Bio

Arthur Warren Waite was born in 1889. He grew up in the United States, but specific details about his early life and family are not widely documented. Waite pursued a career in dentistry and eventually became a dentist. He moved to New York, where he shared an apartment with his wife and her retired parents. His father-in-law, John E. Peck, had made a fortune as a pharmacist.

Waite was ambitious and sought to inherit money from his wife's family. However, both John Peck and his wife, Hannah, were in good health at the time. Rather than wait for natural causes to take their toll, Waite began to concoct plans to speed up their demise through careful manipulation. He had access to disease germs, which he thought could help him achieve his goal more quietly.

His early life set the stage for his later actions, as he developed a disturbing method of thinking about life and death. There is little information about his personality or relationships before this period, but his desire for wealth and influence would later lead him down a dark path.

Murder Story

Arthur Warren Waite was a dentist in New York who committed two murders in early 1916. His first victim was his mother-in-law, Hannah Peck. Waite poisoned her with a mixture of diphtheria and influenza germs added to her food. After becoming ill, she died on January 30, 1916.

Following Hannah’s death, Waite focused on his father-in-law, John Peck. He attempted various methods to kill John, including adding germs to a nasal spray and trying to weaken him with calomel, but these attempts were unsuccessful. Finally, in March 1916, Waite became impatient and chose to use arsenic. He slipped it into John’s tea and soup, leading to his death on March 12, 1916.

After the deaths, investigators grew suspicious of Waite. An anonymous letter prompted an autopsy on John Peck, which revealed arsenic in his body. The testing method for arsenic had been developed earlier and confirmed the presence of the poison.

Waite was arrested on March 23, 1916, and later put on trial. The evidence was strong, and he was convicted of John Peck's murder. In prison, Waite admitted to the methods he had used to poison both Hannah and John. He was executed by electrocution on May 24, 1917.