In January of 1900 the Northwestern Traveling Mens Association of Chicago mounted an investigation into the death of Sanford K Vannatta. The Association had received a series of anonymous letters questioning the cause of Vannatta's death on October 27, 1899 after an illness of just two day's duration. The claim on his insurance policy was made even more suspicious by the fact that Mr. Vannatta had changed the beneficiary on this policy only one month before his death.
Sanford K Vannatta had been a druggist in partnership with Dr. William Hill of Bloomington in the 1870s and was a liquor distiller (Old Elk Whiskey of Lexington, Kentucky) in Chicago. Mr. Vannatta must have been a prosperous man given the education given to his daughters (Bernadine in Minneapolis and Stella in Chicago) as well as the lengthy holidays he and his first wife took with their daughters to Martha's Vineyard, St. Augustine, Florida and San Francisco, California.
Sanford K Vannatta had lived in Bloomington from about 1870 until 1895, when he divorced his wife of more than twenty-five years in November of that year. His remarriage took place just four months later in Cook County to a new bride, Edith B Sims, who was twenty years his junior. Edith was only slightly older than his daughters.
Vannatta had been ill for just two days when his old partner, Dr. William Hill, was called from Bloomington to Chicago to attend him in his illness. (Suspicious circumstance #1 why call a doctor several hours away?) When Dr. Hill arrived in Chicago, Vannatta had already been dead for four hours. Mrs. Vannatta told Hill her husband had had indigestion. Hill was shocked and reportedly said "Lord woman, that would not have killed him in two days!"
Suspicious circumstance #2: The young widow had the body hermetically sealed in a copper casket and delayed the delivery of the body to Bloomington for four days.
Mr. D R Clink of the Association appeared in Bloomington with a request for exhumation and gathered together the necessary men, Mr. Graves, Dr. William Hill and the coroner. Dr. William Hill performed an autopsy and observed a 5 inch perforation of the stomach, but he still was not ready to state that the perforation could not have resulted from ulceration as opposed to slow poisoning. Hill had examined Vannatta one month before his death and had had dinner with him at a restaurant two weeks before his death. Vannatta had been able to eat a hearty dinner, but told Dr. Hill that he was not always able to enjoy his food.
The jury returned a verdict that the death was suspicious and that the cause of death could not be determined without an analysis of the stomach. The Pantagraph report of the autopsy did not make it clear whether the stomach had been replaced in the body or retained for further studies.
Both Mr. Vannatta and Dr. William Hill are buried in Evergreen Cemetery.
No newspapers reported on any further investigation into the death. Edith filed a civil war widow's pension and survivor's pension for her daughter, Edith, in 1903. She was one of the executors of Vannatta's will as well. No mention of a daughter from his latest marriage was made in his obituary. (Suspicious circumstance #3??)