The Teacup Poisoner Serial Killer

The Teacup Poisoner is one of the most unique  and sadistic serial killers to ever come out   of Britain. His method, unlike any other. He  would gradually poison the people around   him, to be able to watch them slowly and  painfully die in front of his eyes. And it   turns out, the victims of his crimes were  nothing more than guinea pigs to him. Just   test subjects, just games to play until they  eventually succumbed to his poisons and died. So today's video is going to be another solved  True Crime case, another serial killer case. So   that's two in a row now, another English serial  killer as well, I promise I'll try and mix it up   by the next video. But today we're going to be  talking about The Teacup Poisoner, one of the   most interesting serial killers I've come across  in a while because this is just so different to   anything else I've ever covered. 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Thanks   again to Casetify for sponsoring this video, love  you guys! And quickly before we get into this video,   I do just want to give my usual disclaimer that  I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that   I talk about in this video. This video is for  educational purposes and everything that I'm   about to say is just information that I have found  on the internet and I'm compiling into one video.   Quickly before we get into this case, I do just  want to give some content warnings. In this video   we're going to be discussing themes of suicidal  thoughts, psychopathy, personality disorders,   schizophrenia and there's also going to be talk  of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime and like,   um adoration of that, you know like, support of  that. So if any of that is trigger into you and   you don't think you can watch this video, I totally  understand. Click out now, hopefully I'll get to   see you some other time with a different video  but look after yourself and with all that being   said, let's get into the case. So today's case is a  very unique one, I know I've used that word so many   times but it just is! Everything about it is so  characteristically different so I can't sit here   and tell you what city it took place in because it  took place in multiple cities and I can't sit here   and tell you how old the serial killer was because  he was a bunch of different ages! It just seemed   that tragedy followed Graham Young wherever he  went. Graham Frederick Young was born on September   7th 1947 in Northwest London to his parents Fred  and Molly. Graham was the younger of two children,   he had an older sister who was actually quite a  bit older than him, I think by like, six or seven   years, her name was Winifred. But sadly just a  couple of months after Graham was born, when   he was still a newborn baby, his life started to  fall apart around him. His mother Molly fell very   suddenly ill, shortly after giving birth to Graham.  She had tuberculosis and it came on really, really   quickly and progressed really, really rapidly, she  was very ill. Within just a couple of months of   getting her diagnosis, Molly passed away from her  tuberculosis and what was supposed to be one of   the happiest times of the family's lives, you know,  welcoming a new baby and they couldn't even enjoy   or celebrate because now they were dealing with  such huge loss and grief. And of course the father   of the family took it the worst, Fred because not  only was he grieving the loss of his wife but now   he was also trying to be a very suddenly, single  parent. He was trying to care for these two kids   and go to work and get money and put food on the  table. It was just proving far too difficult for   him and he very quickly ended up handing both of  the kids to relatives to take care of. This was   only supposed to be temporary, just until Fred kind  of earned little bit more money and got himself a   little bit more stable and then he was planning to  bring his kids back and be a family again. So the   kids were split up, Winifred was sent to go and  live with her father's parents so her paternal   grandparents and Graham was sent to go and live  with his auntie Winnie which was his dad's sister. And this was the situation for three years so for  the first three years of Graham's life, he is being   raised by his auntie Winnie and he was pretty much  separated from his father and his sister. He would   see his father here and there because of course,  it's his sister so he would go over to visit but   they weren't a family. But then in 1950, Fred met a  new woman. A woman named Molly, just like his last   wife um- but he fell in love with Molly and the  two of them married and now that he had a wife   and a stable family and a home again, he felt like  he was finally ready to bring back his two kids.   So that's exactly what they did and they were a  family again and Molly really took on these two   kids as if they were her own. She was honestly,  from what I could tell in my research, she was a   wonderful stepmother. She really, really got on with  the kids at first, especially Winifred because she   was a little bit older, she was, like, going into  her teens at this point and they would like go   out together and well to be fair, she would take  both the kids out all the time especially because   Fred was working a lot so Molly would be home with  the kids during the day, they became really, really   close. But as the two children aged, it became very  apparent that Winifred and Graham were not alike   at all! Winifred was a very normal teenage girl,  she was outgoing, she was social, she was kind and   polite, she was into all the usual things that  little girls are into, you know like, dolls and...   I don't know, that stuff. But Graham was like the  exact opposite, he was shy, reserved, quiet and when   he did get speaking, he was quite an oddball. Like  he- he was quite socially awkward and the things   that he was interested in talking about were  things that not many people are interested in   talking about. I realised I'm probably saying  this to the wrong audience but he was very   into True Crime and serial killers but think how  old he is, he's like 10 and I think when we were   10, even though we're interested in it now, maybe  when we were 10 we might have looked at someone   like, that's a bit weird! Why are you so into serial  killers? I don't know why or how he was getting   access to those books at that age, I don't know if  his parents just didn't care that he was reading   that, I don't think I would want my 10 year old  reading scary stuff like that. He had fixations   on a couple of criminals in particular but he  was almost like a stan of, like, he would write   about them in his notebooks, he would research  them, like, he was genuine- he was a genuine fan!   So there was Dr Hawley Crippen, who poisoned and  killed his own wife in 1910. Graham was really   interested in him and another poisoner called The  Rugeley poisoner, his name was William Palmer. And he   was accused of doing a whole bunch of different  poisonings of, like, loads of people that were   close to him. His family, his friends and it was  believed that it was all so that he could get   um- life insurance policy money. Both of which were  British by the way, British poisoner killers.   Really, really niche interest to have! But Graham's  morbid and weird interests didn't start and end   with True Crime. He was also very interested, very  fascinated by the Nazi regime and World War II   and Adolf Hitler. It all started when they started  learning about it at school, in history class as   you do and he just became a very fixated on it  and it became obsessive. Again to the point where   he was almost like a stan, a fan. He started  wearing swastikas, like, on his clothes, he would   wear the armband. So that's the kind of kid we're  talking about right now, he didn't have that many   friends, these interests were things that he just  indulged in when he was alone in his bedroom. But   outside of his very questionable interests, Graham  Young was a very intelligent child. He got really   good grades in all of his subjects, across the board  but specifically science because he loved science.   He was so interested in it, would spend a lot of  his free time just, like, doing further reading. He   was particularly into chemistry, like, the chemistry  part of science class. He was so interested in, like,   mixing different chemicals and finding out what  they make and then how the properties of it change   when you mix it with different things. It is quite  fascinating, to be fair. So much so, that his father   um- bought him a chemistry set for, like, Christmas  or his birthday or something one year and when I   tell you, he got his use out of this chemistry  kit, he was using it for years and years and years!   He would also, like, nick off with all his mum's  like, beauty products, his stepmom's beauty products   and like, nail varnish remover and stuff like that  and he would read all the chemical content on the   back and learn all these really long names  of chemicals. Like, he was just really, really   into chemistry. When Graham turned 12 years old, he  moved up to high school and he actually went to a   grammar- a grammar school, why did I say it like  that? Grammar school! Um- which is for the smarter   kids over here in the UK, you have to pass like a  specific exam to be let in to a grammar school, so   that says a lot about his grades. And of course  because it is a bit more of an advanced school,   they have a bit more, like, advanced reading.  The library in his high school was stocked   with so many, like, really good textbooks in every  single subject but he was mostly interested in the   chemistry ones. The more he read of, like, all these  different science books, the more he realised is   that toxicology specifically, was his thing. He  was so interested in toxicology which is more   so looking at how these different chemicals can  be toxic or harmful to certain living organisms-   I nearly... you know I nearly said the other word  then! So the stuff that Graham was mainly reading   up on were, like, medicine and drug studies, you  know the ones that are like, tested on humans   and it says which dosages give what kind of side  effects and symptoms and stuff like that. He was   really into all these, like, reading about all  these trials. And one day, Graham decides that   he wants to get his hands on some of these  substances and have a bit of an experiment of   his own. So he's 13 years old at this point in the  case and he toddles on down to the chemist and asks   for these particular types of chemicals that he  wants and the chemist looks at him and he's like,   no, you're a kid! But then Graham used his very  advanced toxicology knowledge to his advantage.  Um- so he lied and said that he was 17, he just  looks young and that he was actually studying   toxicology at one of the local schools  and he needed these chemicals for his-   for his studies, for his- for his experiments! Him and  the chemist had, like, quite a lengthy conversation   about these different chemicals and Graham  managed to, like, prove his knowledge. He seemed   like he could have been a university student  and so in the end, I think this chemist was a   bit dodgy anyway, he just ended up selling this 13  year old a bunch of harmful toxic chemicals. He was   able to buy, like, quite large quantities of three  different chemicals; digitalis, arsenic and antimony.   And within just a few weeks of Graham secretly  purchasing these chemicals, his family started to   fall very suddenly and severely ill. It was like  a stomach bug that they were all experiencing,   actually it was his stepmother Molly that was hit  first. She was vomiting, she had diarrhoea, she had   excruciating stomach pain. So it hit Molly first  and then it hit Fred and then it hit Winifred and   then it actually hit Graham. And as time went by,  none of them really seemed to be recovering from this stomach bug, if anything it was getting  a little bit worse. Even a few of the kids that   Graham went to school with were contracting what  seemed to be this really nasty virus. By now, Molly   had been suffering the longest and she also had  the most severe symptoms, she was now experiencing   hair loss and because she'd been vomiting that  much, she couldn't keep any food down so she was   losing weight drastically. And until this point,  they've been explaining these symptoms away with   loads of different things, like, oh maybe they'd  eaten something bad and then maybe they thought   it was a bug or just a really bad virus but now,  it was clear that it was way more than that, it   wasn't getting any better and it was- well, it was  getting worse a million times worse by the week.   And then Graham's older sister Winifred was struck  particularly badly with symptoms. One day when   she was on the train to work, she started getting  really faint, I think she collapsed. She was having   hallucinations, she had to be rushed to hospital,  actually. At the hospital, she was checked over, they   did a bunch of tests on her and her blood test was  very revealing. She had traces of Belladonna in her   system and if you don't know what that is, it's the  deadly nightshade plant. It's super toxic, poisonous   to humans! There's no way that someone could  ever really, accidentally ingest Belladonna, like,   if you're living a normal life, like, me or you,  there's no way that you're accidentally eating a   little bit of this toxic deadly plant. Immediately  the doctors are thinking that Winifred has been   targeted, someone has intentionally poisoned her.  So they started asking her, well do you know anyone   that- that could have done this to you? Anyone that  might want to do this to you? And she was really   shocked, of course not! Like, she had no conflict  going on in her life, she couldn't understand why   someone would want to intentionally poison her and  try and kill her! So she started thinking of some   potential opportunities that someone might have  had to have done this and then she remembered   earlier that morning, she accepted a cup of tea  off of her younger brother Graham. And actually   now that she was thinking about it, she remembered  but she only had one mouthful of this cup of tea   and it was really bitter so she ended up like,  I think just spitting the rest out, leaving the   rest. She didn't think much of it at the time,  I don't think you would, you'd probably just   think like the milk's gone sour or something  or my brother just makes a really s**t cup   of tea. Uh- she had no idea that it was actually  laced with poison but that seemed like the only   explanation and quite a good explanation at that  because the family knew that Graham was weirdly   obsessed with, like, chemicals and chemistry and  doing all these like little experiments, he was   always doing it, so it made sense. So Fred goes  home really, really angry with his son, he pulls   Graham to the side and he confronts him saying,  how could you do this to your sister? How could   you poison her like that? And Graham's denying it,  he says he has nothing to do with it. He said he   would never do anything like that to his sister  but he did tell his father that he had an idea of   how it could have happened. He said that he'd seen  Winifred playing with shampoos and shower gels in   the family tea set, like, a few days prior and  he was like, oh she probably just didn't wash it   all out properly and she's, like, poisoned herself.  But like realistically, okay so this girl is, like,   in her mid-teens and I'm not judging your hobbies  or what you like to do for fun but when we- are we   really making, like, potions in tea sets in  our mid teens? That's something you do when   you're, like, six. Not only that, the chemicals  and stuff in shampoos wouldn't- they're   not Belladonna! They don't- they don't- they  know exactly what chemical has poisoned her, it's   Belladonna. They don't put Belladonna in shampoo  and conditioner, it won't making sense but it was   just kind of, like, his word against- against hers  really, isn't it? Fred just wasn't really buying   it and so he went up to Graham's bedroom and he  starts looking around, searching the whole place   for Belladonna but he didn't find anything. There  was- well, there was nothing that he saw anyway, whether Graham had managed to hide anything, we  don't know but Fred didn't find anything on that day. At this point in time, Fred did still think that  Graham was responsible for his sister's poisoning   but he didn't think it was intentional. So he  thought that maybe Graham could have been doing   his, like, chemistry experiments and stuff in the  tea set and then not washed it out properly. This   has happened and now he panics and like, is trying  to deny it but maybe he did it by accident. So Fred   gave Graham what- a final warning saying, be careful  with those chemicals because look what you've done   to your sister and that was kind of where this  whole thing was left. But Graham didn't stop   messing with those chemicals, as I'm sure you have  probably guessed, he was the one making his family   deadly ill with this a terrible stomach bug. First  his stepmother Molly then his father then his   sister Winifred and then at points, he was getting  symptoms too and people don't know whether he was   intentionally poisoning himself to make it seem  less suspicious. I don't believe that personally,   wait until you hear the rest of the case, he didn't  do that. I think what the case could actually be is   like, unintentional poisoning. He could have like,  I don't know poisoned a family food or a family   drink and then had to have a little bit because  everyone else was having some or maybe he, like,   just didn't rinse out a cup properly. Something  like that, I don't think it was intentional   though, that's just my opinion. But yeah, he'd been  poisoning his family's tea for months and they'd   all just been blaming it on this stomach bug, he  didn't even have to try and cover anything up   because they were coming up with an excuse for  this illness. His main victim was his stepmother   Molly for some reason, I don't know why she was the  one that he started with and I don't know why she   was the one that he was the most severe with but  for some reason, she was his main test subject. In   fact now I'm thinking of it, I didn't think this  as I was researching but now I've realised, maybe   it was so that he could properly observe her  symptoms because that's what he really liked   about toxicology was- was the experiment of it and  like, the tests and the trials and- and giving a   subject this dosage of this thing and seeing how  they reacted. So maybe that's why he started with   Molly who was a stay-at-home stepmother because he  just spent the most time with her and she was the   most easy to observe, possibly. Sorry I kind of went  off on a little bit of a tangent then but that's   because I got excited, I didn't- I didn't think  of that in my research and I've just thought of   that now. But yeah like I said, he started with his  stepmother Molly and it was the most severe with   her as well and he'd been gradually increasing her  dosage over the last few months. He increased it   by a little bit every week and it- this had been  going on for months and at this point, Molly had   started building a bit of a resistance, a bit of  a tolerance to this chemical and so she wasn't   really getting increased symptoms. She was still  struggling, she still had vomiting and diarrhoea but   it wasn't getting any worse, the symptoms were just  kind of staying the same even though he was upping   the dosage. And this was quite frustrating to  Graham because he'd actually be making notes this   whole time on, like, the dosages he'd been giving  her and the way that she'd been reacting, how long   it took her to react, you know all that kind of  stuff. He was doing full-on science experiments on   his family, poisoning them to see how they would  react. He'd been noting it all down and for the   last few weeks because her symptoms hadn't been  getting any worse, his notes had been pretty boring   and he was getting frustrated with this, he needed  some development, some movement. Then on April 21st   1962, Fred returned home from the pub one evening  to find his wife Molly in the back garden, hunched   over in pain. She was absolutely wailing, she  was holding her stomach, she was crying, she   eventually collapsed to the ground and that was  when Fred called her an ambulance and got her   transported to hospital. But shortly after arriving,  Molly passed away. The doctors concluded that   Molly's cause of death was actually a hidden  injury that she'd sustained from a car crash   that she'd been in a few weeks prior. She had like  a- a problem with one of her discs in her spine  I believe, like a prolapsed disc. And she hadn't  really realised it at the time but it had been   doing more and more damage as the weeks had been  going by and by this point, it must I don't- I don't   know? How does it- how does a disc do something like  that? I don't know but that's what they concluded   she died of anyway. But either way, they were wrong,  that wasn't how Molly died and unfortunately they   didn't find out how she actually died because they  didn't do a toxicology report on her. To be fair,   why would they when they think she's just died  randomly at her house from some sort of injury.   They didn't do a toxicology report on her so they  didn't see that she had insane levels of poison in   her system. Her own stepson had been poisoning her  for months, gradually and when he grew tired that   he wasn't seeing the results that he wanted to, he went out and got a much stronger, much more   toxic chemical to put in her tea. When his father  went out to the pub that night, Graham laced his   stepmother's tea with a large amount of thallium,  like, a freaking lot, enough to kill multiple people.   Later that night, when Fred returned home from the  pub before he actually made it to the back garden   and found Molly in pain, he passed the front window  and saw his son Graham standing at the window,   smiling, waving at his dad, he seemed really excited  Which of course Fred didn't think anything of at   the time, that's his son and he's just come home,  kids do tend to get excited when their parents   come home. But now, it seemed really, really odd that  he must have known that Molly was out writhing in   pain in the garden, dying and he's excitedly  jumping and waving and smiling in the window.  And what's even scarier, is that he knew it was  too late for anyone to save her, he knew that his   father was about to walk back there and find the  woman that he loves dying. Every- every single angle   of this is so effed. So when Molly did pass away,  Graham was actually the first member of the family   to bring up the inevitable funeral. I mean everyone  knows it's gonna have to happen but brought it   up very quickly and he was very adamant that they  should cremate her, just because that's, you know, the   better option when someone passes away, we should  cremate her. And Graham, for a kid, was very, very smart   because he knew why he wanted to cremate her, to get  rid of her body, to get rid of the evidence that he   had poisoned her and killed her. If they cremated  the body, there's no way that they would ever be   able to do tests if anyone was ever suspicious. And  Fred agreed that- that cremating the body would be   the best thing to do and so two weeks later when  the funeral happened, that is what they did, they   cremated the body. But even at the funeral, Graham  was still being an evil little mastermind. At the   wake, he laced one of the dips, I think it was  like a spread or like a mustard relish thing,   he laced it with some sort of chemical. I don't  know which one specifically but he was trying   to poison everyone at his stepmother's funeral. It  made quite a few members of the family ill, like, a   lot- like a couple of them had to run off to the  toilet, a lot of them had stomach aches that day.   It wasn't enough to kill anyone or even leave  them, like, seriously ill but it was enough to-   to give them- give them an upset tummy, give a lot  of people an upset tummy. Most of the family were   pretty much recovered from this mysterious illness,  again it seemed like a stomach bug had broken out   at the funeral and a lot of the family members  were getting over it in the coming days but not   Fred. Fred in fact, seemed to be getting worse. His  symptoms just kept worsening and worsening over   the next few days and then after a week or two, it  got so bad that he actually had to take himself   to the hospital. And once he was there, they did  all these tests and all these, you know, analyses   and they came to a conclusion. They told Fred Young  that they think he is being intentionally poisoned   by someone. Doctors said he was actually only  about one or two doses away from dying, he had   high levels of antimony in his system and had he  left this any longer, he would have probably died.   He came to the hospital right in the nick of time.  Fred immediately had his suspicions of his son, I   mean he practically knew it was his son and so  as soon as he was recovered and discharged from   the hospital, he didn't go straight away and go  and speak to Graham. Actually first, he went to go   and speak to his sister, do you remember Aunt Winnie  that Graham went to go and stay with for the first   three years of his life. Well, Fred and his sister  Winnie were really, really close and they went to   each other with a lot of things and so Fred kind  of needed some help on how to go about this. He has   just found out that his son is intentionally  poisoning him and making him ill and   now this situation is making him think, like,  beyond just that one incident. He's now thinking   of the stomach bugs everyone's been having, his own  wife's death, everything is starting to connect and   make sick sense. And it was around this same time  actually before his dad had said or done anything,   that Graham's school teachers were also getting a  little bit suspicious of him. Because obviously he   was very, very, very into chemistry and poisons and  he was always asking his chemistry teacher about   it all the time. So much so that he realised it  was a very morbid obsession, like, a fixation with   Graham and over time, he was getting more and more  concerned about him, to the point where his science   teacher once went and searched Graham's desk. I  think this was like back in the day where they   had them, like, fold up desks so he goes over and  has a look inside and in there, he finds poison,   poison in- in Graham Young's school desk. There  were a couple of different vials of different   substances, there was also a bunch of notebooks in  there that he'd been taking notes about poisons in.   That was pretty much the only thing he ever wrote  about, just different information about different   chemicals he was finding and these different,  like, killers that he idolised, these infamous   poisoners. It was very clear what was going on  here and everyone was very, very concerned about   Graham Young. He was still very young, maybe only  like a preteen or maybe it was like, 13 maybe 14   at this time. Young anyway, around that age. And  I believe it was his school teacher that called   the police on Graham and the police came down to  speak to the teacher and they decided that since   he is still very, very young and this could just  be, you know, just a wrong path that he's going   down, they decided to take a bit of a softer route  into this. They weren't gonna like, arrest him and   immediately be like accusatory and everything, they  decided that they were going to bring in   a psychiatrist to kind of give him a bit of an  evaluation because if he was mentally ill, then   they needed to go about this a different way. But  of course, they didn't want him to know that he   was getting a psychiatric evaluation because they  didn't want him to know that police were on to him.   So they had a plan. They sent in this psychiatrat-  psychiatrist! They sent in a psychiatrist as a- like,   a careers advisor, she was meant to sit down with  Graham and kind of talk to him about his future   prospects and what he might want to be one day  when he grows up. So she comes in and she chats   to him and immediately, he starts going on about  his love for toxicology and poisons and all that   because he thinks it's a careers meeting and he  wants a career in it and he's talking about how   much he knows about this one and- and like all  these different chemicals, he's naming them all   and saying how toxic these ones are and she's sat  there hearing all of this, obviously she knows why   she's there because he's being accused of like,  intentionally poisoning and almost killing   people. Not only that, he was also showing  just quite an egotistical element to his   personality, he liked to be the most intelligent  and knowledgeable one in the room, didn't matter   what subject but especially chemistry, especially  toxicology. He liked people to know that he knew   more than them and he liked to prove that, he liked  to make sure they knew that. And that's one of the   things that really did him in in this career  advisor meeting, was that he was bragging about   how much more he knew about toxicology and poisons  than the rest of his class. And this was exactly   what the psychiatrist needed to go back to the  police and say yep, this boy is a danger to society,   I definitely think he's responsible for something  here. And so that same day, they went and arrested   Graham Young at his Auntie's house. They took him  down to the police station and when they searched   him, they found that he literally had vials of like,  these chemicals in his shirt pocket. He was just   carrying these on his person, at all times. They'd  caught him red-handed with this and there was no   way out of it and so Graham just confessed that  he had been poisoning people. He'd been poisoning   his own family, his whole family at that and even  a boy that he'd befriended in school. This boy was   Graham's like, only friend. Like I said, he wasn't  social, he was quite a loner and so he would spend   most of his lunch times with this one particular  boy. They would swap sandwiches every now and again   and I think Graham spotted an opportunity in  this. I think on one occasion, he had laced his   own sandwich with some sort of poison and then  asked to swap them and that's how he poisoned   his friend. I think his friend was hospitalised  but did eventually recover. But despite all of   these confessions, confessing to poisoning  his father, his sister, his school friend, he   still wasn't admitting anything about his mother's  death, his stepmother's death. Naturally, the police   did suspect him of having something to do with it,  of course, it was too similar to everything else   that Graham was currently doing it, seemed like  it was in keeping with his current pattern. But   because her body had been cremated at her funeral,  they had absolutely no way of proving anything.   They had no evidence, they had nothing to test.  And so despite police believing that he did kill   his stepmother, they couldn't really do anything  about it, they couldn't charge him with anything.   But instead, he was charged with a few counts of  administering poisons, I think? I don't know, I think   the actual charge is a bit more wordy than that  but he got charged for poisoning. So this case was   due to go to trial and before it did, they brought  in a psychiatrist to give him an assessment to see   if like, well obviously the first one was kind of  disguised as a careers meeting so she hadn't been   able to ask like, proper questions to be able to  diagnose him, it was just more of like a- you know,   like a vague assessment, they just wanted to  get an idea but now, they needed to actually see   if he was mentally ill. Following this assessment,  Graham was diagnosed with Psychopathic Disorder.   It was deemed that he felt no guilt or remorse for  anything he'd ever done, harming people, potentially   killing people because they believed that he  killed his stepmother, although they just didn't   have the proof. And the psychiatrist that assessed  him believed, firmly believed, that he would keep   doing this. There was no sign of him stopping or  wanting to stop at any point. In fact, when the case   did go to court, the prosecution argued that this  obsession and fixation that he had on poisons, was   not something that was just going to go away with  age. It wasn't just like, a childish fixation like,   a phase that he was going through. It seemed like  it was something that was very deeply ingrained   into him for some reason, whether it was due to  his mental illness or what, it just seemed like   something that was not gonna shake with time or  with age or maturity or anything. The psychiatrist   even told the court a specific quote from the  assessment, so this is something that Graham said   and it is so eerie. He said, "I'm missing my antimony,  I miss the power it gives me." Which tells you a lot   about his mental state towards these poisonings,  I think. A lot of it is a power thing, possibly   relating back to his childhood, maybe he felt like  he didn't have power or control over anything and   this is a way that he has found to have power and  control over the people around him. Eventually he   did plead guilty to all of these charges; of  poisoning his- his dad, his sister, his school   friend and for all of that, he was sentenced to 15  years in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital. Broadmoor   is the most infamous psychiatric hospital for the  criminally insane over here in the UK, we've talked   about it in so many videos, at this point. So many  infamous serial killers, serial rapists, terrorists,   literally the worst of the worst, people that they  know will likely offend if they're allowed out   in the world, they're the kind of people that they  send to Broadmoor. And actually bare in mind, Graham   Young is really young at the time, he was 14 years  old when he was sent to Broadmoor and at the time,   he was the youngest patient ever to have gone to  Broadmoor. These days there's been a few younger   than him, I think Sharon Carr was younger than him,  she was like 12! When Graham first arrived, they   did a whole bunch more psychiatric assessments on  him and he was also diagnosed with schizophrenia,   alongside his psychopathic disorder. And for the  first like, couple of months, life at Broadmoor was   fine! Graham seemed to be getting on alright. His  family would come to visit him regularly but they   quickly got quite frustrated with him because  whenever they would go and see him, they would   try and have conversations with him but all he was  interested in was asking them to try and smuggle   him in some poison or even some matches. And they  were quite confused why he wanted matches so bad   because he never been like a- a fire guy, it was  more like a poison guy. So they were quite confused   why he wanted matches but it quickly became clear  that there was a way to like, oh I don't know what   element it is, element? Chemical? Oh you can tell  I got a B in my chemistry GCSE! So there's summat   in matches that you can like, extract and it's  poisonous to humans. Turns out that's why he   wanted the matches, he didn't want them for match  purposes, fire purposes, he wanted them for poison   purposes. Clearly, being in Broadmoor wasn't doing  much for his mental state since he was very much   still in the mindset of wanting to poison everyone  around him at all times. It was clearly like, all he   could think about, day in day out. That was all that  was on his mind was like, when the next opportunity   to poison someone would be. He kind of described  it almost like, a drug addiction but obviously he   wasn't the one doing the drugs but he was craving  administering those drugs to someone else, without   them knowing...odd. So yeah, his family felt like, quite  uncomfortable with the visits now, they- they- they   thought they were kind of being used! He wasn't  really interested in talking to them if they   weren't going to give him- you know, if they weren't  going to smuggle in poisons for him to kill people   inside the hospital. So they're starting to go  see him less and less, obviously they weren't- they   weren't going to take him any poison but Graham  Young managed to find a way to get some. There were   a number of smaller suspected poisoning incidents  in the first few months that Graham was there   but for some reason or in all these like, little  incidents, poisoning couldn't be proven. So they've   never been attributed to Graham Young but I think  it's interesting to mention that he turns up and   suddenly people get ill around him. And then one  day, one of his fellow patients, a man named John   Berridge, just suddenly dropped dead and an autopsy  revealed, that he had been poisoned with cyanide. Of   course, Graham was everyone's prime suspect. Inmates  and staff alike, were all side-eyeing him being   like, okay I wonder who has poisoned this man to  death? Maybe it's the serial poisoner in the prison!   It's not prison, it's a hospital. A serial poisoner in Broadmoor. So they're trying to like, investigate it   and obviously Graham's not just coming out and  admitting like, yeah I poisoned him and killed   him but he can't keep his mouth shut for too long  because like I said, he had a massive ego. He liked   people to know how intelligent he was and he liked  people to know all this s**t that he was getting   up to, he couldn't keep it to himself for  very long. He eventually ends up bragging to   some of the other inmates that he had figured  out how to extract something from the laurel   bushes, that they had in the yards at the hospital  so that he could like, uh- what's the word? He could   um, distill it into cyanide. Forgive me  if the science is wrong, like I said, B in   chemistry GCSE but he'd figured out how to derive  poison from the plants on the hospital yard! How   crazy is that? That they've essentially supplied  that! Well, obviously not with their knowledge   but like, that's still crazy. But this is quite an  interesting turn of events, John Berridge that dropped   dead from cyanide poisoning, his death was actually  ruled as a suicide? No further investigations were   done from that point, his death was ruled a  suicide, Graham Young never saw any punishment,   no one ever was officially able to prove that he  had done anything, to be fair. And a lot of people   that have looked into this case, think that this  could be a cover-up from the hospital, them just   labeling it a suicide so that people wouldn't  ask too many questions and this could be for a   couple of reasons and this goes back to having the  plants in the yard, maybe they were just trying to   save face because realistically, they shouldn't  have plants in the yard that are serial poisoner   can extract poison from. That's- that is crazy,  someone should have done a risk assessment.   So maybe they were just trying to save face on  that front because it's technically their fault,   that they provided these plants in the yard  and then one of the inmates was able to kill   one of the other inmates with them, maybe that? It's just really frustrating that they didn't   take the suspicions seriously at the time, they  didn't properly look into this because Graham   only continued to poison people again and again  throughout his life. Had he been stopped here, had   this been investigated properly, then who knows? He  might not have gone on to do anything that we're   about to talk about, with the rest of this case. I  have a theory that those laurel bushes were ripped   out of the yard because after this point, Graham  never managed to get access to cyanide again and   surely if the bushes were still there, he would  just go right back to them and extract it again.   I think the hospital must have known what had  happened here, they must have realised that he'd   got the cyanide from the bushes, ripped out the  bushes and then this never happened again. He'd   never found cyanide again so to me, that says  that the bushes were gone. I have no evidence   of that theory but it just makes sense to me.  But he did carry on trying to poison everyone,   staff, other inmates- inmates? Patients with like,  whatever he could get his hands on, just like   household cleaning products, bleach even. Oh and  also going back to his weird like, Nazi obsession.   At this point, he was growing into like, an older  teenager and he was starting to grow facial hair...  can you see where this is going. He shaved himself  a toothbrush mustache- toothbrush mustache in, so   that he could look exactly like Adolf Hitler.  While he was in Broadmoor, this- this interest   of his was really kicking it up a gear and I don't  understand why the staff didn't kind of have their   eye on that a bit more? Is that not a red flag?  He was always reading about the Nazis and always   talking about them to anyone that would listen, he  would like- do like, pretend speeches as if he was   Hitler. Is this not the biggest red flag you've  ever heard! He would also exclusively listen to   music from Hitler's favorite composer which isn't  a red flag in itself but I think it's just a bit   funny. But despite all these very concerning traits,  that didn't seem to be subsiding with medication   or therapy or age or time or being separated from  his environment, literally nothing was changing the   whole time he was in Broadmoor which is concerning.  If he sent to a psychiatric hospital for something,   you should be making progress over time but he  really wasn't. And despite the fact that he was not   making progress, somehow Graham Young was released  from Broadmoor early. He was sentenced to 15 years   minimum but somehow, he was let out after nine,  when he was 23 years old. The doctors signed off   that he was fully recovered and he was no longer  a danger to society and God were they wrong. When   Graham found out that he was going to be released,  he actually said to one of the nurses and this is   an exact quote, "when I get out, I'm going to kill  one person for every year I've spent in this   place." And the most frustrating thing is, is that  this comment was actually recorded on his file,  the nurse reported it, it was written on his file  but then for some reason when it came to deciding   to release him early, how could they read that  comment and think yeah, just let him out anyway?!   What! So yeah, Graham was released from Broadmoor  in 1971, he was 23 years old and when he got out,   none of his family wanted anything to do with him.  Of course, he'd been poisoning all of them, none of   them wanted to be close with him at all! But his  sister Winifred did kind of take pity on him, she   realised that he genuinely didn't have anyone and  he'd been locked away from society for all of his   teenage years and now, he was just kind of let out  into the world as an adult and forced to just try   and like, I don't know figure it out. She felt bad,  he is her little brother at the end of the day and   so she said to him that he could come and stay  with her and her husband because by now, she had   her life sorted, she had her life settled down,  she had a husband, I think she could have had kids?   Actually I don't think she had kids at this point  but she had her life together and she was willing   to let her little brother, that had tried to  poison her and kill her a few years ago by the   way, she let him into their house, she trusted him  around the kitchen. She must have really believed   he changed which to be fair, they all had reason  to believe that he changed because all of these   professionals, all these doctors and psychiatrists  had signed off on that fact. They'd said that he's   recovered, he's no longer a danger to society so  his sister was just believing what professionals   said. So at this point in time, Graham is living in  Hemel Hempstead with his sister and her husband.   Hemel Hempstead is just like, north of London, it's  just a bit out of London. And I'm sure you guessed   what was going to happen. Within just a few months  of him being out of Broadmoor Hospital, Graham   Young was already looking to get his hands on  poison again. But now he was back with a vengeance,   it's as if being like, locked away for the last  nine years and been deprived of poison had made   him desperate for it and now, he was about to be  more dangerous than ever. He tried to get some   poison from the chemist, just like last time, just  through like charm and deceit and lies um- but this   didn't work, like it did last time. Last time he was  able to just blag his way through it but this time,   the chemist was like, nah mate sorry, I cannot sell  you anything without like proper authorisation,   like an actual letter. So Graham went off and he  like, forged this University letter, he just made   some random header of a university that existed  in the area and wrote a fake letter from his   Professor saying that he needed these chemicals  for a specific experiment that they were doing. He   took it down to the chemist and the chemist was  like, okay cool and he gave him these poisonous   toxins again. So now he had a whole lot of antimony  which is something that he's been using the whole   time but now, he also had thallium which I believe  is even more toxic than like, pretty much anything   he'd been using to date. But in the meantime, he is  trying to kind of live as much of a normal life as   he can whilst being obsessed with poisons because  like I said, he'd been locked away from the world   all his teenage years, he's now just trying to like  navigate being an adult. So he eventually ended up   moving out of his sister's house and he just  moved into a hostel, I think, in Hemel Hempstead   and he started a shopkeeping course as well, to  give himself a bit of a vocation. He planned to   go on and become a shopkeeper. But wherever Graham  Young went, trouble, illness and death just seemed   to follow him and so, a lot of the people that he  shared the hostel with became ill, a lot of people   on his course also became ill. It was like he was a  walking stomach bug. One of the worst cases was one   of the men that he shared the hostel with, 34 year  old Trevor Sparks and the two of these men had   gotten really close by the way because they were-  they were living together, they spent a lot of time   together. They would go out to the pub together on  evenings, they would even play football in the park   together with a few other men. They- they would just  chill together in the hostel even, sometimes they   would go to the shop, buy drinks, take them back  to the hostel and just chill and talk and the   two of them got pretty close. That was until Trevor  suddenly became violently ill. It just happened so   suddenly, as had all the others. He just woke up  one day and he was projectile vomiting, he was   diarrheaing. Oh my my God! I could have said that  in a much nicer way but I'm- I'm gonna leave it.   Um- he had shooting pains in his legs, he had  actually a really odd combination of symptoms.   So the usual ones with vomiting, diarrhea but  now he's got like, shooting pains in his legs   and also an intense pain in his testicles. It was  a really weird combination of symptoms and even   Trevor acknowledged that. He was like, what the hell  is going on with my body? But to be fair, after like   a day or so, it kind of subsided so he just kind  of looked at it like, that was weird but I guess   I'm fine now and- and life just carried on. That was  until a few days later when the exact same set of   weird symptoms all hit him, all at once. Again, just  like last time but because they'd subsided once   before, Trevor was like it's fine, I'll just endure  it for a day or two and then they'll be gone, just   like last time. And they did, they- the symptoms  went again and this happened over and over again.   I would say like, three maybe four times, he would  get these really odd combination of symptoms and   then it would go a couple of days later. That was  until one particularly bad day when these symptoms   hit him in the middle of a game of football. He was  out at the park playing football with some mates   when he- he literally had to sit out the rest of  the game, he was in so much pain. Trevor had been   to the doctors, multiple times about this specific  set of symptoms um- and because obviously he was   desperate for a cure, it's really affecting his  life at this point in time but the doctors just   couldn't really figure out what was wrong with  him. I mean they kept thinking they knew what   it was, they were diagnose him with something and  then they would realise it's not actually that   and he- they would diagnose him with something  else. He was misdiagnosed like, four or five times   which is insane! At first they thought it could be  a UTI, they also thought it was like an infection   in his kidneys, they thought it could be a bowel  infection at one point, what else was there? I don't   know, there were a few other things and I haven't  written them down but I know that there was more   than that. And every single time, they would put him  on some sort of treatment for whatever infection   they thought he had and the treatment would do  nothing so he would go back to the doctors and   then they'd be like, oh wait yes because it's this  other thing. They still had no idea what this was   because it is such a specific set of symptoms,  something must be affecting so many different   parts of this man. In April of that year, Trevor  actually moved out of that hostel and he never   had one of those attacks ever again, ever! He'd only  shared that hostel with Graham for like, two months   I think Graham joined in like, late February maybe  early March so maybe it hadn't even been two whole   months but he'd had so many of these attacks.  Luckily he managed to get out of this alive, he   managed to know Graham Young and survive it but he  did have some lasting problems from the poisoning.   I think it was particularly with his legs, I read  a few different sources on this, some of them said   that he was paralysed, some of them just said  that his legs just are not very good since all   these attacks so we can't really play football  and stuff anymore. I don't know exactly where on   that scale it is but to whatever degree, the fact  that this has had long lasting lifelong effects   on this man is so sad. Graham Young later confessed  to poisoning Trevor with antimony this whole time.   I'm sure you detectives had figured that out by  now though. So now that his latest test subject   had moved away, Graham decided to move on with  his life. He finished up his shopkeeping course   and he actually moved back to Hemel Hempstead  to be closer to his sister but he didn't move   back in with her. He got like, a house share so he  was renting a bedroom and they all shared like,   the communal areas, the living room, kitchen and  stuff. And he never let anyone in his bedroom, not   any of his housemates, none of his friends. I don't  think he really had that many friends to be honest   but no one was ever allowed in his bedroom. And  that's because inside his bedroom, he was really   expressing his morbid interests. There were posters  all over his walls of Hitler and the Nazis,   there were swastikas drawn everywhere. It genuinely  looks like something out of a horror film. But no   one knew that that was there until like, quite a  while later when eventually his bedroom was found   and everyone was like, not surprised really! So now  Graham is looking for a job, he goes and applies   for a job at this laboratory, it was literally just  for like, a little assistant role, he was just gonna   be like um- they were going to train him up on the  job but when he first got there, his- his basic jobs   was just going to be like, answering phones, taking  notes, making cups of tea for people... dangerous. So   anyway, he applies for the job at this laboratory  and the person giving him the job interview had   quite a few questions about his um- patchy history  because he had to disclose on his CV that he'd   been in Broadmoor for a while and they asked him  about it and he was like, yeah look my mom died   when I was young and I had a bit of a mental  breakdown and I didn't do well, I was sent to   the hospital, they looked after me and now I'm- I'm  grown, I am well again and I'm ready to get back   out there in the world. And this laboratory that  was looking at hiring him really had no reason   not to believe that! Like, that's not something that  people really tend to lie about, this man was sat   in front of them saying I had a really, really hard  time when I was a teenager, I was hospitalised and   he is like, offering up this information, you know?  They're not gonna sit there and go, "I don't believe   you" because they'd be awful people so they didn't,  they just took his word for it because you would.   This employer could actually get their hands  on some discharge notes from Broadmoor, I think   um but annoyingly, in these notes, it didn't  actually say why he was in Broadmoor, it just   said he was in there, he struggled, he's been  medicated and he's been through therapy and   now they believe him to be mentally stable and  and fit to go out in the world. It said nothing   specific! So this employer has no idea what Graham  has done in his past and what he is capable of. So,  he was offered this job at the lab and like  I said, he was kind of at the bottom of the   pecking order he was doing all all the s**t  little run around jobs, tidying up, making cups   of teas. That is literally the worst job they  could have given this man but considering they   had no- not even so much as a hint from Broadmoor  hospital about what this guy was capable of, they   let him make everyone's cups of tea. So Graham  Young starts his job at this laboratory and he   is laying low for a while, he's gaining everyone's  trust, he's making friends, he doesn't do anything   for a little while. He's just kind of finding his  feet, he's learning how this company operates, who's   above who, who has the power and one thing he very  quickly learned after he joined was that everyone   had their own specific mug for their tea. No one  ever swapped mugs, they always just had it in the   same cup and this was gonna help him a lot later  when it came to targeting individual victims. So   once he'd gained a little bit of confidence,  he starts poisoning his fellow employees.   Um- ones that might have pissed him off a bit  that day, ones that he just generally found   quite annoying and unbearable. He would slip them  a little bit of poison in their tea, not enough to   do any serious damage but enough to make them ill, maybe even enough to send them home for the day or   for a day or two. Over time, he was increasing these  doses, increasing them, increasing them until people   started having to have like, days off work at a  time and it started to look as though there was a   stomach bug going around the office because loads  of people were falling ill with the same symptoms;   vomiting, diarrhoea, having a few days off here and  there, it looked like something was contagious and   being passed around the office. And it even got  to a point where like, people would have this bug, they would be off work, they would recover, they  would come back to work and then within a couple   of weeks, they would have caught it again off of  another one of their co-workers who still had the   bug. So people were falling like- it was just a  cycle, they were falling ill with the same bug so   much so, that this this stomach bug became quite  infamous within the town. The town where this   laboratory was was called Bovingdon and the- the  bug became known as the Bovington bug. And it   actually- it was more so like, just an inside joke  within the company, it wasn't really talked about   much outside of this laboratory, well at all really,  it wasn't throughout the town. But like, all the   staff would joke with each other about how they're  all continuously passing it to each other and like,   oh stay away from me, you've got the Bovington bug,  stuff like that. So that was kind of the theory of   all the staff at the laboratory, they just thought  it was- it was a virus but there was another theory   that a couple of people had, that maybe it was  something wrong with the water supply at the   laboratory. Like, maybe the- something was getting in  there that shouldn't have been and it was making   them all ill. But in reality, it was Graham Young  poisoning everyone's tea and no one noticed at   all. In fact, everyone kind of liked Graham! He  wasn't that much of a talkative guy, he never   really was, unless it was something he was really  interested in and you know the kind of stuff he's   really interested in, it's only like, morbid stuff  like, serial killers and the war and the Nazis and   stuff. He could talk for hours and hours about  those kind of things but like, small talk about   the weather, he was never really joining in those  conversations with colleagues. But the ones that   made more of an effort with him were like, the  older men, they kind of took him under their wing   as like a- you know, just like their- their work son.  There was this one particular guy called Bob Eagle or Bog- Or Bob Eggle? I don't know, Bob E- he's 59 years old  anyway and he's called Bob! Bob was a war veteran   and he'd even been at Dunkirk which you- you can  already imagine this lit up Graham Young like a   light bulb! As soon as he heard this, he wanted to  know all about the war, he was always asking Bob   about his like, first-hand recounts? Accounts of  the war, he was asking him to recount. What's the   right word to use? That- he was- he would listen to  his stories, basically. But despite him literally   befriending this man and getting on with Bob  really well and Bob like, taking him under his wing,   treating him like a work son, Graham quickly made  Bob his first proper victim. Well he like, switched   his focus to Bob anyway which is- is so sad that  this man is helping him in so many different ways   and he's being so nice to him. Like one of the only  people that can sit and have a proper conversation   with him, yet Graham is still willing to poison  him and try and kill him. So, Graham Young starts   doing to Bob Eagle exactly what he'd done to  his stepmother Molly. He starts poisoning him   a little bit every single day and slowly raising  the doses to raise his symptoms. Until before long,  Bob Eagle had the Bovingdon bug, more often than  any other staff member and he had it more severe   than any other staff member, as well. And then one  day, just like he had with Molly, Graham was growing   frustrated that these doses weren't affecting Bob  as much as they used to. And then one day, just like   with Molly, Graham was growing frustrated that the  chemicals were no longer having the same effect   on Bob and so one day, he laces Bob's tea with a  fatal dose of thallium. Later that same day, Bob   was admitted to hospital, believing he had just  a really severe case of the Bovington bug. But   while he was there, Bob's symptoms continued to  worsen and now we're starting to see new symptoms   that we've never seen before. He had terrible back  pain, he had numbness in certain parts of his body   and it started spreading like, over time he- he  stopped being able to like, move certain parts of   his body. It was reported that his skin was peeling  off! He was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit   because they just did not know what to do with Bob  and he was being checked on like, nearly every hour.   And Graham would actually call up the hospital and  ask for updates on Bob's condition, just pretending   to be a concerned co-worker. And when you actually  think about it, when you put this into perspective   Graham and Bob have only really known each other  a few weeks, maybe a month and he's calling for   regular updates in the hospital, it's just a  bit odd, you know? I definitely think it's just   because he wanted updates on his poisoning, he  wanted to know how it was going. Bob eventually   passed away from this mysterious illness, he died  in a lot of pain, honestly and when he did die,   doctors concluded that his cause of death was  due to a very rare condition named Guillain-Barre   syndrome. This was the answer that they settled  on because they had looked up a bunch of diseases   with very similar symptoms and this one seemed  to fit what Bob was experiencing, kind of the most.   More so like, all the later symptoms that he was  experiencing, you know the numbness and then not   being able to move his body, the shooting pains  that he was getting in his legs were believed   to be because of this. So now Graham Young's  current victim was gone and don't get me wrong,   he had still been poisoning other people in the  meantime, even while Bob was in hospital, he was   still working on poisoning his other co-workers.  There was another older man, kind of around Bob's   age named Ron Hewitt that Graham turned his  attentions to and Ron was kind of like,   the perfect victim because he was actually leaving  the company in like, two weeks. He'd already handed   in his notice, he was going to be leaving, Graham  was never gonna have to see him again. In fact, I   don't really know what Graham's thought process  was here, whether he thought he could just poison   him loads and then he would leave the company and  then he would never see any repercussions for that   or I don't know if Graham saw this as a challenge.  He only had two weeks to poison and kill this man,   maybe he took it on as a challenge to see if  he could do it before Ron left the company. But   yeah, Graham had been poisoning Ron this whole time  while Bob had been in hospital and in fact, Ron was   that ill with the Bovington bug, that he didn't  even spend much of his final two weeks at work, he   was sick at home. Ron ended up leaving the company  with his life and as soon as he did leave the   company and never went back into that laboratory,  he never had the Bovingdon bug ever again. So now,   Bob Eagle and Ron Hewitt are both gone from the  company for different reasons and they were the   two people that were above Graham Young, maybe  that's why he targeted them, maybe he wanted   promotion because that's what he got! He was now  promoted to store manager. This also meant that   he was now working with a new pool of co-workers,  which meant a new pool of victims. His new superior   was a woman named Diane Smart and he really  didn't get on with her. I mean, she was just   quite a bossy lady from the sounds of things, she  would tell him off if he was doing his job wrong   or she would pull him up if he was being lazy, you  know, regular, schmegular boss stuff. But whenever   she would annoy him or do or say something like  that, he would poison her. He would make her a cup   of tea and lace it with something toxic. I have  a quote from Graham's diary here, it says "Di   irritated me yesterday so I packed her off with  an attack of sickness. I only gave her something   to shake her up, I now regret that I didn't give  her a larger dose, capable of laying her up for a   few days." He was also poisoning a bunch of other  co-workers at the same time, one of which being   another older man named David Tilson. He made him a  couple tea one day and he laced it with thallium, I   think he was trying to kill him because that was  I think the strongest one he used, he would always   bring in the thallium when he was ready to kill  someone. And sometimes right, Graham had been doing   this long enough now that he knew that he kind  of needed to hide the taste of certain poisons   in tea. Some of them were completely tasteless, some  of them were not. And sometimes he would make these   cups of tea for his co-workers and they would  be too bitter and so they would have one mouth- a   mouthful and then they would leave the rest, which  really threw a spanner in Graham's plans, didn't   it? So to get around it this time, he made this  cup of tea, put his poison in it and then put a   frick a lot of sugar in it, gave it to David Tilson. He  he had one mouthful of it and he was like, that is   way too sweet! He was like, I'm sorry mate that- I've got to leave this- this sugar drink. And this   really frustrated Graham, the fact that he'd even  tried to get around it and it still hadn't worked.   So now, Graham was almost trying to prove a point  that he was gonna poison David Tilson and he was   gonna drink it. So a few days later, he went back  into the lab with even more thallium, he laced   David Tilson's tea and this time, he drank all of  it and it was enough to land him in the hospital   that same evening. He had all the same symptoms  that Bob Eagle initially had. He had chest pains   and breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhoea. He  had numbness in his legs, he couldn't really move   his legs that well, he was losing hair. And another  quite obscure symptom was that his skin was so   sensitive to the touch, that even like, clothes,  pajamas, his hospital gown even his bed sheets   were too much when they were touching his skin.  So meanwhile, Tilson is in hospital and Graham   Young is on the outside and he is a bit frustrated  that he hasn't managed to kill David. So he makes a   plan to go and finish the job. He decided that he  was going to go and visit David in the hospital   and take a bottle of brandy laced with even more  poison because he knew that David would- he would   take some, even though he wasn't really allowed it  because he was recovering like, from all of this-   from all of this! These awful symptoms, the nurses  wouldn't have allowed him to have it but Graham   knew that David would take it anywhere and just  not tell the nurses. Which would be perfect, that's   exactly why he chose to lace alcohol so that  David wouldn't snitch and it wouldn't get back   to- to Graham, it wouldn't be traced back to him.  But Graham actually never got chance to visit   the hospital because by the time he'd like laced  this brandy and he was getting ready to go, David   Tilson had already been discharged from hospital.  He had pretty much fully recovered but there was   one lasting symptom of- of his poisoning that  would affect him for the rest of his life.   He had erectile dysfunction, impotence. And it was  supposedly like, properly effecting in his life, you   know, not the kind that is a bit annoying but  there's ways around it, you know what I mean? It   was done, it was done out here. And you guys know  I'm no scientist but that sounds like, quite an   obscure lasting- lasting long-term effect of being  poisoned, don't you think? After this particular   victim, Graham decides to move on again. This time  to a man named Jethro Bat. He made Jethro a laced   cup of tea one day, gave him it, he drank a little  bit of it and it was way too bitter. So he turned   to Graham and he was like, sorry mate I like- I-  thank you for the cup of tea but I can't drink   the rest of it, it's way too bitter. And Graham  turned to him and joked, "oh what do you think   I'm trying to poison you?" The two of them shared  a little laugh over it because right now, even   though he'd been doing this the whole time he'd  been at the company, he was making everyone so ill,   still no one suspected Graham Young so he could be  so blatant about his jokes and he could laugh at   it with his victims. So just like last time, Graham  was determined to actually poison Jethro next, he   was going to make him another cup of tea and make  sure he drank all of it and he did! He managed to   mask the taste a bit better, the second time. Jethro  drank the whole thing and ended up in hospital.   He had pretty much the exact same symptoms as last  time, stomach and chest pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, his   hair fell out, his legs were in a lot of pain. It  wasn't numbness this time, it was extreme pain so   much so, that he actually said he was contemplating  suicide. It was that bad, that he could not put   up with it any longer, he wanted to take his own  life. But thankfully, Jethro survived and recovered,   almost fully but again, just like David Tilson, he  had one lasting effect of the poisonings, erectile   dysfunction. But just as Jethro recovered, another  colleague fell dramatically ill. This was just the   cycle at the lab at this point, it was- there was  always a new co-worker in hospital. This time, it   was another older man named Fred Biggs and he  had been suffering with the Bovingdon bug for a   little while at this point, I think he'd had it  a couple of times and now, it was getting really   quite bad, to the point where in November, he too  was hospitalised. At the hospital, he deteriorated   at a rapid speed. He lost the ability to talk, he  lost the ability to like, help himself breathe, he   had to be put on life support to- to physically  force his body to breathe. And just like one of   the last times, Graham Young was calling up the  hospital every single day and not even just the   hospital, he was calling Fred's wife for updates  on his health! How sick and twisted is that? After   a few days, Fred's body couldn't hold out any  longer and he passed away with his wife by his   side in hospital. It turns out that Graham Young  had administered four times the lethal dose of   thallium in Fred Biggs tea. He had absolutely  no chance of surviving that, at all. So at this   point, people are starting to raise an eyebrow at  this whole Bovington bug thing. It was so severe   now, that it wasn't just people having a couple of  days off work here and there. Co-workers were being   hospitalised on a weekly basis, someone needed to  look into this. So management launched like, a whole   internal investigation in the laboratory. They went  and spoke to a lot of the people that had had the   Bovington bug in the past and they realised some  odd little things about it. For example, none of   them had ever actually passed the Bovington bug  onto any of their family. So they would catch it   at work, supposedly from a colleague, it was this  contagious virus that was going around the lab   and then they would go home to their families  and not pass it on, never once did anyone pass   it on, how odd? How is it that it was passing  amongst people in this one laboratory but it   never passed to anyone else. So another thing they  did in this internal investigation, was they asked   all of the staff, they like, interviewed pretty  much everyone there at that company and they   asked if they had any suspicions whether it was  about people or about situations that could be   making them ill, anything. And so many people said  that they were suspicious of Graham Young. And he   is just a suspicious guy in general, I mean we'll  get into the specifics in a minute as to why they   all thought that but think about it, he's very  uninterested in talking to any of them unless   it's about like the war and Nazis and death and-  and anything odd! Like this man is- he was not   having normal conversations about like, how's the  family, how's the kids, none of that. A few of them   recalled like odd like, specific eerie comments  that Graham had made while he'd been working   there. One of them being about how easy it would  be to poison someone and he even made a comment   about like, oh you wouldn't even know! There were  a few more like that, like, now that people were   actually thinking about this, actually thinking  about Graham having something to do with this   they were like, now you say it, he's said a couple  of weird things about poisons. How specific! Like...   but they were only realising in retrospect. So now  that the management were like, suspicious of Graham   Young, they pulled up a bit of a timeline of the  Bovingdon bug. When it started, when it peaked, you   know all these different things, when all the  different cases happened and they realised   that it started literally as Graham joined the  company. That was when everyone suddenly started   getting ill and on the days when Graham wouldn't  be there at work, no one else would be ill. And   another odd thing that Diane had noticed, you know  his higher up, she mentioned to the management that   were doing the investigation, that it was odd  that Graham himself had never contracted the   Bovingdon bug, not once. How was everyone around  him continuously catching this same thing from   each other, this contagious virus, yet he has  never affected. So another thing they did as   part of this investigation, the- the company had  their in-house doctor, they had like a doctor   that worked on site, they had him do a bit of  research into loads of different like, rare   illnesses that the staff could be suffering  from, you know googling all their symptoms and   then finding a list of possibilities and  then this doctor held a meeting where he   reported back to the management and quite a few  of the higher-ups um- and he was saying a load of   things that it could possibly be and a list of  things that he'd ruled out. And one of the things   that he had ruled out was thallium poisoning. And  Graham Young was actually in this meeting where   he said that thallium poisoning was ruled out and  Graham heard this and he was just dying to prove   his knowledge of thallium. He always wanted to be  right, he always wanted to prove that he was more   knowledgeable and more intelligent than other  people and he just couldn't help himself. So he   piped up in this meeting in front of everyone and  said uh, well actually, I think you'll find that the   symptoms that all the staff are experiencing are  very consistent with that of thallium poisoning.   Why would you- he said snitched on himself! Why  would you do that? Like I genuinely couldn't   believe he did that, no actually I can because  a lot of serial killers are like this, a lot   of murderers, they're just very narcissistic and  egotistical and they don't care if it's actually   going to get them into trouble as long as they  were right and they were more intelligent than   everyone else, that's all that matters. So yeah,  Graham said this in the meeting, he was like,  um actually I think you'll find those symptoms  are consistent and so the doctor was just like...   all right? And then he just he carried on his  presentation, you know, carried on going through all   the things he'd ruled out, all the possibilities  and then after this meeting, the doctor was   thinking, that were a bit odd? That- that were a bit  odd from Graham, why does he know so much about   thallium poisoning? He's- he's quite a young lad,  that's a very specific, niche interest to have. It-   it just intrigued the doctor a bit and so after  the meeting, he went to go and talk to Graham. I   think the way that the doctor kind of staged this  was as if he was asking for Graham's knowledge on   thallium poisoning. Clearly Graham knew a lot about  it and the doctor could stand to learn something.   So the doctor goes over to Graham and he's asking  him about thallium poisoning and Graham can't   resist from just word vomiting all this like,  detailed information about thallium poisoning   and what doses are fatal and what symptoms come  with certain doses. He has- he snitched on himself,   a hundred percent. So this doctor immediately went  and reported it to the management who immediately   went and reported it to the police and one of the  first things that police did was type in Graham   Young's name on the database and they found his  previous criminal history. The previous criminal   history that included cases of poisoning people! As  soon as they saw that, they went straight down to   Graham's auntie's house to go and arrest him and  as soon as they like, stormed in the door, they went   over to him he was like, what are you talking about,  you've got the wrong guy?! Like, auntie, no trust me   it wasn't me, I didn't do anything! And then as  soon as they got him out of the house and they   were like, dragging him to the car, he turned to one  of the officers and said, which one are you doing   me for? So he did admit that he had- that he had  done this to multiple people, as well! He was asking   which one they'd caught him for! Back at the police  station, Graham Young was searched and he was found   to have vials of valium on his person, at that  very time and there was so much more than that   back at his house, as well. They'd gotten a search  warrant for his house and it had come in pretty   quick and as soon as they went in there, they found  his absolute Nazi shrine of a bedroom which was   already the biggest red flag you could ever see,  going in someone's bedroom. They searched the whole   room and they found vials upon vials upon vials  of so many different chemicals, poisons, toxins,   enough to kill over 200 people. They found a load  of notebooks and diaries and stuff, you know I said   he kept all those logs about like, what symptoms  and- and what dosages he's given people and he had   written about every single co-worker that he had  poisoned. He would call them by their initial, he   would write what dose he gave them, what symptoms  they had and then if he was going to allow them   to live or die. At some point in his diary, he even  mentions how frustrating it is when he poisons his   co-workers and then they end up having time off  work. They have a few days off sick because then   he can't watch them and monitor their symptoms and  write them down in his book. That was re- that was   the most annoying part of this process to him. And  that's probably a factor in why he was calling the   hospitals and the wives of his victims so much  because he was just trying to get an update on   the symptoms so that he could write it in his  book! He didn't actually care about their   health or their well-being, it was just all part of  his little experiment. There were other entries in   this diary where Graham would laugh at the idea of  the Bovingdon bug you know, laugh at the fact that   his victims had made up their own excuse as to why  they were all ill and they were all reinforcing   that to each other. He never had to do anything,  he never had to cover anything up. And everyone   had liked him this whole time, well maybe not liked  him but everyone had gotten on with him this whole   time, no one had ever really properly suspected  him and they'd never voiced it anyway, even if they   had suspected him before now. His diaries revealed  him to be responsible for hundreds of poisonings   over the years with over 70 of these being at his  current workplace. And not only was there a victim   list in his notebook of all the victims that  he'd already poisoned but there was also a future   victims list, a hit list of people that he wanted  to kill next. But back to the timeline, so that was   everything they found in the search of his house  but back to the timeline, they have just arrested   him and taken him down to the police station for  questioning and immediately, Graham Young confesses   to everything and I mean everything as well! He  went into depth with his knowledge on thallium,   telling police like, how he'd learn all of this  and what doses he would give to each victim   when he wanted to see certain symptoms. He really  knew how to get what he wanted to observe from his   subject, you know what I mean? Because that's what  that- this was to him, it was all just like, one big   science experiment on real living people. And  then curveball, Graham Young says something in   his police confession that no one was expecting.  He confessed to the murder of his stepmother Molly,   all those years ago! They were never even accusing  him of that, they never even brought that up, it was   him that brought it up off his own back and he  said yep, I poisoned her too, killed her too. He   even described it as the perfect murder because  he had managed to get rid of the body without   actually doing anything, all he'd done was convince  his father to have his stepmother cremated and his   dad agreed so then the body was burnt to ashes and  there was no evidence that he had ever poisoned   her, he said it was perfect. So police asked him why  he had killed his stepmother all those years ago   and he said, "I suppose I had seized to see them as  people, at least a part of me had, they were simply   guinea pigs." So in the days following his arrest,  Graham Young was already front page headline news.   Everyone was talking about this poisonous serial  killer and the media had even nicknamed him at   this point, the teacup poisoner which is what  we know him as today. But Graham hates this, he   hates that nickname! He was so mad when he found  out that that was what he was being called because   it- he thought it seemed like too cutesy for an  evil, big, scary, evil serial killer that poisons   people and kills people. The teacup poisoner!   So he tried to like, make his own serial killer   nickname for a while, he called himself The World  Poisoner but that never caught on and he is still   The Teacup Poisoner. In the end, Graham was charged  with two counts of murder, two counts of attempted   murder and eight counts of different poisoning  offenses. At trial, he pled not guilty so a full   trial was done and as part of the court trial, he  was questioned by the prosecution who said, right   well if you're innocent, like you say and if- if  all of this is not true, then how do you explain   your diary entries? You've literally written  everything, detail by detail, what you did to all   these individual people, how can you explain that?  And Graham said, and I genuinely cannot believe he   said this, he said that they were notes for a  fantasy sci-fi horror novel that he was writing.   They were his notes, that was his storyline, he  was just really getting into it. Who is ever   gonna believe that?! And if all of that didn't  prove that he was the killer enough, there was   also quite a bit of physical evidence that  we haven't actually talked about yet. So for   one, they managed to get hold of a couple of his  deceased victims bodies. So Bob Eagle had actually   already been cremated at this point in time but  they managed to collect his ashes and they also   still had Fred Biggs's body just in the morgue and  they tested both the body and the ashes and found   traces of thallium in both of them. And that was  actually the first time that ashes had ever been   used as evidence in the UK which I find really  interesting, I don't know how often that has been   done since but this was the first instance of that.  The jury ended up deliberating for less than two   hours, I mean it's very clear what had gone on here  and when they came back, they found Graham Young   guilty on pretty much all of his charges. He was  found guilty on the murder ones and the attempt   murder ones but I think he got off on most of the  the smaller poisoning charges. He was handed four   life sentences for all of this and Graham actually  specifically requested that the judge send him to   a normal prison this time and not back to Broadmoor  because he had such an awful time at Broadmoor,   every single patient around that time will have  had an awful time at Broadmoor because it was   allegedly, very abusive there. No one would ever want  to go back there. And the judge actually took pity   on him and honoured his request, he wasn't going to  send him to a prison though, he did think that- that   Graham needed to be in a psychiatric hospital.  So instead of Broadmoor, he sent him to Ashworth   hospital. And in Ashworth, he was an absolute menace, right! He was- he was such a pain in the ass for   staff because like I said earlier, this was like  an addiction to him or at least that's what he   said. He said he felt as though he was addicted to  the drugs himself, he just wasn't administering-   administering them to himself, he was administering  them to others but it was still that like, crave   and the hit of it every single time. So now that  he's been put away in- in psychiatric hospital, he's   still feeling these urges and craving- craving  making a poison, at least. And this man always   found a way, right. So he managed to make a poison  out of seven different household products! He was   like, mixing them all in his cell and um- before he  actually got chance to use it, the nurses found it   and obviously confiscated it. And from that point  on, they were really, really strict with Graham   Young. He was constantly made to like, move bedrooms  so he wouldn't be able to like, hide anything in   any part of his room. He would be constantly just  randomly checked on, someone would just walk in   his room and make sure he weren't doing anything  he shouldn't have been doing. After a few years at   that hospital, I believe Graham was deemed like,  mentally well enough to go to a normal prison   like he actually requested in the first place and  so he was transferred to a prison on the Isle of   Wight which is quite an infamous prison, a lot of  big, big UK criminals have been there including Ian   Brady who was actually there in that prison, at the  same time as Graham Young. Ian Brady, if you don't   know, is one of the Moors murderers, a sadistic, awful,  evil serial killer from Manchester in England. He   murdered and raped a bunch of different children.  Genuinely one of the sickest men I've ever heard   of and Ian Brady was fascinated with Graham Young.  The two of them became really good friends, they   had a lot in common because Ian Brady was also  very much fixated and interested on death and   tragedy. He could talk about the war and the  Nazis and serial killers and murder and death   for hours. And like I say, Ian was fascinated  by Graham because he was so young and so   knowledgeable about- about everything that they  would talk about but especially about poisons. He   had never met anyone that thought like that! I  don't think any of us have, I've never met anyone   so fixated on chemicals. Brady actually later went  on to write a book, I think it was like a biography   type thing and of course, he wrote about his time  in this prison and there was a little section in   this book on Graham just because Ian was so- he  was very much changed by meeting Graham Young   which is really interesting. He just seemed quite  fascinated by him in general, not even so much his   crimes and his- his stuff like that, just like his  thought process and how he went about life. He even   wrote in this book that he thought that Graham  Young was- was just asexual, that he'd never had   sex and never would have sex. He had no interest  in a sexual relationship with anyone. He kind of   got his gratification from poisoning. Brady said  that Graham would become quite like, uncomfortable   or even just disinterested when sex would come  up in conversation because Ian would bring it   up quite a bit because that was a part of his crimes  whereas that had never been anything, even   in Graham's life at all! As far as I'm aware, he  never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anything   like that because he was just away in hospital and  then he came out and immediately started poisoning   people at his workplace, he never had chance for  any kind of romantic life at all. But yeah Brady   said that Graham would get quite uncomfortable  about it and instead, he was excited only by power,   clinic experimentation and death. That was how he  got his gratification in life was poisoning and   killing people. Graham Young passed away in prison  on August 1st 2000 at the age of 42. His death   was recorded as heart failure which some people  find a little suspicious, maybe for a couple of   reasons because he was only 42 years old which  is quite young to just be having heart failure   out of nowhere, as well. He had no previous heart  problems or heart attacks or anything of the sort,   it really came out of nowhere when he was very  very young. And there's a few theories about this,   some people think that the hospital are trying to  cover something up. Not really sure what and that's   about as far as I'm willing to go with that theory.  Oh it's not the hospital, it was the prison that   he died in, wasn't it? They think that the prisons  trying to cover something up. But the theory that   I'm kind of leaning towards a little bit more is  that maybe he had found a way to commit suicide   and poison himself. We've seen him manage to  get hold of poisons some way or another, no   matter where he is. He can extract toxic chemicals  from things and create a poison from pretty much   anything! He's done it with some random bushes in  the yard at Broadmoor, he's done it with cleaning   products in the other hospital. Chances are he  could have found a way to poison himself and   take his own life, maybe he was bored of life in  prison. And that would explain why there were like,  no other symptoms or- or like, he wasn't ill in the  run-up to his death or anything like that. So that   is where Graham's story ends but that's not where  this whole case ends because there's a couple   of things I actually want to talk about first.  There's also been another tragedy that is believed   by some people to be a direct result of another  Graham Young poisoning. In 1973, a man named Howard   Gronow had read the news, as soon as the teacup  poisoner had been found, it was front page news.   He saw this story in the newspaper and suddenly  became very paranoid that he could be a surviving   victim of Graham's. He'd had terrible chest pains  and a couple of other symptoms for years, for   pretty much as long as he can remember, from like  his early 20s and in fact, he can trace back to the   exact day that he started getting these pains. It  was one particular night when he'd been out at a   pub in Hemel Hempstead drinking with some random  guy that seemed to have a huge interest in poisons   and chemicals. It's all- it's all very much adding  up, isn't it? The math is definitely mathing. So he   became convinced that that night in that pub, he  had met Graham Young and he must have poisoned him   and given him these long, lifelong chest pains and  different issues. And Howard became so fixated on   this idea that I think it made him very depressed  and he ended up taking his own life. So that's why   a lot of people attribute this death potentially  to Graham Young, although there's no way for us to   be able to prove that Graham had poisoned Howard.  But I thought that was quite interesting to add   in here and there's an all- there's also another  quite interesting little side story that I want to   add, about a copycat killer. In 2005, a 16 year old  Japanese schoolgirl was arrested for the attempted   murder of her mother when she tried to poison her  with thallium. It was discovered that this young   girl kept an online blog about like, different  poisoners and killers and people like that and   she was very much a fan of Graham Young. She would  post about him often and she actually carried out   this crime almost to a T, like Graham's. So she had  the notebooks and everything and she would log   what dose she give her mother, what symptoms her  mother was experiencing. Like I say, this girl was   done for attempted murder which makes me think  that her mum survived, of course but I did hear   that she was in a coma for a very, very long time.  I don't know if she's still in that coma, I don't   know if she's managed to recover since then. But  that is all I have on this case. Thank you so so   much for watching, I really appreciate it, I feel  like this one's been a bit of a long one again! So   thanks for sticking around for another one and  thanks again to Casetify for sponsoring this   video! Remember if you go to Casetify.com forward  slash Eleanor, you'll get 15% off of your order   automatically applied at checkout. A huge thank  you to all of my channel members for supporting   the channel and helping me decide the cases that  I cover. All of my tier two members are on screen   right now so thank you so much! If you want to  become a channel member you can click the join   button down below! But yeah thank you so, so much  for watching, if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs   up that would really help me out. If you want to  subscribe, you can click this circle with my face   on or if you want to watch another video of mine,  there! There! That was- oh I gave myself the ick! Bye!

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,449,532

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, true crime, solved, documentary, serial killer, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, 2022, poison, poisoner, ian brady, graham young, broadmoor, graham, young, grayham young, broadmoor hospital, broadmoor documentary, moors murders, murders, english serial killer, british serial killer, poison serial killer, chemical serial killer, poison murder, poison murderer, teacup poisoner, the teacup poisoner, poisoned

Id: UC_6WDcLkn4

Length: 91min 35sec (5495 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022