Body Of Harry Houdini May Be Exhumed To Prove He Was Murdered

He was the world’s most famous escape artist, but the one thing he couldn’t escape was the mystery surrounding his death.

Even more than 80 years after he died, the name Harry Houdini stands out in the lore of legendary magicians. He first became famous for his death defying stunts, like being tied up in a locked trunk that was thrown into a river, only to emerge free and alive.

But that changed on Halloween 1926, when an appendicitis attack and peritonitis led to his sudden demise.

Traditional wisdom has always had it that a punch in the stomach triggered the fatal illness.

But now a relative of the great illusionist says he plans to exhume the legend’s body to discover once and for all what really killed the magic man.

George Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini’s brother, believes the performer was actually murdered and that his death has been covered up all these years.

“It needs to be looked at,” Hardeen insists. “His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it’s time to take a second look.”

There was never an autopsy and his body was buried despite rumours of what might have really happened to him.

If what his distant relative believes is true, then whodunit to Houdini?

Hardeen thinks a group called “The Spiritualists”, who held fraudulent seances and bilked people out of their money, had every reason to want Houdini dead.

He spent much of his career debunking the scam artists, and one of its devotees – no less a figure than Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – once sent a letter threatening the magician.

“[He will] get his just desserts very exactly meted out,” Doyle wrote in 1924. “I think there is a general payday coming soon.”

Two years later, the man in top physical shape was dead.

Many now believe he was poisoned with arsenic, and if that’s true there may still be traces of it left in his bones.

Hardeen has hired a lawyer to clear the legal hurdles and has asked two well known forensic pathologists to join the team.

One of them, Dr. Michael Baden, has studied the remains of everyone from Jesse James to the Boston Strangler and has served on panels investigating the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

He’s already noted irregularities in the death certificate, including that the magician’s appendix is listed as being on the left side. And appendicitis is rarely caused by a punch.

There’s no clear date yet for when the exhumation and autopsy would be performed.

But it appears Houdini still has one final trick up his sleeve. And it may have taken eight decades for him to reveal it.