Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde’s trial in the Swope family poisonings provoked media frenzy

On March 5, 1910, in Independence, Missouri, Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde was indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Col. Thomas H. Swope; the murder of Col. Swope’s nephew, Chrisman Swope; a count of manslaughter in the death of Col. Moss Hunton; and the poisonings of eight other people at Swope’s mansion on 406 South Pleasant Street.

Col. Swope, who’d made his fortune buying up real estate in what would become downtown Kansas City, donated what is now Swope Park to its citizens. His ornate tomb is there now, but his body underwent much poking and prodding by forensic examiners before he was finally laid to rest. By removing and slicing up Swope’s brain, experts at the time concluded that he had not died of a stroke, as his attending doctor, Hyde, had claimed, but of strychnine poisoning.

Hyde’s trial began almost exactly a hundred years ago and had the attention of seemingly every area resident at the time.