Hi, and welcome to the H is for Homicide podcast where we talk about all things true crime ranging from sinister to psychotic stories worldwide. In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the case of the toxic tea lady, Carrie Grills. 

Caroline Grills was a most unlikely multiple murder suspect, being a 63-year-old mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She was charged with having murdered, by poison, four distant relatives, using what was then the virtually untraceable thallium. The method was not uncommon in the 1950s - the mother-in-law of prominent Balmain rugby league footballer Bobby Lulham was acquitted of poisoning him. It had made him very ill but did not kill him.

Grills was born to George Michelson and Mary (née Preiers) in Balmain, Sydney, at some point between 1888 and 1890.[1][3] She married Richard William Grills on 22 April 1908, with whom she had four sons.[3]

She first became a murder suspect in 1947 after the deaths of four family members: her 87-year-old stepmother Christine Mickelson; relatives by marriage Angelina Thomas and John Lundberg; and sister-in-law Mary Anne Mickelson. Authorities tested tea she had given to two additional family members (Christine Downey and John Downey of Redfern) on 13 April 1953, and detected the then-common household rat poison, thallium. At the time, thallium was easy to buy over the counter in New South Wales.[3] Mickelson had inherited from Grills' father a house in Gladesville, and Grills was speculated to have murdered her to inherit it.

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Information sources: Murderpedia.org: https://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/grills-caroline.htm#:~:text=Thallium%20poison%20case%20in%201953,then%20the%20virtually%20untraceable%20thallium.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Grills

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