Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and A Charismatic Killer

Set in middle-class Kerrisdale, the green duplex at 2092 West 42nd Avenue is such an ordinary place it’s hard to imagine it was the stage for one of the most sensational murders in Vancouver’s history.

Esther Castellani, 40, died in 1965 from slow and painful arsenic poisoning by her husband of 19 years. A manager at a children’s clothing store, Esther had a 11-year-old daughter Jeannine.

Esther’s husband Rene worked for CKNW. He was known as the “Dizzy Dialler” as well as for his outrageous stunts. Once he played a maharaja who wanted to buy British Columbia. He stayed at the Westin Bayshore and rode around in limousines with bodyguards and an entourage of dancing girls. So effective was the campaign that outraged locals made up signs shouting “Keep BC British.” Shortly before his wife’s death, Rene climbed into a car perched on top of the 20-metre BowMac sign on West Broadway and vowed to stay there until every last car on the lot sold. It took nine days.

Esther knew about the affair. She’d received anonymous late night phone calls from a woman who asked: “Do you know your husband is going around with someone else?” She found a love letter in Rene’s pocket from Lolly.

Shortly after Esther confronted Rene about his affair she started to get stomach and lower back pain severe enough to keep her off work. Over the next couple of months she had bouts of nausea and diarrhea which quickly turned into intense pain and vomiting. Her fingers and toes went numb and she couldn’t walk or use her hands. Various diagnoses had the cause as sodium retention or gall bladder problems brought on by Esther’s poor diet. Esther saw several specialists, spent seven weeks in hospital, and went through more than 120 different tests. No one thought of arsenic poisoning and an autopsy failed to provide cause of death.

If not for the doggedness of Dr. Bernard Moscovich, Rene would have got away with murder. Moscovich had Esther’s body exhumed and tested for arsenic. The second autopsy revealed that she had ingested arsenic for more than six months before her death, including the time that she was in hospital and her arsenic levels were 1,500 times the normal arsenic content of the body.

Rene wasn’t arrested until months later when police discovered his affair with the radio station’s receptionist and stumbled over a box of arsenic laden Triox weed killer under his kitchen sink. Rene had been adding the weed killer to Esther’s food and the milkshakes he thoughtfully brought home to her and later fed her in the hospital.

New forensic technology was able to roughly chart the amount of arsenic she received and when, using her nails and strands of her hair. What helped to convict Rene was that for the nine days he was sitting up on the BowMac sign, there wasn’t any sign of poison in her hair growth and she became violently ill the evening Rene came down from the sign.

The day after Esther’s funeral, Rene packed up Lolly and their two children and went on holiday to Disneyland. When they returned they moved in together. CKNW fired Rene and soon after, police arrested him—two days after he and Lolly applied for a marriage license. He was convicted of capital murder.

For many years Jeannine clung to her father’s innocence, even committing perjury during his trial that took place in the 1960s–a period that saw such a seismic shift in politics, culture and the law. And, while Murder by Milkshake documents one of the most sensational murders of the 20th century, it is also very much Jeannine’s story–her life after her father murdered her mother and what happened to all of the parties involved.

Murder by Milkshake: an astonishing story of adultery, arsenic, and a charismatic killer

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