When Blanche Taylor Moore and her husband went on a honeymoon and he suddenly had to be taken to the hospital, the doctor discovered he had been poisoned by arsenic The dose wasn’t enough to kill him, so Blanche gave him a couple of extra poisoned milk shakes. When the story got out, some people recalled that Blanche’s first husband had died from arsenic poisoning. Others remembered a boyfriend had died of a heart attack. But now the police became suspicious. They dug up her boyfriend’s body and discovered his corpse retained a toxic dose of arsenic. Her father’s body was then exhumed; it also contained arsenic.6
As Blanche’s activities became public, people began calling the police saying they had reason to believe that Blanche had killed their relatives as well. Blanche had remained innocent for a quarter century. To my knowledge, no man in American history’ has ever been assumed innocent while his mother, first wife, and a woman friend died of poisoning and a second wife almost died of poisoning Especially when all this happened in one community-, as it did with Blanche.
Is it possible that by not subjecting Blanche to the type of investigation to which a man would have been subjected she was able to kill people for a quarter of a century-?