FIND 2 MORE VICTIMS IN CHICAGO POISON PLOT: EVENING STAR, NOVEMBER 19, 1922

Joseph Mitkiewicz and Joseph Rushkowski had been dead for eight years when their bodies were dug up and tested. Both had died in 1914, in May and July, after what the paper calls similar circumstances, and both had been married to Tillie Klimek. On November 18, 1922, Dr. William McNally, the coroner's chemist, announced that each body held poison enough to kill several people, and undertakers said it had not come from the embalming fluid. The next day the Evening Star in Washington ran the Associated Press story on page 3, under a headline that already counted them as victims.

The case had begun with a man who lived. Joseph Klimek, her fourth husband, had been taken from their home on Tell Place to the hospital that fall, violently ill, and the tests found arsenic. The police looked back at the men before him. By the time of this report Klimek and her cousin, Nellie Koulik, were held on murder charges after poison turned up in an exhumed former husband of each, the grand jury was to hear the case the following week, and the bodies of five children related to one or both women were to be exhumed. The state's theory was insurance.

The suspicion was spreading. That same night, the paper reports, police arrested a woman and her mother over an alleged attempt to poison the woman's husband, Nicholas McKey, who had come to the police a week earlier to say the two had insured his life for $1,000 without his knowledge and that he had later "had pains in his legs." Both women denied it. McKey told police his mother-in-law disliked him and had recently consulted Mrs. Klimek. That November the Chicago papers were calling her the high priestess of a Bluebeard clique in Little Poland.

What this item records is the investigation at its most feverish, as the Associated Press reported it from Chicago, not anything a court decided. The paper spells the second husband Rushkowski and the cousin Nellie Sturmer Koulik; other records give Ruskowski and Nellie Koulik. Tillie Klimek was convicted of one murder only, that of her third husband, Frank Kupczyk, by a Cook County jury in March 1923, and sentenced to life; she died in the penitentiary at Joliet in 1936, and Nellie Koulik was acquitted. None of the deaths reported here was ever proved against her in court, and the paper does not follow the McKey arrests any further.

The Evening Star for November 19, 1922, is more than ninety-five years old, and the whole issue, this wire story included, belongs to the public domain without restriction. The image is the Library of Congress scan from Chronicling America; the citation and rights statement are given under it.

Heavy, clean type left nothing in doubt, and the transcription carries no [illegible] marks. It keeps the paper's double period after "announced today," its spellings "Mitkiewicz," "Rushkowski" and "Sturmer Koulik," and the quoted complaint about McKey's legs exactly as set. The column runs complete from headline to last line; the bank robbery report printed beneath it is a separate item.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

FIND 2 MORE VICTIMS IN CHICAGO POISON PLOT

Two Others of Mrs. Klimek's Husbands Victims of Heavy Dose, Analysis Shows.

By the Associated Press.

CHICAGO, November 18.—Poison sufficient to have caused the deaths of several persons has been found in the bodies of two more former husbands of Mrs. Tillie Klimek, Dr. William McNally, coroner's chemist, announced today.. Mrs. Klimek and her cousin, Mrs. Nellie Sturmer Koulik, were held on charges of murder after poison had been found in the exhumed bodies of a former husband of each. The case is to be presented to the grand jury next week.

Poison was found today in the bodies of Joseph Mitkiewicz and Joseph Rushkowski, who died under similar circumstances in May and July of 1914. Undertakers have declared that the poison found was not used in the embalming fluid, according to the authorities.

The bodies of five children, all relatives of one or both of the two women, are to be exhumed at once and examined, it was announced.

The state is working on the theory that the series of husbands and other relatives of the women were poisoned in order that insurance might be collected.

Two more women, said to be friends of Mrs. Klimek, were taken into custody tonight in connection with poison cases, when Mrs. Martha McKey and her mother, Mrs. Catherine Kozlowski, were arrested in connection with an alleged attempt to poison Nicholas McKey, husband of the former. Both denied that they had tried to poison the man.

McKey's first connection with the case came a week ago when he told the police that his wife and mother-in-law had insured his life for $1,000 without his knowledge, and that he had later "had pains in his legs."

An investigation, according to the police, disclosed that McKey was suffering from poisoning, and poison was found today at the McKey home. McKey told police that his mother-in-law had disliked him and that the woman recently consulted Mrs. Klimek.

Transcriber's notes

- Readability: excellent. Clean, heavy type. No [illegible] markers were needed.

- Kept as printed: the double full point in "announced today..", "Sturmer Koulik" (usually Koulik or Kulik), "Mitkiewicz" and "Rushkowski" as spelled, and the quoted phrase "had pains in his legs."

- The crop runs from the headline to the last line of the article; the item printed below it, headed "BANDITS START FIRE, THEN ROB OHIO BANK", is unrelated.

- This is the investigation at its height: the two exhumations that produced the murder charges, the five children's bodies ordered exhumed, the insurance theory, and the arrests of two further women who had consulted Klimek. She was convicted in 1923 and sentenced to life.