Criminal Poisoning: Investigational Guide for Law Enforcement, Toxicologists, Forensic Scientists, and Attorneys by John H. Trestrail Read Free Book Online

he could not identify. Police investigation eventually revealed that the 30-year-old O’Bryan had made inquiries around his workplace concerning cyanide and had recently taken out a $65,000
    insurance policy on his son. The court found him guilty of the murder, and he was executed—ironically, by lethal injection—on March 31, 1984 (Sauke, 2003).
    1.2.19. Rev. James Warren Jones,
    “The Minister Who Went Mad” (1978)
    Many people can easily remember the television news scenes of November 18, 1978, showing 913 people lying dead in the sun in a jungle compound in the South American country of Guyana. This case represents one of the greatest mass suicides (murders?) involving poison in recent history. The piv-otal personality involved in this incident, Rev. James Warren Jones, did not administer the poison with his own hands, but he certainly was the instigating force in this terrible event. Jones, who founded a communal group known as the People’s Temple, had taken his flock to the jungles of Guyana and founded a spiritual refuge known as Jonestown.
    Jones’s hold over his followers was a prime example of the famous quote by Lord Acton that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (cited in Kaplan, 2002, p. 554). In Guyana, Jones eventually lost touch with reality, becoming extremely paranoid in his view of the outside world.
    The triggering event to the mass poisoning was the visit of California Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate allegations made by the families of some of his constituents about Jones’s hold over their family members. Congressman Ryan, and many other members of his entourage, were shot and killed at Jonestown, by Jones’s followers, and then Jim Jones ordered his followers to carry out the “White Night” suicide exercises that they had practiced so many times as a test of their faith for their pastoral leader. A large container of fruit drink containing cyanide and sedatives was soon concocted, and many of the people lined up and voluntarily drank the deadly creation. Some, however, were less than willing to die for Jones’s cause; many of their bodies bore signs that the poison had been injected by force. Jones’s body was also recov-Poisoners Throughout History 21
    ered from the commune death scene, but the cause of his death was a bullet to the head. A review of this terrible tragedy in Guyana reminds one of the Euripides saying “whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”
    1.2.20. Murder of Georgi Ivanov Markov,
    “The Umbrella Assassination” (1978)
    Murdering a victim by means of poison can also be a political act. The Markov case represents a most unique murder with poison, because of the means of administration. Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian defector living in London and working for the BBC broadcasting pro-Western propaganda back to his Communist-controlled homeland. While going to work on the morning of September 7, 1978, Markov felt a stabbing pain in his thigh, and a man in the crowd behind him suddenly dropped and then quickly picked up an umbrella. The unknown man apologized for bumping into him, then entered a taxicab and disappeared. Over the next several days, Markov became increasingly ill, and medical teams were unable to discover the cause of his symptoms and of the changes that were happening to his normal blood constituents.
    Within four days of the event, Markov was dead. An autopsy revealed a small bruise on his thigh, which, when excised, revealed a metallic sphere, about the size of the ball on the end of a ballpoint pen, with holes drilled into it.
    Although no poison could be detected in this metal object, the toxicologists generally agreed that the poison that induced Markov’s symptoms was most likely ricin, a highly toxic plant substance found in the castor bean ( Ricinus communis L. ). Georgi Markov’s assassin was never found, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was revealed that its “Laboratory 12” had developed