Coffee Was Poisoned Deliberately, Police Say
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From Times Wire Reports
A 78-year-old parishioner who died after drinking arsenic-laced coffee at a church gathering was deliberately killed, state police said.
Police spokesman Steve McCausland said the arsenic that killed Walter Morrill and left more than a dozen others sick was in the coffee they all drank at a Lutheran church in New Sweden, about 300 miles north of Portland.
“We are officially treating this case as a homicide,” McCausland said in a statement, adding there was no evidence the arsenic was put in the coffee accidentally.
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