Bruce Nickell Research Paper

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Born in the Pacific Northwest in Colton, Oregon on August 7th, 1943 as Stella Maudine Stephenson, Nickell simply grew up in poverty. At the age of 16, she was pregnant and gave birth to her first child named Cynthia and moved to. From the beginning, she had legal troubles long before ending up in prison. She was first convicted for fraud in 1968, charged the following year for beating Cynthia with a curtain rod, again in 1971 for forgery, served behind bars for 6 months, and ordered for counseling after charged for the abuse of her daughter.

After the convictions were put to rest, in 1974, Stephenson met and was later married to a man named Bruce Nickell within the next two years. During their 12 years of marriage, Bruce ended up developing …show more content…

Stella gave him Excedrin pills to calm down the headache, he collapsed moments after taking the drug and was transported to a hospital in Seattle. Doctors claimed that it was emphysema, to Stella, it didn’t make any sense since he never had emphysema before.

Two weeks after Bruce’s death, Nickell heard about Sue Snow, who has also died by taking Excedrin pills. Both Snow and her husband, Paul Webking, took two from the same bottle that morning. Snow collapsed on the bathroom floor, unresponsive, and was announced dead on the same day.

When doing an autopsy on Snow’s body, Assistant Medical Examiner Janet Miller detected a scent that was very distinctive to cyanide, bitter almonds. The test verified that Snow died of cyanide poisoning.

Investigators examined any contents of Snow’s home and found a bottle of Excedrin capsules that Snow used on the morning of her death. Out of the 60 capsules that was in the bottle, Snow only took 3 of them.

Nickell came forward to police about Bruce’s death, proclaiming that he took the same number of pills Snow took before her death. After taking a few tests, the FDA found out that Bruce’s remains contained presence of cyanide in his

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