Houdini's great-nephew and two authors announced a 2007 plan to exhume his body to test for poison

Harry Houdini died at 52 on 31 October 1926. The accepted account is that a punch to the stomach in Montreal on 22 October ruptured his appendix, causing peritonitis. No autopsy was performed. He was treated in Detroit and buried in Queens. In 2006 authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman argued in The Secret Life of Houdini that Spiritualists had him poisoned. They named Le Roi Crandon, husband of the medium Margery, as the plotter, and suggested an experimental serum was given in Detroit. Kalush admitted no link between Crandon and the doctor. On 23 March 2007 at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York, George Hardeen, a great-nephew, said the body should be tested. Pathologist James Starrs agreed to conduct the tests, and lawyer Joseph Tacopina said the cemetery consented. Cemetery board chairman David Jacobson said he had not approved it. Hardeen said he did not represent the whole family. Historian Kenneth Silverman found the evidence unconvincing. As of 2009 no exhumation had happened, and none has been reported since^†.