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DeMELKER-COWLE Daisy Louisa

*1886

+1932/12/30

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aka

1909

1931

Johannesburg

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Urteil: Death by Hanging

Thrice married, South African Daisy de Melker lost her first two husbands under mysterious circumstances, but homicide detectives were not prone to stirring up a widow's grief in the chivalrous 1920s. It took the death of Daisy's 20-year-old son, Rhodes Cowle, on March 5, 1932, to set tongues wagging, and de Melker soon found herself behind bars. An autopsy performed on Rhodes Cowle revealed lethal doses of arsenic in his system, and a pharmacist in Germiston, a Johannesburg suburb, recalled selling some of the poison to Daisy. Increasingly suspicious, the authorities exhumed late husbands William Cowle and Robert Sproat -- deceased in 1923 and 1927, respectively -- with traces of poison revealed in both corpses. Confronted with the damning evidence , Daisy confessed . She had dispatched her husbands for insurance money, killing off her son when he began to blackmail her, threatening to tip the police unless she parted with her savings. Convicted of triple murder in a speedy trial, Daisy de Melker was hanged in Johannesburg on December 30, 1932.

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