by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho

(Note: The spellings of the Potigian family’s names come directly from their gravestones at Fresno’s Ararat Cemetery; these are the spellings that I consider to be correct, as their have the final word. Spellings cited in other sources, however, remain unchanged, according to the original quotes cited.)

Remember that love never dies.

Wednesday, October 31, 1923

Exactly one century ago, the Halloween patrol was ready to hit the streets. And with fifteen extra officers on duty that night, no crime would go unpunished.

“Destruction of property by merrymakers celebrating Halloween will be guarded against by every available member of the police department, Chief of Police Frank P. Truax said last night,” The Fresno Morning Republican reported the morning of Wednesday, October 31, 1923. “In addition, he added, it is possible that 15 special officers will be sworn in.

“Harmless fun will not come under the ban, Chief Truax said, but property damage, as has occurred in the past, must not occur. Many pranks without injury to the person or property of anyone, he added, can be brought forth for the pleasure of the merrymakers.”

In the days before trick-or-treating, or even Halloween parades, the Lord of Misrule reigned supreme.

Hopped up on the sugar rush of caramel apples and penny candy, the youth ran wild in the streets on this most ancient of Celtic fire festivals—a night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was at its thinnest—and adult fears of very real dangers prevailed over the innocent thrills and chills of the children’s campfire ghost stories.

“Officers, he said, will be instructed to take into custody anyone carrying off property or otherwise violating the law,” warned the Morning Republican. “Special warning against a practice of throwing eggs at passing automobiles—prevalent last year, and the cause of considerable damage to property, and to several persons—was issued by the officer. He added that members of the jitney patrol would be instructed to take any such persons immediately to the jail or detention home.”

But for 17-year-old Margaret Potigian, the Halloween patrol would be of no assistance this year. Because by the stroke of midnight on that most fateful of All Hallows’ Eves, the girl was already dead.

As a waning marmalade moon rose in the twilit sky like a lopsided pumpkin, Fresno County Sheriff William F. Jones and District Attorney George R. Lovejoy found themselves knee-deep in a fledgling murder investigation—and only wading in deeper as the sky darkened.

As The Fresno Bee had gone to press that afternoon, the front-page headline would have been impossible to miss. “Death of Girl Investigated by Officials Here,” read the header. “Poison Suspected in Case, According to Statement of Coroner—District Attorney Lovejoy and Sheriff William F. Jones spent the entire day investigating the case secretly, and it was rumored that an arrest would be made.

“Miss [Margaret] Patigian was an orphan and lived with her brother, George Patigian, on his ranch on the White’s Bridge Road.”

And before this most bedeviled of all nights was through, one black widow would weave a most intricate web—one in which she herself would become hopelessly ensnared.

In the horrific wake of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916, Setrag Potigian fled his native Armenia with his young wife Dikranoohi (sixteen years his junior) and their growing family, settling in the agricultural heartland of California’s Central Valley.

By 1920, the Potigian family’s future looked bright, indeed—the family had become quite wealthy, with a large and prosperous ranch outside Fresno, and alight with the joyous arrival of the family’s youngest son Garabed.

But tragedy loomed like a dark cloud in the distance of a sunny day—less than a year after the birth of Garabed, Setrag’s wife Dikranoohi died early in 1921, at the age of only 30, and left with three children, including an infant, the grief-stricken widower felt it prudent to wed again—and promptly. So later that same year, Setrag married an attractive young widow with a son already grown and gone: thirty-three-year-old Eliza Louise Ekhpurian Kason, who had also fled her Armenian homeland with her own family, along with her mother Maria.

But Setrag would soon come to regret his hasty second marriage, as the new Mrs. Potigian’s true colors were rather quick to reveal themselves.

During the idyllic summer of 1922, while out on a family picnic at Collins Hot Springs, on the San Joaquin River, two-year-old Garabed wandered away from the picnic site, despite the fact that his stepmother was supposed to be watching him. “The little boy was later found in shallow water with a bruise to his forehead, the apparent victim of a drowning” (Morrison 54).

Shortly after the untimely demise of his youngest child, Setrag Potigian consulted his friend and attorney Denver S. Church about his growing suspicions about his new wife. The distraught rancher “blamed his wife’s neglect for the death of his youngest son, and told Church that [she] exhibited extreme cruelty towards his remaining son and daughter…he was in mortal fear that his wife would kill him” (Morrison 54).

And though Church would draw up the divorce papers, Setrag ultimately decided to uphold his marital vows.

But less than a year later, in June of 1923, the attorney found himself again summoned by the beleaguered rancher, this time from his deathbed. Potigian had his trusted friend draw up his will, in which he left his entire estate—including the ranch—to his two surviving children: Margaret, 17, and George, almost 20. And to his second wife, Eliza, he left only “$1,000 and income from a twenty-acre vineyard for her lifetime, or until she remarried” (Morrison 56).

Setrag Potigian would die ten days later, on Monday, June 25, 1923, at the age of 49.

As the summer of 1923 wore on into scorching oblivion, the two Potigian heirs grieved for their dead family—three deaths in as many years—as their silent stepmother bided her time, cooking and cleaning in the wake of the reading of her late husband’s will. Bowls of her savory okra stew were washed down with steaming mugs of strong black coffee.

But when both George and Margaret became violently ill after one of their stepmother’s hearty meals on the evening of Friday, August 17th, the oldest Potigian son decided to start dining elsewhere. His sister, however, would not be so fortunate.

“Ten days later, Margaret again became violently ill after drinking a cup of coffee prepared by her stepmother” (Morrison 55). After staying a week at the Sample Sanitarium in Fresno, the teenager spent several weeks with her maternal grandmother, before returning to the sanitarium again in October.

And it was there that “Margaret began to tell the nurses of her suspicions that she had been poisoned by her stepmother, saying that the symptoms her father suffered from were very similar to her own. The doctors began running tests for poison. One test yielded positive results about the time Margaret died on October 30. The family doctor notified authorities of the suspicious circumstances” (Morrison 55-56).

And beneath the lengthening shadows of All Hallows’ Eve—the night of Wednesday, October 31, 1923—Mrs. Eliza Louise Ekhpurian Kason Potigian would find herself behind bars, spinning an intricate web of a tale more chilling—and more real—than any children’s campfire ghost story could ever even hope to be.

Thursday, November 1, 1923

“Confession that she administered poison to her stepchildren—resulting in the death of Margaret—was made last night to Deputy Sheriff Ed Melchonian, by Mrs. Eliza Potigian, District Attorney George R. Lovejoy announced,” reported The Fresno Morning Republican on Thursday, November 1, 1923. “Sheriff William F. Jones immediately placed her in the county jail, charged with first-degree murder.

“Belief that she also caused the death of her husband Setrak Potigian—who died in June—was expressed by Melchonian, who stated that Potigian’s death was very similar to that of his daughter. And that he died in the belief that his wife had caused his death.”

All Saints’ Day dawned cool and gray, the evidence of last night’s devilish revelries discarded in the now-empty streets. And for the last living Potigian heir—oldest son George, only 20—the loss of his entire immediate family was almost more than he could bear. But bolstered by the encouraging news of his stepmother’s arrest and subsequent confession, he withheld nothing from the authorities.

“Mrs. Potegian, according to the boy, hated Margaret and himself,” the Morning Republican revealed. “He said that they became ill frequently after eating breakfast, and he thought that poison had been placed in their coffee.

“…he is convinced that his sister was poisoned first by eating the okra stew, later recovering, and then that she became seriously ill, and died as the result of drinking coffee.”

George noted that he moved out of the house after that first poisoning attempt, refusing to eat any more meals prepared by his stepmother. But when his sister became violently ill yet again, he called in their family doctor, one C.F. Dickenson, who brought Margaret to Fresno’s Sample Sanitarium for treatment and observation.

Potigian’s eldest son “said there were bitter feelings toward him and his sister by the stepmother, who he quotes as stating she would do anything to get them out of the house,” continued the Republican. “The youth assigns the fact that [his father] did not leave more property to the stepmother as the reason for her hate for them, and her desire to remove them.”

But, according to Setrag Potigian’s friend and lawyer Denver S. Church—now an assistant district attorney—even if all of Eliza Potigian’s nefarious endeavors had gone according to plan, it all would have been for nought, anyway.

Church, who had revealed all to investigators—the late rancher’s suspicions regarding the 1922 drowning of his youngest son, his fear of his second wife, his suspicious death, and Mrs. Potigian’s claim that Setrag had been suffering from tuberculosis—made it clear that she never would have benefitted from the collective deaths of the entire Potigian clan, because of what was explicitly expressed in the Potigian patriarch’s last will and testament.

“When the will was read—a will carefully prepared by Church at Potegian’s direction—the widow was left a life estate, and the children became heirs to the bulk of the property,” maintained the Republican.“[But] even their death, though, Church says, would not give Mrs. Potegian the property.”

The Halloween confession by Mrs. Eliza Potigian coincided with the autopsy of her stepdaughter Margaret by Fresno County Coroner John N. Lisle, which confirmed the cause of death as poisoning by arsenic, which had slowly accumulated in the 17-year-old girl’s body over a period of many weeks.

After that ill-fated cup of coffee two months previous, Margaret Potigian had been admitted to the Sample Sanitarium, receiving care from family physician Dr. C.F. Dickenson, who also happened to be a poison expert.

“After a three-day vigil at the girl’s bedside…Dr. Dickenson pronounced the case one of deliberate poisoning,” The Fresno Morning Republican revealed, “his belief being staunchly maintained against the reasoning of other physicians—and against two failures of a local laboratory to disclose poison in the girl’s system. A third test proved the doctor’s theory…

“Dr. Dickenson declared he believed Miss Potigian had been fed poison in small quantities over a period of five weeks. When doctors’ aid was summoned, it was too late, he said, to render much assistance.”

The positive test for poisoning came back within hours of the Potigian girl’s death, which would have been a long and agonizing one. Gradual arsenic poisoning was “a more subtle, chronic approach” to murder, write Lisa Perrin in The League of Lady Poisoners. “In addition to stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea, the victim might complain of a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, and extreme thirst.”

Because “these symptoms are reflective of many kinds of common ailments…even a medical professional would be hard-pressed to jump to the conclusion of poisoning.”

Unless that medical professional was Dr. C.F. Dickenson, whose knowledge of poison gave Sheriff Jones and D.A. Lovejoy the ammunition they needed to sniff out a murderer—sooner, rather than much, much later.

And sure enough, Mrs. Potigian had been paying regular visits to her ailing stepdaughter at the sanitarium, bringing the girl more of that savory okra stew. “This soup contained small doses of the same poison,” reported the Republican, “and the girl continued to grow worse until her death, according to the attending physician.”

And because “arsenic has not telltale odor or revealing taste to give it away,” Perrin notes, it is relatively “easy to blend into food and drink,” giving arsenic its centuries-old reputation as “the perfect poison.”

So as her stepdaughter was being dissected on the autopsy table in the city morgue by Coroner Lisle, Mrs. Eliza Potigian spent Halloween in a jail cell, confessing in Armenian to Deputy Sheriff Ed Melchonian, who then translated to other authorities.

After the death of her second husband and the subsequent reading of his will, Setrag Potigian’s widow set in motion a murderous plot that, ironically, began with a prayer. Spreading ashes all over the floor, “she says she tried to ‘pray them to death’, praying 40 days and 40 nights that they [George and Margaret] would die,” The Fresno Morning Republican reported on All Souls’ Day—Friday, November 2, 1923.

“Decision to kill, she said, was made at the end of 40 days of prayer for the deaths of her stepchildren.” Because her late husband’s heirs had not succumbed to her evil incantations, Mrs. Potigian poisoned the okra stew, setting off a fateful chain reaction that would lead to her arrest for the murder of Margaret Potigian.

“Deputy Melchonian reported that the suspect had offered him all her jewelry and $2,500 in cash if he would secure her freedom. She was booked into the jail on a murder charge. When visited by her mother at the jail, she was heard to say, ‘I knew the poison would kill’” (Morrison 56-57).

Mrs. Potigian’s mother was herself under suspicion as her daughter’s accomplice, as it was learned in the course of the investigation that Mrs. Maria Torosian “had been present at the Potegian home the night the okra stew was served. Maria admitted being with her daughter that evening, but denied that she had a part in the preparation of the dinner. However, the sixty-year-old woman told deputies, ‘I know my daughter and I are going to rot in jail’” (Morrison 57).

By the afternoon of Saturday, November 3rd, with her arrest imminent, Maria Torosian hung herself from a beam in the Torosians’ farmhouse at Kearney and Cornelia, where her husband Madros found her swinging corpse. And when Eliza Potigian was notified of her mother’s suicide, the black widow fell apart under the weight of genuine grief, screaming that she alone was guilty of murder, not her mother. She then attempted to hang herself in her jail cell, but was resuscitated and placed on suicide watch.

“After Maria’s suicide, her husband, Madros Torosian, told officers that he had not been living with his wife for some time, as he, too, was afraid that she would kill him. He said that he and other members of his family had become violently ill after eating food and drinking coffee she had prepared” (Morrison 58).

Mr. Torosian’s explosive claims led to a full-scale search of the Torosian property, and what investigators discovered in the cellar was perhaps even more chilling than the original murder plot, as heinous as it was.

“The most sensational discovery in the Potegian poison plot case was disclosed when it was learned the authorities have uncovered a cache of highly poisonous grape juice—carefully prepared and systematically arranged and labeled as though for use in a wholesale orgy of extermination,” divulged The Modesto Bee on Saturday, November 10, 1923.

“The death cache consisted of several gallons of home-made grape juice, bottled, and carefully sealed with red and white corks—the crimson seals marking liquor that was found to be so loaded with arsenic, that it would be speedily and surely deadly…

“District Attorney Lovejoy said today that the discovery of the death cellar in the Torosian home is final verification of the suspicion that Mrs. Torosian planned the extermination of her husband, Madros Torosian, the family of his brother, K. Torosian, and probably many others, both relatives and friends who had incurred the aged woman’s dislike,” concluded The Modesto Bee.

So, it came as no surprise when a number of similar bottles were found at the Potigian residence, and upon being analyzed, were found to contain arsenic-spiked grape juice just as deadly.

The implications of such a large cache of “death bottles” pointed to a poison plot far older—and far more wide-ranging—than authorities had ever thought or imagined possible. How many more murders had been committed, and how many more poisoners were getting away with serial homicide undetected? What if Mrs. Eliza Potigian and her six times-widowed mother were just the proverbial tips of this poisonous iceberg?

District Attorney Lovejoy called for the exhumation of the body of Setrag Potigian, and on Tuesday, November 13th, Coroner Lisle exhumed and autopsied the deceased rancher. “Over the next couple of weeks, tissue examinations by experts determined that the bodies of Margaret and Setrak contained lethal levels of arsenic” (Morrison 59).

On the same day at Setrag’s autopsy, Eliza Potigian was determined by Fresno County Judge J.E. Wooley to be mentally competent and fit to stand trial. And in the weeks that followed, members of the extended Potigian family began to come forward with chilling allegations of their own.

“From Mrs. D. Moonjian, grandmother of the dead girl, it was learned…that as long ago as two years, Mrs. Potegian said she was praying for God to ‘dry up the whole Potegian family,’” The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record reported, “indicating, the investigating officers say, a carefully laid plot.

“M. Potegian, the girl’s uncle, furnished information indicating that other deaths were planned when he said he recently became violently ill after drinking coffee prepared by Mrs. Potegian, and was convinced she had tried to kill him.”

The holidays came and went. 1924 dawned as cold and Mrs. Eliza Potigian’s unthawed heart. And after a seemingly unending series of delays and venue changes—and a local media circus unlike any yet seen before—the murder trail commenced, lasting three weeks in length. On Saturday, March 1, 1924, it took the jury only an hour of deliberation to find the black widow guilty of the first-degree murder of her stepdaughter Margaret Potigian, cut off in the spring bloom of her youth.

The twelve jurors recommended life in prison, although two of them had originally voted for Mrs. Potigian to hang. (It had been decided early on to conduct two separate trials for each of the murders—Margaret and her father, Setrag—but for reasons unknown, the Potigian patriarch’s murder never made it to trial.)

The Potigian estate, including the ranch, was appraised the very next week—and it its entirety, was valued at $41,357.52. It was a sum to be inherited by George Potigian, the sole heir, and a sum that his stepmother never would have received in the first place, even if her murder plot had proven completely successful—and even if she had somehow managed to get away with it.

For George, it was a bittersweet victory. His entire family was dead, thanks to his evil stepmother. But by that June, love had lightened the heavy burden of his grief somewhat, as he no longer had to bear it alone. “Young Potegian, 20, and Lucille Torosian, 18, school playmate and first love, obtained a license to marry in Stockton Tuesday,” The Fresno Morning Republican proclaimed on Thursday, June 12, 1924.

And after an endless string of appeals through that summer and autumn, Mrs. Eliza Potigian—convicted serial murderess—began her life sentence at San Quentin two days before Christmas 1924.

By this time, George Potigian was newly 21, and an expectant father. In the years that followed, he and Lucille would own and operate a successful trucking business–and his son Leonard would grow up to fight in the Battle of Iwo Jima, marry, and have three sons of his own.

And what of Mrs. Eliza Louise Ekhpurian Kason Potigian? Did she spend the rest of her natural life behind bars at San Quentin?

If this was a movie, she would have. But it’s not, and she didn’t. The female serial killer was paroled in 1937—after serving 13 years of her life sentence—and went to live with her son Choren Kason in San Francisco. By 1940, she was remarried, to a Byron A. Webster, and in 1949, applied for the commutation of her life sentence.

Eliza was pardoned for her crimes by the State of California on Thursday, October 1, 1953—exactly three decades after murdering her second husband and his daughter in cold blood. And as if to prove that life isn’t already unfair enough, she lived to be almost a century old, dying of old age on Tuesday, January 26, 1988.

If there is any moral or lesson to this story, it is that love never dies: a father’s love for his children extending beyond the grave, providing for them after he is gone—an enduring family legacy that continues to exist to this very day, one that the proverbial evil stepmother was never able to completely snuff out.

Even if she did live to be 100.

Works Cited
“Extra Police Will Protect City Tonight.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 1923, p. 11.
“Death of Girl Investigated by Officials Here.” The Fresno Bee, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 1923, p.1.
“Woman Admits Murder of Her Step Daughter by Administering Poison.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Thursday, Nov. 1, 1923, p. 11.
“Murder of Girl by Step Mother Laid to Greed, Avarice.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Friday, Nov. 2, 1923, p. 11.
“Charge Poison Murder Plots Lasted 2 Years.” The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, Friday, Nov. 2, 1923, p. 1.
“Mother of Alleged Poisoner is Suicide.” The Los Angeles Evening Express, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 1923, p. 4.
“Find Cellar of Death in Home at Fresno.” The Modesto Bee, Saturday, Nov. 10, 1923, p. 1.
“Potegian Fate to Be Given to Jury Today.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Saturday, March 1, 1924, p. 13.
“Life Sentence Recommended with Verdict.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Sunday, March 2, 1924, p. 9.
“Estate Valued at $41,357.52.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Sunday, March 9, 1924, p. 20.
“Potegian Poison Case Chief Witness Takes Playmate as Bride.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Thursday, June 12, 1924, p. 9.
“Will Spend Life in Prison.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Saturday, Dec. 20, 1924, p. 13.
“Fresno Poisoner is Paroled from Women’s Prison.” The Fresno Bee, Saturday, July 3, 1937, p.1.
“Famous Fresno Murder of 1923 Returns to Spotlight.” The Fresno Bee, Saturday, July 30, 1949, p. 9.
Morrison, Scott. Murder in the Garden, Volume II: More Famous Crimes of Fresno County. Fresno, CA: Craven Street Books, 2006, pp. 53-63.
Perrin, Lisa. The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women. San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books LLC, 2023, p. 37-38.

All photos provided by the author.

Sarah A. Peterson-Camachois a library assistant with Fresno County Library, with a Bachelor’s in English and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from California State University, Fresno. In her free time, she makes soap and jewelry that she sells at Fresno-area craft fairs. She has written for The Clovis Roundup and the Central California Paranormal Investigators (CCPI) Newsletter.