Stella Nickell, serving 90 years for planting poisoned pills, denied prison release

SEATTLE — Stella Nickell, an Auburn woman who in 1988 was sentenced to 90 years in prison for product tampering that left two people dead and spurred nationwide recalls, has been denied release from prison.

Nickell, now 78, filed a petition last year for compassionate release, arguing in a handwritten note that her health was failing and the Federal Bureau of Prisons was not providing her adequate care.

During her years in prison she’s been a model inmate, she said.

“There is no proven, or even ‘reasonable,’ probability that I will commit another offense when paroled,” she wrote. “I am 78 years old and this is my first time in prison. I have always respected the officers and staff.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied her petition Thursday in a brief, one-page filing.

Nickell was convicted after police and FBI agents, following months of investigation, concluded she had laced her husband’s Excedrin painkillers with cyanide in order to collect on his insurance, then planted poisoned pills in stores to throw off investigators.

Her husband, Bruce Nickell, died, as did an Auburn woman, Sue Snow, who apparently picked up a bottle of the tainted tablets from a grocery store, according to news reports and court records.

The poisonings resulted in widespread public anxiety, as they came just five years after seven people died in Chicago from poisoned Tylenol capsules, leading to the law under which Nickell was convicted.