| 03/24/07 |
| -------- Solving the mystery of Houdini's death ----------
NEW YORK - Relatives want to spring legendary escape artist Harry Houdini from his New York grave to determine whether his 1926 death was no accident. When Houdini died on Halloween at the age of 52, officials attributed his demise to traumatic appendicitis caused by a blow to the stomach, New York Newsday reports. But Larry Sloman, the author of a recent book on Houdini, says doctors today know it is impossible for a blow to the stomach to cause the appendix to become infected. Instead, Sloman says one possible scenario is that Houdini was poisoned by someone in the Spiritualist movement he was trying to expose in his later life. The escape artist charged the movement in which mediums contacted the dead through séances was a fraud. Speculation about Houdini's death has been fueled by the lack of an autopsy and indications his wife, who died later, may also have been poisoned. |