Louise Vermilya

Louise Vermilya (née Woolf; July 1868 – December 1913)[1][verification needed] was an American "black widow" whose activities spanned the turn of the 20th century.

Authorities were alerted and suspicion arose over the peculiar and similar fates experienced by her two husbands, several immediate family members and two associates known to her.

[2] She married 24-year-old Fred Brinkamp on April 2, 1885, at the age of 16 and moved to the village of Barrington within the Cuba township of Lake County in northern Illinois.

[3] The string of homicides began in 1893, when Vermilya claimed the life of her first husband, Fred Brinkamp, while living on their farm near Barrington, Illinois.

Despite not being a salaried employee, Vermilya seemed too eager to work in the mortuary with Blocks "while I never employed her for a couple of years I couldn't keep her out of the office".

Her stepson, Harry Vermilya, followed his father in death shortly after quarreling with Louise over the sale of the Crystal Lake estate.

Homicide detectives became suspicious after questioning Bissonette's father who states he saw Vermilya sprinkling "white pepper" over their meals prior to serving them.

In return, Bissonette was to make a will naming Vermilya as the sole beneficiary of the insurance policy he would carry as a result of this employment.

[4] Bissonette authored a will shortly before his death, but named his fiancé who lived in nearby Kankakee, Lydia Rivard, as the beneficiary of his estate.

[8] Evidence of arsenic poisoning was found in Smith's liver via autopsy conducted by Prof. Walter S. Haines, the Rush Medical College expert chemist.

Juror selection had become an arduous process as men were unsure of if they could inflict the death penalty on a woman as freely as they would on a man.

Up to this point, the jury had been composed of an all-male panel, who were unable to not only impose a death sentence on a woman, but whose attitudes toward female defendants in murder cases also came into question.

[13] On 28 June 1913, Vermilya was released on $5,000 bail due to concerns for her continued failing health and exposure to the summer heat in a non-airconditioned jail, pending her trial for the poisoning of Richard Smith.

It was decided that it would be impossible to obtain a conviction on the Smith indictment, with Sullivan remarking "We could only see that another trial would entail a heavy cost without any assurance of being able to show any strong evidence."

[9] Vermilya led a quiet life following the dismissal of her charges as no further documentation exists of her in local papers past this point.