Editing New Sweden, Maine (section)

==2003 poisoning==
The town made national news headlines in 2003 when a man poisoned the coffee urn at the local [[Lutheran]] church, sickening 15 parishioners and killing one. On April 27, 2003, 78-year-old Walter Reid Morrill, known to the town by his middle name, died of [[arsenic]] poisoning after drinking coffee at the Gustaf Adolph [[Lutheran]] Church in New Sweden, and 15 other, mostly elderly churchgoers became ill, three of them seriously. Five days later, church member Daniel Bondeson, 53, was found after apparently shooting himself in the lower-chest with a rifle, and  left a suicide note in which he confessed to committing with the poisoning stating that it was caused by a dispute that the church did not use an [[altar-table]] he donated weeks before the poisoning. The note also stated that he intended to sicken the parishioners rather than kill them, but the first death from a poisoning to a friend of his drove him to suicide. The note has never been released to the public. The arsenic was later discovered to have been sourced from Bondeson's farm where it was used as a [[herbicide]]. Another victim would die years later due to complications from the poisoning.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sharp |first=David |title=In Maine, pains linger for arsenic poisoning survivors |work=Los Angeles Times |date=June 15, 2008 |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jun-15-adna-arsenic15-story.html |access-date=April 16, 2014 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=AGOffice_Press&id=48446&v=article Maine Attorney General Press Release]</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Farwell |first=Jackie |date=April 25, 2014 |title='This light bulb went on': Nurse recalls identifying arsenic as poison in New Sweden case, 11 years later |url=http://www.bangordailynews.com/2014/04/25/news/this-light-bulb-went-on-nurse-recalls-identifying-arsenic-as-poison-in-new-sweden-case-11-years-later/ |access-date=May 5, 2023 |website=Bangor Daily News |language=en-US}}</ref>

The crime was chronicled in [[Christine Young]]'s 2005 [[true crime]] book ''A Bitter Brew: Faith, Power, and Poison in a Small New England Town''<ref>{{cite web |title=Review of A BITTER BREW: Faith, Power, and Poison in a Small New England Town |publisher=Publishers Weekly |date=February 21, 2005 |url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-425-20042-1 |access-date=April 16, 2014 }}</ref> and on the show, ''[[Mystery ER]]'', which aired an episode on this incident from the point of view of the youngest victim, then 30 years old.<ref>{{cite web |last=Dolloff |first=Aunee |title=New Sweden poisonings in focus on 'Mystery ER' |publisher=Bangor Daily News |date=February 29, 2008 |url=http://archive.bangordailynews.com/2008/02/29/new-sweden-poisonings-in-focus-on-mystery-er/ |access-date=April 16, 2014 }}</ref>