Reply #35: something similar happened up here

[Maine-ah]

a couple of years ago (arsenic in the coffee)

A church member put poison in a coffee pot, authorities believe, and later committed suicide over the incident, in which a fellow church member died from drinking the coffee. Authorities continue to investigate whether others were involved in the crime, and are also trying to determine if possible disputes or tensions within the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in New Sweden, were a factor in the crime. The church is a member congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the nation's biggest Lutheran body. The church has been in the process of searching for a new pastor, the ELCA News Service reported.

The victim of the poisoning, Walter Reid Morrill, 78, died on April 28, the day after he and other members of the church enjoyed a typical Sunday afternoon social-hour snack of coffee, sandwiches and cake.

Police said a suicide note left by fellow church member Daniel Bondeson--found dead at his home on 2 May, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound--appeared to link him to the incident, in which 15 others were poisoned, though none of them fatally. Bondeson, a potato farmer who did not attend church the day of the poisonings, killed himself after authorities publicly announced that the poisonings were a deliberate act, though perhaps meant to look like a natural event, as the groundwater in rural Maine often has traces of arsenic.

The incident has severely shaken the small congregation and drawn New Sweden, population of 162, unwanted national and international attention. The New York Times likened the case to a television murder mystery, and for days, the small town found itself besieged with reporters.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_18278_ENG_HTM.htm