The surviving student told investigators that on that fateful Monday, March 20, she and her mentor had gone to the Lawson home. Nick had consulted the practitioner before, and this time he called because the children were seriously ill. That confirmed that Leonard and Laura had indeed been inside the same apartment.
By the very next day, Laura herself needed emergency care. As with the Lawson family, doctors did not immediately understand what was causing her rapid decline. But that raised another question: why had Nick called a private herbal practitioner instead of relying only on emergency physicians?
It turned out the frightened father had reached out to an old acquaintance because he no longer trusted the initial diagnosis from the ambulance doctor. Leonard came quickly, bringing his student assistant with him. But investigators still had to answer one more question: why did the healthy adult man die while the young woman survived?
The answer was simple. The family offered their visitors hot tea. Laura took only a couple of sips, while her mentor drank a full glass.
As investigators later learned, the tea had been sweetened with poisoned sugar. By the time detectives interviewed Laura, they already knew the toxic powder had been mixed into the household’s dry food supplies. The children’s condition had frightened her so badly that she had no appetite. That stress likely saved her life, because she consumed only a relatively small dose.
She also did the smart thing and went to the hospital as soon as she felt sick. What alarmed her most was that her hair began falling out in clumps. That kind of sudden hair loss is one of the clearest signs of thallium poisoning.
Alopecia is the medical term for abnormal hair loss. Interestingly, thallium compounds were once even used in cosmetic depilatory treatments. But obvious hair loss usually appears only about a week after exposure.
In the most severe poisonings, patients often die before that symptom fully develops. That is why, on that terrible morning, Natalie did not understand the significance of the hair left on her brush. In her body, the key sign pointing to acute thallium poisoning had only just begun to appear.
Meanwhile, crime scene investigators completed their detailed examination of the empty Lawson apartment. After studying the locks and door hardware, they reached a clear conclusion: there were no signs of forced entry. That meant the killer had opened the front door with a key.
So who had access? Besides the victims themselves, duplicate keys were held only by Nick’s mother, Ruth, and his first wife, Elizabeth. Detectives were especially struck when they officially confirmed where Elizabeth worked…
