Everything She Ever Wanted (58 page)

actually going into the bank, but he recalled Pat had wanted him to

sign some business papers.
 
He hadn't hot hered to read the papers.

Sergeant Tedford turned to Hamner and Reeves, Paw Allanson's

attorneys.

"When did you say you got this envelope?"

"Mrs. Allanson-Pat Taylor Allanson-came into the office one day in

April," Hamner replied.
 
"I couldn't tell you the exact date.
 
She told

us that Mr.
 
Allanson wanted us to have it."

This didn't jibe with what Pat had told the East Point detectives as

she wept in the shadow of the wisteria vine on Paw Allanson's porch.

Both Tedford and his partner had been impressed with her sincerity, her

pain, and her helplessness.

"During earlier conversations with Pat," Tedford wrote in his follow-up

report, she told us that Mr. Allanson's attorneys were in his hospital

room when he had had his last heart attack.
 
This is when Mr. Allanson

this statement.
 
Pat said she took notes during this converhad given

sation, and then, when Mr. Allanson was released from the hospital,

she had typed another statement from her notes and Mr. Allanson had

signed it.
 
The copy of the statement obtained from Dunham McAllister,

Pat's attorney, is exactly the same as the original obtained from

Hamner and Reeves, and could not be exactly alike if she had typed hers

from notes.

Hamner and Reeves are sure that they have never taken a statement from

Mr. Allanson in the hospital or anywhere else.... [B]ased on this

information, this statement is believed to be a forged document....

Tedford suspected other false documents might be tucked away here and

there.
 
f le made a note to check into the elder Allansons' wills.
 
Paw

was in no immediate danger of dying, although he would be in the

hospital for some time.
 
The doctors still couldn't pinpoint just what

had brought on his collapse and week-long coma.

Jean Boggs was a determined woman.
 
She didn't know yet about the

confession, but she did not believe for a moment that her father had

tried to kill her mother, nor did she believe he was suicidal.
 
Paw was

too bullheaded to give up on life, and he 1: had taken exquisite care

of her mother for a decade.
 
He would never leave her behind willingly,

and he would never hurt one hair on her head.

Paw seemed as puzzled as jean was by his condition.
 
He had been truly

amazed to find that he had not had a stroke.
 
He shook his head in

bewilderment at the thought that he had "overdosed."

He wanted to find out what was wrong with him as much as jean did.

Two specialists-neurologists-were called in on a consulting basis.

Neither could isolate the cause of Paw's coma.
 
They suggested that he

have CAT scans of the brain and his upper gastrointestinal tract.
 
The

scanning lab was just across the street from South Fulton Hospital.

Jean and her son, David, wheeled Paw there.
 
The tests took thirty

minutes and the results were inconclusive.

A horror was growing in Jean Boggs.
 
She already suspected that Pat

Allanson wanted to inherit her parents'assets.
 
But now jean wondered

if Pat might actually have attempted to hasten her father's demise.

Was Pat dosing her daddy with something that made him sick?
 
Jean had

heard that two years ago someone had snuck into Little Carolyn's

apartment and put something in Tommy's baby's milk.
 
She had been

told-mistakenly-that the substance used was arsenic.
 
In fact, the milk

had been conlaminated with formaldehyde.

jean was about to become an expert in poison-at least one poison:

arsenic.
 
Paw had used it on the farm years back with the animals, not

as a poison but as a cure.
 
It was really the only poison she had ever

beard about.
 
Jean called the Georgia State Crime Lab and asked to

speak to someone about the symptoms Of poison.
 
She got lucky; one of

the top experts in the South happened to be in the lab that day.
 
Dr.

Everett Solomons, with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a Ph.D.

in medicinal chemistry, knew as much about poisons as anybody in the

state of Georgia.

"Could you tell me what the symptoms of arsenic poisoning are?"
 
Jean

began without preamble.
 
"I really need to know."

There was something about her voice.
 
This woman meant it when she said

she had to know.

"Well, it could show up a number of ways," Solomons began.

"Gastrointestinal upset, vomiting, or flulike symptoms, aching in the

extremities-the feet, legs, hands, arms."

"My daddy has three of those symptoms.
 
Is there any way that you can

check for arsenic poisoning after the person's system has been flushed

out with intravenous feeding-I mean, after time has gone by?"

Solomons paused and cleared his throat.
 
"Is this gentlemanis he still,

ah, alive?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, then your answer is yes.
 
I can check for you.
 
I want you to do

some things for me.
 
Ask your doctor to collect a twenty-four-hour

urine specimen.
 
Next, cut some hair off your father's head."

"How much?"

"Oh, about a fourth of a cup."

How much hair makes a fourth of a cup?
 
Jean wondered to herself.
 
Do

you pack it in like brown sugar, or let it fluff up like shredded

coconut?
 
Solomons explained that the hair had to come from new hair

growth around the subject's neck.
 
Thirdly, she was to cut her father's

fingernails and place them in a plastic bag.

Jean hurried back to the East Point Police Department and conferred

with Assistant Chief Lieb and Sergeant Tedford.
 
She informed them of

Solomons'advice.
 
This time, they had every reason to take her

seriously.
 
Tedford immediately called Dr. Jones and asked if it was

possible that Paw Allanson had been given arsenic.

"It could be," Jones said, his voice suddenly aware of an unthinkable

possibility.
 
"The symptoms look like so many other diseases-at least

at first."

When arsenic is ingested, it seeks a place to "hide" in the human

body.

It goes rapidly to areas where phosphorus is stored and replaces it.

Human beings need phosphorus for energy.
 
After long exposure to the

poison, the extremities ache, circulation is compromised, and

eventually paralysis and death occur.
 
In the beginning, arsenic

poisoning can resemble a bad case of boneaching flu with vomiting.

Later it can mimic multiple sclerosis and other more serious chronic

illnesses.

"We're going to need lab tests," Tedford said.
 
"Mrs. Boggs said we

need at least two hundred cc's of urine over a twenty-fourhour

period."

Jones said he would advise the hospital at once and the urine samples

would be collected.
 
Tedford hung up and called the Fulton County

D.A."s Office and informed them of the new suspicions about Paw

Allanson's condition.

On June 26, Tedford accompanied Jean Boggs to her father's hospital

room.
 
The old man sat patiently as Jean snipped a quarter of a cup of

hair and cut his fingernails.
 
Tedford said he would be back the next

day to pick up the twenty-four-hour urine sample.

By 8:00 A.M. on Monday, June 28, 1976, Dr. H. Horton McGurdy of the

Georgia State Crime Lab was in possession of a brown jug containing

1,000 cc's of urine, a plastic bag with hair and hair root samples, and

a similar bag with fingernail clippings.

Analysis would begin at once.

. . .

jean Boggs was nervous.
 
Now that the wheels were in motion, she hated

the thought of her mother alone with Pat out on Washington Road.

Scarcely expecting a gracious welcome, she drove there anyway.
 
She

found Nona Allanson sitting in the kitchen with a practical nurse Pat

had hired.
 
The nurse stared at jean.
 
"Miz Allanson's went on home to

tend to some things," she said coldly.

Evidently, she had been told to beware of Jean.

jean saw tears on her mother's cheeks.
 
She knelt down and took her

hand.
 
"What's wrong, Mother?"

"There's nothing wrong with her," the nurse answered quickly.

"Yes, there is, " Jean said.
 
"She's been crying."

"She doesn't ever cry unless you come around her."

"Mother, what is wrong?"
 
Jean asked again.

"I can't tell you," Nona mumbled.

"I can't help you, Mother, if you don't tell me what's wrong."

Finally, Nona sighed and asked sadly, "Why did Daddy kill Walter and

Carolyn?"

"Who on earth told you that?"

"Mrs.
 
Radcliffe.

"Mrs.
 
Radcliffe?
 
Is she the only one who told you that?"

Jean thought surely her mother was confused.

"Pat told me too, and Colonel Radcliffe Nona Allanso was so upset that

her daughter could not calm her down.

Jean got Bob Tedford on the phone and he offered to come out and talk

to her mother.
 
jean had some questions of her own he arrived at the

house, the young detective assured too.
 
When the elderly woman that

her husband was not a killer, that nobody believed that.
 
He was sick

and he was in the hospital, but he would be home with her soon-just