Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> >The legend is essentially false, but a father did kill his own
> >kid with poisoned candy on Halloween, attempting to make it look
> >like somebody else did it, probably to collect the insurance.
>
> This is a case of don't believe everything you read on the WWW.
> Here in Chicago there have been a number of sick incidents of this
> type over the years, they've been both on T.V. and in the
> newspaper.
>
> After one particularly sick incident a few years ago (a needle)
> people stopped letting their kids trick-or-treat. Hospital
> emergency rooms here normally offer free x-ray of suspect items.
>
> Check with your local big city newspaper morgue (archive).
>
Brian, you are correct that there have been a nuber of reports of this type
in the papers. However, the vast makority of them turn out to be hoaxes
perpetrated by kids. The follow-up stories don't make the front page.
The few actual cases constitute a nasty example of the harm an urban
legend can do: it's unlikely that these sickos would think this up on their own.
All of this information is on the same web site that I pointed to.