"A gripping tale of murder, sorcery, and criminal justice in turn-of-the-century Chicago, Poisoned is the fascinating true story (1907) of a mysterious Bohemian fortune teller charged with murdering a half-dozen people by slowly poisoning them with arsenic. In this presentation, the author Steve Shukis will discuss events that followed Herman Billik's conviction: last-second reprieves; legal battles carried all the way to the Supreme Court; frenzied mass demonstrations; corpses secretly exhumed in the middle of the night; and the revelation that key witnesses lied under oath.
These events started with a family-run dairy in a Bohemian neighborhood in Chicago and eventually continued to a dairy farm in Downers Grove, Lombard, and the DuPage coroner's office in Wheaton. The case affected political campaigns, involved a Chicago Mayor, and featured an eventual showdown in the race for Governor of Illinois between two of the story's central figures. Indeed, if it were not true, no one would ever believe it."
Tickets are selling fast. Get yours now at the Downers Grove Historical Society
Steve Shukis is a sixth-generation Chicagoan and has been an amateur genealogist for more than thirty years. His book Poisoned tells the fascinating story of Herman Billik, a mysterious Bohemian fortune teller accused of slowly poisoning Martin and Rose Vrzal, and their four children in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood in the early 1900s.
This program is underwritten by an anonymous donation in memory of Wayne Siatt (1949-2026), a Renaissance man who loved mysteries of all kinds.
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