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Sunday, November 22, 2015

Nellie Kinsley, Thirteen-Year-Old Woule-Be Murderess, Corning, New York, 1903


FULL TEXT: Corning, N. Y., Jan. 26. – Thirteen-year-old Nellie Kinsley has confessed that a mysterious illness from which her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Isaac B. Kinsley, have been suffering is due to poison she put into the food in order to obtain their property after death.

“Do you know how to get money and houses and everything you want?” she asked her playmates while her parents were ill. “When your father and mother are dead all they own will belong to you. I found that out a little while ago, and I took some of the rat poison papa got to kill the rats with and put it in the supper I cooked. I did not eat the supper, but papa and mamma did and then they got sick, if they die I will have money.”

At the Susquehauna Home, at Binghamton, she repeated the story of the poisoning. Nellie was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Kinsley when she was two years old. Recently Mr. Kinsley had bought some arsenic, and it was kept on a shelf in the pantry. Soon after Nellie prepared supper for her parents and they were taken violently ill. It was traced to arsenic and Nellie was suspected. Mrs. Kinsley will probably be crippled for life as a result of the poisoning.

[“Fed Arsenic to Parents – Girl of 13 Explains Mysterious Illness of Father and Mother.” The Richmond Planet (Va.), Jan. 31, 1903, p. 4]

[390-1/23/21]
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