New York – For all his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini couldn’t escape the Grim Reaper: He died on Halloween 1926, apparently from a punch to the stomach that ruptured his appendix.
But rumors that he was murdered have persisted for decades.
Eighty-one years after Houdini’s death, his great-nephew wants the escape artist’s body exhumed to determine if enemies poisoned him for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead.
“It needs to be looked at,” George Hardeen told The Associated Press. “His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it’s time to take a second look.”
Houdini’s family scheduled a news conference for today to give details on the plans. Prominent New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina is helping clear any legal hurdles to the exhumation.
A team of top forensic investigators would conduct new tests on Houdini’s body, said Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini’s brother.
The circumstances surrounding Houdini’s sudden death are as murky as the rivers where he often escaped from chains, locks and wooden boxes.
No autopsy was performed on his body. When the death certificate was filed on Nov. 20, 1926, Houdini’s body – brought by train from Detroit to Manhattan – had already been buried in Queens, along with any evidence of a possible death plot.
Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, “Was Houdini Murdered?”
A 2006 biography, “The Secret Life of Houdini,” raised the issue again and convinced some that he might have been poisoned, including Hardeen.
