Latest / PNW Haunts & Homicides / Stella Nickell: The Excedrin Poisoner

Transcript

Stella Nickell: The Excedrin Poisoner · PNW Haunts & Homicides

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If nobody else dies, then it looks like just your husband and just your bottle.
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And they look a lot closer at that.
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Yeah.
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And they're going to start with the assumption that, yeah, probably that was tainted, probably
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that was tampered with.
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And I think the call may be coming from inside the house.
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[Music]
0:37
Hi, Cassie.
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Hi, Caitlyn.
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Hi, creepy people.
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Hello!
0:45
Hello!
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This is so weird.
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I know.
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[Laughter]
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We're not together.
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[Laughter]
0:53
Oh, oh, oh, what a year.
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Oh wait, I said it wrong.
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Oh, holy shit, what a year.
1:00
[Laughter]
1:01
I was like, wait, something was missing.
1:03
You're like, that's not quite right.
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I love it.
1:08
Should we introduce the show?
1:09
We didn't finish the intro, yeah.
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That's fine.
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It's a little unhinged today because our routine is thrown off.
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Okay.
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And beneath the layers and layers of ADHD, there may be something else a little neuro-spicy.
1:26
in our makeup and we just can't.
1:31
We simply can't.
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We can't.
1:34
We can't.
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We can't.
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It's fine.
1:37
If you're new to our creepy corner of the world, this is PNW Haunts and Homicides, where
1:42
we chat about true crime, paranormal, and all things creepy in the Pacific Northwest.
1:48
And we do a terror reading at the end of every episode for a little deeper insight
1:53
into our topic for the day.
1:56
Make sure you stick around if you're into that kind of thing.
1:59
All right, Cassie, are you ready?
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I am caffeinated.
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I have gotten all my sillies out, so I think I'm ready.
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Excellent.
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On June 11th, just after 6.30 a.m., 15-year-old Hayley Snow would find her 40-year-old mother.
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Sue Snow had collapsed in the bathroom with a weak pulse.
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Oh, snow?
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I know.
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I love that.
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I know.
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I'm lusher in the Hunger Games, I guess.
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That's a bad snow, right?
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Oh, yeah.
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I'm thinking of snow.
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I know.
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Oh, that's a good snow.
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Also, regular snow is really pretty and cool.
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I know.
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I want some snow.
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Just like a little bit.
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I'm really just trying to focus on the cuteness of this name.
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Yeah.
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Because I don't want to get rest.
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Well, though paramedics had rushed her to the hospital in Seattle by helicopter, she
3:05
would pass away without being able to say goodbye to her daughter, nor her husband, Paul
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Webkin.
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He was a long haul trucker and had been on the road when he got the call.
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Oh, how awful.
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I know.
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Oh, there's nothing you can do.
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I mean, there's nothing you can do anyway, but just like being far away.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And when he showed up at the hospital, I don't think that he really understood the seriousness
3:36
of the situation.
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Oh, yeah, which is kind of a, that's a tough blow.
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Yeah.
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But just 15, Haley Snow had lost her mother who she was incredibly close to.
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She didn't refer to her mother as mom or by her first name as some teenagers might in a
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show of teenage rebellion.
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She still called Sue Mommy.
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Oh, I call my mommy Mommy all the time.
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I know.
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I love my mommy.
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Sue had grown up in the American Southwest before relocating to the state of Washington eventually.
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She worked as a bank teller, but was eventually promoted multiple times while she worked to
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attain her GED.
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Sue had married her second husband, Paul, on Thanksgiving 1985.
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Oh, can you imagine the wedding meal?
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Oh, yeah.
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Well, it's just so bizarre because I was researching this case right around Thanksgiving.
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Oh.
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And when I learned that, I had been listening to Live Laugh Larsonies Thanksgiving episode
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and I was like, stop.
5:02
What?
5:03
Oh, because I've read and listened to like so much different like source material and
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different podcasts and documentaries about this case over the years.
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And I've never heard that detail.
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And then right around Thanksgiving, I found that out.
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They got married on Thanksgiving.
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Oh, it's just proof that you're on the right track.
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I, yeah.
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As charming as that all-mate sound, Sue's life before her untimely death wasn't completely
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devoid of conflict.
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Obviously, she had been previously married prior to Paul to a man named Connie.
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In fact, this man was Haley's father.
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Their marriage had ended, though not for lack of trying, it seems.
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But ultimately, Sue's infidelity was a likely contributing factor.
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And I say that not to demonize her far from it, but because it's important to understand
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that many of the real people that we talk about in all of these cases, they contain
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multitudes.
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Yeah.
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Just like living people, I mean, right?
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We all got shit.
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Yeah, you're a real person and life happens.
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Before Sue was airlifted from Auburn and taken to Seattle's Harborview Hospital, the
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tables would be turned.
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Her husband, Paul, had an affair with his high school girlfriend, Mary, though it was
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reportedly several months prior to Sue's death.
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Oh.
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Sue's autopsy would later reveal the presence of cyanide.
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What?
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Thankfully, though the patient showed no obvious signs of toxicity, the Emmy did run a
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tox screen to test for it.
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Better almonds and betrayal.
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Ooh, bitter almonds.
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What does that mean?
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That's what cyanide smells like to the percentage of the population that can smell it.
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I don't even really know what cyanide is.
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I mean, I know it's like a poison.
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But are you going to go like, what are the use of for what's up with cyanide?
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Cyanide used to be in a lot of really mundane products and things that people came into contact
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with.
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We will talk about a couple of things that it is or has been found in, but I'm going
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to say that.
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Okay.
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For now, just picture like the cyanide capsules that the Nazis reportedly had.
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Oh, that's right.
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That's right.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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You don't need a lot of it, depending on the purity for it to be effective.
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God, how do people even get that shit?
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Well, I'm sure you'll go into it.
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Yeah.
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The day of Sue's funeral detectives searched the home with Paul's permission to do so.
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He felt he had nothing to hide and was quite willing to cooperate with investigators.
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In fact, he was rarely anything if not forthcoming.
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That's a good sign, right?
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Even early on in the investigation, he expressed concern that his wife's sudden death bore a
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startling resemblance to that of the victims of the 1982 Tylenol tampering murders in
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Chicago.
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What?
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He remembered that?
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That's kind of an odd.
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This was only a handful of years later.
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Oh, okay.
9:00
That's true.
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Okay.
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Yeah, it was pretty fresh in the nation's consciousness, I would say.
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That sounds terrifying though.
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I don't want to.
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Yes, it was.
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Though it had occurred on the other side of the country, the deaths of seven individuals
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still loomed ominously for many nationwide, having occurred just a handful of years prior.
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Still it was uncertain just exactly what had happened and who or what was to blame for
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Sue's tragic death.
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Oh, did they find the people that did the other thing?
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I don't think the Tylenol murders have ever been solved.
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What?
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That's part of why it kind of stuck with people, I think.
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This is a NPR article from July of 2023, which says that officially everyone says the case
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is still open and ongoing.
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Unfortunately, the person who was their prime suspect apparently has passed away.
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So we're probably not going to have answers for that one.
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Okay.
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So I think that's actually pretty important context.
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It's not something that I really went deep on, but it's like one side of it, it looks suspicious,
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right?
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Because you're like, well, why are you bringing up this other, yeah.
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But it had just happened in recent years, and sure, it's across the country, essentially,
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right?
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But it's also unsolved.
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So I guess I would be worried about that too.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Fuck, I'm now I'm worried about it now.
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I mean, you should be.
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That's why we have the tamper seals and stuff.
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Literally that case is why.
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Yeah, that's really scary because sometimes I'll be like, eh, fuck it.
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No, don't, don't fuck around and find out.
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Don't fuck it.
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Mostly with food because I'm just like, I'm hungry.
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I mean, the same thing can be done with over the counter or prescription medication.
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In some cases, it could be done with food.
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All kinds of tampering can occur.
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You just, yeah, don't, don't.
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Likely, desperately craving anything resembling normalcy in the shocking aftermath of her mother's
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death.
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Haley went to school the next day.
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Oh, while one would hope that she would be met by sympathetic peers, she faced whispered
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rumors for returning to school so soon after her mother's passing.
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Even as a grown woman, she would never forget how that made her feel.
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That's fucked up.
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It can be dicks, but this kind of just seems like an all-time low.
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Like she came back to school the next day.
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So rather than having some sort of like sympathy or, you know, saying, like, gosh, I'm so sorry.
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Or, you know, trying to help her in any way, people just whispered about like, oh, I bet she
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killed her mom.
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Oh my god, that's so sad.
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She's like, can you imagine?
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She's traumatized already and she's trying to do like the normal thing to feel normal.
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She's the one who found her mom.
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Oh, I wish she didn't go.
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I just want to get her a hug.
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She was still in the house with her mom and she finally realized something was off.
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And actually the timeline in that regard, I think we're going to talk about a little
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bit more because it does become significant.
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She's remained an active advocate to ensure justice for her mother's death all these years
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later.
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As the investigation into Sue's death progressed, her autopsy could not confirm the exact cause
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of death, but the talk screen did confirm a fatal level of cyanide.
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Her paul's product tampering theory that was proffered some might argue just a little too
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early and eagerly.
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He told investigators that Sue took excedrin for frequent chronic headaches.
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I feel you, girl.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah.
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Here I am just to ruin everything.
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For me?
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I'm just going to say that I'm not going to be a victim of any sort of harm.
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I'm just going to say that I'm not going to be a victim of any harm.
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I'm not going to be a victim of any harm.
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I'm not going to be a victim of any harm.
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I'm not going to be a victim of any harm.
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I'm not going to be a victim of any harm.
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Sue was known, at least by the family's account, to have stereotypically purchased tablets.
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Paul would also later state that both he and Sue took excedrin for headaches, as well
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as claiming they had both used it as a caffeine supplement.
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Oh.
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And I'm personally feeling attacked.
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Is that what you do?
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I have definitely taken it where I'm like, I don't feel like very energetic and I don't
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know for anyone who has migraines.
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Sometimes when you just generally feel crummy, there's this little like wriggling doubt or
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worry in your mind that, oh no, I don't want this to start a migraine.
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Yeah.
15:07
That makes sense.
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You know, just really tired and you feel like you're, you don't, for me a lot of times, I
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don't really fully always understand why it is that I don't feel good.
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And sometimes I think it's because in that time, I'm neurologically compromised.
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And so normal things like I have a headache, I should take, you know, medicine or something,
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I get distracted.
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It's like ADHD and migraine come together to create this beautiful baby that keeps me from
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the medicine.
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So the struggle is real.
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Yeah.
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But I found that very interesting because I've definitely taken excedrin when I felt like I
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needed more than anything the caffeine.
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And I thought this could stave off a headache that I don't even realize I'm about to have.
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Yeah.
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That makes sense.
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That's just your intuition, right?
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Yeah.
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I think so.
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May ever.
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By June 16, less than a week after Sue's death, the FDA had completed their analysis of
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the pill bottle found in the family home.
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Paul was not the least bit surprised to learn of the recall of lot number 5H 102 due to product
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tampering and the inherent threat that potential poisoning posed.
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No.
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So it was recalled.
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It was recalled.
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Did you know that a gelatin capsule can dissolve in as little as 10 minutes once ingested?
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I mean, I feel like it was kind of quick because that's like the whole thing with gel, right?
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Yeah.
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I mean, depending on the purpose of the capsule and what's inside it, it can be fast acting.
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It can also be extended release.
17:07
Oh, okay.
17:08
So there's a number of way the capsules are used depending on, you know, the application
17:14
and what medication goes in it.
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That was roughly the amount of time that had elapsed since Haley had seen her mother right
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around the time she reportedly took a dose of exedron and before Sue collapsed in the family
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home's master bath.
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Oh, God.
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So it's really looking like that was the problem?
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Yeah.
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Definitely.
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It's definitely looking like that is 1,000% the problem.
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That's me, the exedron, I am the problem.
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But Auburn, sleepy as it might seem next to a city like Seattle, was about to be rocked
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because there was more than one seemingly suspicious spouse and bottle of exedron in town.
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What?
18:06
There's another one?
18:09
As indie podcasters, we love to show our support of other awesome shows.
18:17
So stay tuned for the promo we've got to share with you this week.
18:21
Let's show them some love.
18:23
You can find their info in our show notes.
18:26
Fire breathing kittens is an actual play one shot podcast that plays various tabletop
18:33
role playing games with a season long plot.
18:37
This is the beginning and an end to each week story.
18:40
You can start at any episode.
18:44
Every week has a different combination of four from the same rotating cast group of people.
18:51
Join fire breathing kittens as they solve detective mysteries, attempt comedic banter, and enjoy
18:59
friendship.
19:01
You guys, we're back.
19:03
And don't worry, we did get more wine.
19:06
Well, of course, it was just after 5 p.m. the evening of June 5th in 1986 when an Auburn
19:17
Washington man was rushed from his home on southeast Lake Money Smith Road by helicopter
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to the Harbor View hospital in Seattle where he later sadly died.
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Wow, and I am so glad that I can see your face so that I know that you have the same reaction
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to southeast Lake Money Smith Road.
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Yeah.
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And I did.
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I was like, I was picturing like that, who is that like Donald Duck in a money thing doing
19:54
this?
19:55
Yeah.
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Like did we name this road?
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Right?
19:58
It's very strange, but yeah.
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According to his initial autopsy, the cause of death was declared to be emphysema.
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That man was 52 year old Bruce Nichol.
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Did he have emphysema?
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He did.
20:16
Okay.
20:17
I like death.
20:18
At least he had it, I guess.
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Yeah.
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But it's kind of weird.
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Kind of weird.
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Emphysema isn't usually something that's like a sudden death.
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Yeah, no.
20:30
So yeah, huh.
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Bruce's wife released his body for autopsy right after his death.
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Of course, if your loved one passed away unexpectedly, you would probably want answers as well.
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Yeah.
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As it turns out, his beautiful wife Stella was quite determined to get to the bottom of
20:54
what had occurred and just what had caused Bruce's death.
21:00
James legit.
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If it was my husband, I would be pretty pissed.
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Yeah.
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In the meantime, the first person that she called to notify of Bruce's death was his boss.
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What?
21:15
Uh-huh.
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I mean, you're grieving.
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I can't say what I would do, but that's probably not who I would call first.
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Yeah.
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This next part.
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If I finish that sentence, who was struck by Stella's frankness?
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She called and said, "Um, he's not coming into work."
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'Cause he died.
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Wow.
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Essentially.
21:42
Uh, yeah.
21:43
No, that's weird.
21:45
Yeah.
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I would agree.
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He wasn't the first man to make note of this throughout her life, that frankness.
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That alone following the death of her late husband Bruce, and he certainly would not be the
22:00
last.
22:02
Walter and Ruth of nearby Winachee were shocked to learn of the passing of their only
22:08
child.
22:10
The couple was by this time in their 90s, but no doubt they could remember all too vividly
22:18
a year's long struggle to become parents some decades prior.
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Oh.
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Walter had been an Apple farmer, Ruth, a teacher.
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Oh my fucking god, stop it.
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He farmed apples.
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He was an Apple farmer.
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You give apples to teachers.
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Mm-hmm.
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It's about as wholesome as it gets.
22:45
It seems like.
22:46
I feel so bad for them.
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Yeah.
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They had brought Bruce home in June of 1934 when he was just a weak old.
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So they had struggled for a while to get pregnant and they adopted.
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They brought him home as a brand new baby.
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I mean, these days I feel like it's something that gets talked about a lot where people, of
23:18
course everybody wants a baby because it's like the clean slate of adoption, if you will.
23:25
But yeah, they actually had that.
23:27
They have had Bruce in their lives since he was a weak old.
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Wow.
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Oh, and they're 90.
23:37
Oh my gosh, this couple.
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Bruce grew up on a large Apple orchard, quite idyllic from the outside.
23:47
And Apple see it's upside in.
23:49
No, that's arsenic, huh?
23:50
Yeah, it is.
23:52
It's arsenic.
23:53
I was like, that would be weird.
23:55
That would be really weird, right?
23:58
But at just 15 years old, Bruce began drinking.
24:02
It was a choice that though his parents never really broached the topic with him.
24:09
Not even when he was still well below the legal drinking age, they felt it had a prominent
24:15
negative impact on the trajectory of his young life.
24:21
Yeah, well, that sounds like it all happened to anyone, right?
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They start drinking that young.
24:26
I think so.
24:27
Yeah.
24:28
I mean, if you start drinking, you can keep it up too.
24:31
Yeah, absolutely.
24:33
Not good for your liver.
24:35
No.
24:36
Still others in the nickel's lives would need to be notified of Bruce's passing, like the
24:43
church family.
24:45
That's their last name.
24:46
Okay.
24:47
It was like their family from church or just super wholesome people with the last name church.
24:55
Who's the who's the church family?
24:59
Stan church and Bruce had met over their CB radios, quickly becoming fast friends.
25:06
So fucking cute.
25:08
I know.
25:09
I know.
25:10
It's such a boy thing too.
25:12
It really is.
25:13
Stan lived in the Auburn area with his wife, Laurie and his two daughters, Kimmy and Karen.
25:24
It didn't take long for Laurie and Stella to form a bond of their own.
25:30
Despite each woman being her counterparts' distinct opposite in nearly every way.
25:38
Which for both Stan and Laurie's sake may have been a good thing.
25:45
Not long after Bruce's death, Cindy Stella's daughter showed up to Kimmy's wedding with
25:51
her boyfriend, but noticeably missing were Stella and Bruce.
25:57
Stan and Laurie were at a loss until Stella showed up at their home following the reception.
26:04
Because they were very close friends and it was not like them to have missed their daughter's
26:08
wedding.
26:09
But it's really weird.
26:11
Yeah.
26:12
So Laurie said to Cindy, you know, I don't know what's going on or what excuse they could
26:19
possibly have for missing Kimmy's wedding, but like tell them to show up at our house after
26:24
the reception.
26:25
Like, we got to know what's up.
26:28
Yeah.
26:30
And the couple was shocked to find out that their friend had passed away two days prior.
26:38
Two days?
26:40
Yep.
26:42
Stella showed up at their house after their daughter's wedding reception.
26:47
As requested, but to let them know Stan, Laurie, Bruce died.
26:55
Two days ago.
26:57
I mean, if their daughter's wedding was coming up, you can kind of see it, right?
27:03
Yeah.
27:04
Like how do you think, oh, like one of the happiest days of your life isn't a couple of days.
27:11
Let me just go ahead and kill that for you.
27:13
Right.
27:14
Absolutely.
27:15
Yeah.
27:16
You can kind of see it.
27:17
It makes sense if that was the only thing.
27:22
I'm stressed.
27:24
Yeah.
27:25
Yeah.
27:26
Stella simply stated that she'd intended to hold off on sharing the news until after the
27:32
nuptials had passed.
27:35
It wasn't long before it became apparent that there were a number of people who felt like
27:41
much of Stella and her daughter Cindy's behavior was quite odd after Bruce's passing.
27:49
Now the initial autopsy performed on Bruce indicated that he had died as a result of
27:56
embassies.
27:57
In stark contrast, Sue Snow's autopsy by assistant medical examiner Janet Miller would
28:05
indicate that a cause of a far more devious nature was almost certainly to blame in her
28:12
death.
28:14
The examination revealed a distinctive odor.
28:19
Better almonds.
28:20
Oh.
28:21
Oh.
28:22
Oh.
28:23
Wait.
28:24
So what are they smelling?
28:25
This is pretty dark.
28:27
When they open up the body for the autopsy, there is an odor that emanates from said body.
28:38
Wow.
28:40
Because of the poisoning.
28:41
That is crazy.
28:44
It's lucky that the assistant Emmy had been present actually.
28:50
This assistant is a telltale sign of cyanide poisoning, but not everyone can smell it.
28:57
Oh, interesting.
29:00
That is weird.
29:02
It's so weird.
29:04
Yeah.
29:05
The Emmy, so the actual medical examiner, was someone falling into the category of roughly
29:13
20 to 40% of people that it's believed do not carry the necessary gene to sniff out cyanide.
29:23
What is that some sort of like biological baby?
29:27
But why does it smell good though?
29:30
You think it should smell really bad?
29:33
Itter almonds.
29:34
Oh.
29:35
Bit, okay.
29:36
I don't know how good that smells.
29:38
I don't know why I was thinking of like roasted almonds when you said that.
29:42
Yeah.
29:43
Not that good.
29:44
What a fitter almond smell like.
29:47
Is it just like the almond skin?
29:49
Because that's really bitter.
29:51
I don't know.
29:52
I'm going to go sniffing almonds after this.
29:56
This does remind me of the Mel's whole episode though when we were trying to figure out what
30:00
ozone smelled like.
30:01
Oh.
30:02
Yeah.
30:03
What does it smell like?
30:04
I don't remember.
30:06
It smells like burnt wires or...
30:09
Oh.
30:10
Yeah.
30:11
No, like a burnt and metallicky smell.
30:12
Yeah.
30:13
Yeah.
30:14
Okay.
30:15
It wouldn't be long before investigators would find evidence in the homes of the victims thus
30:20
far confirming this.
30:22
So they're like, yeah, we also found some cyanide.
30:26
The bottle of Etc.
30:27
Capsules, the both Sioux and her husband, Paul, were said to have taken a dose from the
30:33
very same morning that she died was taken into evidence.
30:39
The bottle would have contained 60 capsules at the time of purchase and when the remainder
30:47
that were present following Sioux's death were tested, three capsules were found to contain
30:56
a toxic dose of cyanide.
30:59
Oh my God.
31:00
It's like Russian roulette.
31:02
Mm-hmm.
31:03
Fucking hate.
31:04
I'm so nervous right now.
31:07
Yeah.
31:08
I don't like the odds.
31:10
No matter what.
31:11
No, I don't like any of it.
31:13
Mm-hmm.
31:14
I'm scrunching like you do when you're scared of my stories.
31:18
I know.
31:19
Oh my God.
31:20
She got so scrunched.
31:22
So small.
31:23
Listen, you got all scrumpled up.
31:27
I did.
31:29
Further close examination of these bottles recovered by investigators as well as another suspicious
31:37
bottle of over the counter pain relief medication revealed something odd in addition to the poison
31:45
inside.
31:46
In addition to poison?
31:48
Yeah.
31:49
So it gets weirder.
31:51
Okay.
31:52
The capsules also contained an unknown green substance.
31:59
There were small flecks found throughout.
32:03
Okay.
32:06
Now if I said I would give you an imaginary million dollars if you could guess what those
32:16
green flecks were.
32:17
Right.
32:18
Poisoning things?
32:19
Because they're green.
32:21
I cleaned a house.
32:22
That has a little green right.
32:23
Oh, interesting.
32:24
Okay.
32:25
So that's what I immediately thought of.
32:27
Sadly, you've lost out on your opportunity for one million imaginary dollars.
32:34
Damn it.
32:35
But I do have an answer for you.
32:37
I want to know I'm dying to know.
32:40
It was later identified as an algae side commonly used in home aquariums known as algae
32:51
destroyer.
32:53
What?
32:55
I never would have guessed that in a million years.
32:58
Mm-hmm.
32:59
Why is it green?
33:00
I don't know.
33:01
I guess that's just the color it is.
33:04
It's algae's greenness.
33:05
Right.
33:06
You would think brown.
33:07
I don't know.
33:08
Yeah.
33:09
It's weird, but that's how the cookie crumbles.
33:12
My dude.
33:13
How the algae destroyer crumbles.
33:17
You're welcome.
33:18
You're not wrong.
33:19
You are not wrong.
33:21
I wish I was wrong.
33:23
Yeah.
33:24
Why?
33:25
So the color was more than likely someone who owned a fish tank.
33:31
Or that was sort of the working theory.
33:35
That's a way to throw someone off though if you don't.
33:38
I mean, yeah.
33:39
I guess you could just go and buy some of this stuff, right?
33:44
Right.
33:45
Though honestly, it's alarming the number of hobbyist pursuits that deal in handling cyanide
33:54
in some form or fashion.
33:56
Does that not kill the fish?
33:59
Right.
34:00
That was my first thought that apparently no.
34:03
Apparently no.
34:04
Okay.
34:05
There's too many questions that don't have anything to do with the story.
34:09
Sorry.
34:10
Researching this case, I was a bit surprised that there aren't more of us dropping dead
34:15
of cyanide poisoning on the regular.
34:18
I don't want to.
34:21
If you were a photographer that developed photos, I'm safe.
34:28
Yeah.
34:29
Apparently cyanide.
34:32
So did they use that in the chemical development of the photos?
34:36
I think so.
34:37
I didn't look too deep into it because it doesn't have the most direct application to the
34:42
case, but it's something that the FBI explored.
34:47
That's very interesting.
34:49
It makes me not want to do that then.
34:51
I was interested and now I'm like, now I'm good.
34:54
Yeah.
34:55
I don't know.
34:56
I feel like maybe there are some people that have gotten sick in, you know, historical times
35:04
that you're like, oh, maybe that doesn't not make sense.
35:08
Yeah.
35:09
We're gloves, right?
35:14
These days we might all be a bit jaded about a good many things, but a murder by cyanide
35:22
was an astounding development, particularly for residents in the state of Washington, and
35:31
certainly for those residing in the Auburn area.
35:36
When it became apparent that more than one tainted bottle had surfaced in the state, the
35:42
manufacturer of excedrin Bristol Myers, along with other companies that sold over the
35:49
counter drugs, offered a $300,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the
35:57
person responsible.
36:00
Of course, this was following the recall I mentioned earlier being initiated.
36:07
Wow.
36:08
Well, at least they're doing something.
36:10
Oh, yeah.
36:11
It's like trying to sweep it under the rug.
36:13
After the deaths associated with Tylenol, excedrin was like, no, we don't want that kind
36:18
of bad press.
36:19
That's right.
36:20
That's right.
36:21
Yeah.
36:22
Yeah.
36:23
So they were pretty quick.
36:25
It was very proactive in this situation, I would say.
36:29
It's scary though, because like it's probably not like even coming from them, right?
36:34
It's probably people at the start, well, you might get into it.
36:37
Okay.
36:38
Oh, I'm definitely going to get into it.
36:41
Or girl.
36:42
Or girl.
36:45
Because it was major news at the time, it may not come as a surprise that the ripple effect
36:50
of the poisoning was quite vast.
36:53
In fact, after watching a news story about Sue Snow's death, it was none other than Stella,
37:03
Bruce Nichol's wife who placed a panicked call to 911.
37:09
Much of the call was unintelligible.
37:16
However, the dispatcher was able to determine that she was calling after hearing about the
37:18
snow case on the news and believed that she had found a bottle of excedrin with the same
37:26
lot number in her home.
37:28
Oh, wow.
37:30
She called 911.
37:32
Yes.
37:33
And Bruce was already dead at this point.
37:37
Right.
37:38
That's what I thought.
37:39
I was like, huh, okay.
37:40
Mm-hmm.
37:41
Again, you don't know what to do.
37:43
Maybe you're just, you know, yeah, maybe.
37:48
Maybe.
37:49
Now, you may recall that Bruce's autopsy stated that he had died of emphysema.
37:59
In later questioning, Stella would seemingly indicate that she had been unaware of the preliminary
38:06
autopsy result, insinuating that she was still awaiting the report.
38:16
Which is kind of weird because I feel like you would remember receiving the autopsy results
38:22
after your husband dies.
38:24
Yeah.
38:26
You would think.
38:28
This wasn't the case, but if you had gone to the trouble of lacing capsules of excedrin
38:34
in multiple bottles, found in more than one city of Washington state so that you could kill
38:41
your husband and collect his life insurance payout, I bet you'd be fairly well invested
38:48
in the outcome.
38:50
And emphysema would not be the COD you're looking for.
38:57
What are you implying, Caitlin?
38:59
I think I'm more than implying it.
39:03
That is so fucked.
39:05
Particularly in the instance where you'd forged his signature for one of his multiple
39:12
life insurance policies as the prosecution in the murder trial would posit.
39:19
And even more so, if that policy had a double indemnity clause in the case of an accidental
39:28
death.
39:30
I don't know what that means, but I'm assuming it means she gets the money anyway.
39:35
So double indemnity is something that I think came up in the Nancy Brophy case actually.
39:44
What that usually means is you get more money like double.
39:50
Oh, okay, I get it.
39:53
Yeah.
39:54
And it's oftentimes in the case of accidental death.
40:00
And it's led to a number of spouses being murdered in seemingly obscure or bizarre ways.
40:11
And this is probably one of the more bizarre.
40:15
Ugh.
40:16
I mean, I get why they would do that, but it doesn't seem like a good thing to be doing.
40:23
No, and definitely not after the Tylenol poisonings.
40:29
No, they're not going to let it go.
40:32
This assertion was backed by the FBI investigators that had examined the documents.
40:40
So they took a look at the policy documents for his life insurance and said, we're not so
40:48
sure about that.
40:49
No, it's so sure about that.
40:52
Oh, God.
40:53
There's just too many things.
40:55
It's way too many things.
41:00
This case is incredibly dense and it easily could have been multiple parts, but you should
41:08
know that Stella wasn't exactly forthcoming about the fact that Bruce had multiple life
41:15
insurance policies.
41:18
It would become a major point of argument in her case when it went to trial, actually.
41:25
But either way, she stood to benefit in a very substantial way from Bruce's death, no
41:32
matter how you splice it.
41:36
There's people that fucking lose their spouses, you know?
41:41
Yep.
41:43
And the FBI brought her in for the long awaited polygraph.
41:49
Stella failed in stunning fashion.
41:55
In Stella fashion.
41:56
Oh, it was in Stella fashion.
41:59
Yeah.
42:00
Still, you're probably wondering about some of the details of the court case.
42:05
While there wasn't an actual smoking gun, there was a statistical anomaly that didn't
42:13
exactly look good for Stella of the thousands of bottles that were screened of a not totally
42:24
unwarranted abundance of caution.
42:28
There were only a handful that contained tainted over the counter drugs and well, Stella had
42:39
two of them in her possession.
42:42
Oh, how lucky.
42:44
Yeah.
42:45
She won the lottery.
42:47
I guess so twice.
42:49
Yeah.
42:50
You know?
42:51
Oh.
42:52
She claimed they'd been purchased in two separate establishments two weeks apart, which
42:58
seems even more unlikely from a purely statistical standpoint.
43:05
Seriously though?
43:07
Yeah.
43:08
Yeah.
43:09
Yeah.
43:10
I mean, that would suck if like that was your luck.
43:14
Yeah.
43:15
But some people say you make your own luck.
43:19
Uh-huh.
43:20
Well, she made her own luck.
43:23
Quite literally.
43:25
Investigators would come to learn that Stella had developed multiple murder plots when she
43:32
decided that she was done with Bruce, including covertly overdosing him with cocaine or
43:39
heroin.
43:40
God.
43:41
Sorry.
43:42
It just like what?
43:46
Even hiring a hitman.
43:49
The latter plan fell flat because with their financial problems, looming large, Stella certainly
43:56
didn't have the funds to hire a hitman or buy heroin or cocaine.
44:03
That's just expensive too.
44:05
Yeah.
44:06
Probably.
44:07
Probably neither was a solid bet for her.
44:10
We could do that to her next husband though, since she'll have all of this life insurance
44:14
money.
44:15
Oh yeah.
44:16
But soon, she came up with a more profitable solution that proved palatable to her.
44:24
Once she had chosen her method, all she had to do was wait with baited breath for Bruce
44:30
to complete his employer-mandated health screening, you know, for his employer-sponsored life insurance.
44:39
She thought she was so smart.
44:47
Once he passed the physical, Stella thought she would be in the clear to poison Bruce so
44:53
she could continue to live exactly as she pleased without giving a second thought to financial
45:00
woes.
45:03
She wouldn't have to worry about losing half of the property that her mother had bought,
45:08
and no one would be the wiser because the only person that might have had an inkling
45:15
about her devious plan was her daughter Cindy.
45:21
Mm-hmm.
45:22
Mm-hmm.
45:23
But she may have miscalculated.
45:26
Oh, why would she talk about that to her daughter though?
45:30
She talked to Cindy about some of the ideas that she had for killing Bruce, not in
45:38
that context always, but she knew that Cindy had experimented with harder drugs like cocaine
45:47
and heroin.
45:48
So, she asked her a lot of pointed questions about-
45:53
Interesting.
45:54
Uh-huh.
45:55
Wow.
45:56
Yep.
45:57
Huh.
45:58
Okay.
45:59
Also, interesting to learn was the fact that Stella Nicoll had maintained multiple fish
46:08
tanks in the trailer home where she had lived with her late husband Bruce.
46:13
Mm-hmm.
46:14
Of course she did.
46:16
The owner of the local pet shop was even brought in to testify to the fact that she had purchased
46:23
the specific algae killer found in the contaminated cyanide tablets.
46:31
Algae destroyer, which needed to be crushed as opposed to the specific products that they
46:38
typically stopped for the same purpose.
46:42
Investigators speculated she had used the same container to crush algae killer and store
46:50
cyanide.
46:51
So, she did one of these.
46:55
She crushed up the algae destroyer with the cyanide and she inserted it into the
47:06
exedron capsules.
47:09
All this planning and like you didn't think that that would ever link you.
47:14
Oh.
47:15
Thank God she's dumb.
47:17
Speaking of planning, Stella's prints were found on Auburn Public Library.
47:25
Books.
47:26
According to an FBI subpoena, titles including Deadly Harvest and Human Poisoning from Native
47:38
Plants.
47:39
Oh my God!
47:42
Wow.
47:45
Over 80 of her prints were found on the lurid pages.
47:52
Particularly those pertaining to cyanide.
47:57
That is so cool that they can do that.
48:03
Like fucked up that they have to.
48:05
But like, can you imagine going through those books and like getting the prints and you're
48:08
like, oh my God!
48:09
Like look at what pages on!
48:11
Yeah.
48:12
And that's exactly what they did.
48:15
Wow.
48:16
It's wild.
48:17
It's nerding out over the prints.
48:18
I know.
48:19
I know.
48:20
Pretty cool because we don't typically think of the 80s as being like this super advanced
48:28
like era for forensic technology.
48:31
Yeah.
48:32
But they didn't need DNA.
48:35
On May 9 of 1988, Stella Nickel was found guilty in federal court, not of murder, but of
48:44
product tampering.
48:47
She was sentenced to 90 years.
48:52
The Chicago Tylenol case had resulted in the 1983 federal anti-tampering law under which
49:01
she was charged.
49:03
Additionally, there were new FDA requirements, including that products be packaged with
49:11
temper-resistant technology.
49:15
That wasn't a thing yet?
49:17
Oh, well, yeah, no shit.
49:22
Not only would Stella be indicted and convicted, by then she hardly seemed surprised by the
49:28
turn of events.
49:30
But something that came later did, when the daughter that she had raised to keep it in
49:38
the family, Cindy testified against her.
49:43
Good.
49:45
Cindy would receive $250,000 of the award put forth by the drug companies when all was said
49:54
and done.
49:55
Oh, okay, forgot about that.
49:59
Mm-hmm.
50:00
Okay.
50:01
This has led some to speculate that she may have initially conspired with her mother against
50:08
her stepfather.
50:10
And testified against her mother for the reward after her mother failed an FBI polygraph.
50:17
Mm-hmm.
50:18
I don't know.
50:19
I don't think that's fair.
50:20
I mean, it's a traumatized child of a murderer who came from a family rife with trauma
50:30
as well.
50:32
Honestly, if you trust the author of the book that I read, he sure does not seem to think
50:42
this is the case.
50:44
Good.
50:45
Cindy fell off the map pretty much immediately.
50:51
Yeah.
50:52
And the only contact that at least the author of the book, and we'll talk about the book
50:59
in a second, that he's aware of that she had had with the outside world was when she contacted
51:07
him by email years later.
51:12
And it seemed like she had gotten her life together and she put that money to good use.
51:17
Good.
51:18
Hopefully, that's still the case.
51:22
This case, there was so much.
51:27
We could have gone into so much detail.
51:29
We literally could have been here for like three episodes.
51:32
Ooh.
51:33
And I really distilled it down, but I'm toying with the idea of a little Patreon bonus so
51:42
you can have a little bit of background to Stella.
51:45
So I don't know.
51:46
I'll keep noodlein' on it.
51:48
Okay, well, I'll be here no matter what you decide.
51:52
You sucker.
51:58
Yeah, that's totally unfair to even insinuate that she had something to do with it.
52:04
I mean, even if her mom did tell her what was she supposed to really do, I mean, who has
52:13
the power in this situation, you know?
52:15
Yeah, I do think that's important to remember is this is her mother.
52:22
And like I said, this isn't something that I went in depth on because it's like once you
52:28
get into one can of worms, there's a whole other one, but there was definitely a keep it
52:34
in the family mentality.
52:37
And so it was pretty unusual even in the numerous, numerous instances of various types of abuse
52:47
for anyone to involve police, which is really sad because if we believe the story that nearly
52:58
everyone understands about Cindy's conception and her early years, it's very sad.
53:09
Stella was reportedly essentially gang raped.
53:16
Oh my God.
53:20
And Cindy was the resulting progeny from that.
53:28
Wow.
53:29
So Cindy, yeah, it's so hard to trace this back because there's so much trauma in this
53:43
family and it's really hard to separate that there are, you know, these really, you know,
53:53
these are human people, these aren't just characters, but having some of these awful
53:59
things happen to you does not give you a hall pass.
54:05
No.
54:07
In Stella's case.
54:08
Yeah.
54:09
Not Cindy.
54:10
She didn't have anything to do with anything.
54:12
I really, I really don't believe that Cindy did and whatever awareness she might have
54:18
had.
54:19
I think, of course, anybody is going to want to believe that this isn't a serious conversation.
54:26
And, you know, my mother would never do this.
54:30
I mean, in hindsight, definitely a lot of regret for her in not coming forward sooner.
54:40
And I think it says it all when Stella showed up to notify Cindy of Bruce's death and keeping
54:50
in mind, this is her stepfather, but a man that's been in her life for quite a few years, she
54:57
said, Bruce is dead.
55:01
And I know what you're thinking, but no.
55:05
Essentially, she was like, wow, I know you probably think I killed him, but I didn't.
55:10
That's not the first thing you say.
55:13
It's not.
55:14
It's not.
55:15
Oh, my God.
55:16
Stella.
55:17
Stella.
55:18
Wow.
55:19
Stella.
55:20
It just makes me so angry.
55:25
I know I kind of said it earlier, but like there's people out there who would give all of
55:29
their money, anything they had to get their spouse back.
55:33
And then there's people out there, fucking killing their spouses to get a little bit of money.
55:39
It's gross.
55:40
It's really gross.
55:43
And ultimately, she didn't want to have a divorce.
55:47
She didn't want to get divorced because she knew that the property that their trailer
55:53
home was on and that her mother's trailer home was on was property that her mother bought
56:04
and she didn't want the financial complications.
56:08
They had debt on top of the fact that they're entangled now in this living situation and
56:18
she didn't want to deal with it.
56:21
So if you don't want to deal with that financial and legal entanglement with another person, don't
56:30
get married.
56:32
Yeah.
56:33
It's, I mean, it's really gonna happen.
56:36
Yeah.
56:37
It's, you can live together.
56:41
That's funny coming from you.
56:43
Sorry.
56:44
No, it, I mean, it really is because I'm like, you know, I think there's something special
56:50
about being able to get married.
56:53
And if that's what you want, you should do that.
56:57
You should be able to do that.
56:59
But if you're somebody who's going to weaponize something that should be, you know, a commitment
57:09
to each other and quite literally you are bound to each other.
57:14
You are legally and financially obligated to one another.
57:19
That obviously is not okay.
57:24
It's, it's wild to me.
57:28
Yeah.
57:29
Just don't get married.
57:30
That is a choice that you can make.
57:33
She had been married before.
57:35
Yeah.
57:36
Oh God.
57:37
You don't have to.
57:39
That's not to say like if you're stuck, if you think you're stuck in a marriage, like definitely
57:46
get a divorce, you know, you can deal with it.
57:48
It's just money.
57:50
It's just things.
57:52
You can survive.
57:54
You can do it.
57:55
It's not like you're, it's the end of the world.
57:58
But someone who just like didn't even want to try.
58:01
Yeah.
58:02
Yeah.
58:03
I don't, I'll never get it.
58:07
Stella had multiple boyfriends.
58:12
After Bruce's death leading up to her trial and the early days of her sentencing, multiple,
58:20
multiple.
58:22
This is a woman who is unable to be alone, which is very unhealthy and not everyone enjoys
58:35
being single and it's never fun to work your way through to the other side of a breakup.
58:42
But this is not the answer.
58:45
No.
58:46
Clearly, I mean, you get, you're just going to get caught even in the 80s.
58:51
It's not good.
58:53
Wasn't there a story about a, like a parent who poisoned like some candy and pixie sticks?
59:02
Pixie sticks.
59:03
Yeah, just to kill his child.
59:05
I believe that was in Texas.
59:08
Did they end up killing other children too, just to like get to theirs?
59:13
That's the worst part, right?
59:14
Because she killed other people.
59:18
Yeah.
59:19
You had nothing to do with it.
59:22
In that case, the pixie stick one.
59:26
According to a pathologist who tested the pixie sticks, the candy consumed by Timothy
59:32
contained enough cyanide to kill two adults.
59:38
While the other four candies contained enough to kill three or four adults.
59:44
Jesus.
59:46
An old Clark O'Brien, nicknamed the candy man and the man who killed Halloween, was an
59:53
American man convicted of killing his eight year old son, Timothy.
59:58
On Halloween, 1974, with a potassium cyanide, laced pixie stick that was ostensibly collected
1:00:07
during a trigger treat outing.
1:00:10
O'Brien poisoned his son in order to claim his life insurance money to ease his life
1:00:16
and his own financial troubles as he was $100,000 in debt.
1:00:23
In 1974, are you out?
1:00:27
Fucking kidding me.
1:00:28
And how much is a child's life insurance going to help that?
1:00:33
Well, if you ensure all of the kids.
1:00:37
Oh.
1:00:38
O'Brien also distributed poisoned candy to his daughter and three other children in an
1:00:46
attempt to cover up his crime.
1:00:49
Oh.
1:00:50
Oh.
1:00:51
However, neither his daughter nor the other children ate the poisoned candy.
1:00:58
Or to me, Jesus Christ.
1:01:00
What fucking disgusting people.
1:01:02
I mean, that was like almost a decade prior.
1:01:07
Wow, yeah.
1:01:09
It's really awful.
1:01:10
Way to kill Halloween, you fucker.
1:01:12
I know.
1:01:14
Freakin' awful.
1:01:15
I mean, here's something that a lot of people who are really familiar with the case find
1:01:25
kind of interesting and in a way kind of a bittersweet.
1:01:31
I think I said in our earlier discussion on the case that there was another suspicious bottle
1:01:42
of a different over-the-counter pain reliever that was found.
1:01:47
And it contained cyanide.
1:01:50
That was found in one of the stores where Stella had told investigators that she bought
1:02:00
one of the tainted bottles of Etc.
1:02:05
The bottle that was suspicious was a bottle of, it was a different type of, I want to say
1:02:15
a seed of Minifin, but I don't think that's right.
1:02:17
It's a different name.
1:02:18
I'd have to go back through my notes, but she had taken a bottle and she left it somewhere
1:02:31
else in the store.
1:02:34
And it got flagged because the FBI is literally investigating tampered over-the-counter pain
1:02:41
medications.
1:02:44
And they looked at it and the store manager was like, "We don't even have a skew for this."
1:02:52
It wasn't even from that store.
1:02:55
Weird.
1:02:57
I wonder if she just ditched it there because it didn't quite work out or something.
1:03:03
She wanted them to find tainted pain medication.
1:03:10
She wanted them to find another bottle.
1:03:12
Like a different kind.
1:03:15
She, well, I mean, maybe.
1:03:18
I don't know that the kind of medication that it was really mattered so much as that she
1:03:24
saw that she had killed someone else.
1:03:29
She wanted them to be aware that there was a danger of tainted medication.
1:03:37
So she left that one in a way that it would be flagged.
1:03:42
It would be found.
1:03:44
Like she didn't want to kill anyone else?
1:03:46
Oh, okay.
1:03:48
I was thinking she was like trying.
1:03:50
No.
1:03:51
No, the way that this one was left at the store, it was definitely an attempt.
1:03:57
It was like, "I want the fact that there's tainted medication.
1:04:02
I want that to be flagged.
1:04:04
I want that.
1:04:05
I want authorities to be aware of that."
1:04:08
But, you know, if you don't want anyone else to die, maybe just don't poison other bottles.
1:04:16
But if you don't poison other bottles, if nobody else dies, then it looks like just your husband
1:04:24
and just your bottle.
1:04:26
And they look a lot closer at that.
1:04:29
Yeah.
1:04:30
And they're going to start with the assumption that, yeah, probably that was tainted, probably
1:04:36
that was tampered with.
1:04:38
And I think the call may be coming from inside the house.
1:04:44
So it was really just like, "Oh, well, shit.
1:04:46
Now I've got the one other dead person who covers my tracks, but I don't want anybody else
1:04:52
to die."
1:04:53
Oh, right.
1:04:54
Like, "Oh, great.
1:04:57
So all you had to do was take someone's mother away.
1:05:04
All you had to do was kill one more person.
1:05:09
And it was all for nothing."
1:05:11
Yeah, you didn't even get what you wanted.
1:05:13
Nope.
1:05:14
I mean, she didn't get away with it.
1:05:18
Wow.
1:05:20
She never asked to worry about money or where to live again.
1:05:23
Yeah.
1:05:25
She won't.
1:05:26
Or is she dead now?
1:05:30
Let's see.
1:05:31
I checked it when I started writing and I believe she was still alive.
1:05:37
But there are reports as recent as the summer of 2022.
1:05:48
Basically saying that they're not going to let her out.
1:05:52
So unless she has died in recent months, Stella is still with us.
1:05:59
Good.
1:06:00
I mean, good that they're not going to let her out, you know?
1:06:03
Yeah.
1:06:04
I mean, listen, is she a danger to society?
1:06:09
I'm not a doctor.
1:06:11
But she was dangerous to at least two people already.
1:06:15
And it doesn't take a whole awful lot to complete that motion.
1:06:24
Yeah.
1:06:25
So I hope she has arthritis.
1:06:27
I hope so too.
1:06:30
What's the apple for?
1:06:31
I was thinking about, well, like what's something that's like representative of poison?
1:06:37
Because I've got like our candles back here from like a witch's apothecary, stinging
1:06:43
nettle and white snake root.
1:06:48
Darn and I have your poison jug.
1:06:50
Oh yeah.
1:06:51
The first poison on it.
1:06:53
Yeah.
1:06:54
That would have been too obvious.
1:06:56
Yeah.
1:06:57
But you may remember from some of our favorite fairy tales and fables that apples are frequently
1:07:05
poisoned.
1:07:07
I did not even make the connection with the...
1:07:11
There's arsenic in the apple seeds.
1:07:14
And you didn't make the connection that they were apple people?
1:07:17
I didn't know.
1:07:18
I didn't know.
1:07:19
I said so funny.
1:07:20
It's so wild to me.
1:07:22
I mean, arsenic, cyanide, you know, a potato potato.
1:07:26
But still though, I mean, it's just so random.
1:07:29
And then the fact that I brought an apple out.
1:07:31
Yeah.
1:07:32
I feel like, oh, but apples, you know, the poisoned apple.
1:07:36
Yeah.
1:07:38
So the apothecary candles.
1:07:40
It reminded me that, you know, she had looked up all of these native plants and ways that you
1:07:47
can poison people and the different plants that are poisonous.
1:07:52
And she did a lot of that at the public library.
1:07:57
And that's how they got the prints.
1:08:00
What I found really interesting about that was she had told people and she testified.
1:08:10
That she was doing that research because they had moved to Auburn and they were in like
1:08:19
a forested area.
1:08:21
And when she was babysitting her grandchild, she wanted to make sure that she wouldn't
1:08:25
get into anything that could make her sick.
1:08:28
I mean, that sounds legit.
1:08:31
I mean, it would if it weren't for all of these other things stacked against her.
1:08:38
Yeah.
1:08:39
Now I'm just running through like the, I have a poisonous mushroom buck.
1:08:43
I have like edible things that are edible and not edible in nature.
1:08:48
Yeah.
1:08:49
She literally made the pet shop special order, the algae destroyer because they carried
1:08:58
a different product that was, I believe, liquid soluble.
1:09:04
And she made them order the kind that you can crush up because that can be put into capsules.
1:09:11
Wow.
1:09:13
Like wait, wait a bit.
1:09:15
More obvious.
1:09:16
Could you be any more obvious?
1:09:20
No.
1:09:22
I know.
1:09:23
Champers.
1:09:24
Champers.
1:09:25
I mean, if you think about it, he kind of poisoned as well.
1:09:30
I don't know what happened.
1:09:31
He didn't.
1:09:32
I didn't have it heard yet.
1:09:33
And Chandler was kind of poisoned as well.
1:09:36
What?
1:09:37
I, I haven't heard anything.
1:09:41
Okay.
1:09:42
Hold on.
1:09:43
Let me.
1:09:44
Oh, wow.
1:09:45
Okay.
1:09:46
So this is very highly Googleable, apparently, because all I did was type in how did in my computer
1:09:52
Google was like immediately like Matthew Perry die.
1:09:57
It hurt us.
1:09:58
Tell me you're listening without telling me you're listening.
1:10:02
He died from the acute effects of the anesthetic ketamine.
1:10:11
The Los Angeles County Department of the Medical Examiner said in the autopsy report
1:10:18
that Perry also drowned in the heated end of his pool.
1:10:25
That it was a secondary factor in his October 28th death deemed an accident.
1:10:33
Be careful, everybody.
1:10:35
So definitely, yeah, definitely don't just decide to get into like maybe, maybe the pool,
1:10:47
maybe the pool, maybe swimming of any sort is not going to be the activity for the night
1:10:52
when you're doing recreational drugs.
1:10:57
Should we do some tarot?
1:10:59
Yeah.
1:11:00
Okay.
1:11:01
Let's do it.
1:11:02
I'll send you my vibes.
1:11:04
How are you feeling over there?
1:11:12
You feel like this feeling good?
1:11:15
This is good shuffle.
1:11:16
Yeah.
1:11:17
Okay.
1:11:18
Was that three?
1:11:19
Yeah.
1:11:20
Sounds good.
1:11:21
Okay.
1:11:22
Oh.
1:11:23
I hate that for us.
1:11:26
Why?
1:11:27
Is it the magician?
1:11:29
Yes.
1:11:30
I don't know how I knew that.
1:11:32
Mother?
1:11:33
I can't see the words on the card.
1:11:35
Team it.
1:11:36
I want to renew the magician.
1:11:38
I don't want that card to be associated.
1:11:41
Let's read it and see.
1:11:44
It is the number one and the switch was only thinking about number one.
1:11:49
No.
1:11:51
If no connection, that's the connection.
1:11:54
This is my card.
1:11:55
It is your card.
1:11:57
And it's kind of your card because of the crow.
1:12:00
It's definitely our card.
1:12:03
But I'm a little possessive.
1:12:06
I think it's more yours for sure.
1:12:08
Yeah.
1:12:09
Yours is definitely the floor.
1:12:13
You know what?
1:12:22
I didn't even mention in this case because I wanted to get all the way through and let you know
1:12:28
who did what.
1:12:29
But Stella and her daughter had an interest in witchabores and girl cards.
1:12:31
Oh, I hate that.
1:12:33
I know.
1:12:34
Wait a minute for the rest of us.
1:12:36
Yeah.
1:12:37
Fuckers.
1:12:38
Stella.
1:12:39
Cindy, no.
1:12:40
Cindy's cool.
1:12:41
We think.
1:12:42
Yeah.
1:12:43
I'm going with that.
1:12:45
Keywords are hidden power, which hidden like a poison, magical ability, mastering unseen
1:12:55
forces, inner guidance.
1:12:58
So that last one, maybe less.
1:13:01
I shouldn't have that.
1:13:03
Oh, boy.
1:13:04
No.
1:13:05
The magician recommends getting in touch with the unseen world instead of focusing only on
1:13:12
the material one.
1:13:14
Yeah.
1:13:15
Maybe this is right on.
1:13:19
They aren't separate.
1:13:20
And what we usually think of as reality is an illusion.
1:13:26
The presence of the four magic tools, which also represent the four elements on this card
1:13:32
suggests that everything you need is right there at your fingertips.
1:13:38
Are you smart?
1:13:39
Do you have charisma?
1:13:41
Are you capable?
1:13:44
Maybe do literally anything else besides murder.
1:13:52
You're connecting with your power and aligning yourself with universal forces to achieve
1:13:57
your goals and desires.
1:13:59
You would have been if you didn't focus on the material goods.
1:14:02
You bet.
1:14:03
Yeah.
1:14:04
Yikes.
1:14:07
When a reading about money, the magician tells you to tap into the universal flow to attract
1:14:12
abundance.
1:14:14
You possess the resources, inner and outer to generate wealth.
1:14:21
This card can also advise you to take control of a financial matter, which is really interesting
1:14:27
because Stella wrote a letter to their mortgage company saying that all of a sudden she would
1:14:35
be taking over their finances.
1:14:38
And that was prior to Bruce's death.
1:14:40
Jesus Christ.
1:14:41
You know what?
1:14:42
Oh my God.
1:14:44
Yeah.
1:14:45
She was really too much.
1:14:50
If the reading is about your job, this card encourages you to use your spiritual and physical
1:14:56
resources correctly to take command of your life and master the circumstances around
1:15:03
you.
1:15:04
Trust yourself and your inner guidance unless it suggests murder.
1:15:09
Yeah.
1:15:10
Don't trust that.
1:15:12
Honestly, your inner guidance will not lead you to murder.
1:15:19
So I feel like she wasn't following her inner guidance.
1:15:23
It shouldn't.
1:15:24
Yeah.
1:15:25
I don't think it will.
1:15:29
The magician can also symbolize a position in a spiritual field or studying spiritual wisdom,
1:15:37
which you could have done more of, but I don't know what the rules are about having a
1:15:41
terro deck in your cell.
1:15:47
In a reading about love, this card may represent a relationship that contains a strong spiritual
1:15:54
or magical element.
1:15:57
You and a partner may be on a spiritual path together, encouraging and inspiring one another,
1:16:05
which is arguably what you were doing when you encouraged Bruce to go to rehab for his
1:16:13
drinking.
1:16:14
If you had continued on that path, that would have been great.
1:16:19
Yeah.
1:16:20
She definitely needed this card before.
1:16:24
Yeah.
1:16:25
Wow.
1:16:26
Well, also it's like magic and the poison apple was like that magic witch, you know?
1:16:34
Mm-hmm.
1:16:35
I'm going to look at the card that was on the underside.
1:16:43
So the two of swords in reverse was the card on the underside of the other half of the
1:16:52
deck.
1:16:53
Keywords are combined resources, courage, faith, friendship, conflict and balance.
1:17:02
In some cards or in some terro decks, this card depicts a blind folded woman holding two
1:17:09
swords crossed over her chest.
1:17:11
Ooh, she killed two people.
1:17:14
Two's generally signify balance or conflict as well as pairing, which you did entirely
1:17:21
too much of.
1:17:23
I think of the two of swords as the blind faith card because it can represent courage and
1:17:30
making decisions based on your own truth and in some cases spiritual guidance.
1:17:36
It says, feels linked, but it's reversed though, right?
1:17:40
It is.
1:17:41
Yeah.
1:17:42
Reverse the two of swords often indicates confusion or conflict with yourself or someone
1:17:49
else.
1:17:51
Maybe both.
1:17:52
Probably both.
1:17:53
Probably both.
1:17:55
And imbalances may cause stress or frustration.
1:18:00
Sometimes this card urges you to take action rather than endlessly analyzing a situation.
1:18:07
You can't see ahead, but you must take a leap of faith.
1:18:11
Yeah, that's like that thing about just get divorced.
1:18:14
Just like take the leap of faith.
1:18:16
You'll be fine.
1:18:17
Yeah.
1:18:18
Yeah.
1:18:19
Yeah.
1:18:20
I'll do that.
1:18:21
Oh my God.
1:18:23
In reading about money, this card suggests worrying about a financial matter.
1:18:29
You don't know what to do and can't trust anyone to help you.
1:18:34
Or so you think.
1:18:35
I got.
1:18:37
Exactly.
1:18:39
The reverse two can indicate choosing between two unsatisfactory options.
1:18:45
Wow.
1:18:46
That's true.
1:18:47
Damn.
1:18:48
I can't.
1:18:49
I can't.
1:18:50
The wrong one.
1:18:51
Yeah.
1:18:52
Yeah.
1:18:53
She definitely chose the wrong one.
1:18:55
If the reading is about your job, the reverse two represents confusion, indecision, lack of information,
1:19:03
or conflicts regarding your work, which there were plenty.
1:19:09
It can also warn that colleagues aren't reliable or trustworthy.
1:19:14
You need to look hard at something you don't want to see.
1:19:18
Your own reflection, bitch.
1:19:20
Yeah.
1:19:21
Yeah.
1:19:22
In a reading about love, confusion or differences of opinion may cause stagnation in a relationship.
1:19:30
Are you clashing swords?
1:19:32
Honesty and openness are important right now.
1:19:36
The reverse two also represents imbalance.
1:19:39
One person may wield more power than the other.
1:19:43
Hmm.
1:19:44
Wow.
1:19:45
That one fit too.
1:19:48
Wow.
1:19:49
I mean, I hate it.
1:19:50
We need to both of them.
1:19:52
Yeah.
1:19:53
Yeah.
1:19:54
I don't know why, but I, because normally I'm like, "Let's just see what the card says."
1:20:02
And something about it being the magician, I was like, "I remain skeptic."
1:20:09
I just felt like, "Okay, I'm going to turn this other piece over."
1:20:13
Yeah.
1:20:14
Perfect.
1:20:15
Good job, witchybish.
1:20:18
Witchybish.
1:20:20
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1:20:41
Ooh.
1:20:42
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Have a creepy ass day.
1:22:59
Not ever this creepy.
1:23:01
No.
1:23:02
Never.
1:23:03
Not so creepy that you like poison people.
1:23:05
Jesus Christ.
1:23:06
I feel like it went without saying, but we'll just say it.
1:23:11
If you're ever thinking about it, just don't do it.
1:23:14
Just get divorced.
1:23:16
Yeah.
1:23:17
Or just, you know, whatever that situation is, just don't be there.
1:23:22
It works out.
1:23:23
I'm telling you.
1:23:24
Okay.
1:23:31
I poured this wine so I know it's safe.
1:23:37
I'm going to take a sip.
1:23:39
God.
1:23:40
Okay.
1:23:41
I'm scared to drink my coffee.
1:23:42
Well, you poured that, so you should be okay.
1:23:45
I don't know if I trust myself.
1:23:48
I mean, I feel like you should, but you never know.
1:23:52
Yana Vanau!