One Coincidence Too Many

CRIME With his china-blue eyes, wavy white hair and deferential manner, William Dale Archerd, 55, is the very antithesis of a Bluebeard. If the Los Angeles County district attorney's office is right however, the sometime hearing-aid salesman's penchant for marriage was matched only by his preference for murder. Last week he was in jail facing charges that he killed his nephew and two of his seven wives; the investigation also implicated him in the deaths of a third wife and two male friends. The suspected weapon: insulin.* The list of Archerd's wives, relatives and acquaintances who have died after manifesting symptoms of insulin poisoning is indeed striking. The first was William Jones Jr., 34, in 1947, who died the day after Archerd paid a visit to his hospital sickbed. The motive, if any, is unknown. The second-and certainly the weirdest case-was that of bride No. 4, Zella, 48, who died in 1956. Two months after their marriage, Archerd told police in the Los Angeles suburb of Covina, two burglars entered their house. With guns in one hand, hypodermic needles in the other, said Archerd, they injected both himself and Zella with a drug, then made off with $500 in cash, overlooking jewelry and other valuables. Archerd was unaffected by the unsought medication, but his wife went from convulsions into a coma and died. If they found anything odd in such a story, Covina police found no cause for arrest. Kindly Uncle William. The third unfortunate, in 1958, was Juanita Plum Archerd, wife No. 5. Two days after their marriage in Las Vegas, Juanita was taken to the hospital, suffering from what was described as an overdose of barbiturates. She died the next day of a condition that looked strangely like insulin poisoning. Frank Stewart, 54, was the fourth, in 1960. Taken to the hospital after apparently faking a fall in an airport rest room to collect on insurance, Stewart was visited by the ever-solicitous Archerd--and died after the usual convulsions that night. Archerd, recipient of the insurance, tried but failed to collect. At about this time, Archerd's brother Everett died at his job, and Archerd and his mother were entrusted with $5,000 for Everett's son, Burney, 15. In August 1961, Burney was taken to the hospital, where he reported that he had been hit by a car, though an investigation showed no such accident had taken place. Burney nonetheless remained in the hospital, where he was visited by his kindly Uncle William. He died soon thereafter. Symptoms: those of insulin poisoning. Archerd's mother, co-trustee of the $5,000, herself died three weeks later of causes not disclosed by the investigation.

In April 1965, Archerd--calling himself James Lynn Arden--took Bride No. 7 (marriages Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 6 ended in divorce or annulment). His new wife was Mary Brinker Post, 59, a widow with grown children, a successful author of short stories and novels for the women's market (Annie Jordan, Prescription for Marriage), and a public relations woman. Mary was admitted in a coma to Pomona Valley Community Hospital last November and died next day of hypoglycemia--shortage of blood sugar. Her death was one coincidence too many, and the Los Angeles County sheriff's department finally put eight detectives on the trail of Archerd, who had been convicted of peddling narcotics in the early '50s. More than 25 years ago, it turned out, he had worked as an orderly in the insulin-shock ward of a state mental hospital.

* If Archerd is convicted, he will be only the second known insulin murderer. The first, English Male Nurse Kenneth Barlow, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1957 for the murder of his wife by insulin injection. A natural hormone, insulin helps to control the body's use of sugar for energy. Injected into diabetics, it lowers an abnormally high bloodsugar level. Too great a dosage, however, can bring the sugar content down to the danger point, bringing on convulsions, coma-and death.

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