What's Your Poison?

Poisoning someone, in an attempt to kill them without being seen as the killer, is perhaps one of the oldest murder methods in the world.

Arsenic Poison Bottle

As soon as a man trapped a woman in an unhappy coupling, or as soon as we invented Kings, we invented poisoning as a method of removing them.

It's led to some inventive pharmacology and chemistry over the millennium. Paracelsus, the famous alchemist toxicologist, said that "the dose makes the poison." In other words, that every chemical can be considered a poison if your victim takes enough of it. But obviously, trying to poison an adult via sugar or salt is going to be very obvious and fail (although poisoning babies and small children with salt is sadly not unknown).

Equally obviously, the ideal poison for a homicide is, therefore, odourless, tasteless, difficult to detect, and offers victim symptoms similar to a naturally occurring diseases in order to divert suspicions that they have been poisoned.

In the past, favourite poisons have been:

1. Belladonna or Deadly Nightshade ~ sometimes known as "beautiful lady" because the plant was a popular cosmetic in the Middle Ages. Juice from the plant or its berries was used to tip arrows with poison. Eating a single leaf or eating 10 of the berries can cause death via its toxic chemicals, solanine, hyoscine (scopolamine), and atropine.

2. Asp Venom / Snake Venom ~ the most famous alleged use of snake venom is Cleopatra's suicide, although that may be more myth than truth. It is, in fact, a slow and painful death via the neurotoxins and cytotoxins that a Cobra venom contains. If death occurs (and it's not guaranteed), it is from respiratory failure.

3. Hemlock poison ~ All parts of the plant are rich in toxic alkaloids, which can cause paralysis and death from respiratory failure, but at the end leaves the victim paralysed but conscious of their surroundings. Probably the most famous case of hemlock poisoning is the death of the Greek philosopher Socrates, who was forced to drink it.

4. Strychnine ~ derived from the seeds of the plant Strychnos nux vomica, it's a more modern poison. It causes paralysis that kills via respiratory failure. There's no antidote for the poison, which makes it guaranteed as a killer.

The first of our medical mass killers appears under the guise of Dr. Thomas Neil Cream (aka the Lambeth Poisoner), who, starting in London, Ontario1878, poisoned and killed at least seven women and one man, with many of the women prostitutes, and at least two victims pregnant. After serving ten years in an American prison, Cream fled to London, England, where he poisoned some more people, and he was finally hanged for murder in 1892. He appears to have gained pleasure from the power the poisoning gave him over his victims, as some were double murders with unborn children.

5. Arsenic ~ Arsenic and compounds derived from it were a popular poison in the Middle Ages because it was easy to obtain, and the symptoms of arsenic poisoning (diarrhoea, confusion, vomiting) resembled those of cholera making it ideal when cholera was a common illness. It was a favourite of the 15th and 16th century Borgia family in Italy.

6. Polonium ~ Highly radioactive, and if inhaled or ingested, it can kill in extremely low doses. Famously polonium-210 was used to murder ex-Russian secret service member Alexander Litvinenko, who drank the radioactive material in a cup of green tea. It took him three weeks to die.

The following other poisons have been used to perpetrate homicidal poisoning:

1. Cyanide,
2. Thallium,
3. Aconitine,
4. Atropine, 
5. Ricin, 
6. *Fentanyl
   
7. Antimony, and
8. Ethylene glycol (anti-freeze)
   

* Included because there were 70,601 overdose deaths reported in the USA involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (primarily Fentanyl) in 2021, and some will have been deliberately applied overdoses i.e. murders and will be undetected.  

Detectives are usually alerted by certain "red flags" that indicate a homicidal poisoning has occurred.

a) Sudden unexplained death.
b) The association of a care-giver with other illnesses or deaths.
c) Whether the victim received medical treatment, appeared to recover, and then died later
d) A care-giver with access to restricted drugs or other chemicals and,
e) Care-giver isolation of the victim stopping others from seeing what's taking place.

The political killing of leaders via poisonings is largely unknown, although the use of polonium by certain state operators has resulted in political opposition figures being murdered while in exile. Indeed, perpetrators of homicidal poisonings are often employed in the medical or caregiving fields ~ Vets, Doctors, Dentists, and Nurses all have this sort of access.

In modern times, poisoners are often seen to derive an amount of pleasure from seeing their victims suffer and in administering the poison. Serial poisoners usually enjoy the thrill of having power over the life and suffering of the victims, even if they are random.

The Chicago Tylenol murders where seven people died in the original poisonings, and there were several more deaths in subsequent copycat crimes, are examples of the thrill of the poisoner having the power over the life and death over random victims.

Forensic science has advanced greatly, and diagnostic tests can sometimes uncover poisoning attempts, but poison murders are still amongst the least frequently detected crimes in the world .... its therefore unknown how many are undetected each year ... possibly hundreds or thousands.