This Day in History: November 6th- Spiking Drinks with Anti-Freeze
This Day In History: November 6, 1982
A 40 year-old woman named Shirley Allen from St. Charles Missouri was arrested on November 6, 1982 for the murder of her husband, Lloyd Allen, also 40. The murder weapon was ethylene glycol, commonly used in anti-freeze, which Mrs. Allen had been spiking her husband’s beverages with over the course of many months.
Unfortunately for Shirley, her daughter had witnessed her poisoning the drinks, and turned her into the police after Lloyd Allen’s mysterious death (too little too late it would seem). Her husband reportedly had noticed something a bit “off” about the beverages Shirley was serving him, but she said she’d been adding iron supplements. He believed her. Lloyd died on November 1; Shirley was arrested on November 6.
Shirley had been married six times. And this wasn’t the first time one of her husbands turned up dead.
John Gregg, who had married Shirley in 1977, died a year later. Shirley was not a happy camper when she found out that her deceased husband had removed her as the beneficiary on his life insurance policy not long before he died. The fact that she was left nothing really put a damper on her widowhood.
Another of her husbands, John Sinclair, became suspicious of the strange tasting coffee his wife had served him on numerous occasions, and went to the police with his concerns. Even though he suffered internal injuries thanks to the poison his wife had been feeding him, he didn’t press charges. Apparently thankful to get out with his life, he merely filed for divorce and got out of Dodge.
Shirley’s other two spouses divorced her as well (she was married to one lucky guy twice).
After an autopsy had been performed on Lloyd Allen’s remains, toxicology reports revealed his tissues were saturated with deadly amounts of ethyl glycol. Shirley denied any involvement in her husband’s death, and also stated she had no knowledge of who was responsible. In 1983, Shirley was convicted of murder after a four-day trial. Taking into account the toxicology report and that her own daughter testified as an eyewitness, the jury only deliberated for three hours to decide her fate.
She was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 50 years.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:
- The Unsolved Case of the Murderous Belle Gunness, “Lady Bluebeard”
- Dr. Robert Buchanan, a Murder, and Killing a Cat in Court
- The First Convicted Murderer in America
- Two Men Murdered 15 People Over the Course of a Year in Order to Sell the Bodies as Cadavers for College Students to Dissect
- The First Person to Use the Temporary Insanity Defense was a Congressman Who Murdered the Son of the Composer of “The Star Spangled Banner”
| Share the Knowledge! |
          |
 |
After reaching the end of this article, I came away wondering why two things had not been mentioned:
(1) whether or not the 1982 murderess was still alive; and …
(2) the age of the daughter who testified against her mother.
It took me a bit of digging on the Internet, but I learned the following:
(1) Shirley “Allen” died in prison in July, 2000.
(2) Her daughter [by one of her earlier “marriages”] was 17 years old at the time of the murder. Here is part of an article published during (or just after) the trial:
“Norma Hawkins, 18, … told a jury … that her mother, Shirley Allen … sent [her and her sister] to buy antifreeze and said she ‘was going to use it to finish him off.’ … Miss Hawkins … [also] testified [that] her mother [had] watched television reports of the seven deaths in Illinois in October, 1982, of people who took Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. ‘She would watch the news at night and write down the numbers’ of the contaminated shipments of Tylenol, the daughter said. She testified [that] her mother sent her and her sister, Paula, 16, to stores to search for Tylenol bottles from those shipments, but they never found any.” [YIKES!]
It’s too bad that the daughters did not go to the police until AFTER their stepfather was murdered.
Thank you, was wondering when this crazy, evil woman died.
I decided to search for information on this case to read about her murdering another one of her husbands, Daniel Null. I was surprised that his name was never mentioned. After Lloyd Allen’s autopsy proved ethylene glycol poisoning, her late husband, Daniel Null, was exhumed from his grave for testing. It was proven that he also died from ethylene glycol poisoning. Shirley Allen wouldn’t allow Daniel Null’s own family to attend his funeral. The funeral directors turned away all 4 of his daughters. This family was never given justice. They only had to be satisfied that Shirley was convicted for killing her next husband. I was told by a friend of the family that Shirley Allen’s daughter had a baby that Shirley tried to pass off as a baby born to her and Daniel Null, in an attempt to collect dependent survivor’s benefits from Social Security.