Pod Insights Serial Killers & Murderous Minds The Teacup Poisoner: Graham Young About this episode Known as the "Teacup Poisoner," Graham Young was a British serial killer who claimed his first victim at 14 years when he murdered his stepmother with poisoned tea. But even a long stint in a mental hospital did little to quiet his urges. Once he got out, Graham continued to poison and kill...and nobody suspected a thing. Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House Original. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @crimehouse for more true crime content.
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0:01 Vanessa Richardson? Hi everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
0:37 Speaker 01 This is Crime House.
0:41 Vanessa Richardson? Everyone has some kind of talent. For many, it feels like their true calling. It becomes a cornerstone of their identity, their greatest passion. And in some cases, their talent brings fame and fortune. It doesn't always work out that way, of course. Sometimes a person's talent isn't financially viable. Sometimes they aren't given the means to develop their abilities. And sometimes, the talent itself is the problem. That was the case with Graham Young. As a skilled chemist, he could have used his abilities to change the world. But instead, he used his talent to kill.
1:35 Vanessa Richardson? The human mind is fascinating. It controls how we think, how we feel, how we love, and how we hate. And sometimes the mind drives us to do something truly unspeakable. This is Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original. Every Monday, we'll be taking deep dives into the minds of history's most notorious serial killers and violent offenders.
2:01 Vanessa Richardson? This is a special one-part episode on Graham Young, known as the Teacup Poisoner. Between 1961 and 1971, Graham murdered at least three people and attempted to kill many others using his encyclopedic knowledge of poisons. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Mind of a Serial Killer wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly matters. And to enhance your Mind of a Serial Killer listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free, and for special one-part episodes like this one, you'll
2:46 Vanessa Richardson? get access three days before its wide release, plus exciting bonus content. I'm Vanessa Richardson.
2:53 Tristin Engels? And I'm Dr. Tristin Engels. As Vanessa takes you through our subject stories, I'll be helping her dive into these killers' minds as we try to understand how someone can do such horrible things.
3:04 Vanessa Richardson? Before we get into the story, you should know it contains descriptions of murder and violent crime. Listener discretion is advised. Now, join us as we dive into the life of Graham Young. Examine his mind, and as always, ask the question, what makes a serial killer? Graham Frederick Young came into a tumultuous world. He was born in London in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. The UK was still rebuilding, leaving people uncertain about their futures. Graham's first few years of life were similarly fraught.
3:49 Vanessa Richardson? When he was only 14 weeks old, his mother, Bessie, died of tuberculosis. His father, Frederick, couldn't handle caring for Graham and his eight-year-old sister, Winifred. They were sent to live with other relatives until 1950, when Graham was three. That year, Frederick remarried to a woman named Molly, and their family reunited. But for Graham, irreparable damage may have already been done.
4:17 Tristin Engels? I don't think there is enough time for me to cover all the ways in which bonding during the first three years of a child's life is critical to their overall development. But let's start here. Within the first two years of life, an infant is undergoing rapid brain development and neuron pruning. Neuron pruning helps improve the efficiency of synapses and neural transmission, which is essentially the way which the brain transmits information to the central nervous system. Without this, our ability to perform any basic function is greatly impacted. There's also some correlation with poor neural pruning and autism, though research on that is still ongoing.
4:59 Tristin Engels? Bonding with their caregiver is essential for this wiring to occur because it helps to ensure millions of new connections are made in the brain. Those connections, or neural pathways, are necessary to form memories, to develop logic and reasoning, and form attachments. There's a lot of research in the field of developmental psychology that indicates that neglect, parental inconsistency, and an overall lack of love can lead to long-term mental health problems as well. So Graham lost his mother as an infant and then was essentially abandoned by his father to relatives. That does not mean that Graham can't form a bond with these other relatives because
5:41 Tristin Engels? he certainly can, but if that bond is nurturing, then these essential developmental needs can occur. But at three years old, he's now being taken away from the caregivers that he likely may have had a bond with and placed into a family he's never known, with a parent he doesn't know and a stepparent now as well. Provided how nurturing this new family system is, this could greatly impact his development.
6:08 Vanessa Richardson? Well, after moving back in with his dad, Graham actually started to struggle. Between the ages of four and eight, his arms and legs often twitched involuntarily. He also experienced what doctors called monotonous thoughts that made it difficult for him to concentrate.
6:24 Tristin Engels? So monotonous thinking or monotonous thoughts tells me that Graham lacks variation and that he has repetitive patterns. So if there are deviations in these repetitive patterns, it can cause him to have some impairment in his ability to focus or adapt.
6:41 Vanessa Richardson? Is that like repetitive thoughts that we have sometimes? If you get a song stuck in your head or something like that, is that the same type of monotonous thinking? Or is that something different?
6:48 Tristin Engels? It's more of like rigidity, like a rigidity, right? Like the pattern, routine and order, what made him sort of cope with all of these broken attachments and sort of, you know, the earlier development was maintaining rigid pattern and routine that gave him comfort.
7:05 Vanessa Richardson? I see.
7:06 Tristin Engels? So outside of that, like the ability to be creative is probably not something he can likely do because he's so rigid in his thinking. Or imaginative play, things like that.
7:17 Vanessa Richardson? Yeah, well, that makes sense because at school, word problems and creative thinking were especially difficult for him. Doctors at the time chalked up these issues to the lasting effects of a severe ear infection Graham had when he was a baby.
7:30 Tristin Engels? So I'm not a medical doctor, but I can certainly understand how long-term impairment from a severe ear infection might cause word problems because there could be some impairment in phonetic and auditory processing. But I don't necessarily see how this could cause problems in creativity. I think that would be better explained by developmental delays.
7:51 Vanessa Richardson? Frederick, his dad, worried about him. But by the time Graham was nine, his verbal skills had progressed considerably. The strange limb movements all but disappeared. But even though Graham seemed to be physically and intellectually fine, he still struggled emotionally. Around his schoolmates, he was quiet and solitary. He was never interested in the things that other boys his age loved. Instead, he found himself obsessed with one subject in particular: chemistry.
8:21 Vanessa Richardson? One day in 1956, when Graham was nine, his stepmother Molly found something odd in the laundry. Graham's pants were stuffed with bottles of nail varnish, acid, and a common anesthetic called ether. When she asked him about it, Graham confessed that he was using the chemicals for unspecified "scientific experiments." He'd gotten hold of them by scavenging them from a pharmacy's dumpster. On one hand, Molly was impressed with her stepson's resourcefulness. On the other, she was obviously terrified at the idea of Graham playing with dangerous chemicals. She decided to do a thorough search of Graham's room and found out he had other disturbing interests. It turned out Graham had checked out
9:06 Vanessa Richardson? a lot of books from the local library that he'd hidden from Frederick and Molly, along with gargantuan chemistry textbooks. There were books on the occult, black magic, and, most concerning of all, the Nazi Party.
9:20 Tristin Engels? So I want to circle back to the delays he had in verbal skills until age nine, because the delay in language, that need for routine, like we talked about, the monotony, poor emotional regulation, his lack of interest and reciprocity in his peers, the disinterest in imaginative play with his peers, and a highly specific fixed interest on chemistry, all by age nine, would warrant an evaluation for autism spectrum disorder. But since this is 1956, I don't think that these evaluations were as routinely done as they are now. Autism is a spectrum, so individuals who exhibit more mild symptoms are higher functioning, and they often get overlooked, especially back then.
10:04 Tristin Engels? Autism was first described by Austrian-American psychiatrist Leo Kaner in 1943. And incidentally, he described it as "an anxiously obsessive desire for maintenance of the same," which tracks with Graham's monotony. All this to say, he is definitely showing signs of autism, but autism does not cause someone to become a serial killer. I want to make that very clear. There's no causation there, and I don't want to stigmatize individuals with autism. Also, since it's 1956, it's only a little over a decade since the end of World War II. So his interest in Nazi Germany doesn't necessarily alarm me, at least now.
10:49 Tristin Engels? He could be learning about this in school or hearing his peers talking about it. It's still very fresh. What is concerning, however, is how he is obtaining the books, how he's obtaining these chemicals, and the fact that he's doing it secretively. I would want to explore why he feels he needs to conceal this in the way he is. And based on what that response would be from him, determine how to best address it from there. But the secrecy tells me he knows that there might be something maladaptive about this.
11:25 Vanessa Richardson? It was definitely fresh. And Molly, his stepmom, was thoroughly disturbed by what she found in Graham's room, probably because he was so young and...
11:33 Tristin Engels? Resourceful?
11:34 Vanessa Richardson? Exactly. She actually spoke to him about it. He told her he loved reading about the Nazis most of all. He was born two years after Hitler's defeat, and he remarked that it was a pity he was only a baby at the time, so he couldn't enjoy the war.
11:49 Tristin Engels? Okay, this is a concerning statement for a nine-year-old. He is likely too young to fully understand the complexities of the war. So what is he glorifying and why?
12:00 Vanessa Richardson? Molly and Graham's father Frederick started to keep a much closer eye on him after that. They hoped Graham was simply going through a strange phase that would pass sooner or later. But Graham noticed them watching him and reacted by becoming more secretive and withdrawn. He scoured medical texts for information on obscure poisons and zoned out in class while doodling, filling endless pages with sketches of vampires, gravestones, and swastikas. The one thing he did tell his parents about was his love of science. And when Graham was 11, Frederick tried to encourage that passion by gifting his son a chemistry set. Graham loved it, but he didn't use the chemistry set
12:43 Vanessa Richardson? to perform typical schoolboy experiments like combining baking soda and vinegar. One day, Molly found Graham holding a dead rat by the tail. He said he was going to perform an autopsy on it. Molly said absolutely not and ordered Graham to throw the rat away.
13:01 Tristin Engels? I would want to know where he got this rat. Was it alive when he found it? Did he kill it himself? And more importantly, how many has come before this one? This would be crucial to finding out if there has been a pattern of any kind of animal cruelty here.
13:17 Vanessa Richardson? Yes, and well, Graham was furious at this whole thing. The next morning, he left a drawing in the hall featuring a tombstone with the inscription, "In hateful memory of Molly Young."
13:30 Tristin Engels? This is unnerving for an 11-year-old, especially because it appears directed at his stepmother right after he did not get his way. However, this is also an age where children are learning to cope with emotions like anger, in addition to hormonal changes. But we learn to cope and self-soothe through modeling and nurturance from our caregivers, and we already know he has had a series of broken attachments, beginning as an infant. So I'm wondering if this might be playing a part in that.
13:59 Vanessa Richardson? In retrospect, it was a dangerous omen. But at the time, Graham's father didn't really punish him. In fact, Frederick was never very harsh with his son, maybe because he was trying to make up for abandoning Graham when he was little, that guilt. But even if Frederick had done more to discipline his son, he wouldn't have been able to stop Graham's experiments. Graham was an exceptionally talented student, and his science teacher gave him special permission to use the school laboratory. Graham was able to conduct his experiments unsupervised, and he used that freedom to push his ideas to terrifying limits. He liked to inject rats he caught around his neighborhood with a variety of chemicals, meticulously observing their effects.
14:44 Vanessa Richardson? But the result was always the same: the death of his subjects. Now, Dr. Engels, we touched on this earlier. We hear a lot about serial killers having a penchant for animal cruelty when they're young, or that animal cruelty is a warning sign in children of future criminal behavior. How common is this in reality? Does it always indicate a dangerous personality?
15:06 Tristin Engels? It doesn't always indicate a dangerous personality. In fact, there's upwards to like 30% of children who've engaged in some kind of animal abuse just out of curiosity and learning limit testing and boundaries. Bringing it back to Graham, though, now we know where he's getting these rats. He's actually going out hunting for them himself. On the surface, Graham's actions could seem relatively benign since it appears to be masked as scientific curiosity. However, he's going a great lengths to hide this, like we talked about before, this secretiveness. This is very akin to Jeffrey Dahmer, if you remember when we covered Jeffrey Dahmer.
15:43 Vanessa Richardson? Yes.
15:44 Tristin Engels? That in and of itself indicates that he is aware that if his parents knew, they would put an end to this. And by what you're describing, Vanessa, this goes beyond curiosity. I think he is getting some form of gratification from this as it's giving him a feel of dominance or power. And in addition to his un-involvement in conventional social activities, these are risk markers for future violence at this point.
16:13 Vanessa Richardson? Just like you said, through these dark secretive tests that he was doing, Graham built a deep knowledge of chemistry. Over the next year or two, his reputation spread around school until even the headmaster was predicting that he was destined for great things, and Graham wholeheartedly agreed. Once he got into a lively discussion with his schoolmates about their future ambitions, Graham stunned them when he declared he was going to be a famous poisoner. His hero was William Barner, a notorious 19th century serial killer who poisoned his victims. Graham's friends didn't really know what to make of it. After a moment of silence, they laughed awkwardly and moved on.
16:55 Vanessa Richardson? The comments earned him a reputation at school for being a jokester with a weird sense of humor. The kids had no idea how serious he really was.
17:06 Vanessa Richardson? By 1961, thirteen-year-old Graham had only become more set on a future as a poisoner. As he entered his teenage years, he decided to add a new dimension to his experiments. Graham was no longer content to run tests on rats and mice. He was ready to observe the effects of poison on human subjects. And he already had subjects in mind: his family.
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19:50 Vanessa Richardson? In January 1961, 13-year-old Graham Young went to visit a local chemist in London. Graham was trying to buy a poison called antimony, a slow-acting toxin which can be lethal over long periods of exposure. But antimony was on the restricted list of chemicals, which meant you had to be at least 17 to buy it. Graham got lucky, though. Instead of asking for his ID, the chemist first asked Graham what he needed the antimony for. Graham launched into a lengthy, prepared speech describing several experiments he wanted to perform, presumably non-lethal ones. The level of detail surprised the chemist. Anyone with that level of knowledge had to be at least 17.
20:35 Vanessa Richardson? So he figured Graham just looked young for his age and sold him the antimony.
20:41 Tristin Engels? This is clearly a cognitive bias that caused this chemist to neglect checking his identification simply because he seemed intelligent.
20:49 Vanessa Richardson? And over the next few weeks, Graham made visits to chemists all over town, growing his stock of poisons. He began carrying a vial of antimony at school, which he called his "little friend." He kept bottles of poisons in his desk and showed them to his classmates. Some students started whispering that he was crazy.
21:10 Tristin Engels? So this is more data to suggest that he is a power-oriented killer in the making. He is getting gratification from showing this to his classmates and maybe even a thrill.
21:22 Vanessa Richardson? This is interesting. Graham didn't pay too much attention to what others thought of him as long as they left him alone to do his experiments. He started viewing other people as potential test subjects rather than fellow human beings. And now that he had a vast collection of poisons at his disposal, Graham was ready to take the next step. However, Graham wasn't going to use them on just anybody. He wanted to observe the effects of his experiments firsthand. So he decided to start with someone he saw every day: his stepmother, Molly.
21:57 Vanessa Richardson? In January of 1961, around the same time he visited the chemist, Graham began regularly poisoning Molly's tea with the antimony he'd purchased. After he mixed the powder in her tea, the toxin caused her to vomit and gave her terrible stomach cramps. It was so bad she couldn't get out of bed for hours. But nobody suspected she was being poisoned. She couldn't taste the antimony in her tea, and her symptoms could have been caused by many different illnesses. It was going just as 13-year-old Graham planned. He kept poisoning Molly's tea for months. While she was sick, he acted like a good, attentive son. Graham regularly checked in on his stepmother
22:41 Vanessa Richardson? to see how she was doing and made her cups of tea. The whole time, he was keeping a close eye on her symptoms and recording his observations in his diary.
22:53 Tristin Engels? Let's talk about the psychology about a poisoning serial killer. Statistically, women serial killers are more likely to poison their victims, and their motives were generally for profit of some kind. The method of poisoning had been theorized for women to be more common because it was effective, efficient, and easier to conceal, especially back then, and it didn't require physical overpowering or violence. Graham is not interested in profit. He was also idolizing Victorian poisoner William Palmer. From what I understand about William Palmer, he also appeared to be financially motivated because he poisoned his brother, mother-in-law, and four of his children, and collected life insurance money.
23:38 Tristin Engels? He also defrauded his wealthy mother out of a large sum of money. But Graham is 13, and so far, there's been no indication that he's motivated at all for financial gain. So at this point, since his first victim was a stepmother and he had some degree of animosity toward her, it's clear he was motivated by having power over her life and got a thrill as he watched her slowly suffer. This is particularly sadistic, since death by poisoning is slow, and therefore, it's prolonging his own amusement, and he's taking notes as she suffers.
24:14 Vanessa Richardson? As we mentioned before, he can watch her. He can keep an eye on her and write down all of her symptoms and the progress of the poison, and it just seems, in my opinion, just pure evil.
24:24 Tristin Engels? It's very sadistic. He's getting way too much psychological gratification.
24:29 Vanessa Richardson? Well, eventually, Graham decided that just experimenting on Molly wasn't enough. In May of 1961, 13-year-old Graham started poisoning his 21-year-old sister Winifred, along with his dad Frederick. To the family, it seemed like some mysterious virus was tearing its way through their house. One by one, they all became weak and sickly. And unbeknownst to Graham's father and stepmother, the illness made its way outside their home, too. It started when Graham noticed his only friend at school, Christopher Williams, was spending more time with another classmate. Graham felt scorned, and he challenged Christopher to a fistfight.
25:12 Tristin Engels? This is interesting because for most of his adolescence, he was disinterested in conventional social relationships. And now, he's feeling rejected because he perceives that his only friend is distancing himself. This speaks to how his early attachment deficits have shaped him. And statistically, peer rejection has a significant long-term impact on the development of interpersonal relationships. He is no stranger to peer rejection. But this is the rejection of someone he may have felt an attachment to.
25:44 Vanessa Richardson? Well, he ended up fighting with his friend, Christopher, but it didn't last long. Christopher was bigger than Graham and laid him out in a matter of seconds. Afterward, Graham staggered to his feet and told Christopher he would kill him. But just a week later, the emotions died down. Christopher and Graham buried the hatchet by sharing a sandwich at lunch, or so it seemed. Because a few hours after they shared that sandwich, Christopher vomited all over his desk. Christopher had a few more instances of vomiting like that throughout 1961, until it got to the point where he had to be hospitalized for several days to recover. The repeated bouts of sickness concerned Christopher's parents,
26:29 Vanessa Richardson? but they couldn't figure out what was going wrong. These events took place weeks or months apart. And even though Graham was known to be interested in poisons, most of his peers didn't really think he had access to them. They thought the vials he kept hidden in his desk were fake, and he only pretended to keep poison with him to seem edgy. So instead of suspecting poison, Christopher's parents thought he might be allergic to something. They started packing his lunch and closely monitoring his diet. Ironically, this only made it easier for Graham to continue tormenting his friend. Christopher's meals were rigidly scheduled, so Graham knew exactly what his friend would be eating on any given day.
27:10 Vanessa Richardson? That made it easy for him to prepare an identical poisoned sandwich and swap the two of them out.
27:18 Tristin Engels? The amount of planning that Graham is doing not just to collect the plants and create the poisons, but to find ways to ensure that they are ingested, really speaks to his criminal versatility and chameleon-like tendencies, especially at such a young age. This is really starting to resemble psychopathic traits.
27:37 Vanessa Richardson? The feeling of control over another person's life intoxicated Graham. He loved having that secret dominance over the people closest to him.
27:46 Tristin Engels? This need to have power and control over the people close to him really indicates to me that there is a lot of unresolved anger. I would go so far as to say that due to his history of broken attachments, losing his mother, being suddenly thrust back into family life again after being essentially given up, that he might not understand what it means to value someone. We know that there's resentment towards his stepmother. He's kind of already shown it with that note, with how he reacts to her. And so far, it sounds like his father was somewhat uninvolved and almost permissive because certainly he's not punishing him. So, does he know what it's like to be valued by someone else? I used to assess juveniles for criminal courts, and in the short time I did that, I only
28:31 Tristin Engels? had to assess for juvenile psychopathy once. There is a screening measurement normed for ages 12 to 18. Graham, being 13, is exhibiting signs of psychopathy that you don't commonly see at a very young age.
28:46 Vanessa Richardson? Well, for the rest of 1961, Graham Young was able to make his loved ones sick without trying too hard to hide what he was doing. But sometime soon after Christopher was hospitalized, Graham's stepmother Molly found a bottle of antimony in Graham's room. It was simply labeled "poison."
29:05 Tristin Engels? The fact that he quite literally made this identifiable by labeling it so blatantly speaks to the grandiosity, the lack of remorse. Those are traits of psychopathy. He simply did not fear the consequences if it was discovered and likely, by the sounds of it, felt he was superior to his parents' authority.
29:24 Vanessa Richardson? Graham's father was absolutely furious. Frederick banned Graham from bringing toxic chemicals into the house and tracked down the chemist who originally sold Graham the antimony. Still, the Youngs never connected Graham's poison with their lingering sickness or his friends. They only wanted to keep the chemicals out of the house to prevent an accident. But the ban on poison didn't hinder Graham much. He had other chemists to supply him with the ingredients he needed and hid them better in his room. Over the next few weeks, his family's illnesses only got worse. Molly and Frederick had back-to-back vomiting attacks.
30:04 Vanessa Richardson? Graham's sister Winifred, now 21 or 22, had to take sick days from her office job. Then, one morning later in 1961, Winifred noticed a strange sour taste in her tea. She didn't finish the cup, but she still felt dizzy and lightheaded on the train to work. She ended up at an eagle-eyed doctor who finally saw what no one else could. He diagnosed her with belladonna poisoning. Belladonna, also known as nightshade, is a deadly berry plant native to West Asia and Europe. In safe doses, belladonna has medical uses, but it's also a powerful poison.
30:46 Vanessa Richardson? Exposure can cause anything from muscle spasms to blurred vision, seizures, coma, and death. Thankfully, Winifred's dose wasn't lethal. The doctor treated her poisoning, and she returned home that evening, absolutely enraged at her little brother. She still didn't think Graham had tried to harm her, but she believed he'd accidentally contaminated her tea after doing one of his experiments. Their father was displeased with Graham as well, although he also didn't think Graham had poisoned Winifred on purpose. In a strange compromise, Frederick sent his son to bed early and conducted a full search of the house for more poison,
31:30 Vanessa Richardson? excluding Graham's room. Needless to say, he didn't find any.
31:36 Tristin Engels? So this is another example of Frederick being a little bit more passive in his parenting. Now would have been a great time to really instill consequences instead of enabling psychopathic behavior, but Frederick Curley was not able to do that. His dad is clearly in denial, and he intentionally did not search the one room. He would be more likely to find more poison. And we already know poison was found in there when Molly found it. And this is because it threatens that denial. Denial is a defense mechanism which tells me that Frederick was deeply uncomfortable or anxious with accepting what his son was capable of. Without having met Frederick and from the little we know about him, this denial seems driven by guilt over how he abandoned his children with family
32:21 Tristin Engels? when he lost his first wife unexpectedly and the long-term effects that seemingly had on Graham. So instead of being a parent and imposing consequences and ensuring safety, he's essentially enabling because he wants to make up for this regret and this guilt and to avoid the obvious. If I were Molly, provided she too isn't in denial, I would have searched his room myself and then brought that evidence to Frederick. I would also have had the bottle tested and brought those results to him as well, if that was possible. But when confronting anyone in denial like Frederick, it's especially important to do so without shaming or blaming them since those are the very things that are driving the denial. Those are the feelings that he's trying to avoid.
33:05 Vanessa Richardson? It's a very delicate balance, but it's so important to really dig in.
33:09 Tristin Engels? And I can understand not wanting to believe it was intentional, but that still doesn't take away the risk. The risk was severe. It's enough to warrant tearing up the house to find anything and everything and then imposing, for lack of a better word, punishments. I don't really like using that term, but boundaries, rules, regulations, consequences.
33:30 Vanessa Richardson? Well, by 1962, when Graham was 14, the family's symptoms had worsened considerably, all except Graham, of course. But his parents linked their medical issues to their age, so they never found it odd that Graham was the only one who never got sick. As for Graham's friend Christopher Williams, he actually managed to recover. It seemed like Graham gave up on poisoning him, likely because he couldn't watch Christopher closely enough. Instead, Graham focused on those closest to him. Graham's stepmom Molly had it the worst. The nausea ruined her appetite and she lost weight. She had such bad joint and back pain that she walked with a hunch.
34:13 Vanessa Richardson? And on Easter Sunday, 1962, she woke up feeling even more awful than usual. Her neck was tight, her back was killing her, and she felt a strange tingling in her hands and feet. Unbeknownst to Molly, the night before, Graham had decided slowly poisoning her with antimony wasn't enough. So he put powdered thallium into her dinner. Thallium is a soft, bluish-white metal. As a powder, it has no smell or taste, making it easy for Graham to add to food without being detected. There are a few practical medical uses for thallium, but up until the 70s, it was most commonly found in rat poison.
34:56 Vanessa Richardson? When used on humans, large, concentrated doses of thallium can cause temporary hair loss, vomiting, diarrhea, and death. Even so, Molly managed to crawl out of bed that morning and get some groceries for the family. She was still feeling sick when she got back, so she stepped outside for some fresh air. Graham made her a fresh cup of tea and watched through the window as she drank it on the porch. His dad happened to get home right as Molly was having a seizure. To his shock, Frederick saw Graham watching on dispassionately as Molly convulsed and thrashed in pain. Frederick called an ambulance, but there was nothing the doctors could do.
35:40 Vanessa Richardson? Molly died the following afternoon, before they could figure out what was wrong with her. Which meant that at just 14 years old, Graham Young was officially a murderer.
36:00 Vanessa Richardson? On April 21st, 1962, 14-year-old Graham Young murdered his stepmother Molly after poisoning her slowly for over a year. The loss crushed his father Frederick, who now had to bury a second wife and take care of Graham all on his own. His son didn't exactly make the grieving process any easier. In the days following Molly's death, Graham repeatedly insisted that she should be cremated. He claimed it was more hygienic than burial. Unbeknownst to Frederick, it was actually because Graham wanted Molly's body destroyed so that the evidence of the poisoning would be lost forever.
36:43 Tristin Engels? Graham's knowledge on how to conceal poison for his victims and then conceal the evidence even after their death is truly shocking for a 14-year-old, especially when you consider that this predates the internet. So his research was all done openly and in libraries.
37:01 Vanessa Richardson? Well, in the end, Graham got what he wanted. She did get cremated, but likely because of Molly's final wishes rather than any persuasion on his part. It was all the same to him, though. At the funeral, Graham was over the moon. Knowing he'd gotten away with murder gave him an incredible sense of power, and that left him wanting more.
37:23 Tristin Engels? There are different types of serial killers, and each type is driven by different motives. But the desire to continue killing is driven by thrill and gratification, especially when they have already gotten away with it without any suspicion, which is the case here for Graham, even though I feel like it's been blatantly in everyone's faces. Which is alarming in this case, given that he really made no effort to hide his interests or his methods from any of his victims.
37:51 Vanessa Richardson? Only a few days after Molly's funeral, Graham planned his second murder. This time, he targeted his dad. He figured that if Frederick died next, people would be likely to blame it on the shock and grief of Molly's death. But Graham didn't want to kill him just yet. So instead of using thallium like he had on Molly, he decided to go back to using antimony. One afternoon, Frederick came home for lunch. He opened a can of corned beef before deciding he wanted some fries to go with it. So he ran out for a few minutes, leaving Graham alone in the house. Frederick got the fries, ate his lunch, and went back to work. An hour later, pain exploded in his stomach.
38:36 Vanessa Richardson? He vomited again and again. He'd never had an attack that intense in his life. He thought he was gonna die. He went home from work early, and over the next few hours, the agony subsided. By dinnertime, he was almost back to normal. But a couple of weeks after that, the same thing happened again. This time, Frederick collapsed, and he was sent to the hospital. The doctor there told Frederick he was suffering from either arsenic or antimony poisoning. He'd gotten to the hospital in the nick of time. His liver was permanently damaged, and they believed that one or more dose of poison would have been enough to kill him. As the doctor filed out of the room,
39:18 Vanessa Richardson? Graham's family passed worried whispers amongst themselves. Most of them had never even heard of antimony before. Luckily, they had an expert among them. Graham got excited and chimed in to explain the differences between the two poisons to them. He just couldn't help himself. Even if it blew his cover, he had to show off.
39:41 Tristin Engels? Psychopathy is a measurement of traits. Inflated sense of self, impulsivity, callousness, and lack of remorse are among those traits. So is being superficially charming and glib. And glibness is essentially the portrayal of confidence that is thoughtless. And this moment, when he bragged about his knowledge of poison, certainly showcases that trait, in addition to the others I mentioned. But more importantly, he said this right after the doctors identified that Graham's father had been poisoned. And we know that Graham idolized William Palmer, the doctor who also poisoned. These doctors identifying the poison might have felt like an acknowledgement for Graham,
40:21 Tristin Engels? almost a sense of pride that someone in the field that he idolizes was able to identify it. It's really hard to say, but it's definitely egocentric.
40:32 Vanessa Richardson? Well, shockingly, despite Graham's odd behavior and explaining what these chemicals were, Frederick still didn't think his son was responsible for poisoning him. He wrote it off as some kind of accident or coincidence.
40:47 Tristin Engels? I feel like denial is a baseline state for Frederick at this point.
40:53 Vanessa Richardson? While Frederick refused to suspect his son, not everyone was so steeped in denial. Lately, Graham's science teacher had become more suspicious of the boy. He probably didn't know Graham was experimenting on live rats, but he was aware that his star student was working with dangerous chemicals. After Frederick was hospitalized, the teacher searched Graham's desk, looking for the notebook his star student used for his experiments. Inside, he found meticulous analyses of poisons accompanied by reams of tables charting their effects. He also came across the bottles of illegal poisons Graham had stashed away, along with drawings and poems about death and destruction.
41:37 Vanessa Richardson? That's when the science teacher remembered Graham's friend, Christopher Williams, and his mysterious bouts of vomiting. He took the circumstantial evidence to the school's headmaster. They both agreed that they shouldn't go to the police yet. They didn't want to potentially ruin a bright student's life without knowing he was guilty. Instead, the two came up with a scheme to trick Graham. They brought in a psychiatrist and introduced him to Graham as a "career counselor." He investigated Graham's knowledge of poison by pretending the questions were part of an aptitude test. Clearly, it didn't take much for Graham to open up.
42:16 Tristin Engels? This is perplexing to me. Firstly, I don't understand why the science teacher didn't just ask Graham himself or speak to him himself. They have a bond. He believes Graham is his star student. He would likely be able to elicit information from Graham, or at least try. I suppose there's always the risk that Graham would be too scared of losing his science lab privileges, if he's honest. So I could see why maybe that would have been why he avoided it. But I really don't like that they arranged this secret interview to trick him. Because not only does it sound like they weaponized the profession of psychology or psychiatry, but there is nothing secretive about meeting with a mental health provider. And by that, I mean, there must be informed consent.
43:01 Tristin Engels? And given that this is a minor, there must be consent by the parents in most cases, and that varies by state. That just didn't happen. At least, that's how this is these days. And I'm not sure what the laws and ethics were specifically in 1962, but there cannot be a secret interview like this nowadays. Informed consent is always required, regardless. And otherwise, it's considered coercive and unethical. Much like this sounds like, even if it did do what it was intended to do, even if we did get the information needed to secure Graham and reduce harm. It was not an ethical way of going about it.
43:40 Vanessa Richardson? Well, interestingly enough, obviously unbeknownst to Graham, the interview sealed his fate. The discussion unsettled the psychiatrist so much that he went straight from the school to the police.
43:52 Tristin Engels? Which is exactly what his science teacher could have done, all from the beginning.
43:57 Vanessa Richardson? The next day, May 21, 1962, Detective Inspector Edward Crab knocked on the young family's door. He ransacked Graham's bedroom and found the hidden supply of poison enough to kill dozens of people. When Graham came home from school, he was carrying three additional bottles of poison in his pockets. The detective hauled Graham off to jail and subjected the 14-year-old to an overnight interrogation. Despite the pressure, Graham denied any part in Molly's death, but there was no getting out of it. He'd been caught red-handed. The morning after his overnight interrogation, Graham freely confessed to poisoning his stepmother Molly with antimony,
44:42 Vanessa Richardson? though he didn't say anything about the fatal dose of thallium he'd given her. Graham also detailed how he'd been steadily poisoning his father, sister, and his friend Christopher for over a year. When the detectives told Graham's family what he'd done, they could hardly believe it. The entire time he was poisoning them, he didn't seem angry at all. And that's because he wasn't. Though he resented his parents for hindering his experiments and had a petty squabble with his friend, Graham likely didn't poison them out of malice. It seems like he did it because they were the easiest people for him to observe while the poison took effect.
45:24 Tristin Engels? I disagree with this, actually. Presentment definitely exists, but so does anger. If he simply was interested in just observing, then he would not have moved from antimony to thallium with his stepmother and only her. Instigating a fistfight also is a demonstration of anger. Only after realizing he would not win a physical fight with his friend Christopher did he start poisoning him, almost like these acts were a form of punishment. So I think they were definitely the easiest people for him to target so that he can observe the effects. But I do also think that there was anger. Both of these things appear true to me.
46:05 Vanessa Richardson? Well, Graham was held at the courthouse while he awaited his trial. Ultimately, he was only charged with poisoning his father, sister, and friend, since there was no evidence of how his stepmother had died. On July 6, 1962, Graham pleaded guilty to all counts. However, he wasn't sent to prison. Considering his apparent mental distress, Graham was sentenced to 15 years in Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital. It seemed like Graham's terrifying poison spree was at an end, but in reality, it was only beginning.
46:50 Vanessa Richardson? In August 1962, a few weeks after beginning his 15-year sentence at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, 14-year-old Graham Young was examined by several psychiatrists. The head doctor diagnosed him with sadism, psychopathic disorder, and schizoid tendencies. Another doctor agreed that he had schizophrenia, while a third diagnosed him with neurotically engendered psychopathic disorder.
47:18 Tristin Engels? I don't know what they were doing back in 1962.
47:21 Vanessa Richardson? Yes, so different.
47:23 Tristin Engels? Neurotically engendered psychopathic disorder. I don't even know what they're trying to accomplish with that. Nowadays, psychopathy isn't a diagnosis. Actually, the diagnosis would be antisocial personality disorder. Psychopathy is a measurement of traits in which antisocial personality disorder is very severe. So that being said, I definitely agree that he has psychopathy. And I also agree that he has sadistic personalities or sadistic tendencies. I think I outlined why that is pretty thoroughly so far. I've been trying to address these traits as we go through the story. Schizoid personality disorder is a condition that begins in early adulthood,
48:07 Tristin Engels? and it's characterized by a lack of desire for or enjoyment of close relationships, even with family. Individuals with this disorder are more aloof, solitary, disengaged, with limited emotional range, and are often viewed as eccentric, all of which definitely seem consistent with Graham. Though we have seen him as expressive when he felt scorned by his best friend and anytime his family threatened his access to anything related to chemistry, he is clearly capable of expressing his resentment and his anger, and even pride, like we saw when he was with his father in the hospital and his doctor had declared that he had been poisoned. However, Graham also had developmental delays,
48:50 Tristin Engels? and I wonder if the evaluating psychologists knew about this. A rule-out nowadays of autism was definitely needed if it wasn't done. He had delayed speech and language. He had a need for monotony or repetition. He had rigid cognitive patterns. His fixation on his special interests in chemistry and the occult and his disinterest in imaginative play with his peers are suggestive of autism. And I think because of the time, that was overlooked. Simply saying he had schizoid tendencies tells me that he didn't fully meet criteria for that diagnosis, otherwise it would have been schizoid personality disorder. This also tells me that they didn't consider autism as a better explanation for his social eccentricities.
49:34 Tristin Engels? But again, autism is not the cause of his poisoning other people. It is not the cause of him being a serial killer. That is explained by his sadism and his psychopathy. That being said, I don't see anything here that supports a diagnosis of schizophrenia. There has been no mention of hallucinations or delusions, and overall, from what we know, he is functioning well. He was the star student, according to his science teacher. We see just how resourceful he is in obtaining knowledge, plants, chemicals. There's been no mention of a lack of goal-directed activity or poor self-care.
50:14 Tristin Engels? In the absence of psychopathic tendencies, I don't see psychosis, but I do agree that there is sadism and that there is psychopathy.
50:23 Vanessa Richardson? Luckily, Graham was kept in what was called Ward One, the highest security wing in the hospital, although he did have some small freedoms. He was allowed to decorate his room and plastered the walls with pictures of infamous Nazis, his second-greatest obsession after chemistry. He painted a skull and crossbones on his teapot and wrote the chemical formulas of poisons on his food containers.
50:49 Tristin Engels? Nowadays, there is no way he would have been allowed to decorate his room with anything related to Nazi or Nazi Germany. That would be strictly prohibited.
50:58 Vanessa Richardson? Graham also had unrestricted access to the hospital's library, where he was able to expand his knowledge of poisons. When he was bored, he entertained himself by trying to frighten the other patients. He liked to tell them how he could extract cyanide from the laurel plants in the hospital's yard.
51:17 Tristin Engels? So firstly, him wanting to frighten other patients is him, again, seeking psychological gratification and thrills and causing harm and fear in other people. So that is still ongoing. But also, it seems that no matter what he does or where he goes, every environment is enabling his interest in poison.
51:36 Vanessa Richardson? Yes, he seeks it out, he finds it, he's, yeah.
51:38 Tristin Engels? He finds it, and it just allows it to continue.
51:43 Vanessa Richardson? His behavior certainly didn't win him any friends at Broadmoor, and he didn't have many visitors either. After what he did to his father and sister, Frederick and Winifred refused to come see him, understandably. But Graham wasn't completely alone. He had an elderly uncle who came by to see him from time to time. However, Graham spent his time with him by constantly discussing his off-putting interests. Unsurprisingly, his uncle eventually decided to stay away as well. It seemed to be the right decision. Only a month after Graham was admitted to Broadmoor, another patient, John Beridge, suddenly collapsed and started convulsing. He died soon afterward, and the coroner determined the cause to be
52:25 Vanessa Richardson? cyanide poisoning. Considering Graham's history and his obsession with cyanide, he was immediately linked to John's death. However, the police never found any direct evidence he was responsible. Even so, there were plenty of rumors that he'd killed John Beridge. Graham became a sort of boogeyman. The nurses reportedly joked with patients that they'd let Graham brew their tea if they misbehaved. Graham didn't mind being the butt of their jokes. In fact, he barely registered the people around him. Instead, he filled his time by learning German, so he could read books about Nazis in their original language. He started
53:06 Vanessa Richardson? talking to himself, impersonating Hitler and going on long, unhinged rants. He made a brass swastika in the craft room and wore it around his neck 24/7. His behavior was particularly turbulent throughout 1962, his first year at the hospital. But after about a year at Broadmoor, Graham began to feel more at home and settled down a bit. He became friendly with a couple of the nurses. They let their guard down so much, they let him make their coffee a few times.
53:38 Tristin Engels? What? Once again, he is being underestimated and that superficial charm and glibness has worked yet again.
53:48 Vanessa Richardson? Yep, huge mistake. Graham allegedly laced the brew with Harpik, a toilet cleaner that contains hydrochloric acid. Luckily, the nurses didn't suffer any major injuries, likely because they immediately vomited after drinking the poisoned coffee. But even though they suspected Graham did it, it doesn't seem like he was punished. Shortly afterward, his case came up for review for the first time, almost like a parole hearing. A tribunal convened to discuss his possible release, and his father, Frederick, even drove down to attend the meeting. It was the first time Graham had seen his dad in over a year, but it wasn't a happy reunion.
54:31 Vanessa Richardson? Frederick only made the trip to argue passionately against his son's release. He told the doctors he didn't think his son should ever be allowed out of Broadmoor. Unsurprisingly, Graham's petition for release was denied.
54:47 Tristin Engels? When anyone is being assessed for discharge, whether it's a hospital discharge like this, or even a discharge from incarceration on parole or probation, we are doing risk assessments. We are looking to see what progress has been made since they've been detained, how they maximize their time during their detainment, how they participated in treatment or any rehabilitation efforts, and what their plans are if they're released. And from there, we assess what risk they still have that they can pose to the public. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, especially when it comes to risk assessment. And since Graham has been detained, he's continuing to fixate on poisons.
55:31 Tristin Engels? He continues his fixation on Nazis by decorating.
55:35 Tristin Engels? Reading about it, learning German, and he tried to poison nurses while he was there. This suggests very obviously that he not only hasn't learned anything, but that he is not amenable to consequences. He lacks remorse. He has done very little to reduce his risk factors for future violence and therefore would not be considered a candidate for discharge. If I had assessed him and I knew about all this, there's absolutely no way I would ever feel comfortable cosigning a discharge. We have an obligation to make sure that they are not a danger to others or the public. And if they are, we have to do what's necessary to maintain public safety.
56:18 Tristin Engels? So his denial was absolutely appropriate.
56:22 Vanessa Richardson? Despite all of that, Graham seemed legitimately stunned that he wasn't released. The tribunal, I think, was a major wake-up call for him. And for the first time, he realized he'd be stuck in Broadmoor for 14 more years if he didn't straighten up.
56:40 Tristin Engels? And so this is how he becomes more versatile and more chameleon-like. This is how he learns. In order to get what I want, I have to play the part. This is where he's going to learn this.
56:51 Vanessa Richardson? So after that, his behavior completely changed. He stopped impersonating Hitler and talked less about poisons. In fact, he went days without speaking at all. He did become more open with his psychologist, however. Overall, the changes seemed to be for the better. About eight years into his sentence, the doctors at Broadmoor believed he'd been fully rehabilitated. So he's now in his early twenties. He spoke more optimistically about his future, and they believed his obsession with poison had diminished. Given his natural intelligence, the doctors hoped he might soon be ready to leave the hospital and go to college. With that in mind, the hospital granted him a supervised, week-long release in 1970,
57:35 Vanessa Richardson? when Graham was 23. His older sister Winifred was in her early 30s at the time and was married with two kids. Unlike Graham's father, Winifred decided to forgive her brother and let him stay with her family. Clearly, he was on his best behavior, and at the end of the week Winifred gave the doctors a positive report. She said Graham behaved normally and seemed capable of handling everyday tasks on his own. With Winifred's endorsement, Graham finally got his wish. A year later, in February of 1971, the 23-year-old was officially released from Broadmoor. Not everyone agreed with the hospital's decision, though.
58:19 Vanessa Richardson? The nurses still remembered Graham's attempt to poison them. One of them even claimed she overheard him vowing to "kill" one person for every year he'd spent in Broadmoor. But they never reported their concerns to the doctors. Although the nurses thought Graham would go back to poisoning people, they didn't think he'd try to "kill." Once again, they'd underestimated Graham, and he'd soon show the world just how dangerous he really was. After being released from England's Broadmoor asylum in February 1971, 23-year-old Graham
59:04 Vanessa Richardson? Young got to work making up for lost time. During the week, he lived with his older sister Winifred and her family, and attended a training program designed to help him find employment. On weekends, he stayed with his aunt and uncle in London. Their house was less full, and Graham enjoyed the extra privacy. It didn't take him long to familiarize himself with the area, especially the nearby pharmacies. But getting restricted chemicals was more of a headache than before. Although he was old enough to buy them now, Graham also needed a signed letter from a registered authority, like a university. Graham didn't let that stop him, though. It's not clear how, but he managed to swipe some stationery with the local college's
59:49 Vanessa Richardson? letterhead on top. He reportedly used the paper to forge a letter of permission, and just like that, he could get almost any poison his heart desired.
1:00:00 Tristin Engels? So this, again, just shows the psychopathic traits that he has because this shows cunning, it shows manipulativeness, it shows versatility, it shows his ability to be like a chameleon. This is what's driving this behavior. And this is, he's also got the fixation on poisons, which is a special interest that I think started at a, because of a very young age, that was more related to autism. But the psychopathy and this sadistic side of him is what's driving this. He has just become much more of a versatile criminal. I mean, look at the resourcefulness he has. Look how well he is able to find any workaround to any barrier to getting what he wants.
1:00:44 Tristin Engels? It just really speaks to the level of psychopathy here.
1:00:48 Vanessa Richardson? I'm sure Graham was tempted to poison his sister again, but eight years in a psychiatric hospital had taught him to be more cautious. Instead, he befriended a man in his training program named Trevor Sparks. The two of them started going to a pub together and spent long nights chatting in Trevor's room over bottles of wine. Graham usually handled pouring the glasses, and it wasn't too long before Trevor got sick. First, it was abdominal pain and vomiting. A week later, diarrhea and groin pain were added to the list. Finally, his limbs started twitching erratically during a soccer game, and he was rushed to the doctor.
1:01:29 Vanessa Richardson? Trevor saw specialist after specialist, but none of them could figure out what was wrong with him. His condition continued to deteriorate for weeks, but he was eventually saved by pure chance. In April 1971, three months after Graham's release, he scored a job in a nearby village called Bovington and moved away. Trevor's life was spared, although the poison had left him so weak he never played soccer again. Not that Graham seemed to care. He was overjoyed to be starting a new life in Bovington. He would be working at a store owned by the local camera manufacturer. The company, called John Hadland Laboratories, made high-grade camera lenses.
1:02:13 Vanessa Richardson? One of the chemicals used to make the lenses was his favorite poison, thallium.
1:02:19 Vanessa Richardson? But for Graham, the most exciting part of this new chapter was the room he was able to rent. For the first time in his life, the 23-year-old had a place to himself and was completely unsupervised. In no time, his shelves were lined with bottles of deadly poisons. Any spare wall space was filled with posters of Nazis. He started work in May of 1971. His new coworkers tried to get to know him, but Graham was hard to read. Some days, he bantered with them like a close friend and even bordered on charming. On other days, he barely spoke at all. Overall, he was usually standoffish, unless they got him talking about chemistry or World War II.
1:03:04 Tristin Engels? Okay, the fact that he's renting a room alarms me because that, to me, I'm picturing that he's living with another family but just in a room, which means whoever he's living among is now at risk. But this hot and cold pattern here with his colleagues is that push and pull between psychopathy and possible autism. On the one hand, he has always been socially awkward since he was a young boy and unsure how to relate to his peers unless, of course, it was regarding his special interests. But on the other hand, his psychopathic traits allow him to be charming and glib for secondary gain. It wouldn't surprise me that they get the charming side of him when he wants something
1:03:46 Tristin Engels? from them, whether it's conversation or help at work, but then get the more aloof side of him when he doesn't have anything that he wants from them. And he knows, like again, he learns more chameleon-like tendencies when he was in Broadmoor. He knew that he had to play a certain part in order to be released, in order to be looked at as rehabilitated. He knew he had to play that same part with his sister and her family. He knows how to play the part when he needs to. And he strengthened that while he was there.
1:04:19 Vanessa Richardson? Graham didn't get too close to anyone at his new job, but he did strike up a casual friendship with his supervisor, fifty-nine-year-old Bob Eggle. Bob had served in the British military, and Graham relentlessly hounded him for war stories. The two of them started spending more time together, and Bob became Graham's next target. His first attack of stomach pains and diarrhea occurred about a month after Graham started work. It went on and off for a few days, until it got so bad, Bob decided to take a vacation. A few weeks later, on June 28, 1971, Bob returned from his time off, feeling much better. But the next day, after only a few hours at the store,
1:05:04 Vanessa Richardson? he took a sudden turn for the worse. The ends of his fingers started to go numb, and Bob went home in a panic. His wife took him for a walk, hoping some fresh air would do him good, but Bob couldn't even make it down the street. By the next day, it felt like someone was jamming nails directly into his spine. Bob was rushed to the hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors there couldn't figure out what was wrong. Paralysis spread from Bob's fingers down his entire body. Though he was completely conscious and could understand others, he lost his ability to speak. Graham watched his new friend's health decline as much as he could. From the outside, his interests looked like concern.
1:05:49 Vanessa Richardson? He pestered the photography store's owner almost every day for updates on Bob's condition. He phoned the hospital several times, trying to glean as much information as he could. He even tried to talk to Bob's doctor directly. Throughout it all, Graham was careful to make his inquiries look like innocent compassion. But when he heard that Bob died after a week or so in the hospital, Graham was euphoric. Up to that point, he'd poisoned plenty of people, but he'd only outright killed his stepmother and possibly the other inmate at Broadmoor. So, after Bob's death, for the first time in ten years, Graham felt a familiar rush of power.
1:06:34 Vanessa Richardson? The best part for him was that no one suspected him. Even a team of trained medical professionals couldn't figure Graham out. They believed Bob had died from a natural neurological condition. Upon hearing that... Graham must have felt like a genius.
1:06:52 Tristin Engels? The pride that he's feeling and that he believes he outsmarted the very people around him directly stems from his psychopathy yet again. It speaks to that grandiosity, that inflated sense of self-worth, and how accomplished he feels in his cunningness and his manipulative effort. When Graham learned about Bob's death, the reason why he was euphoric is because it gave him his ultimate thrill. It was a success. It was an accomplishment. It was another way to stroke his ego and believe in his own sense of brilliance.
1:07:27 Vanessa Richardson? And Bob Eggle's death was more than just a personal triumph for Graham. After Bob's passing, Graham got his job as the photography store's supervisor.
1:07:36 Tristin Engels? Now he's being promoted. And everyone is overlooking and underestimating this man. I don't understand it.
1:07:45 Vanessa Richardson? The calm lasted for a few months, but in late September 1971, another employee named Fred Biggs had to leave work early due to vicious stomach pains. A few weeks later, he was hospitalized. He wasn't the only one. Around the same time, two of Graham's other coworkers suddenly came down with a mysterious illness. That made three employees in the hospital. By this point, word of the unexplained illnesses had spread throughout Hadland Laboratories. Concerned about the health of its employees, the firm's managing director called in a medical officer to help. Finally, someone would be looking into what the employees had started calling the "Bovindin Bug."
1:08:29 Vanessa Richardson? The only question was whether they could do anything about it, and if they could figure out, Graham Young was the culprit.
1:08:48 Vanessa Richardson? In November of 1971, a local medical officer named Dr. Robert Hind began his investigation of the "Bovington Bug" plaguing Hadland Laboratories. He had two initial theories: either the water supply was polluted, or that work at a nearby airfield had spread radiation poisoning. After conducting some interviews, Dr. Hind noticed that all of the victims experienced their first attack following a drink of either tea or coffee. That made him favor his first theory: there was something wrong with the water. While Dr. Hind started running tests, 24-year-old Graham Young was monitoring the victims he'd sent to the hospital.
1:09:33 Tristin Engels? This urge to watch his victims suffer again is his pathology speaking. He is thrill-seeking, and he's power-oriented, and he has sadism. He doesn't derive physical or sexual gratification from his actions, he derives psychological gratification. And for most of his life, he was able to get away with this, with many of the people around him underestimating him, like we've been talking about, or minimizing what he was doing. This started with the chemist who thought, because he was so smart, he had to be of age to purchase the chemicals and didn't even ID him. Then it was his own family, who despite all evidence in front of them, remained in denial and enabled this behavior. When he was at Broadmoor, he was allowed to continue fixating on his interests with
1:10:18 Tristin Engels? unrestricted access, and even the nurses underestimated him. Then his own sister chose to forgive him and believe he had changed and was no longer a threat. All of this just reinforces that grandiosity and strengthens his arrogance. And poisoning all of these people at once was just amplifying the thrill for him. He is now unsupervised and not contained.
1:10:43 Vanessa Richardson? Yes, it's just, all of that is just building up this arrogance. And even his prying seems very arrogant, finding out how things were going and how his victims were affected. But he got up to speed on how his victims were doing. And the two who'd gone to the hospital after Fred Biggs were starting to feel better, but they were still in extreme pain and had permanent nerve damage. However, Fred was too far gone. Chest pains and trouble walking evolved into a total central nervous system shutdown. Sadly, Fred's doctors weren't able to counteract the poison, and he passed away. That made him Graham's third confirmed murder victim.
1:11:25 Vanessa Richardson? The news of his death sparked more panic at the laboratory. After exhaustive testing to find the cause of the Bovindin bug, Dr. Hind was left scratching his head. He couldn't find any trace of pollution in the water, nor could he detect any radiation coming from the airfield. He also considered the correct cause, heavy metal poisoning. But he didn't think the victims were being deliberately dosed with it. And since they all had different job duties, he couldn't think of a way that they'd all be exposed at the same time. The other workers at Hadlands started to lose their patience with the lack of progress. Many of them threatened to quit. It got so bad, another physician who worked with Dr.
1:12:08 Vanessa Richardson? Hind called a full staff meeting. He urged the workers to remain calm as the medical team worked to solve the problem. His plea seemed to work. After a few panicked whispers among the staff, there was a long silence. Finally, someone spoke from the back of the room. It was Graham Young. He wanted to know why heavy metal poisoning was ruled out. He insisted that it fit the situation best by far. After months of careful planning, Graham basically blew his own cover. What was he thinking?
1:12:44 Tristin Engels? Graham has this pattern of grandstanding. He would show off his poisons to his peers at school. He would leave it blatantly labeled at home. Graham learned to contain this behavior like we talked about when he was at Broadmoor, but now he's living alone without anyone containing him. And that impulsive behavior and grandiosity has gone unchecked. He is in a room with doctors, once again, who ruled out heavy metal poisoning. And this probably angered him because those doctors failed to recognize his, and I quote, "brilliance," because I'm pretty sure that's how he felt about himself. Again, poisoning is something that is often overlooked and hard to identify.
1:13:26 Tristin Engels? So if anyone's going to identify it, it would be physicians, right? And if physicians, whom are a profession that he idolizes, if they're not recognizing it, then who will? That is his arrogance and his desire possibly for infamy and being recognized.
1:13:44 Vanessa Richardson? We see this before with different serial killers, who become reckless when they feel invincible.
1:13:50 Tristin Engels? Mm-hmm.
1:13:52 Vanessa Richardson? Even when the doctor tried to move on, Graham refused to let the subject go. He grilled the doctor about his coworker's specific symptoms and repeatedly insisted that the heavy metal poisoning explained everything. The doctor didn't know how to respond to Graham's onslaught. He called an abrupt end to the meeting, but caught up with Graham afterward to continue their discussion in private. It didn't take much to convince him that Graham was suspiciously knowledgeable about poison. As soon as they finished speaking, the doctor asked the owner of the lab, John Hadland, about Graham's medical background. John didn't know too much about it, but he brought the doctor's concerns to the authorities. After looking into the matter further,
1:14:34 Vanessa Richardson? the police realized that the Bovington Bug had appeared soon after Graham was hired. It didn't take them long to learn about Graham's stint in Broadmoor and the reasons behind it. All of a sudden, everything made tragic, frightening sense.
1:14:53 Vanessa Richardson? Graham was arrested on November 20th, 1971. As the 24-year-old was placed in handcuffs, he reportedly asked, "Which one is it you're doing me for?" Clearly, he wasn't surprised by the arrest. He almost seemed to be expecting it. Even so, Graham initially insisted he was innocent, but his protests rang pretty hollow, especially after the cops searched the room he was renting. As we mentioned before, the shelves were filled to the brim with poisons. Swastikas and books about Hitler were scattered across the floor. Scariest of all were Graham's drawings, which depicted balding men in various stages of decay,
1:15:35 Vanessa Richardson? alongside sketches of poison bottles, graveyards, and skulls.
1:15:41 Tristin Engels? These drawings are very significant. I would be interested to know if these men in the drawings were of the same likeness of his actual victims and were his actual victims. Graham already has a history of documenting the process of poisoning and the symptoms that he was observing, but that was when he lived with his victims. So he got to see those victims all day, nearly every day, and had access to observing their illness progression. These are coworkers. He doesn't have that same regular access, especially if they were all working in different areas or had different job duties. So the closest thing to that would be these drawings. It represents that part of his methods that thrill him the most.
1:16:25 Tristin Engels? The observation of them, the torturing, the thrill of that, and everything he was putting them through.
1:16:32 Vanessa Richardson? Is it common for people with violent urges to express their thoughts by drawing? It feels like they need to let it out somehow. It's sort of like he didn't really have any friends, anyone to tell.
1:16:41 Tristin Engels? In a sense, I would say the most notorious serial killer that people would know who did draw their victims was Samuel Little. He drew them from memory. And he drew them for psychological gratification, which is the exact same thing that Graham is doing. He wants to, again, I don't know if these pictures were of the actual victims. I don't know if it was because he couldn't watch them, so he was trying to mimic what he would otherwise be observing through these drawings as the illness progressed. Or if it was planning of these victims, like planning it out, seeing what it would look like before he did it. It's no really way to know, but if I was to guess, I would say that this was his way
1:17:26 Tristin Engels? of documenting the progress of his poisoning in those very people at work. The reason he does this is because it allows him to relive the torture, the death. It's a form of a memento.
1:17:41 Vanessa Richardson? So all the poison bottles and jagged scrawlings painted a pretty clear picture, but they were nothing compared to the ultimate evidence, Graham's personal diary. It contained detailed descriptions of the poisons he used on his coworkers alongside precise dosages and the resulting symptoms they displayed. Graham insisted the diary was the fictional blueprint for a novel he planned to write. That obviously didn't fly with detectives, and eventually Graham gave up his flimsy pretense. He couldn't resist showing off to the authorities and ended up admitting to everything. At the end of the lengthy interrogation, a detective asked Graham the ultimate question:
1:18:25 Vanessa Richardson? "Why?" Graham thought for a moment before responding, "I suppose I had ceased to see them as people, at least part of me had. They were simply guinea pigs." On July 19th, 1972, 24-year-old Graham Young was charged with the murders of Bob Eggle and Fred Biggs, as well as the attempted murders of the two other coworkers. He pleaded not guilty, but it wasn't because he thought he stood a chance of being exonerated. It was because he wanted to draw out the trial for as long as possible, so the press could chronicle every lurid detail of his case.
1:19:07 Vanessa Richardson? That was part of his ultimate goal, to become one of the most famous poisoners in history. And in order to get famous, he had to be found out first.
1:19:17 Tristin Engels? Yeah, he definitely had that desire for infamy. And to understand where that desire for infamy or notoriety came from, we have to look at what influenced and inspired him. And the reality was, he idolized William Palmer, who was a poisoner, and he took a special interest in the Nazi Party. It seems he idolized Palmer because of his intellect and ingenuity. And he likely idolized the Nazi Party because of their notoriety, especially when he made that statement to his stepmother Molly about wishing he could have been born to enjoy World War II.
1:19:51 Vanessa Richardson? That's right.
1:19:52 Tristin Engels? Graham had poor social skills since he was young and was largely rejected by his peers, on top of which he did not know how to value others, which not only allowed him to view people as guinea pigs, but his idols also viewed people and reduced people to something similar, or vermin, which kind of rationalized that for him. He craved power and control, and often serial killers who are power-oriented believe that notoriety is synonymous with power. So Graham wanted to be recognized for his chemical brilliance, his cunning behavior, and his criminal mastermind. And to some degree, it worked because here we are covering his case.
1:20:35 Vanessa Richardson? Well, he got his notoriety. He had his day in court, got through the trial, and eventually Graham was found guilty. The judge sentenced him to life in prison. Thanks to the publicity that surrounded his trial, public support grew for additional regulations on poisons. This led to the landmark Poisons Act of 1972 in Britain, which increased the requirements for purchasing toxic chemicals. On August 1, 1990, Graham Young passed away of a heart attack at the age of 42. With his considerable intellect, Graham could have changed the world. But instead of using his hard-earned knowledge to help others,
1:21:19 Vanessa Richardson? Graham used it to harm them. And sadly, the people closest to him ended up suffering for it.
1:21:37 Vanessa Richardson? Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next Monday as we explore the mind of a new serial killer.
1:21:44 Tristin Engels? Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. But don't forget to rate, review, and follow Mind of a Serial Killer wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.
1:22:07 Vanessa Richardson? And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Mind of a Serial Killer ad-free, along with early access and exciting bonus content. We'll be back next Monday.
1:22:23 Vanessa Richardson? Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios, is executive produced by Max Cutler. This episode of Mind of a Serial Killer was produced by Ron Shapiro, directed by Stacy Waranker, written by Terrell Wells, edited by Alex Benedon, fact-checked by Sarah Tardif and Hania Said, sound designed by Carrie Murphy, and included production assistance from Sarah Carroll. Mind of a Serial Killer is hosted by Vanessa Richardson and Dr. Tristin Engels.
1:22:59 Vanessa Richardson? If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.
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