Harry Houdini's death has long been blamed on a college kid who punched him in the gut nine days before his demise. The New York Times reports that a retired surgeon now says that story doesn't hold up—and may have unfairly shadowed that student for the century that has passed since Houdini's death in 1926. In a new book, Houdini: The Man Who Died Twice, Dr. Larrian Gillespie argues the magician didn't die from blow-triggered appendicitis at all, but from a bowel obstruction allegedly caused by a "fibrous mass of chop suey" eaten days after the blows, followed by emergency surgery that came too late, allowing septic shock to set in.
Reporter Robin Pogrebin details how Gillespie pored over 1920s medical texts, hospital records, three conflicting death certificates, and accounts from Houdini insiders, concluding that documents were altered to hide possible medical mistakes and secure an insurance payout—and to lock in Halloween as his official death date, when she posits that he died the day before. Her work, backed by some Houdini experts and even his great-nephew, also seeks to clear the name of Joscelyn Gordon Whitehead, the student who threw the famous punches and died a recluse. "There is pretty good evidence that she's right," says one Houdini expert of Gillespie. "She actually has completely exonerated Whitehead." For the medical whodunit and the still-unresolved questions, read the full piece at the New York Times.
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