Did Houdini die in 1926 of a ruptured appendix or was he murdered by fraud psychics that he had exposed as hucksters? Forensic scientists, authors of a Houdini biography, and Houdini's family hope to solve the enduring mystery by exhuming his remains. They're currently seeking permission to dig up and examine the body. According to the book "The Secret Life of Harry Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero," by William Kulash and Larry Sloman, Houdini was poisoned. From the Washington Post:
Authors Kulash and Sloman maintain that Houdini was the victim of a thuggish cabal of psychics. Houdini spent much of his career unmasking spiritualism as a fraud, and one of his favorite targets was one Mina "Margery" Crandon, a socialite who acquired a certain fame after claiming telekinetic abilities. Her husband, a prominent Boston surgeon named Le Roi Crandon, was supposedly a member of what the authors call "the Psychic mafia" and the man behind Houdini's poisoning. In the authors' telling, Crandon had a confederate inject Houdini with that serum in Detroit, and it was meant to kill him, not cure him.
Link to Washington Post article, Link to buy "The Secret Life of Harry Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero"
