On June 14, 1856, Dr. William Palmer of Staffordshire, England was led to the gallows to be hanged. By this point, he had spent over one year in prison awaiting this day, but before stepping to the rope, he looked down at the trapdoor on which he would soon be standing and asked the prison’s hangman if it was sturdy. Minutes later, the doctor died in front of a crowd of 30,000 people.
Throughout his life, Dr. Palmer often found himself heavily indebted to those around him for various reasons, primarily his love of gambling and betting on horse races. However, despite this, he always found a way to make ends meet and avoid the consequences of his increasingly risky behavior—that is until, in the years that immediately preceded his death, those debts became overwhelming.
One year before his execution, when the doctor was thirty-one years old, he attended a horserace alongside his friend, John Parson Cook, and used the last of his remaining money to place a series of large, risky bets in a last-ditch effort to avoid debtors’ prison. These bets, unfortunately, did not pay out; however, Cook, who had also bet that day using part of a £12,000 inherited fortune, won big. When all was said and done, Cook walked away with promissory notes for an additional £3,000 from Palmer and many other race attendees.
Over the next few days, as Cook began to collect on these debts, he suddenly became inexplicably ill, and Dr. Palmer took charge of his care. Soon after, the man died and his betting books, winnings, and a large portion of his inheritance disappeared without a trace. On his death certificate, Palmer wrote that Cook had died of apoplexy; however, witnesses soon came forward claiming otherwise.
They said that Cook had expressed concerns to them shortly before his death that Dr. Palmer had been slipping poison into his food and drink.
During Cook’s postmortem examination, Dr. Palmer attempted to sabotage many of the tests that the coroner was performing by requesting to be inside the room during the time of the examination, showing up drunk and bumping repeatedly into the other examiners, and stealing and hiding Cook’s intestines so that they could not be tested for traces of poison. When the coroner demanded that he return the missing organs, Palmer then attempted to bribe the man with a £10 note, requesting that he document Cook’s cause of death as natural causes.
Unsurprisingly, Palmer was soon arrested for murder, and during his trial, the full details of his life, his debts, and the circumstances surrounding Cook’s death were all made public. This was certainly bad for his image; however, what made it even worse was the revelation that death seemed to follow the doctor wherever he went. In addition to his friend, Palmer’s wife, brother, and four infant children had all died premature deaths under mysterious circumstances. And to add to the speculation, Palmer had collected life insurance payouts for both his wife and brother and hastily buried his children, listing “convulsions” as the cause of death for each of them.
Once this information became public, people began to follow Palmer’s case very closely as newspapers picked up the story; everyone wanted to hear and read about the cold-blooded, family-killing doctor that may have had far more victims than anyone would ever know. This interest is what led to, as I said earlier, over 30,000 people attending his execution, which took place approximately one year after he was found guilty of murdering John Cook.
In the years that followed, Palmer’s story continued to grow in popularity, and this is because—at the time—his was such a unique case. Doctors had murdered before, of course, but rarely was their motivation something as repugnant as money, and rarely did they kill their own families to settle debts.
To further add to the mystique, the prison’s hangman, George “Throttler” Smith, also sold one-inch portions of the rope used on Palmer for five Shillings each, and Author Charles Dickens once called Palmer “the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey.” A figure of Palmer’s head was also added to the waxwork museum at Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors that remained there from 1857 to 1979.
Decades after his death, Palmer’s name had been spread far and wide, and by the turn of the century, it had become legend. And with that type of notoriety, it should come as no surprise that his actions went on to inspire numerous other poisoners, one of which was a 13-year-old boy who was born approximately ninety years after the doctor’s death.
As a youth, this boy would attempt to follow in Palmer’s footsteps by learning everything he could about chemistry and the human body; he would experiment on his friends and family by poisoning them with the various chemicals he could get his hands on; and later, as an adult, he would permanently alter the lives of his coworkers by dosing them for months, taking detailed notes of their horrific symptoms as he did, until they eventually succumbed to his poison’s agonizing effects.
This boy’s name was Graham Young, but by the end of his criminal career, he would infamously be known as The Teacup Poisoner.
The Little Devil
When Graham Young was born on September 7th, 1947, in Neasden, North London, he was surrounded by people who loved and cared for him. He had a working father named Fredrick who provided for him, a caring mother named Bessie to look after and raise him, and an older sister named Winifred who was beyond excited about finally having a baby brother of her own. Overall, the family’s future seemed bright; however, their bliss would be short-lived.
Fourteen weeks after giving birth to Graham, the Young family suffered a tragedy when Bessie passed away unexpectedly after developing tuberculosis. It was an unthinkable scenario that left Fredrick in charge of raising an infant on his own, a job for which he felt woefully unprepared. In order to continue working and earning money to support his remaining family, Fredrick was forced to send his children away to live with relatives. Winifred was placed in the care of her grandparents, while Graham was shipped away to live with Fredrick’s sister and her husband, Winnie and Jack.
Over the next two years, Graham grew and matured appropriately, and while you might be expecting me to say that he suffered some sort of horrific abuse at the hands of his aunt and uncle, there is no direct evidence of this. By all accounts, despite losing his mother at such an early age, Graham became very close with Winnie and Jack, and the small family they had created was off to a running start.
However, just before Graham turned three, Fredrick arrived at his sister’s home to make an announcement. He said that he would be taking Graham back with him because he had recently married a woman named Molly and decided that she, Graham, Winifred and himself should all be reunited the way Bessie would have wanted. He was finally ready to bring his family back together, and he could not contain his excitement.
Now, just as was the case with his aunt and uncle, there is no evidence of abuse inside Graham’s new home; however, this sudden change marked the second time in just three years that the boy’s entire life had been uprooted. According to those that knew the family, Graham changed forever after being ripped away from his aunt and uncle, and while I can’t blame Fredrick for wanting to see his family reunited, there was likely a much better way to do this. The separation was a turning point that saw the bouncing, friendly tot morph into a scared, angry, vindictive child.
Furthermore, Graham hated Molly as soon as he met her, and although he would eventually hide his disdain for her well, he would never stop telling his friends and teachers how much he hated his “horrible stepmother.”
Over the next few years, Graham began to develop some very strange interests, of which an all-consuming obsession with death, murder, and true crime was the most concerning. From an early age, he would spend hours poring over non-fiction accounts of people like William Palmer—the man whom he would eventually cite as his personal idol—and other serial poisoners, such as Dr. Hawley Crippen, who was featured on the premiere episode of The Casual Criminalist.
Graham was idolizing poisoners the way other children and teens at the time were obsessing over superheroes and early rock-and-roll singers, like Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard.
As he studied Palmer’s life, Graham learned how the doctor had used antimony to make his family member’s deaths appear like accidents, and this excited him beyond words. And while there is no known reason for why Graham became obsessed with poison or why he wanted to experiment on the people around him, Graham himself would provide some insight years later: he said that he simply wanted to feel the power that came from holding such a dangerous substance in his hand—the same feeling that Palmer must have felt so many years earlier. He wanted to experiment with antimony and other poisons because he simply wanted to know what it felt like to take a life.
Now, we’ve heard this song and dance before on The Casual Criminalist, but what I feel makes Graham’s case remarkable is that he started having these thoughts when he was only eight years old.
Because of his obsession with Palmer, Graham also took an early interest in anatomy and chemistry because understanding how the body worked was key to understanding how poison worked. He wasn’t interested in just pouring a splash of bleach into the family’s dinner or grinding rat poison into his sister’s makeup; Graham wanted to possess a true understanding of poison because he hoped to someday develop his own poisons that were untraceable by standard medical tests. This required much more than a working knowledge of chemistry; it required him to excel in a group of very difficult subjects. As such, Graham dedicated all his free time to the sciences and let the rest of his studies fall by the wayside.
Eventually, Graham also expanded his areas of interest to include the forensic sciences of the time and began learning everything he could about decomposition and toxicology. Understanding these things, he believed, would be the key to ensuring his criminal career was a long one.
Yes, that’s right, before the boy had even exited primary school, Graham was already laying out his plans to become a serial poisoner. And if that little fact is not disturbing enough for you, he did excel in one other subject: German history. Specifically, 1930s and early 1940s German history and its infamous chancellor/dictator—a man whose name I cannot mention due to YouTube’s censorship nonsense.
He was particularly interested in the horrific experiments that had been performed on the people held in concentration camps during that time and the doctors who had performed them. He even started wearing a particular shape on his arm and tried explaining to his friends and family why Germany’s self-deposed chancellor was—and I’m paraphrasing here—kind of a chill dude.
Yes, Graham Young was the worst kind of four-letter word, and this was during a time when firing off a Bellamy salute wasn’t just “edgy teenager” behavior as almost everyone in Britain at the time knew someone who had died while fighting against that ideology.
However, as if he hadn’t already ticked enough boxes off the serial killer’s checklist, Graham was also very interested in things that were inherently unscientific, such as the occult, the paranormal, and demonology—once again, not in the edgy teenager way, but in the total psycho way. One day, after chasing and capturing one of his neighbor’s cats, Graham gathered a small group of children from around his neighborhood to perform a ceremony that involved cutting the animal as he chanted in a made-up, Latin-sounding language. This, of course, terrified the children, but Graham seemed to enjoy their reactions and was not concerned in the slightest about their opinion of him.
Now, realizing that his son was not exactly a normal child, Fredrick attempted to fix Graham’s behavior by encouraging him to focus on the positive subjects that he showed interest in, particularly Chemistry. He knew that his son was smart and believed that, if Graham was given a push in the right direction, he would have an undeniably bright future. He then gifted Graham an authentic 1960s era chemistry set, which included real and dangerous substances that could be used for experimentation and to produce soaps and cleaning products for around the home.
Altogether, it was not a bad effort by Fredrick; however, Graham instead used his new toy to harvest gunpowder from his father’s stored ammunition, combined it with other substances to produce several small bombs, and then blew up a section of his neighbor’s fence and one of the walls of his neighbor’s shed. These actions and more earned Graham the unaffectionate nickname “The Mad Scientist.”
By 1960, the year that Graham turned thirteen, his knowledge of human anatomy, poisons, and toxicology had become so robust that he felt confident enough to conduct his first real experiment on a living person. In preparation, he contacted a local chemist who was working near his home and said that he was interested in purchasing some hard-to-acquire elements for an experiment he was currently planning. The element he was searching for was Palmer’s poison of choice: antimony.
This was a metalloid that—when utilized correctly—could be used to produce certain medicines and cosmetics; however, as you know, Graham wasn’t planning to compete with Maybelline. He wanted the powder for its other properties, the ones that produce an arsenic-like reaction when ingested.
Because Graham was now so knowledgeable about chemistry, his plan to acquire the poison worked as he managed to convince a fully trained professional chemist that he was seventeen years old and enrolled in university. He was even clever enough to use a fake name when reserving and purchasing the substance; on the mandatory poison register he wrote the name “M.E. Evans.”
With the poison now stored inside a tiny glass vial and hidden inside his bedroom, Graham began vetting the people around him to select his first target; he settled on one of his classmates, Christopher Williams. One day, while in science class with Williams, Graham discreetly slipped the boy a small dose of antimony mixed with several other substances from his chemistry set and waited. He observed as Williams soon became unsteady, clutching his stomach and vomiting violently before being ushered out of the classroom.
The following day, Williams was absent from school, and that was because he had been admitted to hospital and was being closely monitored by doctors as the toxins ravaged his body. He was suffering from severe stomach cramps and debilitating headaches that left him nearly immobilized.
Fortunately, Williams survived the ordeal without suffering any permanent disabilities. Graham’s dose had been too small to kill him, and much of the poison had been expelled through vomiting before it could fully take effect. However, Graham was also never caught or punished for this act because doctors were unable to determine the exact cause of Williams’s illness. They assumed that he must have accidentally ingested something toxic outside the school or at home.
Disappointed that he had not been able to witness and document Williams’s symptoms firsthand, Graham then began to re-strategize. He needed to choose a new target, one which he had better and more direct access to. Once again, he followed Palmer’s example:
Over the next few months, every single member of the Young family began to develop unexplained illnesses that lasted for days or weeks at a time. First, it was his stepmother, then it was his father, then it was his sister, and then—either by accident or on purpose—it was Graham himself. The boy had either accidentally dosed himself or he was trying to confirm his father’s belief that a “stomach bug” was causing the family’s reoccurring health issues.
These issues, which seemed to come and go at random, included intense stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, insomnia, and rapid weight loss. The symptoms were usually mild; however, sometimes, they were so severe that one of them ended up being rushed to hospital. When this happened, doctors were unable to pinpoint the source of the family’s issues because they had no reason to believe that a random family’s stomach problems would be the result of long-term, small-dose metal poisoning.
With no one to stop him, Graham continued administering these doses for months, and during this time, he meticulously observed and documented the effects that he saw. Graham was a scientist in the loosest sense of the word; however, as time went on, he began to grow bored of simply watching his family members cycle between sickness and recovery. He decided that it was time to take his experimentation to the next step: he was ready to take a life.
Later that year, when Graham was fourteen years old, he measured out a lethal dose of several poisons, mixed them together inside a cup of freshly brewed tea, and then served the foul concoction to his elder sister, Winnifred, while she was preparing for work early one morning. According to Graham, he presented the tea as a kind gesture, but instead of downing the cup quickly the way he hoped she would, Winnifred took one small sip, made a face, and then immediately dumped the entire cup down the kitchen sink. She said it was so sour she couldn’t even bear to finish it and asked him to never make tea like that again. She then rinsed her mouth, left home as usual, and boarded a train heading toward her workplace.
Several hours later, Winnifred awoke in hospital and was told that she had begun hallucinating while on the train and several other passengers had stepped in to offer their assistance. They had called a doctor for her, but when that doctor arrived, he was left puzzled by Winifred’s condition. Her symptoms were truly strange, but hospital staff eventually concluded that the girl must have come in contact with Atropa belladonna, a plant in the nightshade family. The doctor wasn’t sure where exactly Winnifred might have encountered such a plant, but after hearing Winnifred’s story about the sour tea, Fredrick had a theory.
Later that day, inside the family home, Fredrick confronted his son and accused him of spiking Winifred’s drink with something to make her sick, but Graham said that he had an innocent explanation: he had been using the family’s teacups to mix shampoo and claimed that some of the chemical residue must have been left over in the cup when he served his sister the tea.
Fredrick, of course, didn’t buy this story and promptly searched Graham’s bedroom for evidence of anything nefarious; however, he came up empty. Graham had already hidden everything incriminating, including the poisons. After finding nothing, Fredrick decided to take his son’s word, and Graham was simply given a warning and told to be more careful when working with his chemistry set. This is a decision that Fredrick would come to regret for the rest of his life.
A Death in the Family
On April 21st, 1962, when Graham was still only 14 years old, he succeeded in taking his first life—although, it was not his sister’s life; it was his stepmother’s.
On that afternoon, Fredrick returned home from work and discovered Molly lying in the family’s backyard, clutching her stomach, and gasping in pain. He rushed to her and saw that she was in complete agony. He immediately realized that something was very wrong; these pains were not the same stomach pains that the family had been experiencing for months. She was dying.
From inside the house, Graham stood at the upstairs window looking down at them, taking notes. He did not care when his father called out for help, nor did he make a move to help when his neighbors arrived to transport Molly to hospital. Graham just watched.
As soon as she arrived at hospital, Molly began receiving treatments from doctors, but it was simply too late. She died that very night and unknowingly became her stepson’s first official victim.
Fredrick was devastated. Searching for answers, he turned to the coroner who had examined Molly’s body, but the man did not attribute her death to poison; he said that Molly had likely died from a prolapsed vertebra, which was a leftover injury caused by a car accident that she had suffered a month prior.
However, as we are all aware, the true cause of Molly’s death was Graham’s poison, although there was one key element that made this dose different from all the rest he had given her: Graham had switched from antimony to thallium, another metalloid that is odorless, tasteless, and extremely toxic when ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Graham had switched to thallium because he had noticed that Molly was building a tolerance to antimony and became frustrated that she was not dying quickly enough.
Now, there is some debate about whether Fredrick knew or suspected that Graham was responsible for Molly’s death; however, I don’t personally believe that he was. As far as I can tell, the origin of this claim comes from the fact that Fredrick insisted that Molly’s body be immediately cremated, a request that some theorists speculate was his way of protecting Graham by ensuring no tests could ever be performed that may later implicate him. It’s up to you to decide what you believe, but I wanted to mention this because it is a popular theory online.
However, regardless of your opinion on that, there is one thing we know for certain about Molly’s death: Graham was completely unaffected by it. He didn’t stop poisoning his father or sister at any point, and he even went on to poison other members of Molly’s family while they were in mourning at her funeral. Thankfully, nobody else died as a result of this round of poisoning, but her entire family did return home believing they had caught whatever illness the Young family was constantly suffering from. It weighed on their minds as they wondered if this unknown sickness had made Molly more susceptible to her car accident injuries and if they, too, would suffer a similar fate.
After the funeral, as the weeks dragged on inside the Young household, Fredrick and Winifred’s health continued to worsen as Graham continued to perform his experiments on them; however, even though he would not be caught for murdering Molly, he was about to make a massive misstep that would draw many eyes toward him.
One day, after growing angry with his father for some unknown reason, Graham dosed Fredrick with a larger-than-average dose of antimony and watched as the man became immediately ill, finally resorting to go to hospital after hours of agony. When he arrived, Fredrick believed that this visit would be just like all the others; however, an astute doctor noted several disturbing signs that all pointed toward the unthinkable. He suggested that Fredrick was suffering from a large buildup of metal molecules in his body and that this was likely the result of long-term metal poisoning. He then ran the proper tests—which showed positive for antimony—and said that, had Fredrick received one more dose, he would have died.
Upon learning of his father’s condition, Graham’s science teacher became concerned after he recalled seeing several vials of unlabeled substances stashed away inside the young boy’s desk. He then searched for it and discovered abundant evidence of Graham’s actions: detailed notes about his experiments that spanned years, books and magazines about the poisoners Graham idolized, disturbing drawings that showed Graham’s family member being dangled by their ankles over vats of acid, and—of course—the poisons themselves.
This teacher then brought his findings to the school’s headmaster, and the two of them arranged for Graham to be interviewed by a psychiatrist; however, knowing that Graham was likely clever enough to keep his mouth shut if he knew the man’s intentions, the headmaster requested that the psychiatrist instead pose as a career counselor. He agreed.
The following day, the psychiatrist met with Graham inside one of the school’s private offices for less than an hour before calmly excusing himself and phoning the police. During this short interview, Graham had both disproven his headmaster’s theory and revealed his own greatest weakness: he was a braggart, and even without putting pressure on him, Graham had confessed to everything: his obsessions, his hobbies, his experiments. He had even boasted about how much skill it had taken to dose his friends and family for years without being caught or accidentally killing himself. He didn’t spare the man any details, and when the police arrived, Graham reiterated the exact same story.
The only thing he didn’t admit to was killing Molly.
Graham was then detained under Britain’s Mental Health Act and transported to a high-security psychiatric hospital called Broadmoor to be further evaluated. Here, he was analyzed by two more psychiatrists who each diagnosed him with several severe personality disorders as well as schizophrenia—although that latter diagnosis is hotly debated. Many believe that, based on Graham’s later behavior, he was exaggerating his mental issues to avoid the full responsibility of his actions.
While all this was happening, the police were meeting with Fredrick and Winifred to inform them of Graham’s actions. Finally, they understood what had been happening to their family, and they were left feeling a mixture of anger, heartbreak, and relief.
Broadmoor
In 1962, a judge deemed that Graham suffered from “a lack of moral sense,” and sentenced him to no less than fifteen years in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital for the attempted murder of his father. However, he also said that Graham should remain there indefinitely if he could not be rehabilitated.
When Graham arrived at his new home, he was the hospital’s youngest patient, and this fact gave his doctors hope that he could be rehabilitated. But if you thought Graham was eager to help himself while imprisoned, you would be very, very wrong.
During Graham’s regularly scheduled visits with one of the hospital’s psychiatrists, Dr. Udwin, he admitted that he desperately missed his antimony and, more so, missed the power that he felt while using it. Graham didn’t want to remain in Broadmoor, he said, but he seemed incapable of lying about his desire to poison, and Dr. Udwin quickly realized that his new patient had a difficult road ahead of him.
As Graham settled in, he found himself in a truly miserable place where his every movement was monitored and documented. In letters that he wrote home to his father, sister, and aunt—many of which went unanswered—he complained about the hospital, its staff, the judge who had sentenced him, and his fellow inmates. One inmate in particular, John Berridge, was a frequent thorn in Graham’s side because he apparently snored very loudly.
Weeks after Graham’s arrival, John Berridge inexplicably died in his sleep.
During the man’s postmortem examination, it was determined that the serial snorer had died from cyanide poisoning, but the hospital’s staff were left clueless as they tried to figure out who had poisoned him and, more importantly, where the poisoner had sourced the cyanide. This was more difficult than it sounds because, at the time, there were over 900 patients being treated at Broadmoor and almost every single one of them had a history of violence.
Eventually, the staff concluded that the cyanide must have come from outside the hospital because none of the property’s plants could be used to produce it. However, Graham—who couldn’t help but brag about his knowledge of poisons—informed them that Laurel bushes could be used to produce cyanide and those bushes were scattered all across the hospital’s campus.
Now, even though Graham should have been caught once again due to his own giant blabbermouth, he was not. Many of the hospital’s other patients had already falsely confessed to poisoning Berridge (remember, this was a psychiatric hospital, and such false confessions were common), and Graham’s admission simply left him buried under a laundry list of other potential suspects.
Eventually, John Berridge’s death was ruled a suicide, and all was forgotten. But there were those who suspected Graham, and the Laurel bushes were eventually removed.
Over the next several years, Graham struggled to keep a low profile. He was angry at the world and everyone around him, and he wanted to regain any semblance of the power he had once felt. He began borrowing medical textbooks from the hospital’s library as he searched desperately for new substances, but he found none. His knowledge was increasing, but the tools at his disposal were few and far between. Eventually, however, he found an outlet:
One afternoon, while on duty, several of the hospital’s staff began feeling ill but nobody could figure out why. Later, while searching for a common thread between them, the staff discovered that their breakroom’s coffee machine had been spiked with bleach, which had been sourced from the staff bathroom. And, although they didn’t know for sure who had done it, they all assumed that it was Graham. A dark joke then formed between the hospital’s management and staff:
“(Work harder) or I will let Graham make your coffee again.”
After this incident, Graham was then watched even more closely by staff, and this increased scrutiny caused him to begin lashing out in even more extreme ways:
As we have already discussed, Graham held very sympathetic views toward a certain 1930’s/1940’s German politician and decided to grow a very distinctive mustache to honor him. He also read and practiced the man’s speeches and carved hundreds of little, wooden symbols that he littered around the hospital. It was concerning behavior, but when surrounded by even worse monsters than himself, Graham’s actions went mostly unnoticed.
Frustrated that he was not receiving the attention he desired, Graham then made another decision: he really did not want to spend the rest of his life imprisoned within the hospital’s maddeningly white walls, so he began playing by the rules for the first time since his arrival. And his plan worked.
By Graham’s fifth year at Broadmoor, Dr. Udwin began to feel that the now 19-year-old was making major progress. From what he saw, Graham appeared to be calming down, straightening up, and repenting for his actions. He hadn’t been getting into fights either, nor had there been a single poisoning anywhere inside the hospital for quite some time. Dr. Udwin believed that, should Graham continue to improve, he was a prime candidate to be declared fully recovered and could someday be released.
This was an exciting prospect that Graham eagerly longed for; however, even though his freedom hung in the balance, he just couldn’t help himself. He was still not in complete control of his actions and several more attempted poisonings went unnoticed during his final years at Broadmoor. In one instance, he poured cleaning chemicals into his ward’s community drinking fountain, which—had one of his fellow inmates not spotted him—could have ended up affecting nearly 100 people.
While this slip-up could have reset Graham’s progress to zero, Dr. Udwin never learned of this incident because Graham’s fellow inmates refused to rat him out. Instead, they administered a healthy dose of prison justice, which resulted in a long stint for Graham in Broadmoor’s infirmary.
However, eventually, in June of 1970, after spending eight full years in Broadmoor and celebrating his 22nd birthday, Graham received word that Dr. Udwin had penned a letter to his judge requesting that Graham be released early. In it, the doctor had stated clearly and in no uncertain terms that Graham was “no longer obsessed with poisons, violence and mischief.”
His request was granted, and Graham was given an early release date.
Before leaving Broadmoor, Graham reportedly told a nurse that he would seek revenge on the world for locking him away. He would take one life for every year he lost behind Broadmoor’s walls.
This threat went unreported because the nurse thought that it was nothing more than a dark joke.
Welcome Home, Mister Psycho
After having officially beaten the system, Graham was released from Broadmoor in February of 1971 and promptly travelled 40 miles west to Hemel Hempstead, the town outside of London where his sister and her new husband were then living.
At this point, Winnifred was overjoyed by her brother’s release because she, too, had been assured by Dr. Udwin that Graham had made a full recovery. She eagerly accepted him into her home, giving him a place to stay so that he could focus on finding a job and getting back on his feet. She was, of course, nervous about having a “reformed” serial poisoner staying inside their home, and these fears only grew when she learned that her father still wanted nothing to do with Graham.
He was still—understandably—a little pissed off about Molly.
Yet, despite this, Winifred remained hopeful as she waited anxiously for her brother’s arrival and hoped that, eventually, Fredrick would come around after seeing that Graham was truly reformed. However, when Graham did arrive, he wasted no time dashing Winnifred’s hopes as she quickly realized that her brother still had many issues left to resolve:
First, Graham may have been able to successfully hide his obsession with poison from her, but he was not able to hide the other less-than-charming parts of his personality, such as his tiny little mustache and the ideology that accompanied it. According to Winnifred, Graham was still overly obsessed with 1940’s Germany and spent many hours trying to convince her to reconsider her opinion on Germany’s controversial tactics during the Second World War—the tactics that Graham himself did not see as controversial at all. He even asserted that Britain’s troubles with Northern Ireland and the IRA could be solved in the same way that Germany had solved its problems with the Jews.
And, if that wasn’t concerning enough for her, Graham also failed to apologize or show remorse for what he had done to their family. At times, he even seemed to revel in it.
The day after arriving in Memel Hampstead, Graham made the journey back to their childhood home in Neasden where he surprised his former neighbors with a visit to talk about his crimes and why he had committed them. He then visited his old primary school, spoke with the headmaster about poisoning his fellow students, and then returned to the shop where he had purchased the antimony years earlier to chat with the staff and other customers. He paraded himself around like a celebrity on a comeback tour. He had no interest in allowing his crimes to be forgotten; he wanted to be remembered, and he enjoyed watching the horrified looks wash over their faces as they all slowly realized who he was.
Overall, as I said, these actions did little to calm Winifred’s nerves, and she quickly suggested that Graham find a new place to stay.
Around a week after his release, after he had finished reliving in his glory days, Graham then began looking for work and eventually landed an interview for a shopkeeper position at a photography development firm called John Hadland Laboratories in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire. This shop, which carried many different chemicals used for photography development, should have known better than to consider a man like Graham due to his history; however, they did consider him because Hadland Labs’ management team was completely unaware of who Graham was and what he had done.
During his interview, Graham told the store’s retail manager, Bob Egle, that he had suffered a severe mental breakdown after the death of his stepmother and had been admitted to Broadmoor for treatment. This explained his lack of education and work experience, although Graham purposefully did not mention how Molly had died or anything about his love of poisons. To prove that he was completely cured, Graham then presented a letter from Dr Udwin that stated he had made “an extremely full recovery” and made no mention whatsoever of Graham’s history as a poisoner.
Graham was then hired and ordered to begin working immediately.
When Graham’s coworkers first met him, they saw a man who was short yet imposing, ostensibly harmless yet unnerving, and when he stared at them, they felt their skin crawling but had no idea why.
That was who Graham was after spending so many years locked away in Broadmoor. He couldn’t force himself to appear normal, and despite his best attempts to hide his many disconcerting behaviors, he was failing miserably and most of his coworkers wanted nothing to do with him.
However, Graham did find a friend in his new manager, Bob Egle, as well as another man named Fred Biggs, one of the store’s other supervisors. These men had both taken pity on poor Graham and went out of their way to chat with the strange young man and give him cigarettes and a small amount of money.
Grateful for their kindness, Graham then used these funds to rent a spot at a nearby hostel. While living here, he met a fellow resident named Trevor Sparks, a football enthusiast and casual football player who Graham began enjoying an occasional beer with after work at a local pub.
Now, had Graham truly been reformed, this would’ve been a golden opportunity for him. He had a job, a place to live, a new friend, and he was having moderate success re-integrating into normal society. But, as we have already discussed, Graham never actually intended to stop poisoning people, and he was about to make good on the threat he made shortly before leaving Broadmoor.
After deciding that it would be too risky to start stealing chemicals from his employer right away, Graham attempted to purchase antimony from a local chemist shop but was denied because the shopkeeper recognized him. Undeterred, Graham then travelled to a more distant shop in London’s west side where he succeeded in purchasing a large amount of the metallic powder under the same false name he had used as a child: M. E. Evans.
He also presented the shopkeeper with a fake ID and said that he was purchasing the powder for research purposes.
A few days later, many of Graham’s new friends and colleagues began to fall ill.
First, while out drinking with Graham after work one evening, Trevor Sparks suddenly began vomiting violently after he was handed a glass of water by Graham moments earlier. With the night now effectively ruined, the pair then started back toward their hostel, but by the time they made it to their front door, Trevor was clutching his stomach in pain and struggling to breathe.
Pretending to care for the man, Graham then helped Trevor inside his room and suggested that he try drinking some wine to settle his stomach. Moments later, Graham handed him a glass spiked with more Antimony. As Trevor sipped it, his face and testicles began to swell painfully, and his intense vomiting was soon accompanied by diarrhea.
Over the next few weeks, Trevor’s health continued to worsen until, one day, during a football match, he completely lost control of his legs and collapsed onto the field. He was then taken to hospital, but doctors were unable to help him; they had no idea how a man’s health could deteriorate so rapidly. Eventually, they blamed it on environmental factors and, as Trevor’s health began to improve, advised him to be more careful.
They never realized that his symptoms were the result of a combination of antimony and thallium, the latter of which Graham had stolen from his workplace. This was, if you recall, the same poison Graham had used to kill Molly nearly a decade earlier.
One evening, while Trevor was still in hospital, Graham also met another pub regular named Howard Grodnow, and as the pair shared a drink together, their conversations bounced between normal pub topics, such as football, women, and Graham’s deep love for chemistry and death. Overall, just a normal night out.
However, later that night, after returning home, Howard began experiencing severe chests pains and aches across his entire body. These pains were excruciating, persisted for months, and could not be alleviated by medical intervention. He would not find out what had happened to him for another full year, and he would continue to suffer throughout that entire time.
Back at Graham’s workplace, several of the store’s longtime employees were also beginning to show strange symptoms, and this is because Graham had decided to target the one thing that no true Brit can turn down: a fresh cup of tea.
Yes, shortly after starting his new job, Graham had graciously offered to make tea for the entire staff, and since they had enjoyed it so much, this act of selflessness became a recurring thing. This is how he earned the name The Teacup Poisoner.
Now, cleverly, Graham didn’t poison the entire staff’s tea at once using the same substance because that would’ve been too obvious. Instead, because each of his coworkers had their own cups, Graham was able to select a single target at a time and monitor their symptoms as they slowly grew ill. He was also careful not to use the same type or amount of poison on multiple people because he didn’t want them to start presenting with the same symptoms and have either the local doctors or police notice a pattern.
To keep track of how much of a substance he had given each of them and to document their symptoms, Graham also purchased a new diary to make notes in.
The first person that Graham targeted at his workplace was Bob Egle, his direct supervisor. This was the man who had kindly given him cigarettes and money when he had neither. Graham repaid the man’s kindness by gradually slipping small amounts of thallium into his tea.
While working together, Graham also learned that Bob Egle was a veteran of the Second World War and had been present at the evacuation of Dunkirk, and if you will allow me to put on my Warographics hat for just a brief moment, I’ll explain why that is relevant:
The evacuation at Dunkirk was a nightmarish emergency evacuation that took place from May 26th to June 4th, 1940, where over 338,000 allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, France. It was a hellish few days, and those that survived, like Bob Egle, returned with tales that were as heartbreaking as they were terrifying.
As someone who was very interested in the Second World War, Graham began asking a litany of personal and uncomfortable questions about Egle’s time as a soldier and brought the subject up far too often for anyone’s comfort. These conversations became especially awkward for Egle and those who overheard them after Graham was seen reading German propaganda in the break room and was overheard giving his opinion on the war—an opinion that was not a popular one amongst British WWII veterans.
Now, it’s not entirely clear if Graham chose Egle as his first workplace victim because of the man’s military service and differing ideology; however, it does seem very likely for reasons that will become obvious very soon.
Over the next couple weeks, Egle began to suffer from frequent stomach problems, and while he didn’t think anything of them at first, he was eventually forced to take several days off work due to uncontrollable diarrhea. While he was away, his condition quickly improved, but once he returned, so did his symptoms. He was then forced to take another full week off because he believed that he had not given himself enough time to fully recover.
During this unexpected absence, Egle’s assistant, Ron Hewitt, stepped up to take over his responsibilities, which also earned him the honor of being Young’s next target for experimentation. After drinking Graham’s tea, he too grew ill and was forced to take time off as well. Ron would end up not returning to work at all as he was already in the process of working out a notice and missed his final days of work due to illness. This would end up being the best outcome possible for him in the end as he did not suffer any long-term effects from this single dose.
Once Egle returned to Hadland’s for a second time, his health had improved so dramatically that he thought he was in the clear; however, after accepting another cup of Graham’s tea—a cup that had been purposefully loaded with a lethal amount of thallium—he once again became sick to his stomach, lost feeling in his arms and legs, and was rushed away to hospital where he soon became paralyzed and eventually passed away ten days later on July 7th, 1971.
Graham had officially taken another life, and he reveled in it. At several points throughout Egle’s stay in hospital, he called the nurse’s line to check up on him, once remarking that it was a shame that someone who had gone through so much during the war should suffer so tragically. He even attended Egle’s cremation service where he brought up the man’s military service with many of his grieving friends and relatives. Thankfully, nobody else was poisoned this time.
When Graham returned to work, he was temporarily promoted to Egle’s position because there was simply no one left to fill it after Hewitt’s departure. Graham had only been working at Hadland Labs for a short time, yet he was now managing the entire storefront with almost no experience.
Surprisingly, the store didn’t immediately fall apart, and Graham’s performance as manager was seen as perfectly adequate. He even managed to find time to continue his daily routine of preparing tea for the entire staff, which had been causing several other employees to be plagued by random, unexplained illnesses that seemed to come and go without reason.
For instance, Diana Smart, a woman whom Graham found to be deeply irritating, would frequently become nauseous halfway through her workday and was forced to return home early. In his diary, Graham wrote:
“(Diana) irritated me yesterday so I packed her off home with an attack of sickness. I only gave her something to shake her up. I now regret that I didn’t give her a larger dose capable of laying her up for a few days.”
After this, Jethro Batt, another of Graham’s coworkers who would sometimes give him rides home after work, also started suffering from stomach problems after drinking a cup of coffee prepared for him by Graham. For some reason, Graham had become heavily upset with Batt, and the dose he administered was large enough to kill the man; however, the coffee did not mask the taste as well as tea did, and Batt detected that something was wrong as soon as the bitter liquid touched his tongue. He tossed the remainder, and Graham jokingly asked, “do you think I’m trying to poison you?”
An hour later, Batt was rushed to the hospital after he began experiencing chest and leg pains. Graham’s dose had been so high that even putting a tiny sip of the liquid in his mouth momentarily had caused Batt to suffer a mild heart attack. Doctors were once again unable to detect the poison in his system.
After this failure, Graham began fearing that he would soon be caught if another person at Hadland’s died, so he started reducing the dosage that he put into the tea, and as a result, many of the staff began to suffer new symptoms caused by long-term exposure. Impotence, skin discoloration and peeling, and rapid hair loss were all common. For any customers who entered Hadland’s, it must have seemed as if a zombie apocalypse had occurred and gone unnoticed.
Exterminating the Bug
Now, by this point, you must be wondering why no one outside Hadland’s had managed to put two and two together, but you should know that there is a decent reason for this:
People in town were noticing an uptick in the number of illnesses, and local health experts had labeled the phenomenon “The Bevington Bug.” However, the reason that no one had been able to trace the illnesses back to Hadland’s—or to Graham himself—was simply a matter of bad luck. You see, there was another unknown illness going around at the same time as Graham’s crime spree, and many local children and their parents had recently become sick.
They were presenting with stomach symptoms that were very similar to the ones commonly seen at Hadland’s, and, naturally, medical professionals assumed that the bulk of the town’s symptoms were all directly related to one thing. They were too busy focusing on the children and their school to notice the startling large number of people that were dying and falling ill at Hadland’s.
As for non-health experts, many suspected that the town’s tap water may be to blame, and that’s because, a decade prior, contaminated tap water had caused several unpleasant deaths throughout the town, and people had not forgotten. Many began boiling their water before consuming it around this time as a precaution.
Eventually, however, the signs became too obvious to ignore, and employees at Hadland’s began to complain to management. Diana, the woman who Graham had poisoned because he found her irritating, even singled Graham out personally during a meeting with her boss because she had noticed that Graham was the only person immune from the symptoms that were plaguing the rest of the staff. She suggested that he must be an immune carrier of some horrible unknown disease, while another employee cited Graham’s well-known interest in poisons and blamed him for spiking their food and drinks.
These accusations, however, were not the prevailing theory, and the most common belief among Hadland’s employees was that the substances they all worked with every day, the harsh chemicals used in photography development, were to blame. It wasn’t a bad theory, yet management remained unconvinced. The store’s director, Godfrey Foster, even made a statement claiming that there were no health risks to working at Hadland’s, and that the chemicals onsite were harmless so long as everyone handled them appropriately.
This did little to calm everyone’s nerves as they continued to get visibly weaker, thinner, balder, and angrier.
Eventually, Fred Biggs, another of the store’s employees, became so ill so quickly that he had to be rushed away to hospital because his skin was beginning to peel off in strips and he could not bear the weight of his own clothes against his body. For nearly three weeks, the man was observed carefully by doctors as he lay in agony until, on November 19th, he passed away and became Graham’s next victim.
Back at Hadland’s, as the news of Biggs’ death spread, fears of chemical exposure resurfaced, and Godfrey Foster decided to contact the physician who had cared for Biggs, Dr. Iain Anderson. Dr. Anderson, who was sure that something was going on at Hadland’s but had not yet identified the cause of Biggs’ death, attempted to alleviate the staff’s worries.
He reiterated what Godfrey Foster had said about the chemicals at Hadland’s being safe and said that he had found no evidence that Biggs’ death had been caused by exposure to heavy metals.
The staff were, once again, unsure and began voicing their concerns; however, there was one man who really wasn’t buying the doctor’s excuses. Graham suggested thallium poisoning, the substance he himself had dosed Biggs’ with directly before his admission to hospital, but Dr. Anderson dismissed Graham’s concerns by saying that it simply wasn’t possible. Graham then looked the doctor up and down, asked several more very specific questions that proved he had an intimate knowledge of thallium’s effects on the human body, and, after some research, Dr.
Anderson began to reconsider. The store-clerk had a point.
Back inside Godfrey Foster’s office, Dr. Anderson brought up his newfound concerns surrounding thallium poisoning along with another much more pressing concern: the fact that one of Foster’s low-wage, undereducated store-clerks somehow knew more about thallium poisoning than he, a fully trained medical doctor, did.
Later that day, police arrived at Hadland’s with some very important questions and realized that the mysterious illnesses had all started around the time Graham had been hired and, yes, thallium poisoning did seem like Biggs’ most likely cause of death.
With their sights now set on the young store clerk, the police then visited the hostel where Graham was staying but found that he was not there. It was a Saturday, and Graham had gone to visit with his aunt and uncle, the pair who had raised him until the age of two, and he was not due back that day.
After being given access to his flat by the hostel’s management, they found all the trappings of a serial poisoner—along with a few other unsavory items. The first thing that immediately stood out to them was the walls; they were covered with pictures of German politicians and scientists, homemade flags, books, and symbols from the era, and many sketches of frail, gaunt people with swollen faces who were clutching their throats as if they had been… well, poisoned. They then discovered an indoor garden on the windowsill that housed many plants that could be used to produce arsenic and various other toxic substances.
Beside it, they found a makeshift lab comprised of beakers, bottles, vials, tubing, and glass jars filled with unknown liquids and powders. It was all very startling; however, the piece of evidence that tied everything in the room together was Graham’s diary.
From underneath Graham’s bed, police retrieved a tiny, bound notebook that contained the full details of his experiments. It included the names and information of his victims in the form of makeshift medical charts, detailed breakdowns about the doses they had been administered, graphs and charts used to calculate those dosages, timelines of their symptoms, and other gruesome details about their deaths. It was an indisputable goldmine that evidenced premeditation, motive, method, and everything else police would need to prosecute Graham for his crimes. In all, there were records from dozens of people, many of which were still suffering major complications in hospitals and homes all around Bovingdon.
Graham Young was arrested at his aunt’s house that night at around midnight, and when the handcuffs were placed on his wrists, he asked, “which one are you doing me for?”
Later, inside an interrogation room, Graham admitted to everything forthright. Over seventy victims in all, he said, and he even finally confessed to murdering his stepmother, Molly, after sitting on this secret for over a decade.
Although, “confessed” is not exactly the right word as police say Graham was bragging throughout their entire conversation about how—at only fourteen years old—he had committed the perfect murder and gotten away with it without ever being suspected of anything. He was also very proud and boastful about being the first ever British person to use thallium as a poison. He felt entirely comfortable telling the officers this because he had already accomplished everything he wanted to in life, he said. He had done what Charles Palmer had done—done it better even—and he had already accepted the fact that he would live out the rest of his days behind bars.
Graham’s words and attitude had shocked police; however, when they requested that he sign a written confession, Graham reportedly laughed in their faces, and by the time his trial rolled around, he had completely changed his story. In court, Graham asserted that, although he did confess, he had only done so because his interrogators had stripped him down to his underwear and starved him. He also claimed that the diary found in his room was nothing more than a fictional account of how he wished he could poison his coworkers, and that he had not actually done it.
Eventually, however, toxicology reports confirmed that Briggs’ had died of thallium poising as Graham had suggested to Dr. Anderson, and although police were never able to establish a clearcut motive other than Graham’s weak “I wanted to see what happened” story, Graham was eventually convicted of two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and two counts of administering poison. He was given four life sentences with an additional ten years tacked on for good measure.
After learning of his son’s actions, Frederick Young is said to have torn his son’s birth certificate to shreds, cursing him for ever being born.
Graham died inside Parkhurtst Prison on August 1st, 1990, when he was only 42 years old. His official cause of death was ruled a heart attack; however, many have speculated that Graham Young’s final victim may have been himself.
Dismembered Appendices
In addition to Graham Young, Broadmoor Hospital has also housed many other famous killers throughout the years, including Peter Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Ripper; David Copeland, The London Nail Bomber; Daniel Gonzalez, The Freddy Krueger Killer; and James Kelly, the man who is considered by some to be Jack the Ripper.
After his sentencing, Graham made it known that he would like to have a waxwork dummy of his head placed on display at Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors alongside his idols, Charles Palmer and Hawley Crippen. Years later, his request was granted, although by that point, Palmer’s head had already been removed and he was instead situated between Hawley Crippen and John Haigh, The Acid Bath Murderer.
While awaiting his trial, Graham once offered his lawyer a piece of cake while meeting with him inside a prison conference room to discuss his defense strategy. Aware of the crimes of which his client was accused, his lawyer initially rejected it; however, he reconsidered after Graham reportedly said:
“Come on, I wouldn’t poison my lawyer.”
The man then ate the cake… and was completely fine afterwards.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. William Palmer was hanged in 1856 before 30,000 spectators after poisoning his friend John Cook to erase gambling debts.
- Graham Young idolized Palmer from age eight, studying chemistry and toxicology to replicate his poison murders.
- Young poisoned family members with antimony and thallium for months, killing his stepmother Molly at age fourteen in 1962.
- After eight years at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, Young was released in 1971 despite continuing to poison inmates and staff.
- Young murdered two coworkers and poisoned dozens more at Hadland Labs by spiking their tea, earning him the nickname ‘The Teacup Poisoner.’
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Graham Young’s main idol and inspiration for his poisoning crimes?
Graham Young’s main idol was Dr. William Palmer, a 19th-century English doctor who was hanged in 1856 for murdering his friend John Parson Cook with poison. Young studied Palmer’s methods extensively, particularly how Palmer used antimony to make deaths appear like accidents, and even cited Palmer as his personal idol.
How did Graham Young first acquire antimony as a teenager?
At age 13, Graham Young contacted a local chemist and convinced the fully trained professional that he was 17 years old and enrolled in university. He used a fake name, ‘M.E. Evans,’ on the mandatory poison register to purchase antimony, which he then stored in a tiny glass vial hidden in his bedroom.
What was Graham Young’s first successful murder, and how old was he at the time?
Graham Young’s first successful murder was his stepmother Molly, whom he killed on April 21, 1962, when he was 14 years old. He had switched from antimony to thallium because Molly was building a tolerance to antimony. The coroner attributed her death to a prolapsed vertebra from a prior car accident rather than poison.
How did Graham Young get caught for poisoning his family members?
Graham was caught after he gave his father Fredrick a larger-than-average dose of antimony, causing him to go to the hospital where a doctor detected metal poisoning and ran tests that came back positive for antimony. Graham’s science teacher then searched his desk, found detailed notes about his experiments, books about poisoners, disturbing drawings, and the poisons themselves. A psychiatrist posing as a career counselor interviewed Graham, who bragged and confessed to everything.
What happened to fellow Broadmoor patient John Berridge after Graham Young complained about his snoring?
Weeks after Graham’s arrival at Broadmoor, John Berridge inexplicably died in his sleep. The postmortem determined he died from cyanide poisoning. Graham informed staff that Laurel bushes on the hospital grounds could produce cyanide, but due to false confessions from other patients, Berridge’s death was eventually ruled a suicide and Graham was not caught.
How did Graham Young obtain employment at John Hadland Laboratories after his release from Broadmoor?
Graham Young obtained employment at John Hadland Laboratories by telling retail manager Bob Egle that he had suffered a severe mental breakdown after his stepmother’s death and had been admitted to Broadmoor for treatment. He deliberately omitted how Molly died or anything about his love of poisons, and presented a letter from Dr. Udwin stating he had made ‘an extremely full recovery’ with no mention of his history as a poisoner.
How did Graham Young earn the nickname ‘The Teacup Poisoner’?
Graham Young earned the nickname ‘The Teacup Poisoner’ shortly after starting at Hadland Laboratories when he graciously offered to make tea for the entire staff. This became a recurring act of apparent selflessness, which he used to selectively poison individual coworkers by targeting their personal cups with different substances and amounts to avoid creating a noticeable pattern.
What ultimately led to Graham Young’s arrest in 1971?
Graham Young’s arrest resulted from several factors: Fred Biggs died from thallium poisoning after Graham had directly dosed him; Graham suggested thallium poisoning to Dr. Iain Anderson and demonstrated intimate knowledge of its effects, raising suspicion; police discovered his diary with detailed records of experiments on dozens of people; and a search of his hostel room revealed Nazi memorabilia, a makeshift lab, toxic plants, and his incriminating notebook with victim charts, dosages, and symptom timelines.
What was Graham Young’s sentence, and how did he die?
Graham Young was convicted of two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and two counts of administering poison. He received four life sentences with an additional ten years. He died inside Parkhurst Prison on August 1, 1990, at age 42. His official cause of death was ruled a heart attack, though many have speculated that his final victim may have been himself.
What unusual request did Graham Young make regarding Madame Tussauds, and was it granted?
After his sentencing, Graham Young requested that a waxwork dummy of his head be placed on display at Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors alongside his idols William Palmer and Hawley Crippen. Years later, his request was granted, though by that point Palmer’s head had already been removed, so Graham was situated between Hawley Crippen and John Haigh, The Acid Bath Murderer.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Graham Young: The Teacup Poisoner
- Hero image source by Tbmurray / openverse, by.
