Wilcox County, Alabama doctor used frogs to investigate 120-year-old poisoning, murder of Albert Perkins

Alabama Gov. William D. Jelks

This summer marks 120 years since one of the strangest crimes in Wilcox County history, the 1901 poisoning of Albert Perkins, the investigation of which included an elaborate experiment involving four frogs.

In the Sept. 5, 1901 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era, editor Sherwood Bonner reported, under the headline “Albert Perkins Poisoned,” that Perkins, a young man living “in the Grampian Hills,” had died from poison on the night of Aug. 30. When news of the poisoning reached Camden, county solicitor J.P. Jones convened a jury of seven men and two doctors - T.W. Jones and W.B. Jones - who went to the scene of the crime to investigate the strange death. J.P. Jones held an inquest while the two doctors conducted an autopsy.

About a dozen witnesses were questioned, and the jury determined that Perkins was among a large crowd who attended a church gathering and was seen standing beside a booth were candy and cakes were being sold. At some point, a man named Ben Lee, who was about 70 years old, approached the booth, bought some candy and gave a stick of it to Perkins. A few minutes later, Perkins collapsed and began having convulsions.

“He was picked up by some of the testifying witnesses and when he recovered consciousness, someone asked him what was the matter, if he had been drinking anything. He replied that he had been drinking nothing, except that Ben Lee had given him something to drink out of a black bottle, and that it was as bitter as quinine, and that he has been feeling curious ever since. He repeated this statement several times between his convulsions and, in fact, until he died, which was about an hour afterwards.”

After Perkins’ autopsy, the jury reached a verdict that Lee had poisoned Perkins. It was reported that Dr. W.B. Jones spent several hours testing Perkins’ stomach contents and found that they contained strychnine, arsenic and copper.

“He then proceeded to test the contents by administering some of it to frogs. The first frog died of convulsions in two minutes, the second in five, the third in 15 and the fourth in 20 minutes. The difference in time is accounted for both by the sizes of the different frogs and the respective quantity of the contents swallowed by each. From what we can learn, this is the first thorough chemical test ever made in our county, heretofore the stomach contents having been sent off for examination.”

Authorities arrested Lee on murder charges and placed him in the Wilcox County Jail. On Sept. 10, a preliminary trial was held at the Wilcox County Courthouse with J.P. Jones presiding. Evidence was presented, and Lee was remanded back to jail without bail.

In late November, Lee’s murder trial was held before Judge John Moore, and Lee was subsequently found guilty as charged and given a life sentence in prison. A large crowd attended the trial, and the “seating capacity of the courthouse was taxed to its utmost.” The newspaper noted that Lee was an old man and “in the course of nature, it is hardly to be expected that he will spend a very long time in the penitentiary.”

In June 1904, Lee was still alive and came up for a pardon. Public notices about his upcoming pardon application were published in the newspaper for several weeks, but whether or not Gov. William D. Jelks approved his application is unknown. Despite my best efforts, I could not determine what became of Ben Lee, but in all likelihood, this notorious poisoner died behind bars.