly, Graham became very talkative. "I think I will tell you all about it," Graham began. "It's been an obsession with me," he explained, likening it to a drug addiction. Crab then stopped Graham to check if he wanted someone else present while he discussed this and if he'd wish to make a written statement.
Graham declined both offers saying, "I'd rather tell you on my own and you can write it down." So, Investigator Crab positioned a pen and paper and Graham began. And this is the voice of the poisoner himself.
I have been very interested in poisons, their properties and effects since I was about 11 years old. In May last year, 1961, I bought 25 grams antimony. Within a couple of weeks, I tried out this poison on my friend, John Williams. I gave him two or three grains at school. I can't remember how I caused him to take it. I think it was probably on a cream biscuit or a cake.
He was sick after taking it. I gave him a second dose in May in the same way. And in the following month, I gave him another two doses, always two or three grains and always on food at school. I started experimenting at home, putting sometimes one, sometimes three grains on prepared foods, which my stepmother, father and sister ate because I became sick as well. I know that after eating these prepared foods, my family were all sick.
My mother went to our doctor about her sickness. By September of last year, this had become an obsession with me, and I continued giving members of my family small doses of antimony tartrate on prepared foods. In November 1961, I bought two ounces in separate ounces of antimony tartrate and one and a half grams of belladonna.
One morning at the end of November, it was on a Wednesday, I was getting ready to go to school and I had breakfast in the kitchen and my sister's cup was on the dresser containing a small quantity of milk. I put one 16th grain of belladonna in the milk and then I left for school.
That night, when I got home from school, my stepmother told me that my sister had been ill during the day. When my sister came home from work, she told us all of the symptoms of her illness, and I knew that it was the effects of the belladonna. I was asked by my mother if I knew anything about it, but I denied it. After this, I gave the remaining belladonna to my friend John Williams.
When I first bought the antimony, I also bought digitalis, but I didn't use this. I gave it to a friend, Richard Hands. He is at my school and I think I gave him six ounces. I think he then gave some of it to John Williams.
Since the beginning of this year, I have on occasion put antimony tartrate solution and powder on foods at home, which both my mother and father have taken. They have become ill as a result of it. My mother lost weight all the time through it, and I stopped giving it to her about February of this year. I stopped using it altogether then.
I can't think of anyone else that I have given poison to, and I know that the doses I was giving were not fatal, but I knew what I was doing was wrong. It grew on me like a drug habit, except that it wasn't me who was taking the drug. The two small jars you found on me yesterday contained thallium, sulfate, and antimony. I have not given anyone doses of thallium. I realize how stupid I have been with these poisons. I knew this all along, but I couldn't stop.
Now, this statement was full of half-truths and omissions, but having said all of this to police and signing the statement, Graham was then promptly charged with poisoning his father, his sister, and his school friend, John Williams. For his father, Fred, it was what he'd later describe as the most shattering blow of his life. His message to authorities was to lock Graham up and throw away the key.
While he was in custody during his court proceedings, Graham spoke with a psychiatrist in whom he confided, He would also admit at this point to being sexually aroused while playing with poisons. He never addressed the court directly except to plead guilty on all three counts.
but his statement from the police station was read aloud in its entirety. He was never charged in his stepmother's death because it had been attributed to a prolapsed bone and also because no one knew at the time nor could prove that on the night before her death, Graham had given his stepmother a massive dose of thallium. It would in fact be years before Graham would ever admit as much. There was some debate at the trial as to what kind of treatment Graham should receive.
And if a place like Broadmoor, a high security facility for violent, criminally inclined psychiatric patients, might be inappropriate for a young man of Graham's high intelligence. But ultimately, the psychiatrist felt that Graham was a dangerous and remorseless offender, and he was sentenced to 15 years at Broadmoor.
Now headlines screamed with words like "15 years Broadmoor for schoolboy of 14." Brilliant youth obsessed by poisons felt a sense of power. A schoolboy poisoner with an IQ as brilliant as a university student must be guarded in Broadmoor because of his obsession. He knows all the famous poisoners of history and can talk with doctors on equal terms on the science of toxicology.
so much for that low verbal IQ. And so Graham then began serving his sentence at Broadmoor Hospital. Broadmoor Hospital is the sort of place that they used to call a lunatic asylum, a place for criminal offenders found to suffer from severe mental illness and psychological deficits. It's the kind of place one might be sent in the United States if one successfully pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity at a murder trial.
Now, Broadmoor opened in 1863 and it has a Victorian red brick exterior that gave it a gothic
An official with the Healthy Ministry described what he observed at Broadmoor in this way.
a day room with 35 beds crowded into it, a medical ward which patients have to use as an overflow dining room, a corridor used for the same purpose, and seven beds placed into the corridor.
In his book, Bound for Broadmoor, former patient Peter Thompson described patients washing themselves in their own urine and drying off with communal towels and outbreaks of what sounded like norovirus causing more demand for the toilets than there was supply. Morale among the nursing staff at Broadmoor, meanwhile, was low as security at the facility was inadequate and control over patients was even more limited.
When Graham first arrived at Broadmoor, he was given a private room in the reception wing for his first six months before he was then transitioned into the overcrowded general wing. Graham's days, like that of most Broadmoor patients, consisted of very little structure.
He was awakened at 7 a.m. every morning and lights out was at 8 p.m. every night. In the 13 hours in between, patients were allowed to watch television, read, play billiards and other games, or make rugs. Graham's family visited him infrequently and visits they shared were awkward. As you might probably imagine, he was in Broadmoor for poisoning them.
His father, Fred, would usually sit silently and stone-faced, having nothing to say to Graham, and eventually he just stopped visiting his son altogether. Among his fellow inmates, Graham was unpopular from the outset of his arrival. He was perceived as arrogant, standoffish, and cold.
During his time at Broadmoor, Graham decorated his spaces with images of Nazi leaders. And by this age, he was entering his late teens. He was able to grow an actual toothbrush mustache, allowing him to more convincingly impersonate Hitler. But over time, Graham became Broadmoor's star patient and a favorite of the administrators and psychiatrists.
Sort of like the teacher's pet, because after a shaky start at Broadmoor, Graham had shaped up and begun exhibiting model behavior. The administrators looking after him, in fact, saw great potential, and they were concerned about that potential being squandered should Graham remain in Broadmoor past what was known as the 10-year threshold. Which is a very, very important point.
which is what they consider to be the point of no return, where all hope of rehabilitation is lost.
But there may have been some disconnect among the different arms of Broadmoor's staff, because Graham's interest in poisons was still pretty obviously in full swing even after his commitment. Like, he painted a skull and crossbones on his tea and sugar containers and labeled them with the names of poisons. And shortly after the arrival of a 23-year-old patient, a former soldier named John Barrage, who was sent to Broadmoor after shooting and killing his parents...
John was found dead, and a post-mortem examination determined that Barrage was killed with cyanide. In the absence of any other explanation, his death was ruled a suicide. But how cyanide of any quantity made it into the secure facility of Broadmoor was a mystery that no one on the staff could solve, as there was no source for cyanide in any of the products used at Broadmoor.
Now, after Berridge's death, Broadmoor staff were suspicious of Graham. I mean, rightfully so. Who talked pretty openly in scientific detail that few could understand about the process for extracting cyanide from laurel leaves. And it was determined that the farmland skirting Broadmoor was home to copious laurel plants.
which could have yielded enough cyanide to take down the entire population of Broadmoor. Yet this was purely speculation, nor could Graham be proven responsible for that time the nurse's coffee was found to have been spiked with toilet cleaner. But Graham had become the favorite patient of Dr. Patrick McGrath, the hospital superintendent, and Dr. Edgar Udwin, the senior psychiatrist, both of whom believed in Graham's potential and capacity for rehabilitation.
And after a long period of good behavior from Graham, he was recommended for discharge in 1971. Now 23 years old, Graham Young was a free man again after murdering his stepmother and poisoning basically everyone in his life.
His sister Winnie welcomed his release and genuinely believed, like the Broadmoor administrators who pushed for his discharge, that Graham had been cured. Graham spent his first Christmas as a free adult with his sister Winnie and her husband Dennis, whom she'd actually been engaged to in the early 60s when Graham was poisoning the family, so Dennis had been around for the whole arc of Graham's story. Now, Graham got good and drunk at his sister's and seemed in good spirits.
which included him praising Hitler, which you know, once again, should have been a red flag. And he talked at length about how the British government should take inspiration from the Nazis in dealing with the conflict in Northern Ireland. But Winnie ultimately allowed Graham to stay with her for a short period of time while he got his life together. As part of his release program, Graham enrolled for work prep.
at slough training center four days after he was freed and after this he found lodging at a hostel six miles from the training center now at training he befriended a 34 year old guy named trevor sparks now trevor and graham got along quite well and fast became drinking buddies they'd get together for wine after training and have conversations on a variety of topics
But you know where this is going. Not long after meeting Graham, Trevor began suffering from excruciating abdominal pains like he'd never experienced before.
He went to see a doctor, but the doctor could find nothing wrong with him. That night, Trevor was violently ill throughout the night. And for days afterward, Trevor was vomiting, having diarrhea, experiencing aches and pains in his groin, and weird sensations in his scrotum. While playing soccer, his legs and thighs suddenly gave way and he had to leave the game. And in fact, Trevor would never play soccer again.
Graham looked after his friend and tended to him, pouring him wine and bringing him water. And needless to say, Graham was back to his old tricks not even a month out of Broadmoor. He'd been poisoning Trevor with antimony all along.
but Trevor knew nothing about Graham's past troubles with the law and poisoning his family. And like I mentioned in the previous episode, Google didn't exist back then and so the story of the 14 year old school boy who'd poisoned his family had been long forgotten. It was Trevor's good fortune then that Graham soon found a job that took him far away from Trevor before he could finally kill him. And that was the job
at Hadlan's, which now brings us full circle. Graham had only been at Hadlan's for a few weeks when he began poisoning his coworkers.
And by 1971, two of them had died, another two were approaching death's door, and at least three others were battling similar sets of symptoms. And a few of these employees remembered that their symptoms had begun shortly after drinking tea or coffee prepared by Graham.
Suspicion was first officially voiced by one of Graham's ailing coworkers, Diane Smart, who wrote a letter to Joffrey Foster, the managing director, pointing out that the illness had begun only a short time after Graham began working in the storeroom.
but it was her theory that resulted in her letter being dismissed. She proposed that Graham was a germ carrier spreading a virus that he'd contracted from the Pakistani family he was lodging with. Managing Director Foster looked upon this as a bigoted crankery and didn't give it a second thought.
until a week or so later when the company doctor, Dr. Anderson, held a staff meeting in the Hadlands canteen in an attempt to calm the rising tide of panic that was now disrupting workplace operations. Some
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The doctor explained that inspectors of various types had combed the workplace and were unable to find anything that could possibly be causing these illnesses. This was hardly the reassurance the Hadlands administrators had expected. And during the meeting, a hand shot up among the staff. It was Graham Young's. He had a question.
"What are the similarities and symptoms of the two people who died and the two people who are ill?" he asked. Dr. Anderson answered that there were clear similarities between the two, but no link could be concretely established. The young store man then had another question. "What is the significance of the alopecia suffered by Mr. Batt and Mr. Tilson?" The doctor replied that it may be due to a nervous condition or stress.
So complete alopecia due to psychosomatic stimulus then, Graham confirmed. Well, yes, this could have been the cause, replied Dr. Anderson, who was quite taken with the oddness of this unexpected exchange with the young, low-level storeroom employee. Graham then had a follow-up question. And you would say that Mr. Batt and Mr. Tilson's symptoms are consistent with thallium poisoning?
Dr. Anderson was now positively floored during this company meeting. Thallium poisoning is something that was at the time extremely rare. Remember, up to this time, there hadn't been a single known case in Great Britain. However, despite that, Dr. Anderson had in fact begun to suspect heavy metal poisoning during his investigation.
But he kept it to himself so as not to cause alarm before more data could be gathered. But now here was an otherwise inconsequential employee actually suggesting that this was the cause. After the meeting adjourned, the company's owner, John Hadland, conferred with Dr. Anderson and Joffrey Foster, the managing director, who himself had grown to dislike Graham, describing him to his colleagues as a creep.
Foster and Hadland told Dr. Anderson about Graham having spent time at Broadmoor, and this made Dr. Anderson even more curious. So once the administrators at Hadland's dug deeper into Graham's past and found out specifically why he'd been sent away to Broadmoor, and I guess more notably everything I have just explained to you in these episodes, they immediately notified the local police.
A plainclothes officer went to the house where Graham was staying and knocked on the door. Now, Graham wasn't in, but his landlords were, and they allowed the policeman in to search Graham's room. When he entered it, he found the walls plastered with pictures from Nazi Germany, images of Hitler and other Nazi leaders, and drawings by Graham depicting people in agony, many with their hair falling out, with bottles around them marked "Poison."
He was later joined by two other detectives and they searched and cataloged every item they found. They found multiple bottles and vials containing unknown liquids. They found a vial containing antimony powder. They found empty paper bags from a chemist. It was learned that Graham was still able to somehow obtain these poisons from chemists.
They found a matchbox containing a dead wasp. They found books on forensic medicine. And under Graham's bed, they found a notepad labeled a student and officer's casebook. Police opened it and what they found was what you would call a smoking gun.
It was a diary, a diary in which Graham painstakingly documented the poisonings of each of his coworkers, as well as the trajectories and their declines down to the finest symptomatic detail. Clive Krieger from the sloth training camp, Jethro Bat, David Tilson, Bob Agle, Fred Biggs, Diane Smart, each referred to by their initials, F.
"F is now seriously ill," Graham wrote of Fred Biggs. "He's now unconscious and has developed a bulbar paralysis, necessitating a trichotomy. He also has inflammation of the optic nerve, which has produced blindness."
In an entry dated November 1st, Graham wrote about David Tilson: "Some new developments. D has relapsed and has been readmitted to hospital. A fresh and to me disturbing symptom has appeared. He has commenced to lose hair which, though at present only slight, is likely to progress to alopecia. It is remotely possible that one of the attendant physicians may be sufficiently familiar with the symptoms.
and the signs of my compound that he will gain a clue of the causal factor involved. Now, Graham just admitted here that he was concerned about being detected, and yet it was his own boldness and arrogance during that company meeting that played a role in him ultimately being detected. The police began their hunt for Graham, which eventually led them to, shockingly, his father's house, where they found Graham and arrested him in the presence of his father and his aunt Wynne.
"I don't know what they're on about," Graham told his family upon being advised that he was being arrested on suspicion of murder. Then he asked one of the arresting officers, "Which one is it for?" After Graham was taken away, Fred Young made the decision to disown his son completely.
He went through his house and found every scrap of Graham, from all existing photos of him to his birth certificate, and tore them to pieces. Down at the police station, Graham was confronted with a diary. He admitted to having written it, admitted to having poisons in his possessions, but he denied having ever poisoned anybody. He claimed the diary was a work of fiction for a crime novel that he was preparing to write.
Now, Graham's manner throughout would later be described as icily polite. He began slowly opening up, revealing pieces that he felt would win him the respect of detectives by his being honest without providing what he felt would be enough evidence for a conviction. He acknowledged having been fascinated with toxicology all of his life.
having been a misfit and a loner, being obsessed with the dark and morbid. But then he stopped himself, saying, I'm sorry, Inspector, but that's as much as I'm prepared to say. When the police advised him that Jethro Batts' condition was growing more and more critical, Graham explained that he wasn't receiving the correct treatment, and he would then tell them what to tell the doctors at the hospital. But he clarified,
I won't tell you what agent I used. Basically admitting to the poison. Eventually Graham surrendered and began confessing. Confessing to dosing his co-workers tea. Refusing to name the poison but admitting that it was the same poison given to all of his co-workers. Graham was confident that the thallium would not be detected especially since Bob like his stepmother had been cremated. But Graham
up to date on the latest developments in forensics. Perhaps his copy of forensic medicine was an old edition, but it was now possible to detect thallium by analyzing a cremated individual's ashes. And that's exactly what they did with Bob's cremated remains. And indeed, this revealed significant quantities of thallium. Graham later recanted everything he had said to police, but
was put on trial and was once again convicted, but he would not be sent back to Broadmoor. This time, Graham received four life sentences and was sent to the high security Parkhurst prison where he spent the balance of his life. While there, he made friends with the infamous Moore's murderer,
Ian Brady, who played chess with his fellow psychopath daily until 1990 when Graham Young was found dead in his cell at the age of 42 from what was then ruled to have been a heart attack. But it has been speculated, now only speculated, without proof that Graham may have committed suicide by ingesting poison. Like many psychopaths, Graham Young was not interested in getting better.
He pretended to be, but only to game the system and use its resources to his own end. Much like John Robinson in our Slave Master episode, convincing prison officials that he was a model prisoner and a valuable asset to society, only to kill five women after he was released.
Habitual, violent, psychopathic offenders often believe themselves to be superior beings of a higher intelligence than you, me, or anyone else they come in contact with.
And it's this arrogance that's so often their downfall. In fact, Graham himself may not have loved the nickname the teacup poisoner because he had explicitly wanted to be remembered as the world's poisoner. And he may have had ambitions to poison people on a much, much broader scale. For the next episode in our binge series on poisoners, we'll return from our trip across the pond
And touchdown in Florida, where another poisoner who thought he was the smartest guy in the room thought he could get away with poisoning an entire family. So binge on. It's available now.