The 1986 Excedrin Murders

Did Washington State Have a Copycat or Did the Chicago Tylenol Poisoner Move West? 

Bruce Nickell (photo source)

Sue Snow (photo source) 

In Chicago in 1982, seven people died after ingesting cyanide-laced Tylenol (see my article about the poisonings here).  Although the guilty party or parties were never charged and brought to trial, the acts led to a product tampering legislation which would make any deaths that resulted from product tampering a federal offense. 


King County, Washington in June of 1986 was a world away from Chicago and, like the rest of the country, four years past the Tylenol murders.  Singer Randy Travis had just released his debut album, Danielle Steel was sitting atop the fiction bestseller lists, devastating details about the Chernobyl disaster were being released and the United Kingdom was preparing to celebrate the wedding of commoner Sarah Ferguson to Queen Elizabeth's second son.   A month earlier, in May, King County residents had turned on their TVs to NBC to watch Mark Harmon portray Ted Bundy in a two-part miniseries.  Outside of the Green River Killer, Bundy was the area's most notorious serial killer and in the early summer of 1986 was residing on Florida's Death Row.  

Sue (photo source)

Sue

The city of Auburn is a suburb of metropolitan Seattle, roughly 20 miles south, liberally dotted with parks, open spaces and urban trails.  Housing both farming communities and business and industry, it boasts Boeing as its largest employer.  It has turned out its fair share of athletes and Olympians and even an astronaut  - Dick Scobee, who was killed in January of 1986 in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.   While Auburn is considered a friendly city with only a fraction of Seattle's population, crime is not unheard of -  although the majority of crimes are property related.  

One of Auburn's residents was the popular and outgoing Sue Snow, a 40-year-old mother of two and manager of a local bank.  Sue had become a wife and mother at sixteen and dropped out of school.  The marriage, unsurprisingly, did not last and she married a second time, to her former brother-in-law, Connie Snow.  It was Snow that had brought the New Mexico native to Washington State and quickly, Sue adapted and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.  Finding job opportunities scarce as a twenty-year old high school dropout, she earned her GED and started her banking career as a teller, working her way up eventually to vice president.  She and Snow had a daughter, Hayley, together but the marriage did not last.  Sue did love her name with the surname of "Snow" and so she decided to keep it.   She met her third husband, Paul Webking, in the late 70s, thanks to her daughter being friends with one of Paul's kids.  Paul was a long-haul trucker and had been married four times.  He seemed to be the opposite of the optimistic, happy Sue - but the two fell in love and moved in together.  They lived together for over five years before eloping on Thanksgiving Day 1985.  

In that early summer of 1986, Paul, Sue, Paul's son from a previous marriage, and Hayley shared a home in Auburn.   The morning of Wednesday, June 11, 1986 should have been like any other. 

The call for help came in at 6:43 a.m.   Dispatcher Brenda Deeds heard the calm and steady voice of a young girl who said that her mother had fallen in the bathroom.  

Hayley Snow had seen her mother that morning as Sue went down the hall, headed for the master bedroom and bath.  Hayley herself was headed to her own bathroom for a morning shower.  She heard Sue turn on the faucet to the sink in the master bathroom as she stepped into her shower.  She thought it was just after 6:30 a.m. when she heard a noise, like something dropping.  When she got out of the shower to dress, she realized the faucet in her mother's bathroom was still running.  Sue was a creature of habit and Hayley knew her mother's morning routine.  For the water to still be running from the tap was a signal something wasn't right.  

Hayley found her mother laying on the bathroom floor, still wearing her zippered purple robe.  Seeing that water was about to overflow from the sink, she turned the tap off before dropping to her knees to see to Sue.  Sue's head rested on the track of the shower door, her eyes fixed.  One hand was across her breast and the fingers curled backward unnaturally.  Hayley checked her mother for a pulse and found one, although it was faint.  Thinking that Sue's fingers must hurt, she bent them back into a normal position.  Sue gasped for air but did not exhale.  Hayley recalled learning from her health classes at school that if a person was breathing on their own you should not perform CPR and so she called a friend of her mother's named Karen, who directed the teen to call 911.  

Within four minutes of the call for help, the fire department arrived and found Sue in agonal respiration with her eyes open, fixed, and dilated.  They attempted to ventilate her with a bag mask but she was quickly deteriorating.  Two more EMTs arrived as the firefighters moved Sue from the bathroom floor to the bedroom, where they would have more room to work.  They found she presented as if she had a head injury but nothing else fell in line with that.  They wondered if she had slipped while getting in or out of the shower but Hayley assured them that Sue's routine was to shower in the evening, not in the morning.   

An airlift was arranged to transport Sue to Harborview Medical Center, the area's best trauma center, as Hayley called Sue's bank to inform them that her mother had fallen and would not be in that day.  Hayley arrived at Harborview around 7:30, after Sue's friend Karen came by the home to pick her up.

Doctors in Harborview's emergency room determined after their initial examination of Sue that her brain was swelling and she was in a coma.  Within four hours, they felt she was brain dead and were asking if they could remove her from life support as there was no hope for recovery.     

As there was still no answer as to what had caused Sue to collapse and die, Dr. Corrine Fligner, King County's Assistant Medical Examiner, was assigned to perform an autopsy on her body.   Dr. Fligner was recording her findings when her assistant, Janet Miller, announced "I smell cyanide" and then made somewhat of a joking question as to whether Sue had taken Tylenol, referencing the Tylenol poisonings four years earlier in Chicago.  Dr. Fligner did not smell cyanide (a majority of the population is unable to detect its odor) and continued with the autopsy.  Another doctor came in to ask if anything had been discovered as he had been baffled by what happened to Sue.  Janet spoke up, saying that although Sue's body did not demonstrate the classic symptom of cyanide poisoning (cherry red skin), she smelled cyanide.  The doctor remarked that cyanide could explain why Sue had presented the way she did and Dr. Fligner arranged to have a toxicology screen for cyanide.  

The funeral for Sue Snow was held on Saturday, June 14 and hundreds attended.  She was remembered for her sense of humor, her zest for life, and her devotion as a mother. 

On Monday, June 16, Auburn police received word that the toxicology report on Sue had come back with a fatal level of cyanide in her blood.  Her death was classified as a homicide.   Sue's husband, Paul Webking, was the investigators' initial suspect in her murder.  He was apparently not well liked by anyone in Sue's family, including Hayley, and his marriage with Sue, although new, had been troubled by infidelity by him and tempestuous fights, leading Sue to suffer with bouts of irritability and depression.  The police found him to be strangely unmoved by his wife's death.  Webking told authorities that Sue had a routine of taking Extra Strength Excedrin each morning, something that Hayley confirmed.  However, he said that Sue routinely took capsules, which they had in the house, and red flags went up for Sue's twin sister Sarah, who had arrived in Auburn on the day that Sue collapsed.  According to Sarah, following the 1982 Tylenol incident in Chicago, Sue never, ever took capsules and would only take tablets.  The bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin that Sue had used the previous Wednesday was handed over to the police, with Webking telling them that he himself had taken two capsules from the bottle on Tuesday, the day before Sue collapsed.   Also collected were various other bottles of headache remedies and aspirin, all of which were tablets.  

The analysis of the Excedrin 60-count bottle showed that 56 capsules remained and of those, nine were tainted with potassium cyanide.  Much as it had in Chicago four years earlier, fear swept through the area, compounded by the fact that the Tylenol poisoner had never been apprehended.  The FDA, following its analysis of the bottle, notified the FBI of its findings.  Thanks to a federal law passed after the Chicago case, the FBI had jurisdiction over consumer-product tamperings.   

The FBI's first official act in the Snow investigation was to pull all bottles of Excedrin off the shelves in the Auburn area, while Excedrin's manufacturer, Bristol-Myers, initiated a nationwide recall.  A second tainted bottle was identified at a Johnny's Market in neighboring Kent and it too was sent off to be analyzed.  

Bruce and Stella (photo source)

Bruce

In the late afternoon of Tuesday, June 17, the King County police received a hysterical phone call from a woman who claimed that her husband had recently died and she had discovered a bottle of Excedrin capsules that matched the lot number of the one that had killed Sue Snow.  By the time the responding officer arrived at her home off Lake Moneysmith Road, just outside of the Auburn city limits, Stella Nickell had calmed considerably.  Stella told the officer that her husband Bruce had taken two Excedrin capsules two weeks earlier and had died at Harborview.  Although an autopsy was performed, the preliminary report stated that Bruce Nickell had died of emphysema, something that Stella disputed, saying that her husband had been very healthy.  She provided the officer with a nearly empty bottle of Excedrin; only eight capsules remained.  Bruce, she said, had been complaining of headaches at the time of his death and had been taking three or four capsules a day, a practice that had been ongoing for a week prior to his death.  Stella also provided a second bottle, still in its original box and with the price sticker adhered, claiming that she did not want it in the house.  The officer noted that the cap was loose on the second bottle but it was full to the top.  Stella said she had purchased both bottles two weeks earlier, although in two separate locations; the nearly empty bottle had been bought somewhere in Auburn and the full bottle had been bought at Johnny's Market on the Kent East Hill.  

Although Bruce Nickell had already been buried, a tube of blood from his eyes was at the eye bank; the tube was retrieved and sent for testing.

Analysis of the Nickell Excedrin bottles revealed that both of them had been tainted.  Bruce Nickell's blood showed a fatal level of cyanide, much as Sue's had, making him the first victim of the poisonings.

On Tuesday, June 24 an out of place bottle of Anacin-3 was noted at a Pay 'N Save drugstore off Auburn Way North.  Not only was the bottle sitting on a can of peanuts versus in the pharmacy's over-the-counter medications section, but it was stickered with an orange price tag not used by Pay 'N Save.   That bottle was also sent off for analysis.  

Although the case officially belonged to the FBI, the Auburn Police were continuing to investigate Sue's death and probe particularly into her husband Paul's background.  They firmly suspected that he was involved, even with Bruce Nickell now added to the mix.  Their suspicions were not assuaged by a report that Webking had gone to Sue's office two days after her death and requested the entire contents of her desk.  A coworker of Sue's said that Sue carried a large bottle of Excedrin tablets in her handbag, contradicting Webking's assertion that Sue always took capsules.  Another coworker said that Sue and Webking fought frequently over Webking's trips to California, where an ex-girlfriend with whom he had cheated on Sue with, lived.  The same coworker said that Sue was flirtatious with male customers at the bank and often had lunch dates with them.  Although she did not appear to have been unfaithful to Paul Webking, she had been unfaithful to her first and second husbands.  Additionally, she had been involved in several affairs with married men in Auburn, leading detectives to wonder if a scorned wife could have exacted revenge on Sue.  They also found out that six months before her murder, Sue had discovered some type of extortion or fraud scheme by a bank client.  That lead too was followed up on but went nowhere.  Although there seemed to be a motive for Paul Webking to kill Sue, detectives could find no connection between Sue, Paul Webking, and Bruce Nickell.  

Bruce Nickell had been born in June of 1934 and was adopted at one week old by an apple farmer and his schoolteacher wife.  Considered "the prettiest baby I ever did see," Bruce was beloved by his parents and brought up in a Norman Rockwell-esque environment in the rugged natural beauty of Washington's apple country.  Although neither of his parents were drinkers, Bruce began drinking at the age of fifteen, a year before he recalled finding out that he was adopted.  His drinking was an act his parents felt led to many of their son's mistakes, which included a brief enlistment in the Marines that ended with Bruce receiving a dishonorable discharge after going AWOL and fathering two sons that he was estranged from.  When he was not drinking, Bruce had an intelligent and gentle personality but alcohol brought out a combative side that would often lead him to being thrown out of bars and taverns, as well as several DWIs.  

Bruce had also married a lot - first to a woman named Ruby, then to a Linda, followed by a Mary, and then a Phyllis.  He had only recently married Phyllis when he first met a twice-married mother of two named Stella Strong.    

He and Stella married in 1976, separated in 1977 and reconciled three months later.  Bruce had been working as a mechanic and although the couple struggled financially, they continued their routine of drinking until 1979, when Bruce got sober.  From that point on, until June 5, 1986, his life consisted of working, talking on his CB radio, and spending time at home with his wife, who was by then working as a security screener at Sea-Tac International Airport alongside her adult daughter.  

On Thursday, June 5, 1986, Bruce reported for a normal day at work.  After returning home, he had taken a shower and as Stella was preparing their dinner, he had complained of a headache.  He took two Excedrin and, according to Stella's later statements, had planned on going outside to watch the birds but had stopped, said "I don't feel so well," and then collapsed.  The emergency call came in at 5:02 p.m. and first responders were sent out in aid of a man having a seizure.     As the home was in a rural area, they assumed that there would be someone waving them in from a driveway, as is often the case.  Not on this call.  They noticed Stella Nickell peering from behind curtains as they drove up.  Bruce Nickell, still damp from his shower and clothed only in his bathrobe, lay in front of the sofa on the living room floor, gasping for air.  Although he was deathly white from his neck down, from the neck up he was cherry red.  The EMS had never seen anything like it and were desperate to find what was causing his distress. 

Stella had reported that Bruce was not on any medication other than aspirin and had no underlying health issues, although he was a recovering alcoholic.  She ticked off his health history as calmly as she had let the first responders into the house.  She then brought a pack of cigarettes, musing that perhaps the cigarettes had caused the distress and then broke one open, looking for anything unusual.  The EMS team would also recall that Stella had mentioned the Tylenol poisonings of 1982 a few times.     

Despite best efforts, Bruce died at Harborview Medical Center.  He was only 52 years old.  

One of the paramedics recalled later that evening at around 10 p.m. a call came into the paramedic living quarters.  It was from Bruce's newly widowed wife, Stella.  She explained that the medics had wrapped Bruce up in a knitted afghan before transporting him to the hospital in Seattle and she wanted the afghan back.

June 18, 1986 New York Times article about the deaths (photo source)

A Break

Although detectives had thought Paul Webking, Sue's widower, was a good suspect, he had taken and passed a polygraph test.  He had not helped himself out though by telling detectives that they would never solve Sue's poisoning.  By October, only four months after Sue's death, Paul had a new girlfriend, was dressing in new clothing, and reportedly spending money left and right - but investigators had nothing to link him with Sue's murder.   By December, less than half a year after Sue was murdered, Paul was engaged to his new girlfriend.  

No one would have thought the case would break wide-open thanks to an aquarium and Bruce Nickell's stepdaughter.   

The poison found in the capsules confiscated from the Snow/Webking home, the bottles that Stella Nickell turned over to the police, and the bottles found on market/drugstore shelves were analyzed.  Not only did the 23 capsules contain a lethal amount of potassium cyanide powder but 17 of the tainted 23 capsules also had green particles in them later determined to be an algaecide called Algae Destroyer used in home aquariums.  

One of the detectives working the case, who had been inside the Nickell home to speak with Stella, recalled a very nice aquarium in the living room.   Discreetly, investigators visited fish supply stores and pet stores in the area, nearly 60 of them, until they found a clerk who remembered not only Stella Nickell but selling her Algae Destroyer.  He had suggested to her that she grind up the tablets before applying them into her aquarium as they would work better that way.

Detectives felt money could have been a motive after it was also discovered that Stella had taken out roughly $76,000 in life insurance on Bruce, with an additional $100,000 payout if his death was accidental.  

Taking these facts into consideration, as well as believing the odds that Stella Nickell would have purchased two out of the five tainted bottles found in the entire country -- and two weeks apart in two different locations -- Stella was requested to take a polygraph, as Paul Webking had.  She refused at first, consenting only in November of 1986 and failing it.  

A search of the Nickell home turned up a mortar and pestle set, which had traces not only of the Algae Destroyer but also of cyanide.

Although investigators had plenty of evidence against Stella, they could not find any records of where, when or how she may have purchased or used cyanide and so held off on arresting her.   

By the end of 1986, a reward for information on the tainted medication and resultant poisonings was sitting at $300,000 and both Paul Webking and Stella Nickell had filed wrongful death lawsuits against Bristol-Myers.     

Cindy Hamilton had been Stella Nickell's firstborn child, entering the world when Stella was only fifteen.  Stella had had a rough upbringing, being born into a poor family where it was said that her father molested her older sister.  It's unknown if a young Stella suffered the same fate but she was sexually active in elementary school and was shuffled between relatives and states fairly frequently.  That she found herself pregnant at fifteen should not have been a big surprise.  She told her family that the pregnancy was the result of a gang rape and wanting her baby to "have a name," tried to convince a 19-year-old who had been her boyfriend for two years to marry her and claim the child as his.  The marriage never happened, as the man did not want to lie on the marriage license and claim he was twenty-one but he did ultimately consider the child his.  He wanted to fight Stella for custody, feeling that Stella was an unfit mother, but Stella threatened to turn him in for statutory rape and the ploy worked.  He never contacted Stella again.  

He was not wrong, though, that Stella was not mother material.  Motherhood did little to slow down her good times.  She had begun bringing Cindy with her to bars from the time Cindy was of a young age and by the time Cindy was a teen, she was drinking, using drugs and running with a wild crowd.   Later, she would confirm that her mother was essentially trafficking her out to paying customers.  She too became a mother during her teens and, like Stella, at times would put her drinking and partying ahead of her child.   

Stella married first a man with the last name of Hamilton, who gave Cindy her surname, and a man  by the name of Bob Strong, with whom she moved to California.  Being married, however, did not slow her down.  She continued to drink and sleep with other men during both her marriages.  She and Strong became parents to a daughter named Leah, although Strong would question whether or not the child was biologically his.  

Stella's run-ins with the law began in 1968 with a conviction for fraud.  The next year, she was charged with spousal abuse after beating Strong with a curtain rod.  In 1971, she got popped for forgery and served six months in jail.  

She was still married to Strong when she met Bruce, who was married to Phyllis, wife number four, in 1974.  The fact that both were married to other people did not seem to concern them.  Stella found that Bruce being a hard drinker suited her lifestyle and Bruce seemed not to mind that Stella had not only a legal record but a record for being less than faithful.   Both eventually left their spouses, divorced and married each other.  In her divorce, Stella relinquished custody of Leah to Strong.

Cindy had told her grandmother, Stella's mother, in October that she believed Stella killed Bruce.  It would take several months before she felt comfortable enough to talk to the police, but she did so in January of 1987.  According to Cindy, Stella had talked about killing Bruce for years before the plan really seemed to take action while mother and daughter were working together at the airport.  Initially Stella had wanted to overdose him by putting cocaine or heroin in his iced tea.  Stella had not known where to get cocaine or heroin though and instead began reading up on poisons.  She had first tried to kill Bruce by filling capsules with poisonous seeds and feeding them to him.  Rather than kill him, though, they simply made him sluggish and lethargic.  That led Stella to consider a hitman who could potentially shoot Bruce through his truck window, run him off the road, or mess with his brakes.  Cindy said the issue with the hitman plan was that Stella had no money to offer for the hit.  

According to Cindy, money was only partially the motive in Stella's plan to kill Bruce although once Stella received the life insurance money, she was going to open a tropical fish store.  Once Bruce had given up drinking, said Cindy, Stella, who enjoyed barhopping, found him "boring" and decided he had to go.  Divorce wasn't an option in her mind because she didn't want to have to split anything.  Furthermore, she had been having an affair with one of Bruce's married friends in the year prior to his death.  That friend was a photographer and had a darkroom set-up at home.  Stella had told Cindy that cyanide was used in photography.  The friend would later provide chemical samples from his darkroom, none of which contained cyanide.    

At the same time Cindy Hamilton was talking to investigators, a document examiner in the FBI's forensic lab in Washington, D.C. found that the signatures on the September 1985 and October 1985 American Life insurance applications for Bruce Nickell had been forged, with the forger's signature a match for the known samples of Stella Nickell.  

Following up on what Cindy had said, investigators discovered that Stella had checked out a variety of books on poisons from the Auburn public library.  Her fingerprints were discovered on the cyanide-related pages of the books. 

The Nickells' finances in the months leading up to Bruce's death told a story as well.  From North Pacific Bank, the lienholder on the Nickell residence, investigators learned that there had been 39 times when payments were ten or more days late.  On April 9, 1986, a final notice of delinquency was written and sent to the Nickells, indicating that a total amount of $1,892.01 was due by April 25.  By that point, the Nickells had not made a payment since September of 1985.  Stella had written a note to North Pacific Bank, sending it back on the deadline of April 25.  In it, she admitted she knew that she was "tremendously overdue" with payments but marital problems were the cause of the delinquency.  She asked the bank to have faith in her, that "Bruce is no longer involved" and those marital problems "are about to be solved."  She promised to pay $500 a month and enclosed an $800 check.  On May 27, a foreclosure notice was sent to the Nickells, the same day that Stella went shopping at Johnny's Market and at Pay 'N Save.  On June 1, four days before Bruce died of cyanide poisoning, Stella sent a second note that enclosed a double payment.   On June 3, she shopped at Albertson's and Johnny's, two places where tainted capsules were recovered.  

Meanwhile, in February of 1987, Stella was telling a friend that Cindy had always wanted Bruce as a lover and would therefore not hesitate to turn Stella in for the reward money, which was $300,000 (nearly $830,000 in 2024 dollars).  

A grand jury was convened in March, with Cindy providing testimony against her mother.   Stella's own mother testified, saying that her daughter did have cyanide that she used in her aquarium as well as for use in killing coyotes.  Stella's adult niece testified that Stella could not kill anyone and that she had been planning on leaving Bruce so it would have made no sense to kill him.  She also admitted that her aunt had spoken so much of insurance money that "I was getting sick and tired of hearing about what she was going to get."   

In May, Stella filed a financial affidavit for a government attorney, listing her salary as $621 (just over $1700 in 2024 dollars), her monthly payments of her mortgage, two Visa cards, and a MasterCard that totaled more than $650.  She was then provided a federal public defender by the name of Tom Hillier.   In June, the Seattle Times had a front-page headline about the poisonings and mentioned there was a probe into one suspect - but the suspect was not named.  In mid-July, newspapers across Washington State headlined that Stella Nickell was now the chief suspect in the poisoning deaths of her husband Bruce and Sue Snow. 

It would take until nearly the end of the year but on November 4, an indictment sheet was finally filled out.  Stella was well aware.  She had been placed on a leave of absence from work.  She spent her days, until she was arrested on December 9, drinking and waiting.  Her arrest went without incident, although her decision to wear a blue windbreaker with Bruce's name embroidered on it raised eyebrows.  

Stella was denied bail and pled not guilty to each of the five counts against her.  Trial was set for February 16, 1988.     

(photo source)

The Trial  

Stella's trial, starting in April of 1988, was held on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse in Seattle before Judge Bill Dwyer.  Attorneys Joanna Maida, for the state, and Tom Hillier, for the defense, managed to select 12 jurors from the original pool of 97 in two days: five men and seven women, with two alternates.  

Maida laid out the prosecution's case in a precise and deliberate manner for the jury.  The state believed that Stella Nickell had wanted more out of her life than her marriage to Bruce Nickell could provide and came up with a plan for an insurance payout that depended on someone finding out about Bruce's death being caused by product tampering.  Maida said that Stella had expected the pathologists to rule the cause of Bruce's death acute cyanide poisoning - she had read in the multitude of library books she checked out that cyanide had the distinct smell of bitter almonds.  But when the pathologists ruled Bruce's death one of natural causes due to emphysema, that cut her insurance payout by $100,000 and necessitated a Plan B.  Unfortunately, that Plan B would cause the death of Sue Snow, as Stella needed something to call attention to Bruce's death and therefore some random person or persons would also have to ingest poisoned capsules and die.   To bring her plan to reality, the prosecution believed that Stella had bought nine bottles of Excedrin and cut through the protective film with a razor blade.  She laced some of the capsules with cyanide, as she had done with Bruce's Excedrin, and placed the bottles in random stores in the area.  Unfortunately for Sue Snow, she purchased one of the bottles.     

The jury liked Tom Hillier, whose folksy style contrasted against Joanne Maida's technical, almost cold, argument.  Maida had mentioned that Cindy Hamilton would be testifying, and Hillier asked the jurors to pay very close attention to Cindy's testimony, assuring them that Stella would contradict every bit of that testimony.  He admitted that yes, Stella had filled out the life insurance paperwork and signed documents, something she had done on all papers throughout the duration of her marriage to Bruce and there was nothing nefarious in those actions.  Hillier even had a reason for Stella to have checked out so many books on poisons from the library:  she was a voracious reader and she was concerned about her granddaughter's safety on the Nickells' rural property.  Stella's attorney admitted that Stella and Bruce were in dire financial straits at the time of Bruce's death and suggested that Cindy Hamilton's motivation for speaking to the feds was solely driven by the reward money.  Stella did take the stand and predictably denied everything.  

The case went to the jury on Tuesday, May 3, 1988.  It would take five days of deliberations because Juror No. 7, a real estate saleswoman by the name of Laurel Holliday, had broken from the feelings of the other jurors that Stella was guilty.  She felt that Stella was innocent and lying on the stand about where she shopped and when, canceled checks, and learning about poison was justified in order to not be convicted.   

At 2:50 p.m. on Friday, May 6, Jury Foreman Murray Andrews sent a note to Judge Dwyer stating that after three votes taken over the previous three days, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and that no juror had changed his or her mind.  Judge Dwyer was adamant that deliberations continue and felt it was premature to declare a mistrial.  He asked that the jury retire early for the weekend, rest, and resume deliberations on Monday.  Stella and Hillier were given a sliver of hope that the jury may not have believed Cindy and Stella would leave a free woman.

On Monday, May 9, 1988, as the judge and attorneys prepared for the court reporter to read back portions of Cindy's testimony at the request of the jurors, Laurel Holliday reported to the court that she had received a concerning and threatening call over the weekend.  That forced all jurors to be questioned if they had received any similar calls.  None of them had and many of them believed the story to be untrue.  Once it was determined that Holliday could continue on the jury and deliberate fairly, the court reporter read back the testimony and at 10:30 a.m., jury deliberations resumed.  

At 3:35 p.m., the jury sent word that they had, at last, reached a verdict.  Stella stood, and with Tom Hillier's arm around her, closed her eyes to hear her fate.  She was found guilty on all charges.  Hillier noticed that during the reading of the verdict, Laurel Holliday was crying and he immediately wanted to question the other jurors to see if she had been the holdout and if there was a potential juror misconduct issue.  Judge Dwyer, however, sided with Joanne Maida, refusing to violate the sanctity of the jury's deliberations and ordered that sentencing would take place on June 17. 

Stella, convicted (photo source)

The media spoke to jury foreman Murray Andrews, Sue's widower, Paul Webking, Sue's sister, Sarah, and Sue's daughter, Hayley, who cried upon hearing of the verdict.  Stella's former husband, Bob Strong, after watching the television, listening to what the FBI had to say, what his stepdaughter Cindy had to say, and reading the newspapers came to the conclusion that he didn't know who had killed Bruce Nickell and Sue Strong.

 

Laurel Holliday

On Wednesday, May 11, 1988, after hearing Stella's motion for an order granting permission to interview jurors on potential juror misconduct, Judge Dwyer agreed to question each juror under oath.  In the meantime, a reporter from the Seattle Times who had heard about Laurel Holliday's mysterious phone call, drove to the courthouse to see if he could find anything on Laurel Holliday.  A quick records search found that there was a civil suit with her name in which she had filed a lawsuit against Pepperidge Farms, stemming from an incident that had occurred on July 31, 1986.  Holliday claimed to have bitten into Goldfish crackers during a broker's open house and found the crackers to be hard and taste bitter, leaving a burning sensation in her mouth.  Spitting them out, she claimed to find a pill inside one of the crackers.  Panicked, she had called poison control and, as she stated under oath in her August 19, 1987 deposition, "I pretty much figured I was dead.  This was right after the cyanide poisonings in Auburn."  Although the pill in the cracker was identified as ibuprofen, Holliday neglected to inform the court that she had sued Pepperidge Farms and that she herself had worried she had been poisoned a month after the Auburn poisonings.   Later, Holliday, who had received a $500 out-of-court settlement, said she felt her case didn't apply to the Nickell case and her case was a manufacturer error, not product tampering.  The attorney for Pepperidge Farms had questioned the incident in totality, as a pill would not survive the steel rollers that cracker dough is pressed through during manufacturing.  The Nickell jury foreman, Murray Andrews, believed that Holliday had planned to write a book about her experience on the jury but belatedly realized that she would have to be part of the decision-making process and her complaints of harassment, as well as the supposed phone call, were nothing but stall tactics because she simply did not want to make a decision.

Laurel Holliday was questioned for more than a hour by Judge Dwyer and continued to insist that her Pepperidge Farms lawsuit was not similar to that of Stella Nickell's, that it would not have influenced her, and yes, she had spoken to literary agents and newspapers about writing her story as juror.  The remaining jurors were also questioned, all of them denying any knowledge of the phone call Holliday claimed to have gotten and all of them denying speaking to each other about where they stood - guilty or innocent - on Stella Nickell before deliberating.

A week later, Tom Hillier filed a 16-page brief seeking a new trial for Stella citing that Laurel Holliday had willfully concealed material information during jury selection.  His argument was so convincing that word around the courthouse was that if a mistrial was declared and a new trial granted that murder charges would be filed in King County and prosecutor Joanna Maida would this time go after the death penalty.  Judge Dwyer ended the speculation, however, by denying the motion and sentencing Stella to 90 years with parole a possibility after 30 years.   Tom Hillier immediately filed an appeal and Stella was sent to the Washington Correction Center for Women in Gig Harbor to begin serving her sentence. 

Stella incarcerated (photo source)

Afterword

Stella's daughter Cindy received some $250,000 of the $300,000 reward money and cut off all ties with her family and friends she'd had when Bruce died.   FBI special agents questioned how deeply involved she might have been in the plot to murder Bruce, as did true crime writer Gregg Olsen.  Cindy never saw her mother again after taking the stand in the Seattle courtroom and has never corresponded with her during Stella's incarceration.  In recent years, she told Olsen that she discovered the man Stella had told her was her father was not but thanks to DNA testing, she was able to locate and connect with several siblings, including a brother she has become close with.     

Paul Webking and Sue's daughters, Exa and Hayley, reached an out-of-court settlement with Bristol-Myers and received an undisclosed sum.  Both Exa and Hayley used some of their respective shares to pay for their education.  Hayley is married and the mother of an adult son.  She currently lives in New Mexico, as her mother once did, and stays in touch with author Gregg Olsen. 

In 2000, the USA Network had planned a movie about the case with Katey Sagal to play Stella but it was scrapped shortly before production began.  There were strong objections from advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, who owned the Tylenol brand central to the 1982 poisonings, and network executives feared the movie might inspire a copycat or copycats.  

The appeal that Tom Hillier filed on Stella's behalf was rejected by the Court of Appeals in 1989.  Stella retained a new attorney, Carl Park Colbert, who, along with help from The Innocence Project and private investigators, filed a second appeal in 2001 based on alleged new evidence discovered that the FBI had withheld.   That appeal too was denied.   

Stella continued to assert her innocence for decades, including telling Gregg Olsen that "it is not in me to kill anyone."  She claimed to have been the victim of a plot or frame-up, implicating that her daughter Cindy was behind it.     

At her first parole hearing in 2018, in which both Hayley Snow Klein and Sue's sister Sarah drove to Dublin, California to watch, Stella claimed to be a good person and excellent inmate, as well as wholly innocent.   Her request for parole was denied.

A year later, on May 9, 2019, Stella was once again up for parole.  This time, however, she admitted that she tampered with the Excedrin bottles, intending to kill Bruce as she was a victim of domestic violence.  Hayley Snow Klein was incensed over what she considered to be Stella's half-assed confession and that she would not admit to having killed her mother.  She immediately fired off a letter to the parole board, reminding them of the nature of Stella's planned and premeditated crimes and the permanent damage they caused to the families of Bruce and Sue.  

Once again, parole was denied.

In May of 2022, Stella made a plea for compassionate release.  She was 78 years old, she said, with a myriad of health problems that left her without much time to live.  She claimed she had an arrangement lined up to reside with a friend in Las Vegas and would get a job.  She added that she had been a model prisoner and had lost out on more than 30 years of life with her grandchildren and other family members.   Never did she mention her victims or that she had lost out on life due to her own selfish actions.   As Hayley Snow Klein says, she is not remorseful and she is where she needs to be. 

In June of 2022, the request for compassionate release was denied.  

Stella remains incarcerated at Hazelton Federal Correctional Institution in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia as inmate number 17371-086.  She is up for another parole hearing this year (2024) and, with good behavior, will be eligible for release on July 10, 2040, when she will be 96 years old.  

She is the first person to be tried and convicted for committing murder using product tampering.  As she was convicted in a federal case, Washington State could still have the option to bring murder charges against her. 


     

Bruce's final resting place (photo source)

Sue's final resting place (photo source)

Sources:

Murderpedia (2024).  Stella Nickell.  

Olsen, Gregg.  American Mother.  Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2022.

United States v. Nickell, 883 F. 2d 824 (9th Cir. 1989). 

Wikipedia (2022).  Stella Nickell.