Michael Baden and professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist who has studied the disinterred remains of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo.īaden, who chaired panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John F. The team working on the exhumation includes internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. "If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini," the authors wrote, "it wouldn't have been very difficult." Houdini took the Spiritualists' death threats seriously, but he traveled without security, often accompanied only by his wife, Bess. The authors also suggest that Houdini might have been poisoned by "an experimental serum" injected by one of his doctors at Detroit's Grace Hospital. Kalush and Sloman say that "the Spiritualist underworld's modus operandi in cases like this was often poisoning" - possibly arsenic, which could be detected decades later. Two years later, Houdini - by all accounts a man in extraordinary physical shape - was dead. I think there is a general payday coming soon." In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a November 1924 letter in which Doyle said Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out. The movement's devotees included Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group's fraudulent seances. The likeliest murder suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, "Was Houdini Murdered?"Ī 2006 biography, The Secret Life of Houdini, raised the issue again and convinced some that he might have been poisoned, including Hardeen, who lives in Arizona and is the chief spokesman for the president of the Navajo Nation. 20, 1926, Houdini's body - brought by train from Detroit to Manhattan - already had been buried in Queens, along with any evidence of a possible death plot. When the death certificate was filed on Nov. The generally accepted version was that Houdini, 52, suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach, leading to a fatal case of peritonitis. The circumstances surrounding Houdini's sudden death are as murky as the rivers where he often escaped from chains, locks and wooden boxes. New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina is helping to clear any legal hurdles for the exhumation.Ī team of top forensic investigators would conduct tests on Houdini's body, said Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini's brother. Houdini's family scheduled a news conference for today to give details on the plans. Now, maybe it's time to take a second look." "His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. "It needs to be looked at," George Hardeen said. However, rumors that he was murdered have persisted for decades.Įighty-one years after Houdini's death, his great-nephew wants the escape artist's body exhumed to determine whether enemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead. NEW YORK - For all his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini couldn't escape the Grim Reaper: He died on Halloween 1926, apparently from a punch to the stomach that ruptured his appendix.
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