The Case of the Poisoned Pork Packer
By: Richard J. Goodrich
Tags: Murder, Culture, History, Crime, True Crime

The Case of the Poisoned Pork Packer

Did Laura Farnsworth Schenk try to kill her millionaire husband?

John and Laura Schenk, Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 13, 1910. Public domain.

It was, averred the wealthy snobs of Wheeling, West Virginia, a classic example of what happens when a man marries the help.

A rich young man might indulge in a summertime fling with a pretty maid, but to actually marry one — well, that was like plucking a poisoned flower. Once the sexual attraction dimmed and the blossom wilted, what would remain?

And how much worse if she was a poisonous flower?

“From Kitchen to Mansion, From Mansion to Jail”

John O. Schenk was a wealthy man, the heir to his father’s meat-packing business. His father, Frederick Schenk, had emigrated from Germany and started a butcher’s shop in Wheeling.

A born entrepreneur, the elder Schenk quickly expanded from meat to real estate, purchasing commercial property in Wheeling. By the time of his death, in 1906, F. Schenk and Sons owned a three-acre meat packing plant.

They were also investors in coal, oil, natural gas, and real estate. Upon his death, Frederick divided a fortune of five to ten million dollars between his five sons.

As the family’s wealth grew, the Schenks made their entrance into Wheeling society. All went smoothly until John fell in love with a maid employed by one of his father’s friends.

Laura Farnsworth was born in 1879 and raised in a poor family that made its home in Marrieta, Ohio. Her father deserted the family when Laura was young. In 1887, Laura, only eight years old, was sent to Wheeling to find employment as a servant.

She spent ten years working for the leading families in the town, ultimately attracting John Schenk’s attention. The couple married in 1897.

Schenk’s family was mortified. The patriarch, Frederick, threatened to disown his son if he married a maid. They were rising rapidly in Wheeling society, and now John proposed to subject them to ridicule by marrying beneath his station. John was resolute: “If she is not as good as we, I will make her as good,” he said.

He built an opulent mansion for his bride on Wheeling Island. Laura began a campaign to penetrate the social armor of Wheeling’s finest citizens. A year after their marriage, she began hosting parties, extending invitations to the better crowd.

The social page of the newspapers marveled at the extravagance of her events, but the aristocrats stayed away. Nor did she receive many invitations in return: “She has not graced the drawing rooms of some of the homes where, in a white apron, she once served tea,” wrote the Washington Post.

Laura, handicapped by her low class origins, received little help from her husband. John was a disappointment, a drag on his wife’s social ambitions. Although he indulged her with a fine mansion and a $10,000 automobile, his heart belonged to the meat business. He spent long hours at work, and when he returned home, he preferred to lounge around the house in his “shirt-sleeves” rather than don the suits that were the proper attire for a wealthy man.

Sensing his wife’s frustrated unhappiness, John decided to take a trip to Europe to sample the marvels of the world. Perhaps a forced encounter with culture would expand his mind and make him a more suitable yoke-mate for his socially-ambitious spouse.

Laura remained in Wheeling, caring for the children (Virginia and Robert) and continuing her assault on society. Local residents of the town noticed that she spent an inordinate amount of time riding in her car with a handsome young man.

Gossips wove nets of innuendo around the pair. The neighbors waited for John’s return, eagerly anticipating a marital explosion.

A Poisonous Homecoming

John returned to Wheeling in 1910. His trip had been successful, but the voyage had taken something out of him. He fell ill shortly after his homecoming, and if Laura required a marital course correction, he was in no shape to offer it.

His condition deteriorated. The family physician, Dr. Frank Hupp, was brought in to treat the ailing man. It was assumed that John had contracted something during his travels.

Laura insisted that home was the best place for her husband. Finally, fearful that he was going to lose his patient, Dr. Hupp insisted that John be admitted to the North Wheeling Hospital. Laura protested, but Hupp overrode her objections. Her husband was dying.

John rallied in the hospital. His condition improved. Since he was on the mend, Laura demanded that he be discharged and returned to the comfort of his home. Hupp argued against this course and lost.

John went home. He relapsed, even sicker than before.

By now, Dr. Hupp was suspicious. Was John being poisoned? He transmitted his concerns to John’s brothers. They fired Laura’s chauffeur and replaced him with a private detective.

They also hired a a female detective to play a nurse in order to protect John. Dr. Hupp smuggled one of the bottles of lithia spring water that John drank out of the mansion. He sent it to the labs at Johns Hopkins University for chemical analysis.

The report was unequivocal: the water contained a significant amount of arsenic. Someone was poisoning the millionaire.

Laura was the obvious suspect. After all, she had insisted that John be treated at home. She would become a very wealthy woman if her husband died, and she would be relieved of the socially-inept John. Perhaps she could snag a more suitable mate, a man who would help her ascend the ladder of elite society.

The police and county prosecutors were convinced. At midnight, November 10, 1910, officers pounded on her door and demanded that she accompany them to the police station.

“What for?” she asked.

“You are charged with poisoning your husband,” one of the policemen replied.

“It’s a lie,” she said. “I love him. I will go with you, but first I want to take my children where they will be safe.”

After awakening her children and leaving them with a neighbor, Laura donned her jewelry and a $10,000 fur coat. She then followed the officers to jail, where she was interred, without bail, in one of the towers.

Her cell, a sixteen foot round space on the third floor of the tower, offered a lovely view of the city below. She quickly set about decorating her quarters, hanging expensive tapestries brought from home over the barred windows.

She also insisted that her embroidered couch be moved from her mansion so that she would have a proper place to sleep. She spent her days, while waiting for release, playing cards on a mahogany table. Servants brought several changes of clothing, and she looked, remarked one newspaper, as if she was ready “for an afternoon’s reception.”

Meanwhile, John fought for his life in his hospital bed.

A Prosecutor’s Ambitions

Prosecutor J. Bernard Handlan saw an opportunity to ride this case to the top of his profession.

The story of the maid who had married a millionaire and then poisoned him was playing in newspapers across the country. The entire country received daily bulletins about the developments. Who knew how far he could go if he managed the case correctly?

He ordered the police to follow every lead; surely one woman couldn’t have managed such a subtle poisoning alone. She must have accomplices — at the very least a medical man who could advise her on the proper use of poisons.

To stop Laura’s attorneys from winning her release, Handlan empanelled a grand jury to review the details of her case. Three witnesses testified against the defendant: Dr. Frank Hupp, Miss Alma Evans, who had been John’s original nurse, and “Miss Kline,” a female detective brought in to play the part of a nurse and gather evidence against Laura. Miss Kline was not the detective’s actual name; her true identity was kept secret at the inquest.

Nurse Evans testified that she was the first person to suspect that something was amiss in the Schenk household. When the patient took his meals, Laura always insisted on opening the bottles of lithia water.

Then, after John finished his food, Laura would tell him to drink his water. Every time John dutifully complied, he would begin to vomit. At first Nurse Evans thought this was simply a side-effect of eating, but later she grew suspicious. In Laura’s absence, she tried some of the water. It made her nauseous.

She relayed her suspicions to Dr. Hupp. He sent two bottles to a chemist, who confirmed that both were tainted with arsenic. Hupp immediately insisted that John be moved to the hospital, where he would be safe from whomever was trying to kill him.

As the patient recovered, Laura demanded that he be discharged and returned home. The doctors were unable to stop this, but decided to insert a detective, Miss Kline, into the household to catch the poisoner.

Miss Kline began to work on Laura. She told the wife that John might soon pass away.

Laura allegedly replied, “He can’t die too soon for me. If he’d die, I would be the happiest woman in the world.” Nurse Kline testified that Laura also spoke bitterly about John’s family: The whole “Dutch Schenk” family made her sick. All they knew was “money and meat.”

“Well, I don’t blame you,” Detective Kline had replied, attempting to worm her way into Laura’s confidence. “I wouldn’t want a husband like that, either. I believe I would want him dead, too, and would try to get rid of him.”

Laura then placed her hand on the detective’s shoulder. “Would you? Will you help me get rid of him?”

“Well,” responded Kline, “I have never done anything like that before, but I am a poor woman. I have had to work hard all my life and I don’t know what I would do if it was worth while.”

Kline then stated that she had asked for $5,000 to assist Laura in killing her husband. Laura claimed she didn’t have that much money on hand, but she would pay $1,000 and guarantee that her conspirator would be taken care of for the rest of her life.

It was, wrote a reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, “the most dastardly plot ever conceived in the mind of a human being.”

Laura also told Kline that if her husband should die unexpectedly, the nurse was to make every effort to secure his keys. “If he does die, you make a grab for his pants, first thing and get the bunch of keys out of his pocket. If them Dutch brothers of his get the keys, I won’t get a thing. I want the keys for his safety deposit box at the bank, where he keeps his bonds and stocks.”

The police had not intended to arrest Laura until they finished gathering evidence against her, but when she attempted to move her husband from the hospital a second time, the police decided that she had to be confined to protect John. At the grand jury inquest, Prosecutor Handlan assured the jurors that he had more evidence to offer at a future trial, and that he would, at that time, reveal the names of her accomplices — a degenerate gang that police investigators were still pursuing.

The grand jury, convinced by what they had heard, indicted Laura on five counts of attempted poisoning. The only question would be the charge: John had rallied in the hospital; it appeared that he might live. That would take murder off the table.

More worrisome, from the prosecutor’s point of view, was the rumor appearing in a number of papers that John Schenk found the evidence against his wife unconvincing. He, wrote several reporters, intended to testify for the defense, in support of his wife.

Prosecutor Handlan, worried about how this might play with a jury. He decided to push for a quick trial and win a conviction before John was healthy enough to make a court appearance. Laura’s defense team tried to slow the march of law, buying time for John’s recovery.

The Trial of Laura Schenk

On November 26, 1910, Laura appeared for the first time before Judge Lewis Jordan.

She entered a plea of not guilty to the charges against her, and was granted bail for the sum of $10,000. Unable to raise this amount, she was compelled to remain in her decorated prison cell.

Her attorney, John J. O’Brien, revealed the ground the defense intended to map, when he levied charges against Prosecutor Handlan for his illegal use of the grand jury, and witness intimidation. O’Brien asserted that Handlan had told one of the witnesses, William Wolfe — who had accompanied John on his European trip — to refuse to answer questions from the defense team.

Prosecutor Handlan hotly denied this allegation. Wolfe was brought into the court, and Judge Jordan ordered him to answer any questions the defense attorneys might pose.

O’Brien also requested a delay of the trial, since the attorneys needed to interview physicians in Germany and Italy, who had treated Schenk’s mysterious ailment. The judge was unsympathetic. The trial would begin December 19, whether “the state or defense was ready or not.”

In fact, the trial was ultimately delayed until the new year. On January 9, 1911, Laura, dressed in a new, tailored gray and lavender suit, was escorted into the Wheeling court room for her opportunity to stand before justice. The room was packed with representatives of the press as well as friends, family, business associates, and the naturally nosy.

After a day of jury selection, the state and defense began exchanging verbal shots at each other. Prosecutor Handlan sketched the bones of his case in his opening remarks: John Schenk had been poisoned, initially with lead, and later, with arsenic.

He had been in excellent health when he had returned from his European trip, but had deteriorated quickly once he was reunited with his wife. Moreover, Laura had offered to pay a nurse to secure a poison pill that could be used against her husband.

It was evident, argued Handlan, that Laura Schenk had attempted to kill her husband, and it was only the diligence of Dr. Hupp and the private detectives that had prevented her from attaining her goal.

“The state will prove,” thundered Handlan, “that a year ago John O. Schenk was a man of more than ordinary physique, but today [he] is a wreck of a man; his vitals having been eaten away by the poison given to him by his wife.”

This was all nonsense, countered Attorney O’Brien in his opening statement. His client was the victim of a plot, hatched by John’s brother, Albert. Albert and the rest of the Schenk family had never approved of Laura, so they had conspired to eliminate her.

“Ever since Laura Schenk and her husband were united in marriage, Albert Schenk has endeavored to part them.” The brothers had surrounded her with private detectives who had fabricated evidence and offered false testimony to implicate Laura in her husband’s illness.

When testimony began, the state’s star witness, Dr. Frank Hupp, told the same story he had offered to the grand jury. Someone had tried to poison John Schenk, first with lead, and then later with arsenic.

On cross examination, however, Hupp admitted that he had not suspected arsenic poisoning until he had the lithia water tested. Moreover, he grudgingly admitted the principal symptom that he attributed to lead poisoning — discolored gums — could also have been caused by poor oral hygiene. John Schenk didn’t use a tooth brush, and that may have been the principal reason for his rotting gums.

Nurse Evans recounted her growing suspicions of Laura, and the fake nurse, detective Kline, repeated the inflammatory conversations she had shared with the accused. The two women added little to the testimony they had offered before the grand jury.

On January 13, Prosecutor Handlan unveiled a surprise witness. Gossips had long chattered about a young man seen with Laura during her husband’s absence. Handlan produced him: Daniel Phillips, son of one of Wheeling’s leading families. Phillips testified that he had taken long car drives with Laura. She had purchased expensive gifts for him — a diamond pin, a smoking jacket — and spoke often about a future that they might enjoy if her husband failed to survive his illness.

Here, argued Prosecutor Handlan, was the motive for the poison plot. The young man was in line to succeed John Schenk once he had passed on. Although Phillips refused to answer questions about the intimate details of his relationship with Laura, the damage was done.

Handlan’s final witness, the capstone of his case, was a physician, Dr. J. W. Myers. He testified that several months earlier, before John Schenk returned from Europe, Laura had purchased an ounce of lead acetate from him. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Months later, she had asked him to sell her some arsenic. He had refused the second request.

Motive, means, opportunity. Prosecutor Handlan rested the state’s case against Laura Schenk. Was there anything left to say?

The defense thought so. Attorney John O’Brien began by trying to tear apart the state’s witnesses. He introduced several local physicians who admitted, on the stand, that they would not trust Dr. Myers’ claim. The man was unreliable and known to concoct wild tales. O’Brien threatened to subpoena one hundred doctors — every one he could find in the greater Wheeling area — to see if any of them had sold arsenic to Laura Schenk.

Judge Jordan refused to tolerate this theatrical display.

O’Brien then went after the nurse-detective, Miss Kline. Her real name was Eleanor Zoeckler, an operative for the Horn Company, a Pittsburgh detective firm. “Isn’t it a fact,” he said, “that every statement you have made relative to Mrs. Schenk offering you $1,000 to poison her husband is a tissue of lies, manufactured out of whole cloth by yourself?”

“Everything I have told is true,” asserted the detective.

Attorneys O’Brien and Boyce were unable to shake her calm demeanor on the stand. Boyce attacked her personal life — the fact she was recently divorced and had fallen on hard times — but she refused to alter her testimony. The defense team attempted to further discredit her by calling a Pittsburgh physician, Dr. George Slappy, who was prepared to testify that the detective-nurse was a morphine addict, and that morphine addicts could not be expected to tell the truth.

Prosecutor Handlan objected that such testimony had no bearing on the case; Judge Jordan sustained the objection and George Slappy was returned, unheard, to Pittsburgh.

The case had now dragged on for more than two weeks, and the jurors were becoming restive, tired of the apparently endless line of medical experts and other witnesses. Judge Jordan ordered the court sessions to run longer into the night, in an attempt to finish expeditiously.

Sensitive to the tired jurors, the defense finished their case with Jane Hedges, a member of the Wheeling aristocracy, who testified that John’s brother, Albert Schenk, hated Laura. She recalled an episode in which Albert told her, “John has bought his wife a $6,000 automobile. Every time she goes out in it I have hopes she will break her neck. I will leave no stone unturned to rid us of that woman.”

This, asserted Attorney O’Brien, was clear evidence of a conspiracy, funded by Albert Schenk and supported by perjured testimony from Dr. Myers and detective-nurse Zoeckler. Albert had paid these people to implicate his sister-in-law.

The defense rested.

The Jury Decides

After two days of closing arguments, the jury was released to begin its deliberations. Court observers and the national newspapers agreed that the prosecution was likely to prevail. The evidence appeared overwhelming.

The jury did not agree.

After debating for twenty four hours, the twelve men were unable to reach a decision: eleven voted for acquittal, while one deemed Laura guilty. It was a hung jury.

Judge Jordan discharged the jurors, leaving the case unresolved. The defense team viewed the result as an exoneration. Eleven sensible men had seen right through this absurd attempt to frame their innocent client. As for the lone juror who refused to find her innocent — well, that man must have been paid off by the Schenk family.

Prosecutor Handlan, cheated of what had appeared an easy victory, vowed to retry the case. But, as the months slipped past, he kept finding excuses to ask for delays.

Hours before the jury returned, a messenger had arrived with papers for Laura. John Schenk had filed for a divorce. Rumors that he had intended to stand by his wife were evidently untrue.

As the couple began their difficult court fight over their assets, some newspapers speculated that Prosecutor Handlan was only holding the possibility of a second trial over Laura’s head to compel her to agree to everything John Schenk wanted from their divorce.

Unfortunately for Handlan, West Virgina law limited the number of times he could delay a case. On June 8, 1912, Judge Jordan dismissed the charges.

Laura Farnsworth Schenk was innocent.

Perhaps Handlan would have tried again if John Schenk had died. But the husband recovered, secured his divorce, and lived another thirty years. The Schenk brothers achieved their goal of driving Laura out of the family. Only they would know for sure if there ever had been a conspiracy to achieve this result.

Laura lived, a free woman, until her death in 1950. Her life, marriage, and reputation had been destroyed by the trial of the century. She went to her death, never revealing what only she knew: was she a victim of her in-laws, or a poisoner who was simply unable to complete her task?

Sources: The Journal (Meriden, CT), Nov. 12, 1910; Pittsburgh Daily Post, Nov. 12, 1910-July 5, 1914; Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 13-January 30, 1910; Washington Post, Jan. 11, 1911-June 8, 1912.