# The Halloween Poisoner

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 28 Oct 2022, 35 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/9569bf88-e5ed-4987-937d-af32012192d9/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Candy laced with cyanide and needles in marshmallows, we've long been warned to be suspicious of the sweet treats handed out by strangers at Halloween. But it seems that most stories of "Halloween sadism" are just that, stories. No child seems to have been killed by adulterated Halloween candy... well... there is one terrible exception. The poisoned Pixy Stix of Pasadena, TX. For a full list of sources used in this episode visit Tim Harford.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin, Pasadena, Texas, nineteen seventy four. Someone is getting ready
[0:29] Speaker 1: for Halloweens. He lays out five pixie sticks on the
[0:33] Speaker 1: kitchen counter, the large plastic tubes nearly two feet long,
[0:38] Speaker 1: filled to the brim with fizzing candy, quite a prize
[0:41] Speaker 1: for the local trick or treaters. Then he takes a
[0:45] Speaker 1: sharp pair of scissors and one by one he snips
[0:50] Speaker 1: off the top of each pixie sticks, and from each
[0:54] Speaker 1: one he pours an inch or two of candy into
[0:58] Speaker 1: the sink. He turns the forcet and the water rinses
[1:02] Speaker 1: the candy powder away, fizzing as it vanishes down the drain. Next,
[1:08] Speaker 1: he unscrew the cap from a large bottle filled with
[1:11] Speaker 1: a white powder. The bottle has an official looking label
[1:15] Speaker 1: on it, some kind of chemical. He grabs a spoon
[1:19] Speaker 1: and digs into the powder, heaping it into one pixie
[1:22] Speaker 1: sticks tube after another, replacing the missing candy. He's hurrying
[1:27] Speaker 1: a little now. He puts down the spoon and screws
[1:31] Speaker 1: the cap back on the bottle. He reaches for a stapler.
[1:36] Speaker 1: A couple of staples per tube does the job, sealing
[1:39] Speaker 1: their new contents away. Stapler away scissors away from the
[1:45] Speaker 1: force it again. He rinses the spoon and dries it.
[1:49] Speaker 1: He picks up some soap and thoroughly washes his hands.
[1:53] Speaker 1: Then he dries them. Five pixie sticks tubes still lie
[1:58] Speaker 1: on the counter. Is anyone ready for some trick or treating?
[2:04] Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary Tails. Fifteen
[2:32] Speaker 1: years earlier Fremont, California, Trick or treat squealed the children
[2:38] Speaker 1: as they rang the doorbell. The door swung open. On
[2:42] Speaker 1: the threshold stood an ordinary looking couple. On the doorstep
[2:46] Speaker 1: gathered a gang of tiny little vampires and ghosts and monsters,
[2:50] Speaker 1: holding out their treat bags and waiting for candy, treat
[2:55] Speaker 1: or trick. Smiling, the grown ups dropped a handful of
[2:59] Speaker 1: candy into each bag, and the spooky little sprites scampered
[3:04] Speaker 1: off to the next house. But when they tasted the candy,
[3:08] Speaker 1: something wasn't. Some of the treats were little white heart
[3:12] Speaker 1: shaped pills. They were sugary on the outside, but the
[3:16] Speaker 1: inside was yucky. Some of the kids complained to their
[3:19] Speaker 1: parents about the substandard treats on offer. The parents of
[3:23] Speaker 1: Fremont were seriously worried looking for evidence, They sent some
[3:28] Speaker 1: older children back to the house with treat bags. The
[3:32] Speaker 1: children returned with lollipops and more of those unpleasant little pills.
[3:38] Speaker 1: The police were summoned and paid a visit to the
[3:40] Speaker 1: house of doctor William Shine, a dentist with an impeccable reputation.
[3:47] Speaker 1: It was nineteen fifty nine, a simpler time, a more
[3:50] Speaker 1: innocent time. Nobody could quite get their heads around what
[3:54] Speaker 1: doctor Shine seemed to have done, but it was hard
[3:57] Speaker 1: to deny. The pills were analyzed and found to be
[4:01] Speaker 1: a professionally manufactured laxative, suggesting that doctor Shine had a
[4:06] Speaker 1: rather twisted sense of humor. Given that an adult dose
[4:11] Speaker 1: was two pills and some children had thirty pills in
[4:14] Speaker 1: their treat bags, the risk of tragedy was clear enough.
[4:18] Speaker 1: Eventually the police recovered nearly five hundred pills. Fortunately, none
[4:26] Speaker 1: of the children was sick enough to go to hospital.
[4:29] Speaker 1: A few suffered cramps or vomited, most of them spat
[4:33] Speaker 1: the unpleasant pills out immediately. The main damage was to
[4:37] Speaker 1: the peace of mind of the community, along with a
[4:39] Speaker 1: self inflicted damage to doctor Shine's reputation. For a while,
[4:44] Speaker 1: it seemed as though he'd faced prison time and lose
[4:47] Speaker 1: his license to practice, But in the end he escaped
[4:51] Speaker 1: with probation and a fine of five hundred and twenty
[4:54] Speaker 1: five dollars. And that was that, a strange, cruel joke
[5:00] Speaker 1: in which sheer luck prevented tragedy, something unique, the kind
[5:05] Speaker 1: of thing that would surely never happen again. My daughter
[5:13] Speaker 1: says that Halloween is her favorite holiday. She says it's
[5:17] Speaker 1: even better than Christmas. How so, I ask, because it's
[5:22] Speaker 1: about community, She says. Christmas is inward looking, the immediate
[5:27] Speaker 1: family huddled together having fun at home. Halloween is outward looking.
[5:33] Speaker 1: You don't spend it at home, You spend it wandering
[5:36] Speaker 1: around your neighborhood. Gifts aren't wrapped and handed to a
[5:39] Speaker 1: select few, They're doled out liberally to all visitors. Children
[5:44] Speaker 1: experience kindness, not just from friends and family, but kindness
[5:49] Speaker 1: from strangers too, But not all strangers are kind. William
[5:54] Speaker 1: Shine's laxative prank is the first example I can find
[5:57] Speaker 1: of what is sometimes called Halloween sadism, where a stranger
[6:02] Speaker 1: puts something dangerous into the treats collected by children on Halloween.
[6:07] Speaker 1: Rat poison and the chop looked aff needles in marshmallows,
[6:12] Speaker 1: that sort of thing. My daughter's vision of Halloween is
[6:16] Speaker 1: a way to meet your community and realize that strangers
[6:19] Speaker 1: can be nice people too. That vision dissolves on contact
[6:23] Speaker 1: with Halloween sadism. And that's what makes Halloween sadism such
[6:27] Speaker 1: a grotesque act of betrayal. It's toxic, figuratively and literally,
[6:33] Speaker 1: poisoning the relationship children have with their community, eating away
[6:38] Speaker 1: at the very idea that someone you don't know might
[6:41] Speaker 1: nevertheless give you something of value. No wonder, we're warned
[6:46] Speaker 1: that plump red apple that Junior gets from a kindly
[6:50] Speaker 1: old woman down the block, cautioned the New York Times
[6:53] Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy may have a razor blade hidden inside. Well,
[6:59] Speaker 1: it may, but does that happen often? Indeed it does,
[7:03] Speaker 1: noted Newsweek shortly before Halloween, nineteen seventy five. If this
[7:08] Speaker 1: year's Aween follows form, a few children will return home
[7:12] Speaker 1: with something more than an upset tummy. In recent years,
[7:17] Speaker 1: several children have died and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury
[7:21] Speaker 1: from razor blades, sewing needles, and shards of glass purposefully
[7:26] Speaker 1: put into their goodies by adults that's just awful. It
[7:30] Speaker 1: implies that serious incidents occur every single year. And in
[7:35] Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, the Dear Abbey column, syndicated in over
[7:39] Speaker 1: a thousand newspapers, agreed, it's Halloween time again, and time
[7:45] Speaker 1: to remind you that somebody's child will become violently ill
[7:49] Speaker 1: or die after eating poisoned candy or an apple containing
[7:53] Speaker 1: a razor blade. But after reading such alarming warnings, a
[8:01] Speaker 1: young sociologist named Joel Best became curious. Best had a
[8:06] Speaker 1: wide variety of interests. He was interest in crime and
[8:10] Speaker 1: in social problems, but he was puzzled by these stories.
[8:14] Speaker 1: Best had found that criminals and drug addicts always had
[8:17] Speaker 1: a reason for what they did, even if we might
[8:20] Speaker 1: object to those reasons. I could not, for the life
[8:24] Speaker 1: of me, figure out what the reason for poisoning Halloween
[8:28] Speaker 1: treats might be, he told me. And some of these
[8:31] Speaker 1: stories sounded a bit more like Grimm's fairy tales than reality.
[8:36] Speaker 1: A razor blade and the plump red apple from the
[8:39] Speaker 1: kindly old woman. Seriously, But when Joel Best told his
[8:44] Speaker 1: friends he thought these stories might not be real. His
[8:47] Speaker 1: friends were outraged. Of course, they were real. So Best
[8:52] Speaker 1: started to look for data on these appalling crimes. How
[8:55] Speaker 1: often were children poisoned or maimed by evil strangers peddling treats?
[9:01] Speaker 1: Not easy to say. There is no crime of Halloween sadism,
[9:05] Speaker 1: so crime statistics wouldn't cover it. The denist, William Shine,
[9:10] Speaker 1: was convicted of outraging public decency for handing out laxatives
[9:15] Speaker 1: to neighborhood children. That's the kind of crime they charge
[9:18] Speaker 1: you with when everyone agrees you've been a complete bastard,
[9:21] Speaker 1: but nobody can quite nail you with anything more specific.
[9:26] Speaker 1: But Joel Burst figured that whenever a child died or
[9:30] Speaker 1: was hospitalized by a Halloween treat, the newspapers would cover
[9:34] Speaker 1: the story in the first few days of November, and
[9:37] Speaker 1: so he got hold of the major newspapers dating back
[9:40] Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty eight, the year before William Shine's laxative stunt,
[9:45] Speaker 1: and carefully studied the days immediately following Halloween to find
[9:49] Speaker 1: out just how often this had happened. The newspapers reported
[9:55] Speaker 1: some worrying incidents. In nineteen sixty four, two teenage girls
[10:00] Speaker 1: Elsie and Irene Drucker, knocked on the door of Helen File,
[10:04] Speaker 1: a neighbor in Greenlawn, Long Island. Missus File gave them
[10:08] Speaker 1: a foil wrapped pack of treats, but when they opened it,
[10:11] Speaker 1: they were disgusted to find steel wool dog biscuits and
[10:16] Speaker 1: a bottle cap sized container full of ant poison. They
[10:20] Speaker 1: showed the parcel to their father. He called the police,
[10:23] Speaker 1: and missus File was duly arrested and charged with endangering
[10:27] Speaker 1: the health and life of a child. The judge committed
[10:31] Speaker 1: her to a hospital for psychiatric examination. It's hard for
[10:35] Speaker 1: me to understand how any woman would sense all reason,
[10:38] Speaker 1: could give this to a child. Well fair enough, missus
[10:42] Speaker 1: File did not display good judgment. Her husband told The
[10:46] Speaker 1: New York Times that she had given out the trip
[10:48] Speaker 1: packages only to teenagers. She had told them explicitly it
[10:52] Speaker 1: was a Halloween joke, and she had been giving out
[10:55] Speaker 1: real candy to younger children all day. I've no reason
[10:58] Speaker 1: to doubt that explanation, and in fact, it would actually
[11:01] Speaker 1: be quite a good joke if it wasn't so self
[11:04] Speaker 1: evidently flirting with disaster. That said, the experts tell me
[11:09] Speaker 1: that even if a young child did get hold of
[11:11] Speaker 1: and poison, it would be unlikely to do them serious harm. Okay,
[11:18] Speaker 1: so now, Joel Best had two cases, William V. Shine,
[11:23] Speaker 1: who in nineteen fifty nine gave laxative pills to neighborhood
[11:26] Speaker 1: children and made some of them sick for an evening,
[11:29] Speaker 1: and Helen File who in nineteen sixty four gave teenagers
[11:33] Speaker 1: inedible household supplies from the cupboard under the kitchen sink
[11:37] Speaker 1: and told them to their faces that it was a
[11:39] Speaker 1: Halloween joke. Two stupid, thoughtless people, and thankfully no lasting
[11:44] Speaker 1: harm done. But by the nineteen seventies, newspapers were warning
[11:49] Speaker 1: before each Halloween that severe injuries and death were frequent occurrencies.
[11:56] Speaker 1: It's true that after each Halloween accounts of trouble had
[12:00] Speaker 1: become more common in the media in the early nineteen sixties,
[12:03] Speaker 1: the newspapers would rarely have any incident to report. Yet
[12:07] Speaker 1: in the three years from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen
[12:10] Speaker 1: seventy one, there were thirty one incidents in the press.
[12:15] Speaker 1: The strange thing was noted Joel Best. While there were
[12:18] Speaker 1: a lot of reports of Halloween sadism, most of them
[12:21] Speaker 1: seemed fairly minor. Most of the time, nobody was hurt.
[12:26] Speaker 1: A child just pointed to something worrying in a candy
[12:28] Speaker 1: bar Indeed, on closer inspection, many of the cases seemed
[12:33] Speaker 1: to be well somewhat implausible. A few were proven hoaxes,
[12:39] Speaker 1: others just seemed rather unlikely. Joel Best noted one case
[12:43] Speaker 1: where a boy had eaten half a candy bar, then
[12:47] Speaker 1: complained to his parents, I think there's hand poison on this, mum.
[12:51] Speaker 1: And indeed there was on the unbitten end. The child had,
[12:56] Speaker 1: of course applied the poison himself, was perfectly unharmed, and
[13:01] Speaker 1: presumably thought it would be a hilarious Halloween prank. In
[13:06] Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, the trade magazine The Newspaper Industry Editor
[13:11] Speaker 1: and Publisher reviewed newspaper's efforts to track down actual cases
[13:15] Speaker 1: of Halloween sadism. Editor and Publisher magazine concluded that almost
[13:20] Speaker 1: every report was a hoax. There was one strange and
[13:28] Speaker 1: awful exception. Cautionary tales return in a moment. Three days
[13:49] Speaker 1: after Halloween in nineteen seventy, Kevin Tostum, a five year
[13:54] Speaker 1: old boy from Detroit, collapsed and fell into a coma.
[13:59] Speaker 1: Four days later, he died the cause of death was
[14:04] Speaker 1: a drug overdose, and the police had said Kevin's Halloween
[14:08] Speaker 1: candy had been sprinkled with heroin. This tragedy was widely
[14:14] Speaker 1: reported as an appalling case of Halloween sadism, and you
[14:18] Speaker 1: can see why. After a growing drip of newspaper warnings,
[14:23] Speaker 1: the first fatal case of Halloween sadism had finally happened,
[14:29] Speaker 1: Except the truth that gradually emerged was rather different. A
[14:35] Speaker 1: few days later, the Detroit police announced that Kevin had not,
[14:39] Speaker 1: in fact consumed poisoned candy. It swallowed a capsule of
[14:44] Speaker 1: heroine while visiting his uncle's home. And that was the
[14:47] Speaker 1: state of play in the early nineteen seventies. Every year
[14:51] Speaker 1: there would be ten or twelve reports of tampering with candy.
[14:54] Speaker 1: Hardly anyone was injured, and careful reporters had concluded that
[14:58] Speaker 1: most of the incidents were fabricated. The tragic death of
[15:03] Speaker 1: Kevin Tosten had nothing to do with Halloween at all.
[15:07] Speaker 1: And then on Halloween nineteen, nineteen seventy four, something happened,
[15:14] Speaker 1: something so terrible that even by the standards of cautionary tales,
[15:19] Speaker 1: it's shocking. The evening started well enough for eight year
[15:25] Speaker 1: old Timothy O'Brien and his five year old sister, Elizabeth.
[15:29] Speaker 1: They were strolling around the neighborhood in Pasadena, near Houston, Texas,
[15:33] Speaker 1: with their father, Ronald, Ronald's friend Jim Bates, and Jim's children.
[15:39] Speaker 1: It was something of a reunion. The O'Brien's had once
[15:42] Speaker 1: been neighbors of the Bates family, but on he was
[15:44] Speaker 1: tight and the O'Briens had moved to an apartment in
[15:47] Speaker 1: a less desirable neighborhood. Still they were all together again,
[15:51] Speaker 1: now tapping on doors collecting treats. Timothy and Elizabeth had
[15:57] Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes costumes, issuing traditional garb for something
[16:01] Speaker 1: a little more modern. It was raining, but if you
[16:05] Speaker 1: want the candy, you can't be scared off by that.
[16:08] Speaker 1: They not on the door of one spooky looking house,
[16:12] Speaker 1: dark and perhaps deserted. There was no answer. They ran
[16:17] Speaker 1: off to the next house, leaving their father, Ronald, trailing behind.
[16:23] Speaker 1: But Halloween treats come to those who wait. Ronald had
[16:28] Speaker 1: lingered a little and emerged smiling with a hall of candy.
[16:33] Speaker 1: The door had cracked open a few inches, and an
[16:37] Speaker 1: unseen stranger had thrust out a hand with the treats.
[16:41] Speaker 1: What treats why? Five large plastic tubes of fizzing candy powder,
[16:49] Speaker 1: five giant pixie sticks as the rain got heavier, everyone
[16:55] Speaker 1: decided to head home. Ronald handed out the pixie sticks
[16:59] Speaker 1: to the four children, then gave the last one to
[17:02] Speaker 1: a child who knocked at the door, a fellow congregant
[17:05] Speaker 1: at Ronald's church. The O'Brien family then waved goodbye to
[17:10] Speaker 1: the Baitses and headed for home. Little Timothy begging for
[17:15] Speaker 1: a treat before bed. Ronald gave him the pixie sticks,
[17:20] Speaker 1: but Timothy complained that the candy tasted bitter, so Ronald
[17:24] Speaker 1: fetched some sweet cool aid to wash it down. Then
[17:28] Speaker 1: he turned out the light. Within minutes, Timothy had run
[17:32] Speaker 1: to the bathroom violently throwing up, Daddy, Daddy, my stomach hurts.
[17:38] Speaker 1: Timothy went limp. It was obvious that he was seriously ill.
[17:43] Speaker 1: Timothy's mother, Danene, called nine one one. The ambulance was
[17:47] Speaker 1: on its way, but it wasn't clear whether anything could
[17:50] Speaker 1: save Timothy O'Brien. The pixie sticks that Timothy had gulped
[17:55] Speaker 1: down hadn't been spiked with ant bait or a laxative
[18:00] Speaker 1: or even heroin. The top inch or so of the
[18:03] Speaker 1: pixie sticks tube had been emptied of candy powder and
[18:07] Speaker 1: filled up with powdered potassium cyanide, one of the most
[18:11] Speaker 1: infamous poisons in existence. Cyanide blocks the body's ability to
[18:17] Speaker 1: use oxygen gulp all the air you like. The cyanide
[18:22] Speaker 1: poisoned body can't absorb it, as the victim's blood carrying
[18:26] Speaker 1: oxygen that can't be used. Terms cherry red. Timothy O'Brien,
[18:32] Speaker 1: an eight year old boy, had swallowed enough cyanide to
[18:35] Speaker 1: kill three grown men. He died long before reaching the hospital.
[18:43] Speaker 1: But while Danin O'Brien tried to absorb what had just
[18:46] Speaker 1: happened to her boy, the police had an urgent question.
[18:51] Speaker 1: Where were the other four pixie sticks? Five year old
[18:54] Speaker 1: Elizabeth had one but had gone to bed without touching it.
[18:58] Speaker 1: Two more were in the possession of the Bates children,
[19:00] Speaker 1: and the child from church who had knocked at the
[19:03] Speaker 1: Bates's door had the last one. Those other tubes of
[19:06] Speaker 1: candypowder might be just as deadly. They had to be found.
[19:10] Speaker 1: The Bates children had gone to bed by the time
[19:13] Speaker 1: the police arrived at Jim Bates's house. Fortunately, their mother
[19:17] Speaker 1: had objected to the mess making pixie sticks and had
[19:21] Speaker 1: told her children and have to wait until morning when
[19:23] Speaker 1: they could eat the candy. Outside the suspect treats were
[19:27] Speaker 1: safely removed by the police, and soon enough they two
[19:31] Speaker 1: were confirmed to contain cyanide. At two o'clock in the morning,
[19:35] Speaker 1: when the police finally arrived at the house of the
[19:38] Speaker 1: last child, Whitney Parker, the news of the cyanide triggered
[19:42] Speaker 1: understandable panic and a frantic search. Where was that tube?
[19:48] Speaker 1: Surely Whitney hadn't eaten it. Whitney's parents found him in bed,
[19:53] Speaker 1: eyes closed, quite still clutching the pixie Sticks tube to
[19:58] Speaker 1: his chest. He was safely asleep and the tube was unopened,
[20:06] Speaker 1: perhaps because Whitney had failed to prize open the treats
[20:09] Speaker 1: crudely stapled end. It was of course poisoned too. One
[20:18] Speaker 1: eight year old child was dead, and that number could
[20:21] Speaker 1: easily have been five who could have done such a thing.
[20:26] Speaker 1: The police retraced the trick or treating route with Ronald
[20:28] Speaker 1: the next day, but he couldn't remember any details. Ronald
[20:33] Speaker 1: spoke to the press telling them I have my peace
[20:36] Speaker 1: knowing tim is in heaven now. And then the day
[20:41] Speaker 1: after that was Timothy O'Brien's funeral service. His father, Ronald
[20:46] Speaker 1: sang the old hymn Blessed assurance, but changed the words.
[20:51] Speaker 1: Instead of this is my story, this is my song,
[20:55] Speaker 1: he sang, this is Tim's story. This is Tim's song.
[21:01] Speaker 1: The boy's little coffin sat there in the center of
[21:03] Speaker 1: the chapel. The congregation were weeping uncontrollably. Soon after, Ronald
[21:13] Speaker 1: O'Brien and the police retraced the route again. Finally, Ronald
[21:18] Speaker 1: remembered where he'd got the pixie sticks. Someone had opened
[21:22] Speaker 1: the door of that house, just a crap stuck out
[21:25] Speaker 1: an arm, a man's arm. It was hairy and offered
[21:28] Speaker 1: the deadly tubes of candy. But when the police investigated,
[21:33] Speaker 1: the occupant of the house had a solid alibid. He
[21:36] Speaker 1: worked at nearby Houston Airport and he'd been on shift
[21:39] Speaker 1: that Halloween. His colleagues backed up that story. His employer
[21:44] Speaker 1: had the timesheets to prove it. So Ronald O'Brien's account
[21:48] Speaker 1: just didn't make sense. Cautionary tales will be back in
[21:55] Speaker 1: a moment. We're never going to stop worrying about our children,
[22:10] Speaker 1: of course, but what exactly we worry about seems to
[22:14] Speaker 1: change from decade to decade. Here's the latest, fresh from Facebook,
[22:19] Speaker 1: warning about an epidemic of child abduction with that inevitable
[22:24] Speaker 1: invitation to smash the share button. Twenty two thousand kids
[22:28] Speaker 1: go missing a day, nine hundred and sixteen per hour.
[22:32] Speaker 1: Never keep quiet about it. Keep sharing hashtag save our Children,
[22:37] Speaker 1: and people do indeed keep sharing. When I last checked,
[22:42] Speaker 1: just that one post had been shared about forty thousand times.
[22:48] Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, we worried about Halloween candy. In
[22:51] Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, we worried that Satanists were running daycare centers.
[22:56] Speaker 1: Today it seems we worry about industrial scale child abduction
[23:01] Speaker 1: twenty two thousand missing children a day. My book The
[23:06] Speaker 1: Data Detective argues that one of the most important steps
[23:10] Speaker 1: to take when confronted with a statistic is simply to
[23:14] Speaker 1: notice your emotional response and try to find a moment
[23:17] Speaker 1: of calm. It's not easy to be calm when you're
[23:21] Speaker 1: picturing gangs in vans with blacked out windows cruising the
[23:25] Speaker 1: streets of every neighborhood looking for the next child to grab.
[23:29] Speaker 1: But if we can slow down, calm down, and think,
[23:35] Speaker 1: we might not rush to hit that chair button, we
[23:38] Speaker 1: might notice that if twenty two thousand children really were
[23:42] Speaker 1: going missing each day in the United States, that would
[23:45] Speaker 1: mean children were going missing at more than twice the
[23:49] Speaker 1: rate at which children are being born. That seems unlikely.
[23:54] Speaker 1: Our brains feed on stories, not statistics. Some stories are
[23:59] Speaker 1: completely fictional that they seize our imaginations anyway. A kindly
[24:03] Speaker 1: old woman offering the plump red apple, juicy yet full
[24:07] Speaker 1: of dangers image from snow White It's more than two
[24:11] Speaker 1: centuries old, will never forget it. Other stories are based
[24:15] Speaker 1: in reality. The abuser whose money and status and connections
[24:19] Speaker 1: shield them from scrutiny, who do exist Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassa,
[24:25] Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein. But on these foundations of truth, some people
[24:30] Speaker 1: spin much grander fantasies, deep state gangs kidnapping and enslaving
[24:35] Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of children, all commanded by the pedophile
[24:39] Speaker 1: master minds who control the most powerful institutions in the world.
[24:44] Speaker 1: Our gut reactions can easily overwhelm all rational thought. But
[24:50] Speaker 1: if we can stop and think, perhaps we can find
[24:53] Speaker 1: more reliable statistics and take a moment to understand what
[24:57] Speaker 1: they mean. According to the FBI, there were four hundred
[25:04] Speaker 1: and twenty five thousand reports of missing children in the
[25:08] Speaker 1: US in twenty eighteen. It's a huge number, but as
[25:13] Speaker 1: the investigative journalist Michael Hobbs has explained, about half these
[25:17] Speaker 1: cases were a custody dispute. One parents took the children
[25:21] Speaker 1: away for the weekend and didn't bring them back on time,
[25:24] Speaker 1: and the other parent complained to the police. Most of
[25:28] Speaker 1: the rest were runaways, children unhappy with their families, or
[25:32] Speaker 1: foster families who left to sleep on a friend's couch.
[25:36] Speaker 1: Often this would happen again and again, so the same
[25:40] Speaker 1: child might be reported missing a dozen times a year.
[25:43] Speaker 1: It's all very sad, but none of this matches the
[25:46] Speaker 1: social media myth of the van with darkened windows cruising
[25:51] Speaker 1: neighborhoods to look for children to snatch. The number of
[25:55] Speaker 1: actual kidnappings in the United States by strangers or near strangers,
[26:01] Speaker 1: it's between a hundred and one hundred and fifty children
[26:04] Speaker 1: a year. Even one would be too many, but thankfully
[26:09] Speaker 1: it's very far from four hundred and twenty five thousand.
[26:13] Speaker 1: It's also much less than the number of American children
[26:16] Speaker 1: who die in car accidents more than two thousand a year,
[26:20] Speaker 1: or who are fatally shot again more than two thousand
[26:24] Speaker 1: a year, or who die from abuse or neglect at
[26:28] Speaker 1: the hands of their parents or primary care givers just
[26:32] Speaker 1: under two thousand a year. Children are much less at
[26:36] Speaker 1: risk from predatory strangers than they are from cars or
[26:40] Speaker 1: gums or their own families. Back in nineteen seventy four,
[26:48] Speaker 1: in Pasadena, Texas, the police received an intriguing call from
[26:54] Speaker 1: a life insurance agent. Were they aware? He asked that
[26:59] Speaker 1: Ronald O'Brien had taken out insurance on his own son's
[27:04] Speaker 1: life eight days before Halloween, that he had insisted on
[27:08] Speaker 1: a policy that would pay in full even if only
[27:12] Speaker 1: the first quarterly premium had been paid, and that on
[27:16] Speaker 1: the first of November, the day after Timothy's death, he
[27:20] Speaker 1: had called the agent to collect his money. No, said
[27:26] Speaker 1: the police. They had not been aware of that. Joel
[27:33] Speaker 1: Best had trouble publishing his findings. At first. Academic journals
[27:37] Speaker 1: were so convinced that Halloween sadism was real that when
[27:41] Speaker 1: he published evidence suggesting that it was dramatically exaggerated, the
[27:45] Speaker 1: journal editors just rejected it out of hand. But he persisted,
[27:50] Speaker 1: and eventually, in nineteen eighty five he published an article
[27:54] Speaker 1: with a colleague. By then, Joel Best had found newspaper
[27:58] Speaker 1: reports of seventy six separate incidents of suspected Halloween sadism.
[28:04] Speaker 1: There were no cases of children being poisoned by kindly
[28:08] Speaker 1: looking old ades or any other stranger. The two fatal
[28:13] Speaker 1: incidents were Kevin Toston's accidental heroin overdose, a tragedy that
[28:18] Speaker 1: never had any connection to Halloween, and the death of
[28:21] Speaker 1: Timothy O'Brien eight days after his father took out a
[28:26] Speaker 1: generous insurance policy on his own son's life. As for
[28:31] Speaker 1: the other seventy four incidents, a mixture of minor injuries,
[28:35] Speaker 1: near misses, and hoaxes, mostly thought Joel Best hoaxes, and
[28:41] Speaker 1: while every year brings more reports of trouble, they either
[28:44] Speaker 1: evaporate under scrutiny or turn out to involve very minor
[28:48] Speaker 1: injuries or no injuries at all. I'm not making light
[28:53] Speaker 1: of the dangers to children. I'm a parent, and like
[28:56] Speaker 1: most parents, I worry about my children's safety. But I
[29:00] Speaker 1: am trying to shed some light on which dangers should
[29:03] Speaker 1: worry us. For instance, it's common for more than a
[29:06] Speaker 1: dozen children every year to die in accidents connected to
[29:10] Speaker 1: toys or baby equipment, often by choking on a small part.
[29:15] Speaker 1: A child is vastly more likely to be killed by
[29:18] Speaker 1: their own toys than by candy poisoned by a stranger.
[29:22] Speaker 1: Still unlikely, mind you, still very unlikely. But looking squarely
[29:27] Speaker 1: at the numbers, I know what I'd worry about more.
[29:30] Speaker 1: Here's another number. Between four pm and ten pm on Halloween,
[29:35] Speaker 1: children aged five to fourteen years old are four times
[29:40] Speaker 1: more likely to be hit and killed by a car
[29:43] Speaker 1: than during the same hours on any other night of
[29:46] Speaker 1: the year. That's according to a detailed analysis from the CDC,
[29:50] Speaker 1: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's four or
[29:54] Speaker 1: five deaths a year in the US every year. Compare
[29:58] Speaker 1: that to the number of children killed because a stranger
[30:02] Speaker 1: poisoned their candy. Not one, not ever. No one ever
[30:08] Speaker 1: made a decision because of a number, said the celebrated
[30:11] Speaker 1: psychologist Daniel Carneman. They need a story, But the more
[30:16] Speaker 1: emotional the story is, the less we're really thinking it
[30:19] Speaker 1: all through. Our misperceptions of the world matter. They matter
[30:26] Speaker 1: because we end up scaring our children about things which
[30:29] Speaker 1: are very unlikely to happen, such as being abducted by
[30:32] Speaker 1: a stranger, while diverting our attention from problems that are
[30:36] Speaker 1: bigger but more mundane. And our misperceptions of the world
[30:41] Speaker 1: matter when they provide cover for people who really do
[30:44] Speaker 1: want to do harm, people like ron O'Brien. When the
[30:52] Speaker 1: police in Pasadena, Texas began to look more deeply into
[30:55] Speaker 1: the death of little Timothy O'Brien, they quickly discovered some
[30:59] Speaker 1: unsettling facts. That not only had Ronald O'Brien taken out
[31:04] Speaker 1: life insurance on Timothy just days earlier, but that on
[31:08] Speaker 1: the insurance documents he had forged the signature of Timothy's mother,
[31:13] Speaker 1: Danene Danine O'Brien didn't know anything about the life insurance.
[31:18] Speaker 1: The police also discovered that Ronald O'Brien was in money trouble,
[31:22] Speaker 1: that Ronald's friend Jim Bates, had noticed him acting very
[31:26] Speaker 1: strangely at the funeral. He was paying so little attention
[31:30] Speaker 1: to his own son's coffin that he actually walked into it.
[31:34] Speaker 1: That three people remembered Ronald chatting quite recently about the
[31:39] Speaker 1: toxicity of cyanide, and that he had been at Pains
[31:42] Speaker 1: to confirm the lethal dose and to find a cheap supply.
[31:47] Speaker 1: That scissors in O'Brien's house had fragments of pixie Stick's
[31:51] Speaker 1: plastic on the blades. Ronald O'Brien was arrested and charged
[31:57] Speaker 1: with the murder of his son, Timothy and the attempted
[32:00] Speaker 1: murder of his daughter Elizabeth, the Bates children, and Whitney Parker.
[32:06] Speaker 1: He had decided that he could murder his own eight
[32:09] Speaker 1: year old son and risk the death of his own
[32:12] Speaker 1: daughter and three other children because he had heard the
[32:16] Speaker 1: stories about stranger danger at Halloween. He thought nobody would
[32:21] Speaker 1: suspect him. All those urban myths about poisoned candy, they
[32:26] Speaker 1: kept circulating and circulating until eventually they became a self
[32:32] Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy. O'Brien's trial took place in the summer of
[32:37] Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. The prosecutor, Mike Hinton, did not hold back.
[32:43] Speaker 1: He ought to be damned for what he did, he declared,
[32:47] Speaker 1: staring intently at the jury while pointing at O'Brien. I
[32:51] Speaker 1: don't want you to forget for one minute. He wanted
[32:54] Speaker 1: to take those other kids with him. The jury agreed.
[32:58] Speaker 1: After forty six minutes of deliberation, they pronounced Ronald O'Brien guilty.
[33:05] Speaker 1: He was sentenced to death, and in nineteen eighty four,
[33:08] Speaker 1: the state of Texas executed him. Joel Best is still
[33:17] Speaker 1: updating his data approaching Halloween twenty twenty two, Professor Best
[33:23] Speaker 1: still has yet to find a single example of a
[33:27] Speaker 1: child killed because a stranger poisoned a Halloween treats. But
[33:33] Speaker 1: when you've finished listening to this podcast, what will you remember?
[33:37] Speaker 1: Will you remember Joel Best's carefully compiled statistics, or will
[33:42] Speaker 1: you remember the horrific death of little Timothy O'Brien. If
[33:48] Speaker 1: your family is celebrating Halloween this year, enjoy yourself, make
[33:52] Speaker 1: some new friends, meet your neighbors, and do please make
[33:57] Speaker 1: sure that your children take care when crossing the street.
[34:09] Speaker 1: For a full list of the sources used in this episode,
[34:12] Speaker 1: visit the show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Portionary
[34:20] Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.
[34:24] Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino
[34:28] Speaker 1: and Emily Vaughan. The sound designed original music is the
[34:31] Speaker 1: work of Pascal Wise. It features the voice talents of
[34:35] Speaker 1: Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford, and Rufus Wright. The
[34:40] Speaker 1: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
[34:43] Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Famee, John Schnarz, Julia Barton,
[34:48] Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserv Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano,
[34:54] Speaker 1: Daniane Lakhan and Maya Caning. Portionary Tales is a production
[34:58] Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember
[35:02] Speaker 1: to share, rape and review, tell a friend, tell two friends,
[35:06] Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show ads free
[35:08] Speaker 1: and listen to for exclusive Cautionary Tale shorts, then sign
[35:12] Speaker 1: up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple
[35:15] Speaker 1: Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus

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