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Eva
RABLEN
Poison and Progress - By Deborah Blum /
Online.wsj.com
Heinrich returned to chemical analysis to solve
Carroll Rablen's mysterious death. Although deaf from a war wound,
Rabin would drive his young wife Eva to local dances. On the night
of 29 April 1929, he waited in his car while Eva danced in the
town schoolhouse. Not long after Eva had brought her husband
sandwiches and coffee, screams from outside cut the party short.
They found Rablen writhing on the floor of his car. He soon died.
The medical examiner concluded that the man had died from natural
causes, but Rablen's father thought otherwise. To humor the
grieving father, the sheriff searched Carroll and Eva's house.
Behind a plank and underneath the stairs, he found a bottle of
strychnine. A woman calling herself Mrs. Joe Williams had
purchased the poison at a local drug store. Yet a clerk identified
the woman as Eva. The police arrested the widow, who protested
that her husband had been suicidal. The prosecution called upon
the Wizard of Berkeley.
Heinrich re-examined the corpse and found
traces of strychnine in the stomach. He also detected poison in
the cup that Eva had brought him. Since Rablen could have poisoned
his own coffee, Heinrich still needed to show that Eva had spiked
the drink with strychnine. Reasoning that Eva might have had
trouble navigating a crowded dance floor with a cup of coffee, he
asked the sheriff to interview all those who had attended the
dance. When questioned, Alice Shea remembered that Eva had bumped
into her and spilled a few drops of coffee on her dress, a dress
that she had fortuitously not yet washed. Heinrich examined the
garment and found strychnine in the coffee stains. Upon learning
about Heinrich's involvement in the case, Eva pled guilty to avoid
the death penalty.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys alike sought
out Heinrich to analyze evidence and present his findings in
court. Unlike many science experts of the time, Heinrich neither
patronized juries nor confused them with jargon. He explained his
findings simply and directly,
Late deafened by a German shell that exploded
in his dugout while he was serving in France during World War I.
Postwar, returned home to Standard, CA. Married, but it lasted
less than a year in part because she could not stand his
domineering father.
Lonely, he began writing to women whose names
he bought from a marriage agency. After many nonresponses and
other disappointments, he finally found one woman, Eva Young
(hearing) who had also been married before and had an 11 year old
son.
They met and married despite his father's and
the community's intense disapproval and dislike. She very much
enjoyed attending weekly dances in another town a few miles away,
although Carroll Rablen did not participate due to his deafness.
Instead, he would sit outside in the car, waiting for the dance to
end to take her home. It is likely that he also didn't trust other
men to take her home, since they had an eye for her and she for
them too.
On one such night, Eva brought sandwiches and
coffee out to Carroll in the car. Soon after, he was noticed
writhing with agony in his car seat, and he died before anyone
could help, but not before complaining of bitterness in the
coffee.
Suspicion immediately fell on Eva for poisoning
Carroll, but an autopsy showed no poison in Carroll's stomach and
no other evidence strong enough to charge her with his death.
Suicide could not be ruled out either, since Carroll had been in
depression several times before and had talked about committing
suicide.
A preliminary inquest into Carroll's death
brought a huge crowd of spectators, forcing the judge to hold it
outdoors since no available room was large enough. The local
sheriff then secretly brought in an expert forensic investigator,
and the two of them working together finally built an intricate
chain of proof, establishing Eva's guilt in poisoning Carroll.
Confronted with the evidence, Eva confessed, eliminating the need
for a trial, and was sentenced to life in prison without
possibility of parole or commutation.
Thought I’d share the following article I’ve
been working on for the second edition of Hearts West: Mail Order
Brides on the Frontier. Marrying the wrong person could mean death
or at the very least 20 years in prison. Hearts West II will be
released Christmas 2012. When Carroll B. Rablen, a thirty-four
year old veteran of World War II from Tuttletown, California,
advertised for a bride he imagined hearing from a woman who longed
to spend their life with him hiking and enjoying the historic,
scenic beauty of the Gold Country in Northern California. The ad
he placed in a San Francisco matrimonial paper in June 1928 was
answered by Eva Brandon. The thirty-three year-old Eva was living
in Quanah, Texas when she received a copy of the matrimonial
publication.
If Carroll had been less eager to marry he
might have noticed the immature tone Eva’s letters possessed. If
he’d taken the time to scrutinize her words he might have been
able to recognize a flaw in her thinking. According to the July
14, 1929 edition of the Ogden, Utah newspaper the Ogden
Standard-Examiner, one of Eva’s first correspondences demonstrated
that not only did she seem much younger than thirty-three years
old, but she also had a dark side. “Mr. Rablen, Dear Friend,” the
letter began. “You wrote about a son I have. He has had no father
since he was a month old. The father left me. I haven’t seen him.
If a man leaves me I don’t want to see them. And I’ll make sure I
can’t.”
Eva left Texas for California in late April
1929. She and Carroll were married the evening of April 29, 1929.
The dance that followed the nuptials at the Tuttletown school
house was well attended by Carroll’s friends and neighbors. They
were happy he had found someone to share his life. Eva twirled
around the room dancing with anyone who wanted to join her. She
was elated with her situation. Carroll on the other hand chose to
wait outside for his new bride in the car. According to the Ogden
Standard Examiner, Carroll was slightly deaf and despondent over
the other physical ailments that kept him from fully enjoying the
festivities.
When Carroll’s father, Stephen Rablen began
regaling guests with his rendition of the song “Turkey in the
Straw” on his fiddle, Eva excused herself and went outside to
visit with her husband. She took a tray of sandwiches and coffee
to him. He smiled proudly at her and commented on how thoughtful
it was for her to bring him some refreshments. Carroll helped
himself to a cup of coffee, blew across the top of it to cool it
down then took a sip. He made a bit of a face as if the coffee
lacked something. He took another drink to determine what it
needed.
Shortly after Carroll swallowed the brew a
third time, he dropped the cup and began to scream. Eva watched
him slump over in the front seat of the car. Carroll continued to
scream. Wedding guests poured out of the building to see what was
wrong. Carroll’s father pushed past the people to get to his son.
“Papa. Papa,” Carroll repeated, reaching out for Stephen’s hand.
“The coffee was bitter…so bitter.”
Emergency services were called to the scene but
by the time they arrived Carroll had slipped into an unconscious
state. Attendees at the reception told reporters for the local
newspaper that Eva simply stood back and watched the action play
out around her. She wore no expression at all; no worry, concern,
anxiety, nothing. An ambulance transported Carroll to the hospital
and Eva road along in the vehicle with her husband. He was
pronounced dead at the scene.
Doctors suspected foul-play because his illness
came on so suddenly. An autopsy was performed and the contents in
Carroll’s stomach revealed the presence of poison. The cup he
drank coffee out of was also analyzed and traces of poison were
found there as well.
On May 1, 1929, the day of Carroll’s funeral,
the Sheriff of Tuolumne County returned to the spot where the
groom died. In a patch of grass only a few spots where Rablen’s
automobile was parked, a bottle of strychnine was found. The
bottle was traced to a drugstore in near Tuttletown. The register
showing the purchase of the item had been signed for by Mrs. Joe
Williams. The description of Mrs. Williams given by the clerk at
the drugstore suggested Eva Brandon Rablen bought the item.
The sheriff asked Carroll’s widow to accompany
him to the drugstore where without hesitation the clerk identified
her as the purchaser of the poison.
Authorities escorted Eva to the police station
and she immediately claimed her husband had poisoned himself
because he was brokenhearted over his health problems. Stephen
arrived at the station soon afterwards and told police that he
suspected his daughter-in-law killed his son over a $3,500
insurance police. He accused Eva of finding her victims through
mail-order bride advertisements and suggested she killed her last
husband, a mail-order groom named Hubert Brandon. Stephen demanded
Eva be arrested for murder.
Eva was arrested for the crime, but not on her
father-in-law’s orders. A handwriting expert had compared the
signature on a drugstore’s registry with one Eva provided
authorities with at the station. The two were a match. Eva was
charged with premeditated murder.
Newspaper articles about the homicide referred
to Eva as “Borgia of the Sierras.” The public was ravenous for
specifics about the killing. “Quarrels, quarrels, I was sick of
and tired of them,” Eva told a judge about her marriage. “We
talked things over. It was decided we should both commit suicide.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Finally I decided to poison
him. It was the best way out, I thought. Now they want to hang me?
I could only put him out of the way because I felt it was the only
way to get my freedom.”
Eva was sentenced to life in prison at San
Quentin for murder. The day the authorities escorted her to the
ferry that would take her to the penitentiary she was all smiles.
Reporters and inquisitive spectators on hand at the dock asked Eva
why she killed Carroll. She politely told them she couldn’t give
them the information they wanted. “I can’t tell you why I
confessed to putting strychnine in my husband’s coffee. I told the
court all and I want to tell all.”
Eva was helped onto the ferry that would
transport her to San Quentin. Sheriff Jack Dambacher of Sonora
County and his wife decided to travel with Eva to prison. “I feel
fine,” she told her traveling companions, “not a bit tired. I’m
not at all downhearted or discouraged.” Eva’s eleven year-old son,
Albert Lee waiting at the dock with his aunt and uncle to say
goodbye to his mother. Eva showed little emotion as she held her
child close to her. “I will be all right,” she told him. “I’m
going to study Spanish. I’ve always been crazy to learn Spanish.
Then if I get along well with that I can take on other subjects.”
Eva’s sister assured her that she would take very good care of her
boy and promised her that those who lived in the Sonora area would
help with Albert as well. “He will not suffer for what wasn’t his
fault. We will see he wants for nothing.”
According to the Examiner the 1929 murder of
Carroll Rablen by his mail-order bride Eva Brandon is the most
notorious case of its type.