Accident, Suicide or Murder?
Part One
Let’s start this chronicle in the 21st Century, not the early 20th Century when the events of the story actually unfolded.
The location is Lake Forest, Illinois, specifically Sheridan Road near the former property of Barat College of the Sacred Heart, which closed decades ago. Sheridan Road bisects the city of Lake Forest, starting at Fort Sheridan in the South and eventually merging with E Westleigh Road to the north. A woman named “Mary” was droving that stretch of road one rainy evening in July 2023 and subsequently posted on a hauntings and “old spirits” website an acknowledgement to the apparition she saw.
The Chicago Tribune also reported what the woman observed that July evening, in part writing: “. . . recently a woman was driving down Sheridan Road . . . saw a girl on the side of the road in a long blue dress which was wet from the rain.” The paper reported the young girl was standing close to the road, so the woman driver, concerned for the girl’s wellbeing, grasped her cell phone to call the police. At that moment the girl smiled at her. It was not the smiled she found odd or disturbing, but, rather, it was her “black stained mouth” that sent chills through her body.
The woman driver knew the local lore of the young girl who died in that exact location over one-hundred years earlier from ingesting potassium cyanide . . . a deadly poison . . . that would have likely blacken her mouth. When her car’s headlights went through the girl she concluded it was not a living human she was seeing. It was a 21st Century apparition of Marion Lambert who, at age 18, died in that spot on February 9, 1916 from cyanide poisoning.
old spirituals 
Another brilliant story from Nicola Di Crescenzo! The image of the girl standing in the rain and smiling with a black-stained mouth is very creepy!
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I am humbled by the compliment and very appreciative.
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Will definitely murdered Marion. If she lied about being pregnant, she was probably desperate to stop his new relationship. Who knows what else she would do? That was probably Will’s thinking anyway. Great story, Nicola!
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Thanks you, Ruby.
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What a sad story! Both Will and Marion seemed to be troubled young people. Possibly faking a pregnancy to win a boyfriend back isn’t the portrayal of a stable person. Will’s changing story of the meeting with Marion is troubling. Whatever happened, both families lives were destroyed. Will also lived a very unstable life after the tragedy. I’m not sure what really took place in those woods that day, but the jury must not have been convinced of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
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You’re right about Will. He exemplifies the consequences of a bad life decision. He wanted to become a journalist to write stories, instead he became the story for other journalists to write about his entire life.
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Great research on this, Nicola! I’m always interested in what becomes of people after the story.
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That’s a great point. He escaped prison but there was some bit of justice. What a life he could have had!
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It’s a little creepy to think that Marion can still be seen off the side of the road. It’s hard to say what truly happened since we only know Will’s side of the story, although it’s odd his story kept changing and the case changed the trajectory of his entire life. I believe it was an accident whether it was him that gave her too much poison or her that took to much. She wanted love, not death. Will didn’t want her dead, he just wanted someone else. It seems like whatever she had planned to do, she would have told Josephine.
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Those are very good points! There was no malice between them. And Will told many versions of what happened but he certainly never told the truth. Curious what the author will say.
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I believe we have a meeting of the minds.
While researching this story, by pure coincidence, I spent a week in and around the Lake Forest area. I even drove Sheridan Road. I wasn’t aware of Marion’s apparition until later, so I didn’t try to experience it for myself. Suffice it to say, Will was Marion’s first true love which made him irresistible. I believe she would have done anything to continue a relationship with him. However, I do not believe she would have INTENTIONALLY committed suicide.
Conversely, I do not believe Will would have INTENTIONALLY poisoned Marion. Whatever the sequence of events, I believe the consumption of cyanide was intended for a reason other than murder. For me the case is a confluence of actions that resulted in an unintended consequence.
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just seems odd that Marion went into the woods by herself with an angry ex and didn’t ask her best friend to come with. Also seems odd that she actually did have a letter to send and still had it in her hand. It seems odd that Will only remembers walking off and then something happening to Marion after he turned around, it also seems odd that Josephine Davis her best friend didn’t go with her and also changed her story halfway through the trial and devastated the family. Weird
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I think so too! This is a Nicola post, I’m curious what he thinks!
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