Houdini Murdered ?

[kuranes]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_us/houdini_exhumation;_ylt=Atel6HtJX94d58cp7pdOS_DMWM0F

[omnirook]

Houdini was a Jew. Back then embalming wasn't necessary even for gentiles. I doubt that Houdini was embalmed - there is probably very little left for an inquest. If he were poisoned, it would have to be a poison that would leave traces in bones and teeth. All the rest is probably long since disintegrated.

Nowadays w/the laws requiring embalming for all dead bodies - even those to be cremated! - future forensic scientists will have a lot more to go on. Embalmed bodies last for centuries, are recognizable as individuals for a long time after burial.

[AllAboutSoul]

Embalming is not mandatory everywhere, at least not where I live. I'll double check though.

[Madrigal]

Wow, I didn't know about this theory. I always bought the punch to the stomach story. Houdini was like my pre-teen crush when I was 12 or so (despite the fact that he was dead, lol). I used to read a lot about him back then.


In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a November 1924 letter in which one of the movement's devotees, Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, said Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."

I had no idea!

[sorabji_66]

read the recent large bio.

didn't realize the Spiritualist movement was that popular or rabid.

the main point i came away with was the anger and viciousness in the individuals who would try to confine him in cuffs, causing plenty of damage to him along the way.

[kuranes]

I used to read a lot about him back then.
Me too.



I had no idea!
i didn't know about friction between the two although I knew Houdini was always debunking fake mediums. I thought Doyle was sincere in his belief in the occult, and so therefore wouldn't object to Houdini. Houdini kept an open mind about the afterlife and told his wife a secret word that she could remember in order to make sure it was really him trying to communicate with her from the beyond. She was to keep it to herself so that "mediums" would have to deliver the goods without the usual mumbo-jumbo. I think I heard that eventually someone tricked her into telling them what the word was.

Doyle also got the scoop on a man named Adam Worth from Scotland Yard, or from one of the original Pinkerton men. ( The Wiki article has it as Scotland Yard vs. Alan Pinkerton or one of his sons. ) Doyle used this info to devise a fictional "arch-villain" for Holmes. The first "INTJ evil genius" of fiction - Professor Moriarty. So I was told, anyway. ( The Wiki article speculates on a number of other people who may have served as models for Moriarty, and perhaps Hustler may have even read up on him....:) ) I have Worth's bio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Moriarty