The wicked stepmother

It's February, and as always my thoughts turn to the deaths of Uncle Charley and David, as well as the other men who were poisoned but survived: Robert, Edward, Del, Timothy, and Harold. It has been 99 years since the two men died and five more were poisoned.

Ninety-nine years and no one was ever arrested and convicted.

However, while poking around the internet for clues, I came upon yet another strychnine poisoning in Ohio in 1925! While I sincerely doubt there's a connection, maybe the OSU poisonings eight months earlier were a cause of inspiration?

Find a Grave

On Saturday, October 3, 1925 a 13-year-old girl named Esta Winifred Strome died abruptly and painfully at her home in New Carlile, Clark County. By Tuesday, Oct. 6 (the same day Esta was buried.) her step-mother, Birdie Gardner Strome, was arrested and accused of poisoning Esta with the strychnine found in the girl's intestinal track.

The next day the bodies of Birdie's former husband and sister-in-law were exhumed from Enon Cemetery in Enon, Clark County: George Frock, who died on Sept. 14, 1922, and Mary Frock Faulder, who died on Aug. 28, 1920. Apparently both had died under similar grim circumstances, and I found testimony that strychnine was found in George's body.

After the death of her first husband George, Birdie lived briefly with Henry Homer Baltzell before his arrest and conviction in 1923 on robbery charges. At Birdie's trial, pharmacist Arthur E. Smith stated he sold Henry a quantity of strychnine, and Henry testified that he gave it to Birdie prior to Frock’s death.

Esta's father Carrie Strome testified he married Birdie in 1923, a year after George died. He understandably sued Birdie for divorce on Friday, Feb.5, 1926.

Birdie was arraigned on October 31 and pleaded not guilty. Her trial started on December 7 and she was convicted on Dec. 17, 1925. The jury of nine men and three women recommended mercy.

Birdie died two years later on Feb. 15, 1927 aged 60 in Union County, Ohio at the Marysville Reformatory. She is buried in an unmarked grave in Oakdale Cemetery in Marysville, Union County.

Her father died 33 years after Esta and shares his headstone with his daughter.

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Tell everyone I said hello

I was incredibly touched when a woman in Ohio reached out to me in October 2022 to ask if I would like to have a postcard written by my late cousin Owen Douglas Huls, to his maternal grandmother Ann Shriner in our hometown of Logan, Ohio. Yes, please!

Written on a U.S. Navy postcard, it has no stamp just a notation of "Free" in the top-right corner. The postmark appears to read Nov. 1, 1943 from Jacksonville, Florida

Sun.

Dear Grandma,

I received your cookies & candy yesterday and they sure were good. I enjoyed them all eve. You sure can bake good. I also received the candy from Grace (possibly his maternal aunt Grace). Thank her for me will you. Tell everyone I said hello. How are you by now? Has it turned cold there yet. It is cold at nites [sic] here & warm in the day time. I graduate this Thursday. Then I'll move about 15 miles to the Air Base. I'll start to fly then. I'll be in a PBY (a flying boat and amphibious aircraft that was used in the 1930s and 1940s). Later I'll be transferred to either B-24 - B25 or B-26. Hope to get in a B-26. That's all for now so I'll sign off.
                                                                Love, 

                                                                        Owen

This is the only thing we have left of Owen. Tragically, he was executed on June 6, 1945 while serving in the Pacific and his body was never recovered.

Rest in Peace cousin.

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