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    The Arsenic Affair: The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry
    The Arsenic Affair: The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry
    The Arsenic Affair: The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    The Arsenic Affair: The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry

    By Richard O Jones

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    About this ebook

    Before the dust settled on the 1917 case, there would be accusations of murder, an exhumation of the body, three trials, one hung jury, a prison break and a scandal that rocked Southwestern Ohio.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRichard O Jones
    Release dateJul 13, 2014
    ISBN9781311610409
    The Arsenic Affair: The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry
    Author

    Richard O Jones

    About Richard O Jones After 25 years writing the first draft of history as a writer and editor for his hometown newspaper, the Hamilton Journal-News, Richard O Jones left the grind of daily journalism in the fall of 2013 for a life of true crime. He is the author of two books on the History Press imprint, Cincinnati’s Savage Seamstress: The Shocking Edythe Klumpp Murder Scandal (October, 2014) and The First Celebrity Serial Killer: Confessions of the Strangler Alfred Knapp (May, 2015). In 2016, he began a twice-weekly podcast "True Crime Historian" (www.truecrimehistorian.com) where he tells stories of the scoundrels, scandals and scourges of the past through newspaper accounts in the golden age of yellow journalism. He created the Two-Dollar Terror series of novella-length ebooks. Mr. Jones, a creative writing graduate of Miami University, Ohio, spent most of his career as an arts journalist and has won numerous awards for his reviews and profiles. In 2004, he was named a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre and Musical Theatre program at the Annenberg School of Journalism. The Ohio Associated Press named him Feature Writer of the Year in 2011. Since leaving the newspaper world, Mr. Jones has become an active member of his local history community as a board member of the Butler County Historical Society, a member of the History Speakers Bureau and a regular presenter at Miami University in a program titled “Yesterday’s News.” The Michael J. Colligan History Project of Miami University presented Mr. Jones with a Special Recognition for Contributions to Public History for his coverage of the Centennial Commemoration of the Great Flood of 1913. Photo by Sandra M. Orlett

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      Book preview

      The Arsenic Affair - Richard O Jones

      The Arsenic Affair:

      The True Crime of Belle Wardlow and Harry Cowdry

      By Richard O Jones

      A Two-Dollar Terror #2

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 Richard O Jones

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook dealer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

      Cincinnati Enquirer

      Table of Contents

      Quinsy

      Exhumation

      Arrest

      Visitors

      Inquest

      Trial

      The Defense

      The Verdict

      Confession

      Prison Break

      Belle for the Prosecution

      Notes

      Sources

      About the Author

      The Arsenic Affair

      Lorel Wardlow had been suffering for over a week with quinsy, so when he died on February 23, 1917, officials didn’t pay much notice and saw no need to perform an autopsy.

      But then the neighbors started talking...

      Quinsy

      Lorel Wardlow and his wife Belle had been working what was known as the Scudder farm for many years near the tiny village of Kyles, a train stop about eight miles outside of Hamilton, Ohio, in Liberty Township along the road to Middletown.

      He had been in the care of a country doctor, Dr. Homer D. Williamson of Bethany, whose treatment had been confirmed by the city doctor, the well-respected Dr. Mark Millikin of Hamilton. He clearly suffered from quinsy, a complication of tonsillitis that results in severe abscesses of the throat. Today, quinsy would be treated with antibiotics, but the discovery of penicillin was still more than a decade away. Consequently, quinsy was then fairly common and frequently fatal, and it was listed as Lorel Wardlow’s cause of death, though there was no autopsy or other postmortem examination.

      Dr. Williamson visited the Wardlow home several times during the man’s illness and had given him a variety of medicines, including arsenic injections, a common treatment against infections at the time. Some of the medicines were in tablet form, meant to be dissolved in water, and some in capsules.

      During his visits, however, the country doctor was unaware of the complicated drama unfolding around the patient, certainly had no inkling that within the next two years he would testify at three murder trials as a result of Wardlow’s passing.

      After Wardlow’s body was taken back to his hometown of Mt. Orab, 50 miles away in Brown County, gossip began swirling around Kyle that quinsy wasn’t really Lorel Wardlow’s undoing, but poison.

      Wardlow’s sister Mary Lou Brown approached Butler County Coroner Edward C. Cook concerning the rumors and he began to investigate, along with Butler County Sheriff Frank E. Pepper and his detective, Frank Clements.

      One of the men she told the coroner to see was John Williams, who lived about a mile from the Scudder farm.

      Williams told the coroner that one of Wardlow’s farm hands, Harry Cowdry, had come to him several days before Wardlow’s death and told Williams the man was going to die and that he was getting ready to take over the farm.

      Then after Wardlow died, Cowdry had come to him again saying that Wardlow’s wife Belle had poisoned him and wouldn’t shut up about it. Cowdry said he was afraid that he would be implicated in the murder and would be arrested within the next 48 hours, so he asked Williams to help him get a confession from Belle. He wanted Williams to hide in the Wardlow barn, then he would lure Belle in on the pretext of wanting to talk to her, then get her to admit that she had given her husband arsenic.

      Williams refused.

      Johnny, you know Belle’s a bad woman, Cowdry said.

      I don’t know that she is, Williams replied. She has always been all right in my sight.

      You know she’s a bad woman and gave her husband poison and now she is always telling me about it, Cowdry said. You come down and hide in the barn and I’ll bring her out and let you hear.

      Williams wanted no part of it, but he told the coroner what Cowdry told him, adding another incident near the time of Wardlow’s death: Belle Wardlow had once come into Cowdry’s room and placing a revolver over his heart had told him she would kill him if he didn’t stick with her. That’s what Cowdry said, anyway.

      Coroner Cook also spoke to Bob Foster, Wardlow’s other farm hand who had been working for him since

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