In the autumn of 1909, Colonel Thomas Swope, one of the wealthiest and most prominent men in Missouri, lay recovering from a fall in his home at 406 South Pleasant Street in Independence. At eighty-one years old, he had decided to change his will. Instead of dividing the residue of his estate among his seven nieces and nephews, he planned to leave a large portion to the people of Kansas City, a city he had already enriched with more than a thousand acres of parkland. His family knew of this decision.

His cousin James Moss Hunton, the chief executor of the will, had been consulted on the matter. On October 1, 1909, Hunton fell ill. His doctor, George T. Twyman, attended him, along with Frances Swope’s husband, Dr.

Bennett Clark Hyde, who was married to the Colonel’s niece. Hyde suggested bleeding the patient, a common medical practice of the era. Twyman agreed. Hyde removed roughly a quart of blood before Twyman suggested that was enough.

Hyde continued until another quart had been taken, at which point, according to the nurse present, Pearl Keller, Hyde’s wife intervened and told him he had bled the man enough. Hyde stopped. Within minutes, Hunton went into a spasm and died. Hyde and Twyman certified the death as apoplexy, a catch-all term for sudden death from heart attack or stroke.

Nurse Keller was uneasy. Five minutes after Hunton’s death, Hyde sent for her and suggested that, as Colonel Swope’s nurse, she recommend him to replace Hunton as executor of the will. She refused, saying it was not her place to intervene in family matters. The following day, Hyde instructed Keller to give the Colonel a digestive pill.

Within twenty minutes, Swope became violently ill and told her he wished he had not taken the medicine. Hyde examined him and declared the Colonel was suffering an attack of apoplexy, likely brought on by the shock of his cousin’s death. He did not inform Twyman of the Colonel’s condition. On October 3, Thomas Swope died.

Hyde certified the cause as apoplexy. Soon after, Hyde warned the family to boil their water for fear of typhoid. On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, Hyde and his wife dined at the Swope mansion, bringing their own bottled water. Within two weeks, nine members of the household fell seriously ill with typhoid fever.

Hyde had procured typhoid germs weeks earlier from a colleague, Dr. Edward Stewart, claiming he wished to study them. Stewart later discovered that enough germs were missing to infect an entire city. The only person in the household with access to typhoid germs was Hyde, and he and his wife were the only ones present who did not fall ill.

On December 5, Hyde gave a capsule to Chrisman Swope, the Colonel’s nephew, who had been recovering from typhoid. Soon after, Chrisman began convulsing. Hyde diagnosed cerebral meningitis. The next day, Hyde gave him another capsule.

Chrisman deteriorated rapidly, and after an injection, he died within moments. Hyde certified the death as cerebral meningitis, but an autopsy found his brain normal, and quantities of strychnine and cyanide in his liver. On the night of December 12, Hyde entered the room of twenty-one-year-old Margaret Swope. Without speaking or examining her, he injected something into her arm.

A nurse checked her pulse and found nothing wrong. Margaret’s arm became infected and swollen. Investigation later suggested Hyde believed he was injecting her with diphtheria germs, but the vial had been mislabeled and actually contained infected discharge. When Lucy Swope returned from Europe, Hyde insisted on being the one to meet her in New York and break the news of her brother’s death.

On the journey home, he persuaded her to drink water from a cup he provided, claiming her sister had sent it. She declined the powders he offered. She arrived home, took no food or drink there, and went to a friend’s house, where she promptly came down with typhoid. The five nurses in the mansion had reached the same conclusion.

They confronted Dr. Twyman and declared that either Hyde left or they would. Twyman spoke to Mrs. Swope, who broke down and said the burden had been on her heart and she could not cast it off.

Twyman summoned Hyde to his office and told him the nurses believed he was responsible. Hyde threatened to sue them for slander. Twyman persuaded him to leave quietly. That evening, as Hyde left, Tom Swope, one of the nephews, saw him stop in the street, drop something from his pocket, and stamp it into the snow.

Tom investigated and found fragments of a broken capsule and smelled potassium cyanide. He called an attorney, John Paxton, and together they collected the fragments. Analysis revealed the capsules contained potassium cyanide. A sample of Margaret’s vomit, saved by Twyman, contained strychnine.

Hyde was arrested on January 11, 1910, for the murder of Colonel Swope and released on bond. A grand jury indicted him for the manslaughter of Hunton, the murder of Colonel Swope by poisoning, the murder of Chrisman Swope by poisoning, the attempted murder of Margaret Swope, and seven further counts of attempted murder for the other household members who had contracted typhoid. The trial began on April 16, 1910. Frances Hyde, unwavering in her belief in her husband’s innocence, hired five attorneys and spent a quarter of a million dollars on his defense, eventually mortgaging her house.

The prosecution presented a powerful case, but three days into the trial, Dr. Twyman died before he could testify. The defense called medical experts who argued that Chrisman’s death could have been meningitis, that embalming fluid might produce cyanide in testing, and that the Colonel’s tonic contained strychnine. These claims were rebutted in cross-examination.

The chemist who manufactured the tonic said the quantity of strychnine was minimal and could not account for its presence in the liver. It was December, so there were no flies to spread typhoid. The jury found Hyde guilty of murder on July 5, 1910, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor. Frances Hyde appealed.

The Supreme Court ordered a fresh trial, citing 255 errors in the conduct of the first. A second trial in 1911 lasted eight weeks, but the sequestered jury fell apart when one juror escaped and was declared mentally unfit. A mistrial was declared. A third trial in 1913 ended with a hung jury.

A fourth trial was discussed, but the Swope family began quarreling over the expense, and Frances Hyde was exhausted. In 1917, eight years after the murders, the charges were dropped. Hyde was a free man, but his reputation was destroyed. He worked loading trucks for a time.

Frances divorced him in 1920 for cruelty and violence. Hyde moved to Lexington, Missouri, where he had lived as a boy, and resumed a modest medical practice. On August 7, 1934, he collapsed in a newspaper office while checking election results and died. He was sixty-two years old.

The cause of death was given as apoplexy.