'Aunt Thally': Queen of the Thallium Poisoners

In the years immediately following World War II, a spate of thallium poisonings gripped the country. Of all the thallium poisoners, 63-year-old grandmother Caroline ‘Aunt Thally’ Grills was the most notorious. Grills killed four family members and poisoned three others – not because of lust or revenge for domestic violence, as was the case with other women sensationally sent to trial in the early 1950s, but because of the thrill she got from watching her victims slowly die. In the annals of Australian crime, and in the context of Australian society at the time, the crimes of ‘Aunt Thally’ are uniquely bizarre.