26

A Taste for Thallium

If it wasn’t for the arrest and subsequent trial of housewife Yvonne Gladys Fletcher in September 1952, another murderer, Caroline Grills – a serial killing grandmother who had murdered several of her family members – may well have remained uncaught.

Yvonne Fletcher had been the victim of repeated bashings by her second husband, Bertram Henry Fletcher, a rat catcher for a company in Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west. Because of his job, Fletcher had easy access to deadly thallium-based rat poison, which he brought home to keep the Fletcher residence free of rodents. What he didn’t know was that he was providing the means of his own death.

Though widely used in Europe for many years, thallium hadn’t been used in Australia until the early 1940s. It proved highly effective in eradicating the hordes of rodents invading eastern Australia around that time. In every state except New South Wales, anyone buying thallium had to record their name and address on a Poisons Purchase Register.

Family friends became suspicious when Bert Fletcher died in 1952. He had died in too similar a way to the way Yvonne Fletcher’s previous husband, department store cleaner Desmond Butler, had died: he had passed away, after a long illness, in July 1948.

The friends notified police, who exhumed the remains of Fletcher and found traces of thallium. Police exhumed the remains of Des Butler and, even though he had been in the ground for four years, his corpse contained enough traces of thallium to charge Yvonne Fletcher with double murder. She was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Caroline Mickelson was born in 1890. At the age of 17 she married Richard William Grills and became Caroline Grills. The couple went on to have four sons, who in turn gave them several grandchildren. Around 1947, Richard and Caroline were living in inner Sydney, and their house became infested with large rats – not an uncommon story at the time. The local council suggested they use Thall-rat, a cheap and readily available poison containing thallium.

When Caroline saw the effect it had on the huge rodents, she wondered if it might have the same effect on some people she felt were standing in the way of what she wanted. At first ‘Aunt Carrie’, as she was affectionately known by her loving family, only murdered out of greed, but her motive soon seemed to turn into the pure enjoyment of making others suffer.

Caroline Grills’s career as a killer began in mid-1947, when she murdered her 87-year-old stepmother, Christina Louisa Adelaide Mickelson. The woman had married Caroline’s widowed ex-seaman father 11 years earlier, and when Caroline’s father died, his will stated that Christina should receive life tenancy in their comfortable family house, which was in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville. The will also stated that when Christina passed away, the house would be handed on to Caroline. Anxious to move out of her own rat-infested dwelling, Caroline decided to murder Christina and claim the family home she believed was rightfully hers.

Caroline went to visit her stepmother at the Gladesville residence one afternoon and slipped a dose of Thall-rat in her tea. Christina began convulsing violently. The family doctor was called and the elderly woman was ushered to bed, only to pass away during the night. Because of Christina’s advanced age, no one considered the circumstances suspicious. Accordingly, no autopsy was performed. Christina was cremated a few days after her death.

Caroline Grills waited a few months before she dosed her next victim with Thall-rat – 84-year-old widow Angelina Thomas, a lifelong friend of her husband’s. Indeed, Angelina had partly raised Richard – when he was a boy, he had lived with her in her cottage at Leura in the Blue Mountains.

It was well known that when Angelina died, her ‘foster son’ Richard and his wife would inherit her house. Caroline would often make the trip out to the Blue Mountains to visit Angelina, and she would always take a freshly baked cake or similar treat for afternoon tea, as she did on 17 January 1948. After that visit, Angelina passed away. As per her wishes, her house was handed on to Richard and Caroline.

Caroline Grills now lived in a large home in Gladesville and had a ‘weekender’ in the beautiful Blue Mountains. Her husband had built up a successful real estate business, and she was surrounded by a large and loving extended family. It would appear that she had no further reason to kill.

But no. Caroline’s next victim was 60-year-old John Lundberg, her husband’s brother-in-law. A healthy former seaman, he fell ill and his hair started to fall out while he was holidaying on the NSW central coast with Richard and Caroline Grills. A doctor who visited had no explanation for the sudden and mysterious ailment. Caroline took on the responsibility of nursing her sick relative back to health. Soon John lost his sight. Then his mind started to wander. After lapsing into a coma, he died, on 17 October 1948. Doctors found nothing unusual in the death of a fit and athletic man, and John Lundberg was soon cremated without an autopsy.

A few months later, on 15 October 1949, Caroline’s sister-in-law, Mary-Anne Mickelson, died after a long illness – during which her hair fell out and she lost her sight. Caroline cared for her during the illness, even spoon-feeding the sick woman.

But the trail of death didn’t stop there. Eveline Lundberg – Caroline’s husband’s sister, the widow of John Lundberg – became seriously ill in 1951. As in the previous cases, her hair started to fall out and she began to lose her vision. She also suffered from painful leg cramps and fell into fits of deep depression.

Christine Downey (Eveline’s daughter) and her tram driver husband John often got together with Eveline and Caroline Grills to play bridge. During their games, Caroline would make tea and serve cakes and pikelets and other home-cooked items she had brought.

Eveline’s illness lingered until 1952. By that time she was almost totally blind. She was placed in full-time hospital care. While Caroline had made a point of visiting Eveline every day while she was sick at home, she couldn’t do that in the hospital, and with trained nurses looking after her, Eveline started to make a recovery.

Caroline turned her attention to the Downeys at the weekly card games. As she had done with poor Eveline, she began administering enough thallium to make them sick – but not enough to kill them.

Before long, both began to lose their hair. They also experienced impaired vision, and suffered from cramps and bouts of nausea. Unbelievably, no one recognised a pattern. Aunt Carrie continued to serve tea and homemade treats.

The Downeys’ suspicions were only aroused when the Yvonne Fletcher case came to light – the symptoms of Desmond Butler and Bertram Fletcher were all too familiar. Both victims had suffered a long, mysterious illness during which they lost their vision and had their hair fall out. They also experienced painful cramps in their arms and legs, and had become vague and bedridden before passing away in horrible pain.

Christine and John Downey informed the authorities of their suspicions. Under police supervision, the pair went about their lives while detectives gathered evidence against Caroline Grills. The Downeys collected food supplied by Aunt Carrie and samples of the tea she made, but all proved harmless.

It wasn’t until 20 April 1953 that their theory was proven correct. The Downeys brought Christine’s mother Eveline, now totally blind, home from hospital. As she sat on the verandah, Caroline Grills called in and made a fuss of Eveline, making up a fresh brew of tea and serving her up some homemade pikelets she had brought.

As Caroline returned from the kitchen with a cup of tea, John Downey saw her reach into her pocket and sprinkle something into the cup. Christine diverted Caroline’s attention as John swapped cups, putting the contents of the suspect cup into a jar. Analysis of the tea proved that it was laced with thallium, as was the food Caroline had brought with her.

Caroline Grills was arrested shortly after. When traces of thallium were found in the pocket of the dress she had been wearing the day she visited the Downeys, she was charged with the attempted murder of Eveline Lundberg.

The bodies of Angelina Thomas and Mary-Anne Mickelson were exhumed. When they were found to contain traces of thallium, Caroline was charged with four murders and three counts of attempted murder: of Eveline Lundberg and John and Christine Downey.

The case against the 63-year-old grandmother first caught the public’s attention in August 1953, when Sydney City Coroner E. J. Forrest conducted an inquest into the death of Christine Mickelson. He found that there was enough evidence to commit Caroline for trial. But the Crown elected to instead try her for the recent attempt on Eveline Lundberg’s life.

Caroline’s trial opened at Sydney’s Central Criminal Court on 7 October 1953 before Mr Justice Brereton, who had already ruled that the prosecution could use evidence from all of the poisoning cases Caroline had been charged with.

The defendant laughed and joked with police and her defence lawyers as the proceedings got under way. It seemed she was trying to pass herself off as a happy and harmless old lady; an elderly woman who couldn’t hurt a fly.

The Crown case was represented by C.V. Rooney, QC, who said Caroline had become ‘a practised and habitual poisoner who had lost all sense of feeling’.

Caroline’s only defence was denial. When placed in the witness box by her defence counsel, Frank Hidden, she admitted she had used rat poison that contained thallium, but denied putting it in anyone’s drink. ‘Why on earth would I want to do such a thing as that?’ she added, feigning innocence. The elderly woman had an excuse for everything, and Hidden went to great lengths to establish that she was a helpful housewife whose main pleasure in life was doing good for others. He added that there was no motive for the alleged attempted murder of Eveline Lundberg, and there was no direct link between his client and the poisoning.

‘If she has committed these crimes, there can be no more treacherous or violent poisoner in history,’ Hidden concluded. ‘All the historic cases of murder and attempted murder are prompted by motives of revenge, lust or gain. In these cases there is no question of revenge, of sexual motive or of gain.’

The only possible reason the Crown could come up with for Caroline’s actions was that she murdered ‘for the thrill she got from watching the effect of the poison and knowing that she alone in the world knew what was causing the symptoms and suffering’.

When it came time for him to sum up, Justice Brereton told the jury that thallium was a diabolical, inhuman and cowardly weapon. He pointed out that the use of the poison displayed no particular intellect. Brereton drew attention to the number of thallium poisonings in the Grills family circle, adding that Caroline was a common factor every time. No one else had a link with all the victims.

It took the jury just 12 minutes to return with the decision that Caroline was guilty of the charge of administering thallium to her sister-in-law Eveline Lundberg with the intention of murdering her.

Caroline drummed her fingers and her face tightened as she heard the verdict. Asked if she had anything to say, she frowned and commented that, ‘I helped to live, not to kill.’

Justice Brereton then spoke to the court.

 

Justice Brereton: The jury has found you guilty and I agree with its verdict. The evidence disclosed that under the guise of friendship and loving kindness, but with apparently motiveless malignity, you administered poison to Mrs Lundberg, condemning her at least to a life of blindness and possibly to death. You are hereby sentenced to death.

 

A gasp sounded throughout the courtroom as Caroline’s husband Richard touched her on the arm. He softly called ‘Carrie’ as the convicted murderer was escorted away.

After a failed appeal against the verdict, Caroline’s death sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment. ‘Aunt Thally’, as she became affectionately known within the confines of Long Bay Gaol, settled down to a life of handing out advice and being a shoulder to cry on for other prisoners.

Blind and incapacitated, Eveline Lundberg spent her final days sitting on her daughter’s verandah in Great Buckingham Street, Redfern. Near the end of her life, she told a reporter that Caroline ‘made my life a purgatory. But I’m not bitter. What’s the use of being like that?’ A short time later she died, in a western Sydney nursing home.

On 6 October 1960, Caroline Grills was rushed to Prince Henry Hospital with peritonitis following the rupturing of a gastric ulcer. She died an hour later.