Arsenic Epidemic

A Philadelphia judge & jury last week awarded the electric chair to Herman Petrillo, 40, spaghetti salesman and "brains" of a murder-for-insurance syndicate alleged to have done away with four victims of arsenic poisoning on whose lives they had insurance (TIME, Feb. 13). After hearing the verdict, Herman Petrillo tried to slug the jury's forewoman, was dragged cursing from the courtroom. Judge Harry S. McDevitt ordered the arrest of Paul Petrillo (cousin) and the widow of a poisonee (two other widows were already in custody), and investigators began exhuming 70 bodies in graveyards of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York. Object: to prove that Petrillo during the past ten years had run an arsenic epidemic to collect upwards of $100,000 in insurance.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.