The fine tradition of poisoning continues in Russia, as Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy, is reportedly suffering from thallium poisoning.
What is thallium?
“It is tasteless, colourless, odourless. It takes about a gram – you know, a large pinch of salt like in your food – to kill you”, he said.
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who also lives in Britain, said thallium was a “special” poison, that “you couldn’t just get over the counter”.
“You could say it is only available to secret services,” he said.
While thallium is not as easy to get as rat poison, it is most emphatically not only avaliable to secret services. In fact, even a child can get it if they try hard enough. Long time readers of this blog will remember the case of the teenage girl who poisoned her own mother with thallium. As the girl wrote in her creepy, creepy blog:
“It’s a bright, sunny day today, and I administered a delivery of acetic thallium,” the girl wrote in August. “The man in the pharmacy didn’t realise he had sold me such a powerful drug.”
That diary is fucked up…
Sorry for responding to this late, but the russians really need to get over that “mob culture” that they had for the past 60+ years. Its really scary and embarassing at the same time.
It seems that doctors have ruled out thallium and radiation now. The patient’s condition has deteriorated sharply.
He died. Now they are reporting he was poisoned by Polonium-210 a hard to get radioactive isosotope. Also his bodily fluids seemed to have contaminated at least 5 location in London so far.
This story just keeps getting better and better. For those who missed it, the killer goes by the name of Igor the Assassin and:
From here.