Coffee, generally, is something heavily relied upon to make someone seem a little more alive. It’s supposed to open your eyes a little wider and raise your heart rate, not shut the former and eliminate the latter. Nevertheless, a couple unlucky souls throughout time have been compromised to a permanent end by an ill-advised cup of joe.
Here are five times someone was taken out by a cup of coffee or a close equivalent…
Qajari Coffee
First off, we’ll look back in history to a particularly infamous blend. Specifically, back to Persia (now Iran) where a poisoned brew known as “Qajari coffee” was used as a royal method of murder. Enemies of the kings in question must have had a lot of pretty miserable mornings, knowing that their little pick-me-up might have a chance of being their last drink ever. Even so, I bet there were a couple rough sunrises where they risked it anyway.
The Indonesian “Coffee Murder”
Coffee and poison seem to make a conveniently dark pairing. I guess if you’re going to have to disguise something in a drink well enough for someone to hit a lethal dose, it’s better hidden under coffee’s strong flavor than a subtle oolong tea — especially something as noxious as cyanide. Apparently, a cup of iced coffee in Indonesia was a good enough cover to get a lethal amount of cyanide into the system of Wayan Mirna Salihin, in a murder that was national news and the subject of a Netflix documentary.
Now That’
s A Mugging
Sometimes, coffee can have a hand in a killing with no ingestion necessary. Los Angeles woman Lois Ann Goodman might hold the crown in making good on the threat “don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee” when she made her mug a murder weapon. Her husband, Alan, was found dead from what we can assume was a long-brewing bed of fury, thanks to blunt-force trauma delivered by Lois’ daily coffee container. She claimed he’d died of a heart attack, which seems unlikely, as that doesn’t dent your head.
Coffee Enemas
After hearing about an apparently mortal bit of medicine known as a coffee enema, I was dismayed to find out how many results on Google still needed to recommend people not try it for themselves. If you think cold brew gives you the shakes, try boofing a cup of Starbucks blonde. By which I mean, do not do this, for the love of god. A coffee enema, if you need clarification, is the act of injecting coffee into your anus. While the coffee is inserted at room temperature, three people have died from such enemas — either due to electrolyte imbalance or sepsis.
Panera’s Deadly Lemonade
Okay, so it’s not coffee, but I couldn’t not mention the coffee alternative that favorite restaurant of sad workers everywhere, Panera, dropped recently. The one that killed multiple people. Common sense would have you believe that caffeinated lemonade has to be a slightly more chill beverage when it comes to caffeine content than black coffee, but this lemonade was secretly packing a shocking amount of caffeine. A single large “Charged Lemonade,” at 390 milligrams, already pushes the daily limit of 400 milligrams caffeine for a healthy adult. So when a 46-year-old man tosses back three in a row, you’ve got a serious problem.