Free Republic

Nearly 200 years after Jane Austen‘s untimely death, crime novelist Lindsay Ashford has come up with a new explanation: arsenic poisoning. Austen, the English author of such classic novels as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility,” died in 1817 at age 41. Her death has been attributed to everything from cancer to Addison’s disease. But Ashford, who moved to Austen’s village of Chawton three years ago and started writing her new crime novel in the former home of Austen’s brother, stumbled across another possibility — that Austen died of arsenic poisoning. ... Ashford recognized that Austen’s symptoms could be...

The unexpected death of conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart just got a whole lot more mysterious. Only two months after Breitbart’s passing, the coroner that investigated the cause of death may have succumbed to arsenic poisoning. Michael Cormier, 61, passed away on April 20, the Los Angeles Times reports this week. Although Cormier’s death is only being publicized now, the timing of actual passing actually came within hours of the release of the preliminary autopsy report of Breitbart. Commenting to the Times on the latest news, Lt. Alan Hamilton of the Los Angeles Police Department says that investigators have not ruled...

<p>He spent his life trying to determine how people died. But now his colleagues are searching for answers after he died under mysterious circumstances.</p>

BURBANK (CBS) — An official with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office may have been poisoned with arsenic, police said Friday. KNX 1070′s John Brooks reports investigators are taking a closer look at the death of 61-year-old Micheal Cormier Cormier, a respected autopsy and forensic technician who also was a photographer with the special operations response team, was rushed to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank from his North Hollywood home one week ago. Hospital staff eventually advised police that there may be “suspicious circumstances” surrounding Cormier’s death, said LAPD Lt. Alan Hamilton. “We have information that could potentially include...