What young boy (at least before the advent of video games) did not thrill to the exploits of Harry Houdini in the many books recounting his death-defying feats. I know that I read a slew, sometimes under bed covers by flashlight long after I was supposed to be asleep.

Now, 81 years after the great magician’s death, his great-nephew want to exhume Houdini’s body to determine if he was poisoned by his enemies, who included a group known as the Spiritualists, because of his efforts to debunk their claims that they were in contact with the dead.

“It needs to be looked at,” says George Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini’s brother. “His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it’s time to take a second look.”

Houdini is said to have died from a ruptured appendix from a punch to the stomach, but there long have been rumors that there is a more nefarious explanation to his sudden death.

The likeliest murder suspects are Spiritualists, whom Houdini attacked during stage shows that exposed what he said were fraudulent seances conducted by the group.

Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle was a leading spiritualist, and according to two Houdini biographers, wrote a letter to the magician in 1924 saying, as Professor Moriarty might, that he would “get his just desserts very exactly meted out. . . . I think there is a general payday coming soon.”

More here.