The Arsenic Affair

When the farmer Lorel Wardlow died from an acute case of quinsy after a long illness, the country doctor who took care of him signed off on the death certificate without an autopsy, but the little town of Kyle was soon buzzing with gossip about his widow. The scandal that rocked Southwest Ohio in 1917 includes an exhumation of the body, three trials, one hung jury and a prison break.

When the farmer Lorel Wardlow died from an acute case of quinsy after a long illness, the country doctor who took care of him signed off on the death certificate without an autopsy or postmortem. But the little town of Kyle was soon buzzing with gossip about his widow, Belle Wardlow, and her association with the farmhand Harry Cowdry, who helped take care of his boss during his final days. Before the dust settled on the case, there would be accusations of murder, an exhumation of the body, three trials, one hung jury, a prison break and a scandal that rocked Southwestern Ohio.

After 25 years writing the first draft of history as a writer and editor for his hometown newspaper, the Hamilton Journal-News, Richard O Jones left the grind of daily journalism in the fall of 2013 to embark on a second career writing the second draft of history, focusing on stories of true crime. Mr. Jones, a creative writing graduate of Miami University, Ohio, spent most of his career as an arts journalist and has won numerous awards for his reviews and profiles. In 2004, he was named a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre and Musical Theatre program at the Annenberg School of Journalism. The Ohio Associated Press named him Feature Writer of the Year in 2011. Since leaving the newspaper world, Mr. Jones has become an active member of his local history community as a board member of the Butler County Historical Society, a member of the History Speakers Bureau and a regular presenter at Miami University in a program titled “Yesterday’s News.” The Michael J. Colligan History Project of Miami University presented Mr. Jones with a Special Recognition for Contributions to Public History for his coverage of the Centennial Commemoration of the Great Flood of 1913.