It’s evening on July 27th, 1933, in Greenwood, Mississippi. Allegedly, Dr. Sara Ruth Dean calls Dr. John Preston Kennedy and says he owes her “a going away party.” Despite the fact that he’s due to remarry his ex-wife the next week, he goes and picks her up at her residence and they return to his office. They have several drinks. Finally, Dr. Sara Dean says they should have a “farewell drink.” She’s brought whiskey in a black bottle. Dr. Preston Kennedy leaves the room to get water and returns to find the glasses poured. As he sips, he notices a metallic taste and deduces it’s been spiked with mercury. He quickly drives her home and then heads down Avenue I, stopping to vomit along the way. He returns to his office and takes all manner of medicine to eject the poison from his system. Five days later, with no improvement, he finally consults with other doctors, but it’s too late. He calls two brothers to his bedside and gives a deathbed statement pointing out Dean as a poisoner, and promptly dies.
I ran into an article about Dr. Sara Ruth Dean while doing research on a completely different person. Poison Highball Death Case was the scandalous headline that caught my eye. As I read more about her, I became very intrigued. Was Dr. Dean a jealous woman who poisoned her lover at a final deadly tryst? Or was she a woman maligned at the top of her game?
First, the drink. It’s not my favorite. I do love a whiskey sour, but I don’t love a whiskey neat. This heavy-on-the-whiskey flavor is just a tad too strong for me. But this one’s for Sara, so here it is.
Highball Whiskey
2 oz whiskey
4 oz club soda, chilled
Fill a highball glass with ice. Pour over two ounces whiskey, top with club soda and give a quick stir. If you’d like a sweeter drink, you can replace the club soda with ginger ale or ginger beer.
Dr. Sara Ruth Dean
Dr. Sara Ruth Dean was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, about 1899. She showed an early interest in medicine and pursued her undergraduate degree in pre-med at the University of Mississippi. When she graduated in 1920, she had a significant list of accomplishments under her belt and, according to her yearbook “only one failing” : writing love sonnets.
After her undergrad, she went on to the University of Virginia and, according to her later obituary, she was the first woman to graduate as a doctor from UVA. She was still serious about medicine. She was still serious about romance.
She began her career and worked very hard, quickly becoming an expert in children’s diseases. She worked with the Women’s and Childrens hospital in Boston and at the Childrens Hospital in Denver, Colorado, before returning to Greenwood and opening an office as a Baby Specialist. She was living the single life with a heavy focus on her very successful career.
But soon she was making national headlines — and not in a good way.
In July of 1933, she was charged with the poison murder of her so-called lover, John Preston Kennedy. It is said that when she was arrested, her only comment was “Well, I’m surprised.” She immediately put in a writ of habeas corpus. You see, the only thing holding Dr. Sara Dean was a statement by her admirer. As of yet, they had no other proof that she was tied to his death in any way.
But that statement haunted her for the entire trial. The prosecution said she was motivated by jealousy. Dr. Kennedy was due to return to his previous wife and get re-married, imminently. They also claimed she would have had access to mercury chloride, a small portion which was found in his system.
Had the esteemed children’s doctor really stooped so low? The defense gave an adamant no. Dr. Sara Dean was Not Guilty. They planned, not only, to prove that Dr. Kennedy had many other ailments that could have caused his death, but that the amount of mercury found in his system could have been caused by other things. How did the defense prove that Preston Kennedy had other ailments? Love letters, of course. They read dozens of love letters from Kennedy to Sara that proclaimed his love while also pronouncing his ongoing health issues.
Finally, the defense moved to prove that Dr. Dean wasn’t jealous. In fact, she had moved way past Dr. Preston Kennedy, recently, and was planning to get married to Captain Maull of Delaware. Perhaps it was Preston that had been jealous and had, in a fit of rage and heartbreak, committed suicide! Unfortunately, that backfired pretty quickly when Maull denied their engagement.
Nevertheless, Sara Ruth Dean’s auntie came to the stand and said that the night that this apparent tryst took place, Sara Ruth Dean was with her.
Twelve men sat on the jury. And despite the fact that the prosecution hadn’t produced a bottle with mercury, and despite that fact that they hadn’t found any whiskey or mercury in Dr. Sara Dean’s possessions, and despite the fact that the motive was weak and that she had an alibi, they still found her guilty of murder in the first degree. She was sentenced to life in the state penitentiary.
People were pissed. Women were pissed.
They wrote letters to the judge and the paper. Many believed the only thing she was guilty of was falling into the affections of the unworthy and wrathfully jealous Dr. John Preston Kennedy — and that she was further maligned by the all male jury that had been entranced by the ex-wife’s sob story of a broken home. Dr. Sara Dean was the clear interloper, here. But being guilty of an affair is not the same thing as being guilty of murder by poisoning.
And somewhere, deep down, they knew they got it wrong.
Dr. Sara Dean appealed. In July of 1935, Governor Sennett Connor gave her a full pardon based on private talks with Kennedy’s ex-wife and the prosecuting attorney.
She went on to have a successful, decades-long career in Mississippi. She spent two decades as attending physician at the Mississippi State Hospital. Eventually, she did get married, but it was a later in life marriage, to Marshall Pitchford. Maybe men were wary of her after the scandal. Or maybe she just preferred to be a bit more foot loose and free in her private life while continuing to focus on her work.
What do you think? Do you think Dr. Dean was a jealous poisoner or a maligned doctor? Personally, I wish she were still around. I’d get her a drink, listen to her life story — dig up a love poem or two.
This research was done in preparation for my program, Can I Get You A Drink: True Stories of Female Poisoners, which I offer to libraries, historical societies, book clubs and other nerdy/fun groups of all kinds. If this case interests you, check out the live footage of the courthouse held at the University of South Carolina in the Moving Image Research Collections.