Observations placeholder
Graham Young and the mass poisonings
Identifier
029498
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Rat poison used for Murder - Mike Thompson, Matty Coe and Thomas Sloan
Rugby School, UK Molecule of the Month July 2018
One of the first notable cases was that of Graham Young, who was born in 1947 in Neasden, London. From an early age, Young was obsessed with poisons. This led him to begin testing different toxic substances on his relatives when he was only 14.
Suspicion was aroused when Young’s family became violently ill, with his sister once hallucinating on the train to work. After she was taken to hospital it was concluded that she had been exposed to he plant Deadly Nightshade (atropa belladonna), but the source was not known.
Eventually his ‘experiments’ killed his stepmother Molly. To destroy evidence of his murder he convinced his father to have her cremated, so that her body couldn’t be tested for the presence of his poisonous chemicals. Next came another mysterious illness of his sister, which led his aunt to become suspicious. Knowing of his love of poisons she suggested taking Young to a psychiatrist. Soon after this consultation he was in the hands of the police.
After being found to possess psychopathic tendencies by pre-trial psychiatrists, he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital, which a high security prison/hospital in Crowthorne in Berkshire. He was their youngest inmate since 1885.
Young was later released from Broadmoor in 1971 because authorities thought that they had ‘cured’ him of psychopathy. He then went to work as a laboratory technician at a chemical factory in Bovingdon, near Hemel Hempstead. Here he is thought to have been the cause of the “Bovingdon Bug” which affected more than 70 people and killed three. The cause of the ‘bug’ turned out to be Young who was poisoning his co-workers’ tea with thallium sulfate.