This was the first American prosecution for a crime which took place in two different jurisdictions, as Botkin had sent the poison from California, but it was received in Delaware.

[1] In 1895, Botkin met John Preston Dunning while he was bicycling in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

Dunning, a heavy drinker, was fired by the Associated Press when it was discovered that he had embezzled $4,000 in office funds to pay his gambling debts.

The affair lasted almost three years but ended when Dunning was re-hired in March 1898 as the agency's lead reporter for what would become the Spanish–American War.

"Passionately fond of candy," according to her husband, Dunning took at least three pieces herself and shared the rest with others on the porch of her father's home.

After two days in agony, Elizabeth and her older sister, 44-year-old Ida Harriet Deane, died from arsenic poisoning.