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Becker’s motive was money. All her victims died after bouts of vomiting, some ailing for a few days, others dying in a matter of hours, all after spending time and drinking with Marie Becker.
When Becker was arrested she was discovered with two small bottles of digitalis on her. Digitalis was used medicinally for heart problems, but Marie Becker had no known heart trouble and, as one interviewee recalls, she was known for her lively dancing.
A scientist, Professor Andre, who studied under the professor who carried out the forensic toxicology on the cases, discusses the difficulties involved in confirming the presence of digitalis in the exhumed bodies of the victims and explains the tests that were carried out.
Interviews with people who knew Becker and those whose families were closely associated with the case punctuate this episode, which also includes fascinating archive footage of Marie Becker in court as the sentence of ‘guilty’ is pronounced.
A failed cover-up
The second case in this programme is equally fascinating. It took place in 1934 in Aberdeen, Scotland and concerned the murder of an eight year old girl named Helen Priestly.
After disappearing just minutes from her home, her body was found hours later in the communal hall of the tenement flats where she lived. It appeared that she had been raped and strangled.
Interviews with those who knew and lived near to Helen Priestly portray the tense atmosphere at the time and the feeling that every man in the area was being watched.
But the post-mortem produced some unexpected results.
Helen had not been raped, but had been attacked to make it appear so; her killer was not necessarily a man.
Police attention focused on a couple who lived in the tenement building and had a daughter nearly the same age as Helen Priestly. Helen was known to aggravate the family by rattling the banisters and calling the wife names.
The husband had an alibi but the wife, Jeannie Donald, did not give a convincing account of her movements at the time of the murder.
The pathologist Sydney Smith carried out very advanced forensic microbiology for the time to establish that bacteria from Helen Priestly were present on wash clothes in the Donald flat. Many other contact traces, over two hundred, were found to show that Helen’s body had been in Jeannie Donald’s flat.
Jeannie Donald was eventually found guilty of the murder, though there is still the feeling in Aberdeen that she had not meant to kill the child, but had done so in a fit of rage.
