Legislators in California and New Jersey responded to the alleged threat by passing tough new laws. A few communities even tried to ban trick-or-treating altogether. Schools started training children to inspect their goodies for tampering.
Soon everyone from Dear Abby to the local police chief began giving advice on how to protect children from Halloween sadists. But those of us who study crime for a living have long been skeptical about the actual existence of Halloween sadists. For it seems implausible that a homicidal maniac would limit his attacks to one night a year. And it sounds too much like the Halloween legend itself.
At long last, the record has been set straight. In 1985 two California State University professors, Joe Best and Gerald Horiuchi, published a study which concluded that the Halloween sadist was essentially a myth. After an exhaustive examination of the nation's newspapers, covering a 15-year period (1959-1984), they managed to locate only 76 cases of tampering with Halloween candy.
Most reports turned out to be either mistaken or fraudulent: Only 20 cases resulted in injuries, and all of them were minor. There were two deaths, but one involved a child who ate heroin hidden in candy he found at his uncle's house; the other child was poisoned by his father, who put cyanide in his candy to make it look like he was killed by Halloween sadist.
