Where Is Arsenic Lilly?

Arsenic Lilly--to use the name by which some doctors call her--is an attractive, dark-haired woman in her middle 30s. She has a fatal way with men.

In October of 1968, her husband was admitted to the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville for treatment of internal pains. After four days--with Lilly in faithful attendance at his bedside--he died. An autopsy showed acute gastric ulcers and hemorrhaging of internal organs.

Not long afterward, Lilly moved in with a carpenter, who also developed gastric problems and entered the same hospital. With Lilly once again in attendance, he finally grew so sick that all visitors were barred--whereupon he began improving. The doctors ran a battery of tests and discovered signs of arsenic, which, when administered in small doses over a period of time, produces symptoms that can easily be mistaken for those of other ailments. Some of the organs from Lilly's late husband were reexamined, and they also showed large amounts of the poison.

The police questioned Lilly with the aid of a lie detector. She calmly denied everything and passed the test. Since there was insufficient evidence to hold her, she was allowed to go her way.

Lilly next took up housekeeping for a 78-year-old retired real estate developer, and predictably enough he was brought to University Hospital last December with nausea, vomiting and a burning sensation in his hands. Lilly loyally visited the bedside, but a doctor involved in the earlier cases happened to spot her. She was dissuaded from further visits, and her employer recovered. Again police could find no evidence to prove that Lilly had ever bought or administered arsenic, so they brought no charges. Says a police lieutenant who investigated Lilly: "All we had was hearsay and circumstantial evidence."

With the law apparently helpless, Dr. Lever Stewart and three colleagues decided to write up the case in the Virginia Medical Monthly, to warn other physicians in the area to be on the lookout for arsenic poisoning. "She's a grade-A psychopath," says Dr. Stewart. Passing the lie detector test was no problem for her, "because to her it would mean nothing to lie."

At last report, Lilly was somewhere near West Palm Beach, Fla., using an alias and working as a housekeeper for a rich retired couple. The Public Health Service has alerted state police and health authorities. "Looking at the evidence," says Dr. Stewart, "there's no doubt in my mind that she killed her husband and tried the same thing with the other men. And she'll try it again."

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