Amy Archer Case

One of the largest criminal cases of arsenic poisoning in recent history was that carried out by Amy Archer Gilligan. Amy owned her own nursing home in Windsor, Connecticut from 1907 where in total there would be 60 deaths at the residence between the years 1907 and 1917. In 1897, Amy had married James Archer and it was in 1907 they decided to purchase the nursing home in Windsor. A few years later in 1910, Amy’s husband James died of at the time was apparently thought to be of natural causes, but it was officially put down that he had died of kidney disease. It was known that a few weeks before his death, a large insurance policy was taken out on him, yet at the time no one thought this to be suspicious. After this , in 1913 Amy married Michael

The cause of death was said to be severe indigestion. Again as suspicious as it sounds, nothing at this point was further investigated to see if there was something more sinister involved with these deaths. As more deaths began to pile up of clients in the nursing home, suspicion grew of why exactly this was the case. An alarming figure was made known that between 1907 and 1910 only 12 had died, whereas between 1911 and 1916 a total of 48 had died. Franklin Andrews, who was considered a healthy man, was doing gardening at the home when he suddenly collapsed and died in May of 1914. A gastric ulcer was the official cause of death. It was after this case where further investigation would take pace, as Franklin’s sister Nellie Pierce looked in his relationship with Amy and found out that she had been hassling him for money. She found a pattern where Amy’s clients or anyone close to her were dying a short time after giving her a large sum of money or signing up for insurance and or wills. Pierce went to various newspaper outlets and the district attorney regarding her suspicions about Amy and it was brought to the attention of the police force to properly investigate what was going