New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina, who is assisting the family, said Friday that the paperwork necessary for the exhumation would be filed Monday.

Houdini's family scheduled a news conference Friday to give details on the plans. Hardeen said a team of top forensic investigators would conduct new tests on Houdini's body.

The generally accepted version of Houdini's death held that the 52-year-old suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach, leading to peritonitis. But no autopsy was performed.

When the death certificate was filed on Nov. 20, 1926, Houdini's body had already been buried.

Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, "Was Houdini Murdered?"

A 2006 biography, "The Secret Life of Houdini," raised the issue again and convinced some that he might have been poisoned.

The likeliest suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group's fraudulent seances.

The team working on the exhumation includes internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist who has studied the disinterred remains of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo.

Baden, who led panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., pointed out a pair of oddities in Houdini's death certificate: It noted his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right, and he said the diagnosis of appendicitis caused by a punch was "very unusual."

Starrs said he was long familiar with the story of Houdini's death and believed the fatal injury was the result of an accident until he read the Houdini biography.

"My eyebrows went up when I read this book," Starrs said. "I thought, 'This is really startling, surprising and unsettling, and at bottom, suspicious in nature."