ARCHERD, William Dale

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ARCHERD, William Dale
Born in 1912, William Archerd cherished a lifelong fascination with medicine. Lacking the cash and self-discipline required for medical school, he sought work as a hospital attendant, learning what he could of drugs and their effects through practical experience. During 1940 and '41, Archerd worked at Camarillo State Hospital, in California, serving in departments where insulin shock therapy was used to treat mental illness. In 1950, he pled guilty to illegal possession of morphine in San Francisco, receiving five years' probation. A second offense revoked his probation, and Archerd was confined to the minimum-security prison at Chino; escaping in 1951, he was quickly recaptured and transferred to San Quentin. By October 1953, he was free on parole.
Archerd's "bad luck" extended into other aspects of his life, as well. Married seven times in 15 years, he lost three wives to mysterious illnesses between 1958 and 1966. If that were not enough, his friends and relatives were also dying under unusual circumstances.
  
William Dale Archerd talks to journalists in court. (Wide World API)

On July 27, 1967, Archerd was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The victims included his fourth wife, Zella, who collapsed two months after their marriage, on July 25, 1956; a teenaged nephew, Burney Archerd, dead at Long Beach on September 2, 1961; and wife number seven, author Mary Brinker Arden, who died on November 3, 1966. As charged in the indictment, Archerd was suspected of injecting each victim with an overdose of insulin, thereby producing lethal attacks of hypoglycemia.
At least three other victims were suspected in the murder series. Archerd's first known victim, according to police, was a friend named William Jones, who died in Fontana, California, on October 12, 1947. Archerd's fifth wife, Juanita, had also displayed classic symptoms of hypoglycemia at her death, in a Las Vegas hospital, on March 13, 1958. Another of Archerd's friends, Frank Stewart, died in the same hospital two years later, on March 17, 1960.
On March 6, 1968, William Archerd was convicted on three counts of murder, the first American defendant convicted of using insulin as a murder weapon. His death sentence was affirmed by California's state supreme court in December 1970, then reduced to life imprisonment two years later, when the US Supreme Court described existing death-penalty statutes as "cruel and unusual punishment."