Henry Casavant opened the package that had just arrived for him, special delivery. Cream puffs. He’d enjoyed the best cream puffs he’d ever eaten a few days earlier when he accepted an invitation to dinner at the home of Cornelia Merckelbach on Pond Street in Woonsocket.
Cornelia was a 25-year-old French girl who had arrived in America aboard the “Marquette” on Aug. 6, 1912. With $50 in her pocket, she went to live with her sister on Earl Street in Woonsocket and find employment as a housekeeper. Standing less than 5 feet in height, the brown-eyed brunette met Henry during the winter of 1915 and had socialized with him many times since then.
The day after his dinner with Cornelia, 30-year-old Henry told widowed mother of one, Hattie Oakley, how delicious Cornelia’s cream puffs were. Hattie, also 30 years of age, was another woman Henry had been spending time with. The widow of Charles Oakley, her husband had died only a year into their marriage, leaving her alone with an infant daughter, Giulia May. She resided on Ross Street in Woonsocket with her daughter at the home of her parents, Henry Seymour Merrill, a stonemason, and Lunette Roena (Davenport). She and Henry had been spending time with each other for seven years.
Henry retrieved a cream puff from the trio in the special delivery package of Jan. 26, 1916, and handed it to Almon Vadeboncoeur, the 29-year-old husband and father who was working with him that day on a carpentry project. He then proceeded to eat the other two cream puffs himself.
That evening, Henry was taking Cornelia to a motion picture theater when he began to feel ill on the way. He told her he had to return home.
Later that night, while at home on Social Street in Woonsocket with his 25-year-old wife, Jessie, and his three young children, Almon died.
Henry himself was hovering near death when Cornelia recalled him telling her about the cream puffs he had received that day. The authorities were contacted, and soon Hattie was called in for questioning. She vehemently denied having anything to do with the delivery. However, she made it clear to police that Henry belonged to her. She confessed that he had promised to marry her and that although he had turned his attentions toward another woman, she was not jealous and still expected to become his wife.
After a three-hour interrogation, Hattie was taken to the county jail in Cranston and held without bail while an investigation took place. At her trial, Hattie pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder. She remained steadfast in proclaiming her innocence until the clerk at Hodder’s Pharmacy testified that she had come into the store and purchased two ounces of arsenic the day before the murder, claiming that she needed it to kill rats. That afternoon, the trial came to an abrupt end when Hattie suddenly decided to plead no contest to second-degree murder and accept a sentence of 20 years at the Women’s Reformatory in Cranston.
Two handwriting experts had already testified that the writing on the package Henry received came from Hattie’s hand, and a pathologist testified that arsenic was found in Almon’s stomach as well as on the wrapper from the cream puff package.
Despite having survived his plight, Henry was now crippled and residing with his parents on Transit Street in Woonsocket. He died on Nov. 2, 1942.
While her mother served out her prison sentence, Giulia lived with her grandparents until their deaths – Henry’s in 1916 and Lunette’s in 1918. She then went to board with a man named Oliver Cook and his family in Athol, Massachusetts. Oliver’s brother-in-law, William Guy Faulkner, also lived there. He was employed as a machinist in a leather goods factory while Giulia worked alongside him as the factory’s bookkeeper. The two were married in 1923 and settled into a home on Marble Street in Athol, where they both gained employment at the city hall – he as a janitor and she as a clerical worker.
After Hattie had finished serving her sentence, she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, having taken back her maiden name, perhaps in an attempt to separate herself from the woman in the murderous headlines of 1916.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.