Death by chocolate
The true story of the case that terrorized 19th-century Waterloo County
John Wilson Murray was a street-savvy school dropout, a Civil War veteran and a frontier-style Sherlock Holmes who spent decades tracking down murderers, robbers, fraudsters and other criminals.
As Ontario’s first full-time detective, he solved hundreds of high-profile cases across the province and was one of the pioneering investigators for what would become the Ontario Provincial Police.
But few crimes bothered the famous detective like the unsolved case of the poison chocolatier who terrorized Cambridge 130 years ago.
On Oct. 4, 1888, someone claimed the life of three-year-old Meta Cherry, the daughter of wealthy mill owner John Cherry. The killer tried to poison at least two other local families before Murray — the real-life inspiration for William Murdoch in the CBC’s “Murdoch Mysteries” series, which is filmed in Cam-
bridge — took on the case.
Little Meta had consumed strychnine, a lab test concluded. The poison had been carefully hidden inside chocolates mailed to the family’s home.
Meta’s death, one of many true-crime stories preserved by local historian Darryl Bonk, was likely dramatic and painful. Within 10 minutes of ingestion, strychnine poisoning causes severe muscle spasms and convulsions, until breathing eventually stops.
Murray was surprised when he examined the girl’s body.
“I looked at the little child. She seemed startled, even in death, as if the hand that thrust her into eternity had seized her roughly and scared her,” the detective told biographer Victor Speer in his 1904 memoirs.
Others in the town became similarly ill, but survived. By the time Murray arrived, Galt, Berlin and Waterloo were in an uproar over the mysterious chocolate killer.
“Great excitement prevailed in the county of Waterloo. Many people were terrified; others were infuriated. A fiend was among them spreading death and planning the extermination of whole families,” Murray recalled.
He was a skilled tracker who also pioneered scientific evidence-gathering, recognizing that clues could be hidden in things like footprints, clothing, weapons and handwriting. But Murray was stumped by this one.
Whoever killed the little girl had also sent similar packages to Rev. John Ridley, minister of St. John’s Anglican Church in Galt, and to the daughter and wife of Charles Lowell, owner of the Queen’s Hotel in Galt.
The killer had carefully drilled a hole in the chocolate drops, filled them with whitish strychnine powder, then covered the hole with more chocolate.
It was believed the murderer knew their targets well — each box contained chocolates labelled for specific family members, some with strychnine and others without. Meta Cherry died after eating the chocolate that was intended for her mother.
“This established clearly the intent of the poisoner to kill many people, and wipe out a number of families,” Murray wrote.
The detective began interviewing people around town, trying to establish a common link between the attempted poisonings. He unearthed a lot of family secrets but few usable clues.
“I ransacked ancestral closets for family skeletons, and I poked in all the after-dark affairs and twilight scandals since the days when the oldest inhabitants were gay young folk, fond of walking hand in hand through the gloaming. I ran down secrets that distressed dear old ladies and left them in tears,” he said.
Many assumed a woman was behind the deadly packages, because the chocolate boxes had been so carefully sewn, according to newspaper accounts. Murray also discovered the word “Miss” on an original address that was partially scraped off the package sent to the Cherry home.
Another theory was that it was part of an attack on the church after boxes of poisoned candy were received by four ministers in New Brunswick, killing the wife of one priest.
Murray eventually focused his investigation on one suspect — Hannah Boyd, a 20-year-old maid who was rumoured to have been a mistress of Charles Lowell, who owned the Queen’s Hotel were she had worked.
Boyd, originally from Hamilton, had left town before Murray arrived and began working as a maid at a home in Thorold, Ont. She was arrested and held, but after a week of questioning was let go.
“I was satisfied after these interviews with Hannah that she had no guilty knowledge, and that she had nothing whatever to do with sending the packages,” Murray said.
The poisoning case was never solved.
Murray would later become famous for another case in Galt when he investigated the body of an English investor shot and dumped in a nearby swamp. The man had been lured by a fake newspaper ad. In that case, the killer was caught and hanged.
Recalling the poisoned chocolate mystery years later, the detective claimed he knew who the killer was. But he says he could never find enough proof to charge anyone.
“I did develop promptly a strong suspicion as to the person who did send the poison packages,” Murray told his biographer.
“It is one of the most aggravating cases of my entire experience, yet I hold steadfast to my first impression.”