Poison Widow House

The Poison Widow House in Whitewater is tied to one of the strangest murder cases in Wisconsin history. In September 1923, Myrtle Schaude was arrested after attempting to poison her four children with chocolates containing strychnine. Schaude had taken the children for a ride in the country and gave them the poisoned candy as part of a plan that could have made their deaths look like an automobile accident. When the children began eating it, she suddenly warned them it was poisonous and pulled the candy from the youngest child’s mouth. One of her sons became ill but survived.

The investigation quickly became even darker. While in custody, Schaude confessed to poisoning her husband, Edward, about a year earlier. Authorities exhumed his body and found evidence of strychnine poisoning. Schaude had previously lived with Edward on a farm outside Whitewater before the couple moved into town, where their home also operated as a boarding house. One of the boarders was Ernest Kufahl, a student at the Whitewater Normal School with whom Schaude had become romantically involved. Kufahl was accused of helping poison Edward but was acquitted. Schaude ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter for Edward’s death and four counts of attempted murder involving her children. She received a 20-year prison sentence and was later pardoned by Wisconsin Gov. Fred R. Zimmerman in 1929.

Today, the house is known locally as the Poison Widow House, a reference to the nickname newspapers gave Schaude during the sensational 1923 case. It is important to separate this house from the Schaude family’s earlier farm, which occupied a different location and is now part of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus. The 1036 W. Main Street house is specifically associated with the later Whitewater chapter of the story, including the poisoned-candy attempt that exposed the mystery surrounding Edward Schaude’s death.

Wisconsin author Linda Godfrey documented the bizarre case in her 2003 book The Poison Widow.

In nearby Calvary Cemetery lies the graves of an entire family suspected of being poisoned to death.