The champagne cases

Whether to toast a New Year, a wedding or sports victory, champagne has come to symbolise joy. Sadly, the drink of celebration has also been turned criminal.

Sinister sparkling

Eight years after Agatha Christie used potassium cyanide spiked champagne as a weapon in Sparkling Cyanide, a real-life double homicide case featuring the same deadly cocktail hit US newspapers in December 1953. Though the killings had occurred in August 1953, it took a falling out between co-conspirators to set investigators’ sights on the culprits.