In 1921 in Chicago, Otylia “Tillie” Kupczyk asked her landlord if she might store a casket in their apartment building’s basement. Tillie had bought the casket on sale, and she had a feeling she would need it soon for her third husband, Frank. She had premonitions he was about to die and she wanted to be prepared. Frank indeed fell ill and died, just like Tillie’s previous two husbands. Tillie promptly cashed her life insurance check and looked for a new man to marry. It didn’t take her long. She met Joseph Klimek at Frank’s funeral in April, and they wed in July.
By November 1922, Tillie had a fresh insurance policy on Joseph’s life. After he became violently sick, physicians discovered trace amounts of arsenic in his stomach. Police immediately suspected his wife had poisoned his food. When it became apparent Joseph would survive the arsenic attempt, police turned their attention to Tillie’s deceased husbands. They exhumed Frank’s body, tested the tissue and also found it tainted with arsenic. Within six months, a jury sentenced Tillie Klimek to life in prison. She died in an Illinois penitentiary in 1936 from natural causes.
