Once Botkin's photograph circulated widely, later eyewitness identification became harder to evaluate cleanly.
Had a witness truly remembered the woman from the store?
Or had the witness seen her face in newspapers so many times that recognition became inevitable?
Modern courts understand the risk of such contamination.
The defense in 1898 understood the basic problem too.
Publicity could create witnesses.
It could also distort them.
The jury had to decide which had happened.
The Father Who Kept the Letters
Perhaps no individual action was more consequential than John B. Penington's decision to preserve the anonymous correspondence.
Think about how easily the letters could have disappeared.
Mary Elizabeth might have destroyed them out of embarrassment.
Her father might have thrown them away after deciding they were malicious gossip.
Instead they remained.
Then two daughters died.
The father could reopen the drawer.
The letters became evidence overnight.
This is a recurring theme in old cold cases.
Evidence survives because someone kept something without knowing why it would matter.
A letter.
A receipt.
A photograph.
A ticket.
History often depends on accidental preservation.
The Intended Victim
Another chilling question is whether the sender intended only Mary Elizabeth to die.
The package was addressed to her.
The note referred to "yourself and baby."
The candy, however, was inherently shareable.
Ida Deane ate it and died.
Others became ill.
If the sender expected Mary Elizabeth to consume the entire box alone, that assumption was reckless.
If the sender understood she might share it, then the risk to others was obvious.
Either way, the result extended beyond the person at the center of the jealousy theory.
Ida was not Cordelia's romantic rival.
Yet she died.
That death exposes the uncontrollable nature of poison hidden in food.
Once a contaminated box enters a household, the sender loses control.
"With Love"
There is something especially disturbing about the wording of the note.
Not hatred.
Not threat.
Love.
"With love to yourself and baby."
The phrase existed to lower suspicion.
The sender did not simply conceal poison under chocolate.
She concealed hostility under affection.
That double disguise made the package effective.
Chocolate disguises arsenic.
Love disguises motive.
A woman's handkerchief disguises the absence of a real sender.
The entire weapon was built from trust.
Why Chocolate?
Chocolate was ideal for several reasons.
It was desirable.
Portable.
Giftable.
Easy to mail.
Strong flavors could potentially conceal alterations.
Individual pieces could be manipulated.
A recipient could eat several without immediately suspecting the box.
And Mary Elizabeth was known to enjoy sweets.
Dunning reportedly remembered that Cordelia knew of his wife's fondness for candy.
That piece of personal knowledge would become deeply significant.
The killer did not need to force the victim to ingest poison.
She only needed to send something the victim wanted.
A Crime Designed Around Personality
This was not merely poisoning.
It was targeted poisoning.
The murder weapon was chosen around the victim's habits.
Mary Elizabeth liked candy.
The sender knew it.
That transforms an ordinary preference into vulnerability.
Many planned crimes work this way.
The offender does not overpower the victim physically.
The offender studies routine.
What will she open?
What will he trust?
What will they consume?
How can the victim be persuaded to perform the final action herself?
The more personalized the trap, the less violent it looks until it is too late.
Across a Continent
San Francisco to Dover is a vast distance.
In 1898, mail traveled largely by rail across the country.
The package passed through infrastructure the sender did not control.
It could have been damaged.
Lost.
Delayed.
Misdelivered.
Opened.
The candy could have melted.
The recipient could have thrown it away.
A postal employee could have noticed something.
The killer accepted all of those uncertainties.
That suggests extraordinary confidence in one assumption.
Mary Elizabeth would trust the gift.
And she did.
The Perfect Remote Murder
From the sender's perspective, the method offered extraordinary advantages.
No travel east.
No hotel registration near the victim.
No weapon carried across state lines personally.
No witness placing the suspect at the Dover house.
No physical struggle.
No blood on clothing.
No need to flee after the death.
By the time Mary Elizabeth became ill, the sender could be living an ordinary life in California.
If doctors diagnosed food poisoning or intestinal disease, perhaps nobody would ever examine the chocolates.
The crime depended on medicine failing to recognize the poison.
It nearly worked.
Why It Failed
It failed because too many people ate the same candy.
That created a cluster.
If Mary Elizabeth alone had eaten one or two pieces and died days later, her death might have been interpreted differently.
But several people became sick after sharing one package.
Two died.
That common exposure made the chocolates suspicious.
Paradoxically, the unintended victims helped expose the intended crime.
The poison spread too widely.
The pattern became visible.
The Difference Between Murder and Epidemic
Doctors in 1898 constantly dealt with infectious and food-related illness.
The challenge was distinguishing an outbreak from intentional poisoning.
The Penington household had eaten dinner together.
Could the fish be responsible?
The corn?
Another dish?
Investigators had to compare exposures.
Who ate what?
Who became ill?
Which item was unique?
The candy increasingly stood out.
This is epidemiological reasoning before modern epidemiology became a familiar public concept.
Look for the shared exposure.
The same logic used in disease outbreaks can identify poison.
Arsenic's Double Edge
Arsenic was popular among poisoners partly because symptoms could resemble gastrointestinal disease.
But by the late nineteenth century forensic chemistry had advanced enough to detect it.
This created a strange transition period.
Arsenic was accessible enough for criminals to use.
But no longer invisible enough to guarantee safety.
The sender may have relied on the symptoms being misdiagnosed.
Chemical analysis destroyed that assumption.
Once arsenic was found, accidental food poisoning could no longer explain the deaths.
Someone had transformed a gift into a weapon.
No Autopsy Problem
The investigation also encountered difficulties because the women had been embalmed and funeral arrangements moved quickly.
Some later accounts emphasize concern that a traditional autopsy had not been performed before burial.
That created potential evidentiary problems.
Could prosecutors prove the precise cause of death?
The surviving candy contained arsenic.