After his young wife, Virginia, got tuberculosis in 1842 and died five years later, the already hard-drinking Poe apparently dove deeper into the bottle.
In the late summer of 1849, he was in Richmond, Virginia, where he proposed to an old sweetheart, Elmira Shelton.
On September 27, 1849, Poe left Richmond, supposedly bound for Philadelphia.
The details of his actions and whereabouts over the next few days remain uncertain, but on October 3, a passerby noticed Poe slumped near an Irish pub in Baltimore, Maryland.
Poe’s death left a mystery that has lingered for more than a century.
Shortly after his death, Rufus Griswold, Poe’s literary rival, wrote an obituary characterizing him as a morally bankrupt, drunken womanizer.
The victims were drugged, disguised and forced to vote over and over at different polling places for the chosen candidates, then left for dead. »