Graham Young
The man, who was known as the ‘greatest British poisoner’ of the twentieth century, died August 1st 1990 in his cell in the Parkhurst prison of a heart attack. Young was born September 7th 1947 in London. His mother died the same year and an uncle and aunt took care of the baby until his father remarried in 1950. According to his sister, who was 8 years older, Graham seemed like a normal child, although it occurred to her that her little brother liked to be alone. When he got older, it appeared that his intelligence was over the average. This showed his high marks for English and chemistry. What nobody seemed to notice however, was that Young already got interested in the effects of several kinds of poison, and this interest would become an obsession later on. In his teenage years, Young got to know the nazi-movement and he grew out to be a fervent worshipper of Hitler. He envied Hitler because of the power he had taken and he was determined to reach the same status. His growing knowledge of poisoning would help him to obtain that power over others. That year, 1961, he started to poison his family members systematically. He didn’t give them lethal doses, but enough to make them feel very nauseous. Instead of spending his money on the usual things, teenage boys buy; he purchased small doses of antimonium and digitalis. He claimed he needed them for experiments at school. That way, he got a gigantic amount of poison; experts estimate he had enough of it to kill 300 people. Young didn’t only use his family members as laboratory rabbits. Sometimes he just forgot in which food he had put the doses, so it happened several times he suffered from vomiting and cramps himself. He also took small doses to clear himself from any suspicion. He even tested his poisonous fluids and powders on his best friend. After a while, the diseases that haunted the Youngs started to cause some suspicion. Grahams aunt Winnie was aware of his interests and didn’t trust him. When a psychiatrist was asked to see him, Graham admitted in an indirect way he had control over the health condition of his relatives. They warned the police. May 23rd, a couple of police officers caught Young at home. He realized lying was senseless, so he confessed. He didn’t mention he had given his stepmother a lethal dose. In his cell, Young tried to commit suicide by hanging himself, but he could be stopped in time. He told a psychiatrist he felt helpless because he didn’t possess any poison. Not even during his trial did he talk about his stepmother whose remains couldn’t be used as evidence, because there weren’t any: she was cremated. Medical experts claimed it would be best to put Young in a psychiatric institution. The judge convicted him to 15 years in Broadmoor, an institution for mental disordered criminals. Nine years later however, Young got out and he even found a job. His supervisor didn’t know anything about his past. The day before he went to work, Young bought some antimonium and thallium. Only a short period after Young began to work, his foreman, Bob Egle, got sick and eventually died. His death came as a shock to his colleagues, especially Young seemed to be very upset. A few weeks later, Egle’s successor, Ron Hewitt, got sick as well. He decided to quit his job and saved his own life that way. The amount of employees that were showing all the same symptoms grew spectacularly: up to 70 of them suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. Several people had to stay in hospital for a while, but it didn’t come to more deaths. The cause of this odd disease stayed a mystery. A lot of the victims became ill after drinking a cup of tea or coffee that Young made for them, but they didn’t seem to link the one with the other. They just assumed there was some kind of virus going around. A few months later, the ‘virus’ caught Fred Biggs. He was brought to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London, but it was too late. He died too. At that point, some began to realize there had to be an investigation for the cause of this mysterious disease. Young asked one of the investigators if he had considered the possibility of a large-scaled thallium poisoning. Some of Young’s colleagues started to get suspicious and wondered if he really was that innocent as he seemed to be. One of them went to see the chief. Young had told him his main hobby was studying the effects of toxic products. They warned the police immediately. When Young’s past was checked for a possible criminal past, the investigators couldn’t believe what they saw; Young got arrested right away. When his apartment was searched, antimonium, thallium and aconitine were found, but they also discovered a diary, which showed an image of the cold, calculated murderer Young was. He described in a scientific way which doses he had given to his victims, the effects of it and whether he would allow them to live or whether he would let them die a horrible death. During the first questioning, Young claimed that his notes didn’t have anything to do with reality, but that he was planning to write a novel. Later on, he did confess. He didn’t have any other motive for the murders than that they gave him power over other’s lives. He didn’t see his victims as human beings anymore, but he thought of them as test objects. When he officially was accused of several murders and even more attempts, he pretentiously reacted that he could have killed them all, but that he chose to let them stay alive. Young’s trial started June 19, 1972 and lasted for ten days. He pleaded not guilty, still claiming his notes were meant to be used for a novel. Young was found guilty and was convicted to life in a regular prison. His life sentence ended August 1st, 1990.
