James Richardson is an African-American man who was convicted in 1968 for the murder of his seven children in October of the previous year. His children died after eating a meal that was poisoned with pesticides.
On October 25, 1967, the seven Richardson children consumed food that had been poisoned with parathion. The children ranged from the age of two to eight. Six of the Richardson children died that day and the seventh died the next.
The night before the incident, Annie had made lunch for the next day because she and James had to work in the fields. A neighbor, Bessie Reece, had been asked to take care of the young children while the parents and older kids were at work and school. The school-age children came home for lunch and then returned to school. The teachers noticed that something was wrong with the kids and took them to the hospital. Meanwhile, another teacher went to the Richardson house to check in the younger kids and noticed that they were sick as well, and took them to the hospital. James and Annie were contacted and informed of what was happening. The two parents went to the hospital, unaware that six of their children were already dead.
Officers went to the house to find what had poisoned the children but were unable to find anything. They went back the next day and found a bag of parathion in the shed. The officers claim that the bag had not been there the previous day and whoever had placed it there must have poisoned the children.
Richardson was charged with seven counts of murder in the first degree. Those charges were dropped. Eventually, Richardson and his wife were both charged with child neglect. When they were given lie detector tests, Annie passed but James failed, which indicated that he was guilty.
Richardson was sentenced to the death penalty and waited on death row for five years, but was spared because of a Supreme Court ruling. Richardson contacted a trial attorney and asked for the attorney to represent him. The attorney found that the neighbor, Bessie Reece, was a convicted murderer and at the time of the children’s death was on parole for killing her ex-husband by using poison. This detail had been kept out of Richardson’s trial.
In 1988, Reece confessed to the murders several times, but she was not taken seriously because she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Reece died in 1992. She was never indicted for the crime.
On April 25, 1989, Richardson’s sentence was reversed due to an inadequate trial. It had been discovered that several people involved in the investigation and the trial had withheld information or lied about information. An informant recanted his statement saying that he had been coerced by an officer to lie.
On May 5, 1989, Richardson was released from prison.
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