The California coffee cup murder... The dance at the schoolhouse in Tuttletown, Calif., on April 27, 1929, was the last hoedown for Carroll Rablen. His wife, Eva, 32, loved to kick up her heels, so the couple attended many dances. But Carroll, 34, preferred to sit it out. Battle wounds left the World War I veteran deaf; he couldn’t hear the music.

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After midnight, Eva brought a cup of coffee and sandwiches to her husband as he waited in the car. Then she sashayed inside as strains of “Turkey in the Straw” filled the hall where Carroll’s father, Steve, and uncle, John, were playing fiddle and guitar. After a few sips, Carroll screamed in agony and slumped over. “Papa! Coffee… bitter,” he moaned. Within the hour, he was dead.






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Within the week, Eva was charged with his murder. Newspapers dubbed her “Borgia of the Sierra.” Carroll met Eva about 18 months earlier through a lonely-hearts ad he placed in a San Francisco matrimonial newspaper, the print and paper ancestors of today’s online dating services. He was too shy to meet women face-to-face.
Circumstantial evidence started to pile up. Police found a bottle of strychnine from a local Bigelow drug store discarded near Carroll’s parking spot. Bigelow’s sale register showed the signature of a Mrs. Joe Williams who bought the poison three days before Carroll’s death. A clerk recalled she said she needed it to get rid of gophers.


Eva’s preliminary hearing lured roughly 6,000, who came by car, carriage, horseback, and even on foot. Usually, such hearings fit nicely into the office of the justice of the peace, large enough for about 20 people. But the proceedings had to be moved to an outdoor dance floor in a park to accommodate the spectators. The show came to an abrupt, unexpected end when Eva changed her plea to guilty. She admitted to spiking her husband’s coffee with strychnine.




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