“We now know that explanation is medically impossible — you can’t rupture an appendix with blunt trauma,” said Joseph Tacopina, a Manhattan lawyer, who is seeking permission from a Queens County judge this week to exhume the body. “Doctors relied on anecdotal evidence to make that determination,” he added. “But we have solid evidence showing that there was ample motive to murder Houdini.”
The biography’s authors, William Kalush and Larry Sloman, say that “motive” arose from a bitter rivalry between leaders of a spiritualist cult and Houdini, who set out to debunk their claims of being able to commune with the dead in the early 1920s. According to the authors, Houdini formed his own “secret service” to infiltrate the spiritualist movement and expose its “spirit mediums” as quacks, who were profiting from the grief of bereaved people seeking contact with their deceased loved ones.
The most notorious of these mediums, authors said, was Margery Crandon, the wife of prominent spiritualist leader Le Roi Crandon. In 1926, Houdini reportedly exposed her “talents” as a farce during a public séance that she had planned in order to garner accolades from a prominent scientific journal. The exposure dealt a near-fatal blow to the couple’s reputations and, some historians say, prompted Margery Crandon to make veiled threats on Houdini’s life.
Months later, Houdini began complaining of stomach pains — which his doctors diagnosed as food poisoning. On Oct. 31, 1926, he died unexpectedly from conditions related to peritonitis, or inflammation caused by an infection of the digestive organs. Houdini’s death came one week after a Canadian college student named Joselyn Whitehead punched him in the stomach without warning in an apparent effort to test his claims of being able to withstand any blow to the upper body.
Le Roi Crandon would later write that Houdini “had been dealt with by the spirits for activities against the movement,” according to the book.
Now, several descendants hope to launch an investigation into whether the Crandons had a hand in the death of Houdini, who was in otherwise peak physical condition, when he died at age 52.
Last week, the Crandons’ great-granddaughter, Anna Thurlow, supported the exhumation, saying her family endorsed the “use of modern technology to support or confirm a historical fact.”
But it remains to be seen whether the authors’ speculation ever rises to the level of “historical fact.” As of press time, supporters of the plan were still awaiting a legal nod. If they win court approval, forensic investigators would soon begin digging in hopes that the magician’s embalmed remains yield enough usable tissue samples to test for traces of heavy metals, like arsenic or mercury. Experts said those substances are detectable in hairs, fingernails and bone fragments for decades after burial.
“We never know for certain what we will find until we actually dig up the body and see if we have any tissue intact to proceed with an analysis,” warned professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist, who has studied the remains of gunslinger Jesse James and “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo. “I’m optimistic we will find something.”
But supporters of the plan are facing more preliminary hurdles than they initially expected — or are willing to admit. At last week’s press conference, Tacopina claimed he had already received the necessary consent for an exhumation from Houdini’s “only living” descendant, Hardeen. The attorney further claimed that he had gotten approval from officials at the Machpelah Cemetery, where Houdini is buried, at 82-30 Cypress Hills St. in Glendale.
Not so, according to David Jacobson, the cemetery’s chairman of the board, who told reporters that he never gave permission for the dig — although it would not have mattered if he had consented, since the decision is solely “up to the courts.”
Nor do the attorney’s claims of full family consent hold water. More than a dozen people across the country (not just Hardeen) trace their lineage to the magician, including Jeffrey Blood, the grandnephew of Houdini’s late wife, Bess. Last week, Blood lambasted the plans in a letter to The Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pa., saying, “Bess Houdini would never have approved. This is likely being done to promote sales of a recent book on Harry Houdini.”
If “The Secret Life of Houdini” is what Blood is talking about, his accusations may not be entirely baseless. Indeed, the Manhattan press conference was organized and funded, not by Houdini’s estate (as Tacopina first suggested), but by Dan Klores Communications, a public relations firm hired by the authors to promote their book. Tacopina declined to comment on whether he was being compensated for his efforts.
Starrs contended that book sales and retainer agreements are a complete afterthought to the team of academics, who have signed on for the project. Every scientist and historian involved in the project volunteered their services and will only be compensated for project expenses, he said, adding that his own forensics experts will look for any potential cause of death, not just lethal poisoning.
“I understand the speculation, but it is not as though we are being paid to deliver a specific conclusion to somebody,” he said. “This is rock-hard science. The goal is to find out what caused Houdini’s death, whatever that cause may be. I would not have agreed, if I thought this was a matter of pulling a rabbit from a hat.”
But whatever the outcome, some local historian believes the heavily publicized exhumation plans have already generated a spectacle worthy of the escape artist, himself. “All this talk of digging up a corpse is interesting for historians, but it would have been right up Houdini’s alley,” said Richmond Hill historian Nancy Cataldi, “because everything was a big stunt for him, just like this seems to be.
“(Houdini) never did come back from the dead, the way some people thought he would,” she added, “so maybe this will finally revive him, in its own way.”
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