Career
Authorities tested tea she had given to two additional family members (Christine Downey and John Downey) on 13 April 1953, and detected the poison thallium. Grills appeared in court charged with four murders and three attempted murders (the third being Eveline Lundberg, Christine Downey"s mother) in October 1953. She was convicted on 15 October 1953 and sentenced to death, but her sentence was later changed to life in prison.
She became affectionately known as "Aunt Thally" to other inmates of Sydney"s Long Bay prison.
In October 1960, she was rushed to the hospital where she died from peritonitis from a ruptured gastric ulcer.
