Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook - Season 1, Episode 2 - The Teacup Poisoner | Forensic Files

Graham Young was a psychopath Graham young was more dangerous in the Christ and no one could trust him didn't matter
who his victims were whether it was family workmates school friends they were just guinea pigs to him and
interesting poisons and fascination with the Nazis it was a murderous combination
Graham Young was a man with a passion for poison but far from experimenting in laboratories he carried out his deadly
trials on family friends and work colleagues murdering three of them how did this gifted chemist
transform himself into the man they called the teacup poison [Music] I'm Fred Dynegy and I've been reporting
on serious crime as a journalist and television reporter for more than 40 years as the official biographer to the
Kray twins I know that when it comes to crime the myth can take over from the reality of what actually happened I want
to know what made Graham young so very different from other boys in the 1950s brought up in nice turn in London he
said he'd suffered a troubled childhood this led him to embark on a campaign of poisoning unlike any other in British
history for my investigation into Graham young I'm going to meet the people who came face-to-face with the poisoner and
survived I'll also be speaking with the individuals who've examined the motives behind his murderous reign I always want
to try and take a psychological perspective into what transforms a person into a killer who better to do
that than top criminologist David Wilson well Graham young didn't have the easiest starts in life his mother died
12 weeks after the birth which meant that Young's father fostered him out to an ant now even being four stood out a
family member wasn't particularly a successful event in Young's background his aunt didn't particularly bond with
him eventually his father remarries and the stepmother brings the family back together but young and the stepmother
were almost at loggerheads immediately so this was a boy who didn't have the easiest of family circumstances seemed
to bear some antagonism towards his stepmother and of course that was going to have deadly consequences in the
future from a very early age young fostered interest in taboo subject matters he was fascinated with the Nazis
he openly read Mein Kampf and spoke about the virtues of Hitler only 14 years after the Second World War ended
the story of Graham young is indeed fascinating Anthony Holden was a young reporter on
the case and wrote a book called ecent Albans poisoner I'm hoping he can tell me what motivated this sadistic killer
Graham Young who was born same here as me in 1947 was as a child clearly very very clever boy very interested in
science and history and he kept voluminous notebooks and was really educating himself into being an
extremely expert chemist it's just unfortunate that the chemistry was interested was poisonous as a child
Graham Young received a present from his father Fred and stepmother Molly for passing his eleven plus it was a
chemistry set nobody could have known that such a present would become a catalyst for Young's reign of terror and
inspire him to learn about his first deadly poison and Timoney here we've got a boy who almost from the start is
isolated is lonely is obsessed with poisons and crucially is obsessed with Nazism it was almost as if the writing
was on the wall for Graham young from a very early age at school Graham young didn't make many friends the one he did
make soon regretted becoming pals with the poisoner she had a girlfriend called Kris Williams who he really liked and
they would have sandwiches together never have sandwiches as Graham young he'd slipped some antimony into his
friends sandwich Williams would be off school for a few days with some mystery viral doctors would say it was a virus
or a bug and he just make notes and although this was supposedly his best friend and indeed on one occasion
Christopher had been off school for so long that young and he went off to London Zoo for the day and ever the
young the helpful psychopath says to Christopher we'll look I know you've been ill I've managed to get some
lemonade that should be able to help cure you in fact that lemonade simply included
more antimony young psychopathy Nino and he simply wanted to be near people that
he could do harm to and Christopher Williams was a very lucky young man in that he didn't have to go home with
young every single night and eat food with them as Young's parents and sister did at home thirteen year old young was
conducting a more long-term experiment upon his family so he put some poison in the sunday join not eat that bit himself
watch what it did to his father his stepmother his sister and make notes so if stepmom as she did threw up after
lunch he'd say to grams makes us throw up the family suspected the enthusiastic chemist was to blame for their sickness
they believed he'd accidentally contaminated kitchen utensils he borrowed to carry out his school
experiments little did they know their son was using them as human guinea pigs and that his experiments were inspired
by Britain's most popular crime author in 1961 sir Graham would have been 14 during his first bout of poisonings
Agatha Christie published a novel called the pale horse in which the poison that's used is this poison thallium
there's a very detailed technical quote in the Agatha Christie novel about thallium and its effects which clearly
was to him like reading a textbook my investigations have revealed that antimony and thallium aren't chemicals
that can be easily purchased I want to learn more about the poisons Jung was using and the impact they could have if
they were used on a human a man who's agreed to help me is forensic scientist James Cleary and to me is a very hard
bristle sort of metalloid and it can be very easily powdered so if you imagine you know most people think of mess it's
very hard Sutton says you know it's gonna be hard to absorb into the body but if you put that into a very fine
powder form it can be very easily and very readily absorbed into the body and once it's in the body
the problem with heavy metals is that they cannot be destroyed or broken down and once a she ends up in the tissue can
it become locked and it's actually very hard to get rid of it so James what would be the effects then on the human
being on a body you end up with effects that might be distinguished as say a viral poisoning like influenza so you
have like that tummy upset sort of headaches sweating fever that type of effect on an individual as time goes on
one of the obvious effects is a hair loss so that's one big fact that you'll find with chronic poisoning but usually
if it's an acute poisoning the effects are so strong and so quick that you sort of really die before you get the though
the hair loss bouts of sickness had become increasingly more common in the young household and the teenage poisoner
had set his sights on one family member in particular within his family he's particularly going to concentrate on
Molly his stepmother this is the stepmother he's hated from the age of three this is
the stepmother who destroys his toy aeroplane collection this is the stepmother whom he gives small doses of
antimony to over a long period of time some 12 months so as to replicate the symptoms of gastroenteritis
so Molly's constantly in bad health with stomach problems so we took enormous pleasure then in watching his stepmother
in agony dying and of course you're right he's going to be sitting across the breakfast table the the lunch table the
dinner table knowing full well that he's given his step malee a dose of antimony that's going to
cause her major stomach problems he's going to take pleasure out of the power that he knows that she's going to have
an unpleasant evening an unpleasant day it's the sense in which he can control this environment that's interesting to
me because psychologically I think that's what he's been desperate for all his life he's been desperate to have
power and control over circumstances that he feels he has no power and control over through poisoning his
family he is able to establish that control the levels of sickness were becoming increasingly violent on the
evening of April the 21st 1962 Graham's father Fred returned home to find his wife Molly writhing in agony in their
garden comforting her Fred spider figure gazing down on them it was Graham he was
motionless It was as if he was watching an experiment Molly was admitted to hospital but her symptoms mystified the
doctors she told her staff that she just wanted to go home to make her family dinner they were her last words
just hours later Molly young who is dead the post-mortem stated that her cause of
death was due to a collapse bone at the top of her spinal column that she'd suffered a year earlier they had no
reason to suspect antimony Graham Young had claimed his first life and got away with it he was now on the lookout for
his next unsuspecting victim for his deadly experiments I'm Fred Dynegy and I'm looking into the crimes committed by
the teacup poisoner Graham young I want to know whether he was a misguided genius or a calculated killer in 1962
Graham young stepmother Molly had died in mysterious circumstances doctors believed her painful death was related
to an old car injury she'd suffered the true cause was much closer to home she'd
been poisoned by fourteen-year-old Graham young Graham young never showed any sign of remorse not just about
killing his stepmother who he may have had son of objections to but his own father Fred was permanently damaged his
liver etc by the poison that Graham fed to him his sister Winifred was damaged these were people who had been nice to
him and unfriendly to him and paternal or sisterly the last people you'd think he would go after but they were just the
nearest to hand with his stepmother dead Graham young began placing larger doses
of antimony in his father's food and drink today antimony is only possible to access with a government license in the
1960s it was mainly used in the manufacturing of batteries and solder the chemical was only available to
pharmacists and industry experts even though he was only 14 Graham young had no problem acquiring
large amounts for his deadly experiments he was a boy who could clearly switch on
the charm when the occasion demanded he was going into chemists asking to get acts
to a certain number of poisons he would explain that away by explaining that he was doing experiments at school indeed
on one occasion he would say that he was at University crucially he would always
sign them at the poisons register that chemists demanded Gramm young could appear mature and competent and adult
clearly masking his murderous intent behind gaining access to these poisons would it be a painful death essentially
sting is destroying the nerve endings and one of the effects of that is that you end up with numbness in the fingers
and of nose with antimony is the effect of walking on hot coals I think yes it would have been a very painful death
months had passed since his stepmothers death his father Fred Young was still in
mourning when he too began suffering severe bouts of sickness he was rushed to hospital where the doctors were keen
to monitor his condition but they weren't the only ones as with his stepmother Graham had kept meticulous
notes on his father's slow demise in hospital he sat quietly watching the effects
the doctors suspected that fred was suffering from some form of poisoning they couldn't agree on whether arsenic
or antimony was responsible when Graham began to lecture them on how to distinguish between the two
his father demanded they get that boy away from me Fred Young had become suspicious of his
son he wasn't the only one when he's at school he's useless in virtually every other
subject except for chemistry the chemistry teacher becomes suspicious other family members are suspicious of
this Kandi's continuing health problems in Young's family and so the chemistry teacher finds poisons in his desk calls
the family doctor the family daughter calls in a psychiatrist the psychiatrist and the police interview young on the
pretext that his knowledge of chemistry is so great perhaps he's already at university level young of course
revealing the true nature of the psychopath the true nature of the serial killer is desperate for the attention
and of course shows off his arrogance knows no bounds Young's bravado left the police in no doubt that he was
responsible for the series of illnesses at home and school they arrested him for
attempted murder the young hand even at that young age was only 14 had in his pocket what he
called his exit dose he had a file of poison for himself in case this happened but unfortunately never had time to get
to it well unfortunately for him and for his subsequent victims young confessed to poisoning his sister Winifred friend
Kris Williams and his father Fred through the food milk and water at home his stepmothers body had been cremated
so young could not be charged with her murder he was convicted of poisoning sundry
people and the judge at the time decided because of his youth he was only 14 that
the best thing was to send him to a mental hospital for the criminally insane at just 14 he was sentenced to serve 15
years at Broadmoor becoming the youngest ever person to be committed to the psychiatric hospital since 1885 both
Ronnie Kray and the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe have been inmates at Britain's most renowned psychiatric
hospital one man who knows abroad Moore's reputation is former criminal Bobby Cummins Bobby now runs a charity
that helps ex-offenders called unlock although he was never sent to Broadmoor he did serve time in later years with
Graham young there was always that weariness if you had to Broadmoor label on you to type to go problem or those
who are working there ticket and don't want to do our Jail so they want to get into the mental health system where it's
Elijah and his does that are in Burrell mortar are are completely off the road completely bonkers that will kill with
Broadmoor gave young the opportunity to further his learning he had access to their library and despite being a
high-risk prisoner the authorities didn't restrict the types of books he read he was in Baltimore which means he
didn't come under the prison system where he was restricted on you know I'm watched on my read he could go to the
library but most of the book so that God would be reading will be on poisons and
toxicology that sort of thing you know he wouldn't be reading mrs. beatings cookery book and this and this it was
something to do with cannot put a poison in the cake you know that sort of thing
you know he's only 14 15 when he first goes to Broadmoor the authorities at the time
wouldn't imagine that they were dealing with the psychopath of the kind that young was they would simply of see him
as a troubled boy even the strict confines of the secure Hospital weren't enough to deter young from trying to
achieve a lifelong ambition of infamy he would occasionally put car pick or sugar
soap whatever unpleasant if not poisonous semi poisonous materials were to hand in an institution like that into
the tea urn that went around Broadmoor and there were reports of illnesses another patient John berridge died from
cyanide poisoning only months after arriving at Broadmoor young claimed to have produced the poison extracting it
from Laurel bushes on the hospital grounds his confession was not taken seriously and the death was recorded as
suicide so he continues to demonstrate this type of behavior but crucially he then recognizes here's this ability to
turn the charm on again to appear mature to appear adult he crucially recognizes
that if he ever wants to get aren't abroad more he's got to convince the authorities dr. odwin his personal
psychiatrist that he's safe to release and so young gradually changes that behavior and appears as the model
prisoner the model patient in the 1960's Broadmoor was undergoing the transition
from an old-style penal institution to a modern psychiatric hospital the man in charge of the poisonous rehabilitation
was dr. Edgar Hudd Whitman he was responsible for determining just how dangerous Young was and whether he
should be released back into the community there's an arrogance with psychiatrists they always think they're
inside your mind I once said a psychiatrist say to me how do I get inside of prisoners mind and I said make
sure he don't get in your mind if you hold a case to my release I'm not going to tell you the truth I'm going to tell
you what benefits mate professor David Wilson is a former prison governor he's been responsible
for some of Britain's toughest prisoners you've had a lot of experience as a prison governor is it possible for
prisoners for inmates to to fall to con doctors and psychiatrists yes of course it's possible because doctors and
psychiatrists and prison governors are human humans make mistakes therefore you've got to be very careful indeed
about the decision-making process that's going to put somebody who's committed very grave offenses back into the
community young to me must have been so clearly a malevolent presence malevolent
force that it does surprise me that a sophisticated Socotra in an institution like that full of baddies could be
persuaded by this young boy but Graham was very clever and he was probably quite a good actor as well eight years
into his sentence Young had seemingly transform from a sadistic poisoner into a remorseful young man dr. Edwin
believed he was making good progress I've been did a report to named secretary whose responsibility it was
Reginald maudling at that time saying this boy still only just 20 early twenties they reckoned once you've been
in there 10 years you're institutionalized you're never gonna be able to cope with the outside world
again in 1970 Graham young had served eight years for poisoning his father dr. Edwin wrote to the Board of Governors
and told them he believed Graham young was fit to return to society and was granted home visits he thought we'll
take one experiment and he said to Graham I'm going to let you out for a week you can go stay with your sister
Winifred and see how it goes see how you cope with the outside world and he wrote
her a letter that subsequently became famous because he said guess what your friendly neighborhood Frankenstein is
coming to stay with you next week and he did go and stay with him for a week she had a husband a small child and
a dog who all of whom you'd think in the context of this story might have a little strychnine in the dog food but no
gram knew that this was his key to getting out and behaved like a model patient there are several parts of dr.
Edwin's behavior in releasing young that I find extraordinary but I would also say there's a context Young has gone to
Broadmoor not as a convicted murderer he's gone to Broadmoor as a 14 year old boy who attempted to poison his father
his sister and a school friend now that's a very different set of criminogenic factors from somebody who
had been sent to prison for murder so I think dr. odwin is trying to help this boy back into the community by 1971
Graham young walked out of the gates of Broadmoor a rehabilitated man or that's what he made the authorities believe I'm
Fred Danish and I'm investigating the case of Graham young the teacup poisoner in 1971 he was freed from Broadmoor
where he'd served eight and a half years for poisoning his father as far as the authorities were concerned he was cured
Graham young was only 23 and had made it clear he wanted to start a new life he set out to find a job one where he
could put his chemistry skills to good use he was trained as a store man by the Broadmoor release service the next
astonishing irony of this story is the poison that Graham was by now interested in was called thallium which is a heavy
metal poison and its main industrial uses in in photography there are two companies in this country that stock
thallium in the manufacturer manufacturer photographic lenses and the Broadmoor placement service found gray
meowing a job in one of these two factories the political headlands laboratories in a little village called
Bovington just as hemel hempstead a government training scheme provided Graham young with a
glowing reference pad --lens employed almost a hundred people antony Odom was one of them back in the 1970s he
remembers Graham young this is the first time he's ever agreed to speak about him
and the devastation he caused what do you remember then of of Graham young well when Graham arrived
it was understood that he come from some sort of rehabilitation as a result of a
mental breakdown he didn't strike one as being exceptional he was very dark somewhat glum very articulate clearly
very intelligent and he obviously conveyed through one means or another his knowledge of chemistry and we those
that were curious asked him what he'd been and what he'd done in the past and he swore I was actually a failed
chemistry student or a failed pharmacist so when those terms any sort of medically related or chemistry terms
were used it didn't come as a great surprise because that's what we believed him to have been I do remember
colleagues saying to me one day as we were discussing him generally just don't get him on the subject of Hitler and the
Nazis because it's a favorite topic and he'll be off on one basically and it's no we did smile about it and say yes
okay well care of that young thought his job would entail working with the deadly
chemical thallium to his disappointment it wasn't kept on site once used as a rat poison thallium should have been
impossible to purchase but again Jung persuaded a chemist to provide him with large quantities of the poisonous metal
valium is a very soft malleable metal and actually that metal is actually very easily and readily dissolved in water
and it's it's odorless colorless and tasteless which means that if you had it in a drink you wouldn't even suspect it
was there I am young hadn't changed and now had new friends to target people who had
taking time off either 1 or 2 days or whatever and then things started to get more serious just within a very small
group of people but there was just a few that thought hmm not a nice thing not a
nice complaint there was a particular occasion I remember when I was in one of the buildings and looking out and
somebody came rushing out of the stores and was violently ill on the grass outside which looking back on it well at
the time we thought something very extraordinary going on there Bob Eagle was to become Young's first victim
at had --lens he complained of chronic stomach pains and a numbing sensation in his body over
a period of 2 months Bob Eagle was regularly admitted to hospital each time doctors failed to diagnose his problem
and he returned to work where he confided his ailments to his colleague Graham young Bob Eagle was very ill I
think it was probably the thallium had a very horrible effect on him in terms of
the sensitivity of his skin he was giving him violent hallucinations he was effect having nightmares out of
hell with this Balian poisoning is not a pleasant way to die and of course as we
would later discover Saddam Hussein uses exactly the same time for poison when he's trying to bump off political
opponents in Iraq Agatha Christie says it's the sort of the poisonous drug of choice that it is
so hard to detect it in terms of suspicion you wouldn't suspect it as being you know someone's suffering from
thallium poisoning in normal day-to-day Satta life and then once it actually you
then start suffering these symptoms and the ease that of illnesses and diarrhea and upset stomach
it's very hard to be very prescriptive in terms of knowing exactly what the cause of it was and I'm sure most
medical doctors they would be quite hard pushed away to him exactly what the cause was until it got to the stage
where it's too late there is actually something with valium called Prussian blue that you can use as a bit of an
antidote and it binds with the the thallium stop it going into the soft tissue but once it does go into the
tissue then it essentially becomes locked it essentially becomes a by accumulator it kind of sticks into your
tissue and very hard to remove and I think at that stage once you're at that level of sort of poisoning then there's
very little you can do about an English you just waiting to die Bob Eagles condition worsened and he
returned to hospital every treatment they tried was unsuccessful and his condition grew worse by the day eight
days after being admitted Bob Eagle died Bob Eagles death was recorded as bronchopneumonia with guillain-barre a
polyneuritis a rare disease of the immune system poison wasn't suspected Bob Eagle was cremated and in fact it
was Graham who went around to see the widow and explained to her that cremation was probably the best option
these days and as fate would have it hadlen the managing director chose Graham young to accompany him to the
funeral on behalf of the company because he'd been Bobby Hill's friend so Graham
sat in the crematorium watching the evidence of his crime literally go up in smoke as no one suspected Young was the
culprit he was free to continue his reign of poisoning he targeted at least 10 of his nearest colleagues each was
struck down with the same mysterious symptoms and had to spend time off work only two months after Bob Eagles murder
the poisoner turned his attention towards Fred Biggs Fred begs the store manager had worked
at Hanlan's for four years he made the fatal mistake of befriending young he too began to suffer chronic pain and
sickness on the 19th of November 1971 Fred Biggs became the second person to die of what the staff had had --lens
believed to be a mysterious bug why he chooses particular targets doesn't seem to me to be particularly clear for
example he targeted one man whom he knew was going to leave the job in fact young
got the job because this chap was going to work in another Factory so sometimes his motivation isn't clear
because at the end of the day Fred we're dealing with a psychopath you know they
don't think rationally sometimes but if we see the bulk of his targets as being his stepmother his father his sister his
school friend it's people who are close to him people over whom he would like power and control power and control that
I think he felt had been denied to him Grahame young made meticulous notes detailing the effects that the poison
had upon his victims I think it's quite sick as he's actually still working with
them you know their colleague and unit working with them and presumably talking about sort of things as people do and
and observing them in getting ill and and continuing to dose them up and having that observational chat element I
think is the bit that I find hard to understand it's the cold level of removal of dosing him up and then just
sitting back and watching them suffer the management at had lands would impelled to call in a doctor to
investigate the cause of the two deaths and the serious illness they also wanted
to reassure the work force so the doctor went on having described his business of
thee and now as this isn't so forth they've been doing and he came to the conclusion that we were probably
suffering from some sort of hybrid flu virus and that these things were very aggressive and that was probably what
the situation was in amongst the concern staff one man stood out from the route Graham young then piped up and
started asking questions and they were very technical terms that he was using I suppose in a sense we
weren't so surprised because of this past experience that we thought he had here's the arrogant psychopath
once again emerging to the fore as he had done when the psychiatrist comes into school to interview him Young says
too much he reveals this knowledge of poisons indeed he suggests to the authorities
have you considered Thalian poisoning and it's that over eagerness to be part of the story to be at the forefront of
what's happening that leads to young being arrested in November 1971 the police were called in to investigate
young a check of his criminal record revealed his past conviction as a poisoner when the police raided Graham
Young's room they found the walls decorated with Nazi artifacts each surface filled with an array of
chemicals more importantly they discovered his handwritten diary detailing every dose of poison he'd
administered to his unsuspecting victims and the impact it had on them new tests
were carried out on the internal organs of Fred Biggs and the ashes of Bob Eagle
the results were shocking it was estimated that over time Biggs had ingested more than 100 grams of phalerum
just one gram could be fatal you know we were a close group very trusting and understanding of each other and suddenly
you have this situation where somebody is being has been very very malicious within a group like that it's it has a
pretty profound effect on on everybody but horror really I suppose it's the only way you can describe it less than a
year after leaving Broadmoor Graham Young was really at the factory he'd claimed two lives and made many others
serious the ill his scientific abilities knew no bounds his new laboratory was now to be
Britain's toughest prison I'm Fred dine age and I'm examining the life of Graham
young VT poisoner his knowledge of poisons were so advanced many believed he could have become one of Britain's
leading experts in this field instead however he chose to devote his talents to killing at least three people and
poisoning many others in 1972 Young had been arrested for killing his work colleagues
Fred Biggs and Bob Eagle on the 19th of June Graham Young's trial began instant Albans he pleaded not guilty to the
charges against him Anthony Holden was sent to cover the story for the local paper and his articles caught the
attention of the poisoner it was the first time I laid eyes on him and it was a pretty scary sight he was in court his
demeanor was very arrogant detached like one of those dictators who doesn't recognize the court you know he sent me
notes across the court that said can you get make me so famous that I wind up in
the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussauds I want to be to go down in history as a really famous murderer the
defense called just one witness the accused Graham young he remained cool under questioning his arrogance never
wavered he disagreed with the medical evidence presented by the prosecution young insisted the deaths were due to a
virus the irony of the whole trial was that we journalists knew about poisoning his family when he was a teenager eight
years in Broadmoor obviously the jury and did not know about that because you're not allowed to raise previous
convictions during a trial and we would often be in the canteen drinking a cup of tea with the jury it was so tempting
in that absurd way to go across and say did you know he's done it or because you could never tell during a
trial what impression the evidence is making on the jury the prosecution's key evidence was Young's diary he kept a
record of every measure of poison he dispensed to his co-workers at the factory his study of Fred Biggs was
shocking I have administered a fatal dose of the special compound he is surviving too
long for my peace of mind it took only a short amount of time for the jury to reach its verdict young was found guilty
and sentenced to life imprisonment for each murder asked if he felt remorse for his actions Young said what I feel is
the emptiness of my soul not until after the verdict after they found him guilty
it was revealed that he'd done this before and then of course there was this huge national scandal he should never be
let out of Broadmoor in the first place I accept that he manipulated and was clever there the management was
certainly not made aware of his complete background had they been then I think they would have picked up the situation
much quicker and realized that there was something amiss and thirdly he should never have had access to the chemicals
that he did Young's ability to access deadly poison and Broadmoor failure to warn his employers with serious issues
that needed to be addressed if such a tragedy was to be avoided again crucially no
we'd have something called the mapa arrangements the multi-agency public protection arrangements which follow the
career of our newly released prisoner who's regarded as still potentially dangerous who follow his career in the
community checking out on a regular basis that he isn't engaging in risky behavior risky behavior that would do
other people harm the jury raised concerns in their summary about Young's ability to get hold of deadly poisons so
easily 1972 is when the poisons that changed in terms of access to these type of many
types of poisons including heavy metals and is interesting to note that the the jury on the on the second trial from him
poisoning his coworkers they actually fed back to the court saying that one issue they had was the access to these
poisons that it was just so easy enough see that they felt it should change and within a few months after that the the
the poisons act changed and that men that is actually much harder get hold of these poisons Young's previous
conviction had sent him to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital this time he was sent to Parker's prison on the Isle of
Wight home to some of Britain's toughest criminals he decides he doesn't want to go back to Broadmoor but would
rather go into the mainstream penal estate so he's locked up in Parkhurst where guests would be friends him Ian
Brady one of the Morris murderers Brady also somebody who is obsessed with Nazism and they have an immediate
connection with each other because both of this fascination for Hitler for the Third Reich and for Nazi insignia but
interestingly Brady describes him as looking like a young Joseph Goebbels and so here we've got this direct link
back into this boyhood obsession poison and Nazis still emerging all these years
later in Parkhurst whereas Brady was happy to spend time with the poisoner the majority of
prisoners weren't Bobby Cummins was one of 500 inmates who avoided him Bobby you've you've actually met him
what sort of bloke was he well let's put it this way Fred you know we're sitting
here having a cup of sea I think we'd not be picking up those cups if we had gram in their company no
really poor dee I wouldn't even say you drink it first to see whether it was all
right because his chances are he would know exactly how much to drink the water know him and I'll drink he'd kill me no
no not in a million years I wouldn't even sit on the table with him in case he dusted it with something that's
they're dangerous we're talking about you know as I said he'd make the crazy look like any year bad men you know look
like amateurs free fighters this guy was deadly you're never tempted to go and see him inside
not really no in retrospect I'm quite surprised because I ministers people I've written a book about this guy it
would have been interesting to have talked to him to have met him asked him questions about things I don't know were
unresolved but I just thought it would have been madness because one would have had a cup of tea when would have had
some sort of I suppose you could have turned it down but that would have been impolite not a man to be employed it
just thought no this is not a good idea go and have a cup of tea with him he was
doing say nobody in prison like carrying a weapon or smuggling some again and I say what's the risk of he was very high
risk there so I will it's about as risky as having Graham Young on your team oh you know did God protect that bad the
you know in prison you know the God Squad would always meet up with the most horrific killers like the Bradys of this
world and all that but no one invited Graham young to the vicar's tape I you know either neighbor and that crazy the
guy was that dangerous even prison officers didn't feel safe with him everyone was too scared to approach the
convicted poisoner he became completely isolated on the 1st of August 1990 Graham Young was found dead in his cell
aged just 42 the official cause of death was heart failure but he had no history of a hard
condition and the mystery of Graham Young's death murder suicide natural causes some prison officer said you know
prisoners had him and done him and and it's a possibility prisoners for where we don't feel safer then right let's
take away this freight because they live with it for years but having said that there was prison who said prison office
has done it because they actually would is going it and and they weren't safe however he could have dr. day at ease I
think he may have committed suicide he was somebody who recognized that the rest of his life was going to be spent
behind bars and I felt took the ultimate form of power and control over his own life by gaining access to whatever
poison he would be able to find poisons that he would be able to kill himself with prior to his death
Graham Young had been approached by cosmetic companies Kinsey utilized his understanding of chemicals to enhance
their products so just how different could his life have been had he placed his knowledge of poison to more
productive use coming those people manufacturing these herbal lipsticks and all that nor any young you know what
keeps the collar on better what you know and what plants what I use so you know in his own way he was de kiddy on the
Block when it comes to the poison going the only thing was he was totally immoral at one point he applied for a
job with the police forensic science laboratory he probably could have been a very good force for scientific
investigation on the right side of the law but no he had this deadness to normal human interaction he had no
compunction no remorse no guilt about inflicting terrible pain and in some cases death
I suppose it makes you think perhaps a little bit more cautiously about individuals and you learn them for more
about life and the fact that somebody isn't necessarily all they seem and if they're quiet and relatively harmless
perhaps they're not the accounts that I've heard from the people who met Graham young and have studied his story
suggests to me that although he may have been highly intelligence he was at heart
completely insane who knows what he could have achieved if his talents for toxicology had been recognized and
developed what we do know is that he placed no value on human life and saw his existence as one big experiment
[Music] [Music] [Music]

Brief Summary

Graham Young, the "teacup poisoner," used poisons to kill family and colleagues, leading to his arrest and life imprisonment.

Key points

The Teacup Poisoner. Graham Young, a gifted chemist, turned his fascination with poisons into a deadly obsession.
A Troubled Childhood. Young's difficult upbringing shaped his dark interests and eventual path to murder.
First Victim. Graham's stepmother Molly becomes his first victim, dying under mysterious circumstances.
The Model Patient. After eight years, Young is deemed fit for release, but his true nature remains hidden.
Graham Young's Release. After eight and a half years, Graham Young was released from Broadmoor, seemingly rehabilitated.
The First Victim. Bob Eagle became Young's first victim, suffering from mysterious ailments that led to his death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was a boy who didn’t have the easiest of family circumstances.

2:40WatchOct 4, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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