Filed by Gregg Olsen

#1 New York Times best selling author

December 19, 2020

The case

Stella Nickell's small-time world was one of big-time dreams. In 1986, her biggest one came true when her husband died during a seizure, making her the beneficiary of a $175,000-plus insurance payoff until authorities discovered Bruce Nickell's headache capsules had been laced with cyanide.

In an attempt to cover her tracks, Stella did the unconscionable. She saw to it that a stranger would also become a "random casualty" of cyanide-tainted painkillers. Stella's cunning plan came undone when her daughter Cynthia notified federal agents.

From history.com

Stella Nickell is convicted on two counts of murder* by a Seattle, Washington, jury. She was the first person to be found guilty of violating the Federal Anti-Tampering Act after putting cyanide in Excedrin capsules in an effort to kill her husband.

Stella and Bruce Nickell married in 1976, shortly after seven people were killed in Chicago, Illinois, from poisoned Tylenol pills. According to Stella’s daughter from a previous marriage, Stella had begun planning Bruce’s murder almost from the honeymoon. The Chicago Tylenol incident (which was never solved) had a lasting impact on Stella, who decided that cyanide would be a good method of murder.

In 1985, Stella took out a life insurance policy on Bruce that included a substantial indemnity payment for accidental death. A year later, Stella put cyanide in an Excedrin capsule that Bruce later took for a headache. He died in the hospital, but doctors did not detect the cyanide and ascribed the death to emphysema. Stella, who stood to lose $100,000 if his death wasn’t ruled an accident, decided to alter her plan.

Nickell tampered with five additional bottles of Excedrin and placed them on store shelves in the Seattle area. Six days later, Susan Snow took one of these capsules and died instantly. After her death was reported in the news, Stella called police to tell them that she thought her husband had also been poisoned.

When investigators came to Nickell’s home to pick up the Excedrin bottle, she told them that there were two bottles and that she had purchased them on different days at different places. When both turned out to contain contaminated capsules, investigators grew suspicious. FBI detectives knew that it was an unlikely coincidence that Nickell had purchased two of four known contaminated bottles purely by chance. Still, hard evidence against her was hard to come by until January 1988.

Cynthia Hamilton, Stella’s daughter, came forward (possibly in order to obtain reward money) with her account of Stella’s plan to kill her husband. She told authorities that her mother had done extensive research at the library. When detectives investigated, they found that Stella had borrowed, but never returned, a book called Human Poisoning. Her fingerprints were also found all over other books on cyanide.

What I found on the hunt for this story

When I was researching Bitter almonds, I visited Stella Nickels in prison in California. I was nervous to visit her after the book launched. When we had a chance to sit down to talk, I asked her what she thought of the book. At first she was very upset with me and didn’t think I treated her fairly, but then after reading the book, she said that she would accept the portrayal. She said that she was a great judge of character and that she trusted me. Coming from a multiple victim killer, that meant a lot :)

Stella loved her Polaroid camera

Where are they now

Nickell was sentenced to two terms of 90 years in prison for the deaths of Bruce and Snow, and three 10-year terms for the other product tampering charges. All sentences were to run concurrently, and the judge ordered Nickell to pay a small fine and forfeit her remaining assets to the families of her victims. She is now up for parole, but recent turns of events is that she has finally confessed to the murders and her parole is still under review. I have talked with her daughter a number of times and she has asked me to attend the hearings as a character witness to keep her in prison.

More Crime Files you might like