The Poisoner's Handbook By Rob Rapley

Michael Blair was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a young girl named Ashley Estell. Ashley was only seven years old when she disappeared from the park her and her family were attending. The state had three eyewitnesses, but none claimed to have seen Estell and Blair together at the Plano, Texas park. The disappearance occurred on September 4, 1993 and Michael Blair’s car was spotted by both police and city employees before he was called in for questioning which eventually lead to his conviction in 1994. There were many different reasons Michael Blair was wrongly convicted of the young girls death.

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The Poisonwood Bible Everyone in the world has someone that they want to grow up and be just like them in every way, and in the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the reader views a young girl named Leah Price who is devoting her life to being just like her father. As a young girl, she absolutely adores everything about her father while trying to be his favorite; she follows him around doing everything he does until he makes them move across the world to a city named Kilanga in the deep Congo. Throughout the novel, Leah begins to change her viewpoints about her father as his decisions put their family in danger. The geography, culture, and the physical presence of others all contribute to Leah’s complex character and help shape her

Have you ever thought about how many murderers you have encountered just living your daily life? The people of the Eastern Shore may understand how this feels. The Eastern Shore experiences hundreds of murders a year, however, just three shocking murders affected the way the local community continues to view the life around them. Murders are a commonly committed crime throughout the world, yet, very few people realize that they have more than likely experienced an encounter with a murderer just carrying on with their daily life. One may wonder, what causes someone to become a murderer, serial killer, or any other kind of criminal.

The Incident In 1998, Dr. Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde reached to John Pollard, who was the coroner for the South Manchester District, about Dr. Harold Shipman’s high rate of deaths of all of his patients. This was brought to the police attention and the police did not pay so much attention to it, assigning some of the newer police officers, which of course had little experience in being a police officer. These assigned police officers were unable to find enough evidence to charge Dr. Harold Shipman. Shipman’s investigation was then dropped and that same year Shipman killed 3 more people, with last victim being Kathleen Grundy, whose death certificate was recorded by Shipman stating that the cause of death was “old age.”

In criminology, differential association is a theory developed by Edwin Sutherland proposing that through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior. The differential association theory is the most talked about of the learning theories of deviance. (DAT). (Sutherland) (Sociological Theories of Crime and Their Explanation on Crime , 2007) Theories of criminality are most commonly derived from human behavior.

Chapter five titled “Mercury” of The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum gives a fascinating story, about a woman named Gertie Gorman who was married to a man named Charles Webb. Many believed that her husband poisoned her because in her will “[she would leave] everything to her husband” (112) giving him a good motive for that action, but as the investigators opened up the body they found the presence of mercury bichloride, which was a “messy killer” (114) meaning it was hard to miss because of all the bloody inflammations. As the investigators looked more into the case they found out that Webb was not the person responsible for his wife’s death, however Webb was still prosecuted. Mercury can be poisonous if taken in extreme quantities causing the same things it did to Gertie’s body.

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“The positivist approach assumes that deviance is real, that it exists in the objective experience of the people who commit deviant acts are those who respond to them.” (Conrad, Schneider 1980) Positivism is a perspective on knowledge and reality that assumes human behavior can be studied and explained by utilizing the same principles and practices used to study the natural behavior. Applying the scientific method to the study of human beings. The view that human behavior and attitudes are influenced by forces both internal and external to the individual.

Chapter 2 of The poisoner’s handbook by Deborah Blum has an aggressive style. Elements of diction support this style. Some of the elements that support the style are connotation/ denotation, cacophonous, and monosyllabic/polysyllabism. Connotation and denotation help to show the aggressive style of the writing in chapter 2. When describing mustard gas, Blum states the its effect include “searing the eyes into a crusted blindness” (Blum, 2010).

In 1892, a young woman named Lizzie Borden was accused of murdering her father and stepmother (“Lizzie Borden on Trial” 2). This accusation was influenced by the lack of evidence at the scene of the crime. There appeared to be no murder weapon, very few witnesses, and the house did not show any signs of an intruder (“Lizzie Borden on Trial” 5). Once the scene was investigated, it was determined that the cause of death for both victims was multiple blows to the head by an axe. Two axes were found in the home, and neither had a speck of blood (“Lizzie Borden on Trial” 14).

Throughout the whole investigation of the Gail Miller rape and murder case there were many wrongs committed leading up to the false conviction of David Milgaard. The authorities were pressured by the public and other groups to convict someone of this heinous crime and in doing so this action of theirs put an innocent man behind bars for twenty-three years. Right from the start of the investigation there were faults and incorrect procedures perpetrated by the police. The events that took place leading up to the conviction of Mr. Milgaard demonstrate just how sloppy the investigation took a turn when the police became lax in their investigational procedures.

Sutherland’s theory of Differential Association takes a macro level analysis as to why people commit crimes and brings it to a micro level analysis. He concludes that looking at a multiple factor approach did not explain why crimes are committed. Instead he asks the question what one singular factor touches on these multilevel factors. Sutherland looked for the universal explanation as to why crimes are committed rather than looking at individual reasons. His theory seeks what has always been present in crime and what has not or better yet what mechanism or experiences correlate to the crimes committed.

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