Ep. 6: Death is Like a Box of Chocolates

Life is like a box of chocolates: You never know if you're going to bite into one that has been laced with deadly poison.

Fourteen-year-old Harry Pennington returned from the Dover, Delaware, post office on August 9, 1898, with a registered package for his young and pretty aunt, Elizabeth Dunning, the daughter of ex-Congressman John Pennington. She unwrapped the package and found a shiny pink box wrapped with a pink ribbon.

"Look, Papa, I've received a box of candy. I wonder who could have sent it?" 

"There must be a note of some kind, or a name," said Mr. Pennington from behind the newspaper he was reading.

"Yes, there's a note, but it says 'With love to yourself and baby. Signed, Mrs. C. I'm afraid I don't know a Mrs. C." 

Not only did Elizabeth not know the name of the sender, but the postmark was illegible. But Mr. Pennington, not much interested, returned to his newspaper. Elizabeth examined the box, and inside she found an embroidered handkerchief covering two layers of assorted chocolates. 

Elizabeth, whose husband was in Puerto Rico serving as a newspaper correspondent during the Spanish-American War, put aside the chocolates to prepare dinner for herself and her six-year-old daughter. After dinner, the other occupants of the house relaxed outside on the veranda. These included Mr. and Mrs. Pennington, young Harry Pennington, Elizabeth's older sister, Ida Harriet Deane, and Ida's daughters Leila and Mary Deane. Elizabeth suddenly remembered the candy. She and her sister ate several pieces, while the children each had a few nibbles. Mr. Pennington declined, while Mrs. Pennington took one bite and cast it aside, remarking that it tasted terrible.

That night, Elizabeth Dunning and Ida Deane fell violently ill, and children were sickened to a lesser extent. Although a doctor was quickly summoned, his treatments produced no improvement. After several hours of agony, Ida died on August 11. Elizabeth Dunning died the next day.

A post-mortem examination revealed that the two women had died from arsenic poisoning. Fortunately for investigators, the candy box and its contents, along with the wrapper, had not been thrown away. It was Elizabeth's father, the former congressman, who studied the postmark on the wrapper and determined that it had been mailed from San Francisco, where John and Elizabeth Dunning had formerly lived. He recalled that his daughter had received a handful of anonymous letters from California since returning to Delaware. He was able to find one of these letters and he compared the handwriting with the note that had been sent with the poisoned candy. The writing appeared to be identical.

One of these letters, written by the hand a female, was dated July 10, 1897. It read, in part:

I sincerely hope you have made all due inquiry concerning the grave information I sent you concerning the conduct of your husband.

The note made reference to an unidentified beautiful woman who was supposedly having an affair with Elizabeth's war correspondent husband, John Preston Dunning.

On the other side of the country, San Francisco detectives went to work untangling the threads of John Dunning's past. He had married Elizabeth Pennington in Delaware in February of 1891. A short time later they moved to California, where John accepted a position as a newspaper reporter. Their daughter was born later that year, and John Dunning gradually climbed the ladder of success, becoming the daytime bureau manager for an established press organization. He was a handsome man, with a fondness for flirting and gambling on horse races. These pastimes rankled the ex-congressman's daughter, who was extremely religious. Not surprisingly detectives learned of a woman rumored to be John's mistress, whom he had met three years before the mysterious deaths of Elizabeth Dunning and Mrs. Deane.

It all began one day in September of 1895, when John was cycling through Golden Gate Park. the chain on his bicycle broke, and as he was trying to fix it he struck up a conversation with an attractive woman who was sitting on a nearby park bench. Upon being informed of his wife's death and having discovered that his secret was out, John Dunning told investigators about his affair. Her name was Ada Curtis and she had been born in England. Ada was a widow, or so she had claimed.

Detectives discovered that none of these details were correct. Ada Curtis, in fact, had been born Cordelia Adelaide Brown and her place of birth was not England, but the small rural community of Brownsville, Nebraska. Her father had founded the town in 1854, and she and her sisters grew up considering themselves as high society-- though their family was not at all wealthy. These delusions of grandeur were so strong that one of her sisters was sent to an insane asylum, where she later died.

In September of 1872 18-year-old Cordelia Brown, as she was then known, married a Kansas City banker named W.A. Botkin. They later moved to Stockton, California, where Cordelia gave birth to a son. She and her husband eventually separated, and Cordelia moved to San Francisco with her young son, Beverly Botkin. To maintain an illusion of youth, Cordelia told people that Beverly was her stepson. According to John Dunning, who was unaware that his mistress was several years older than he was, Elizabeth knew about the affair, which was the reason for her return to Delaware in the summer of 1896. John remained in San Francisco and moved into an apartment on Geary Street, adjoining the apartment occupied by Cordelia and her son.

In March of 1898, John Dunning was dispatched to Puerto Rico to cover the Spanish-American War, which required a cross-country train trip to New York. Before leaving the United States, he and Elizabeth reconciled. He told Cordelia about the reconciliation, which drove her closer to the brink of insanity. She went so far as to write a letter to the governor of California, asking him to send her to Puerto Rico. This request, of course, was denied, as the American fighting forces had no use for a 44-year-old estranged wife with a phony British accent.

In July, Cordelia fell ill and went to Stockton with her nurse, Almira Ruoff, to recuperate. She went to a doctor, who prescribed opium, warning her that, in large enough doses, it could be lethal. This got her thinking about other poisons, specifically arsenic. Mrs. Ruoff later recalled that Cordelia began asking her all sorts of questions about arsenic-- where could she obtain it? Would she have to give her name? What were the symptoms of arsenic poisoning? Mrs. Ruoff, however, didn't think too much of it at the time.

Upon returning to San Francisco in August, Cordelia booked a room at the Hotel Victoria and gave specific instructions not to be disturbed. On August 4, she went to the post office and sent a registered package to Mrs. John Dunning of Dover, Delaware. Later that afternoon she boarded a train to a small town in Sonoma County where her sister, Mrs. McClure, was living. It was the San Francisco Examiner who contacted a Sonoma County correspondent, Lizzie Livernash, and asked her to do some digging around. When Livernash informed Cordelia that she was under suspicion for the Delaware poisonings, she began to panic. Believing that her estranged husband would be willing to protect her, she attempted a reconciliation of her own. It worked.

However, in the meantime, John Dunning had returned from Puerto Rico and had positively identified the handwriting on the note which had been sent with the poisoned candy as that of the woman he had known as Ada Curtis. Armed with this note, the handkerchief and the box of chocolates, Detective B.J. McVey departed for California. 

On August 23, Cordelia Brown Botkin was arrested and charged with murder. But where would she be tried? California or Delaware?

The high-priced lawyers retained by Cordelia's husband were able to prevent her extradition to Delaware, but excellent policework led to her indictment. The candy box was traced to a store in San Francisco and two clerks remembered selling the chocolates to Cordelia because she had specifically requested a box without the company's name printed on it. A clerk at a clothing store remembered selling the handkerchief to Cordelia because she had often gone there to cash checks and money orders, and a drugstore clerk named Frank Grey recalled selling two ounces of arsenic to a woman fitting Cordelia's description. She had given her name as Mrs. Bothin and her address as the Hotel Victoria. Though the victims had died thousands of miles away, on September 16, Governor Budd of California decided that the trial would take place in California.

Cordelia Brown Botkin went on trial on December 6, 1898, before Judge Carroll Cook. Cordelia took the stand in her own defense, but her testimony failed to convince the jury. She was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on February 4, 1899. She was held in branch county jail at Ingleside pending the outcome of her appeal-- or that was supposed to be the plan.

One Sunday in March of 1901, Judge Cook happened to be riding the trolley, which passed through Ingleside. When the trolley stopped at the jail, the judge's jaw dropped when he noticed that one of the passengers who had gotten off was the woman he had recently sentenced to life imprisonment.

 An investigation determined that Cordelia had been given special treatment by the guards, who permitted her "occasional outings" beyond the jail walls. Moreover, she had been provided with a special suite of rooms, special bedding and specially prepared meals. The public outcry was immense. 

His finances depleted by hungry lawyers, W.A. Botkin finally secured a divorce from his wife in 1902. As for Cordelia, her life of luxury behind bars was short-lived. After the main jail was destroyed by fire in 1906, the Ingleside annex became overcrowded and she was transferred to San Quentin, where she found herself in a considerably smaller cell with considerably less comfortable bedding and less palatable cuisine. She suffered a nervous breakdown and died at San Quentin on March 7, 1910. Her death was attributed to "softening of the brain due to melancholy."

Which is just one of the many unpleasant consequences of fifteen minutes of infamy.