In 1840s France, a young woman with aristocratic dreams married a man she didn’t want… and he didn’t live long enough to fix it. When Charles LaFarge fell violently ill, his symptoms made no sense — until a dead dog, a suspicious cake, and a trail of arsenic pointed straight at his new bride.
This episode dives into the life and crime of Marie LaFarge, the woman whose scandalous trial became France’s first forensic murder case. From the toxic marriage to the groundbreaking Marsh test, we unravel how a desperate wife, a bottle of arsenic, and one determined toxicologist changed criminal history forever.
Was Marie a cold‑blooded poisoner or a victim of 19th‑century hysteria?
Let’s get Dead Serious.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Lafarge
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/visibleproofs/galleries/cases/orfila.html
https://daily.jstor.org/the-arsenic-cake-of-madame-lafarge/
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cholera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/1162417
https://www.missedhistory.com/article/marie-lafarge-arsenic-trial-1840-forensic-toxicology
Movie:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028556/?ref_=fn_t_1 (L'Affaire LaFarge)
Book: No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators
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APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1896929129
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0QcspQIAcBaK2ZsoSzwYnE?si=2D6M514USTaYKXsJ8TKASw
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Ames_Marie
Edited by: Buzcar Wojciech
At Dead Serious, my goal is to share these stories honestly and respectfully. Although I research each case thoroughly, some details published by media outlets and other sources may not be independently verified.
