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发帖数: 157 | 1 http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/thallium_is_favored_me
In April 1995, two college undergraduates in China posted a message on the
internet:
"Hi. This is Peking University … A young 21-year old student has become
very sick and is dying … Doctors at the best hospitals in Beijing cannot
cure her … So now we are asking the world — can somebody help us?"
Their friend, Zhu Ling, a chemistry student, was suffering stomach pain and
hair loss and was slowly becoming immobilized. The paralysis had spread up
into her diaphragm and was now preventing her from breathing. If the cause
wasn’t found soon, she would probably die.
More than 2,000 people around the world heeded the call for help, and a
graduate student and professor in the department of radiological sciences at
UCLA reviewed the replies and came up with an answer: thallium poisoning.
Ling’s doctors tested their patient, confirmed the diagnosis and
administered the only known antidote, Prussian blue, according to
international news accounts. Ling survived, but was left with permanent
neurological damage and severe cognitive deficits.
The case was widely publicized in China. Police questioned one of Ling’s
roommates, but no one was ever charged.
That same year, Tianle Li, who today sits in a North Brunswick jail charged
with fatally poisoning her husband, graduated with a degree in chemistry
from Tshingua University, which is in the same Beijing neighborhood as
Peking University.
It is impossible to know if Li knew about the Ling case, but a nurse at
University Medical Center in Princeton remembered it last month, according
to Steven Marcus, medical and executive director of New Jersey Poison
Control.
Although authorities have refused to release the name of the nurse, it was
she who suggested testing Li’s then-critically ill husband for thallium
poisoning. The results were positive, but the rush to save Xiaoye Wang’s
life ultimately proved futile.
Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Nicholas Sewitch confirmed last week
that Wang was given a "lethal, massive" amount of thallium.
Sprinkled on food or dissolved in liquid, thallium has been called the "
poisoner’s poison" and "inheritance powder." It’s been dusted on doughnuts
, cakes and protein shakes; dissolved in bottles of cola and beer; poured
into cups of tea and glasses of vodka; and found in saltshakers, candy canes
and boxes of chocolate.
Thallium is a rare, nondescript heavy metal, and it is what prosecutors say
Bristol-Myers Squibb chemist Li allegedly used to kill her husband.
Li, who has a 2-year-old son by Wang, remains in jail in lieu of $4.15
million bail. Her attorney, Steven Altman, says he plans to file motions
Monday for two hearings.
"The bail is extremely excessive," he said. "She wants her child. She has no
reason to leave or go anywhere."
The other hearing is for probable cause, to force the prosecutor’s office
to "show information that (she) poisoned her husband or have the judge order
her released."
While unusual as a murder weapon, thallium has been the tool of choice for
everyone from spiteful spouses to heads of state seeking to punish political
opponents.
Amnesty International and investigators from the World Health Organization
say that thallium was used under Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein to kill
hundreds of dissidents.
In 1981, Shawkat Akrawi, an industrial chemist in Iraq, made a surreptitious
phone call from a Baghdad hospital to a reporter at New Scientist magazine
in Great Britain. He spoke in Kurdish, according to an article the magazine
published a short time later:
"The accident they arranged didn’t kill me," Akrawi told the reporter, "so
they gave me thallium in the hospital where I am being treated."
Akrawi told the writer, "Say goodbye to everybody." Then the line went dead.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
• Before Monroe man's fatal poisoning, couple had history of domestic
disputes
• Doctors, scientists searched for antidote for Monroe man dying from
thallium poisoning
• Monroe woman pleads not guilty to fatally poisoning husband
• Monroe woman is charged with fatally poisoning husband
• Authorities investigate death of 39-year-old Monroe man
PAINFUL POISON
Experts say thallium, which is colorless, odorless and tasteless, is often
chosen by the nefarious because it is slow-acting, painful and its wide-
ranging symptoms are suggestive of a host of other illnesses and conditions.
"There is a triad of symptoms: gastrointestinal, peripheral neuropathy (
nerve damage to the extremities) and hair loss," said Steven Marcus, medical
and executive director of New Jersey Poison Control.
Marcus says those who choose thallium as a weapon "tend to be more cowardly
than other kind of murderers. Poison puts a distance so the poisoner doesn’
t have to be near when the victim dies."
In 1962, a year after Agatha Christie published a thallium-based murder
mystery, a British teen named Graham Young used the heavy metal to kill his
stepmother and sicken several other family members. Although committed to an
institution for the criminally insane, Young was released in 1971 and
promptly killed two co-workers and seriously injured two more — all with
thallium poisoning. Young was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences,
and in 1990 died in prison from a heart attack at age 42.
As recently as 2002, a 61-year-old Long Island woman, Ann Perry, confessed
to poisoning her longtime boyfriend by lacing his milkshake with thallium.
In 1997, Joann Curley of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., confessed to authorities she’d
killed her husband six years earlier by spiking his daily thermos of ice tea
with thallium over nine months.
Before the downfall of apartheid, South African agents had plans to slip
thallium into Nelson Mandela’s medication, according to a report from the
country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And last year, a former
senior adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat alleged Israeli military
agents poisoned Arafat with the heavy metal.
Even the CIA had dreamed up a plot to use thallium to embarrass Cuban
dictator Fidel Castro. The idea was, according to Senate hearings held in
the mid-1970s, to dust Castro’s shoes with thallium so the hair of his
legendary beard would fall out.
Thallium is relatively slow-acting, and a lethal dose usually takes almost
two weeks to debilitate and kill, according to experts. Symptoms don’t
begin until days after the poison is ingested and often start with stomach
pain and vomiting.
When Wang was admitted to the hospital in Princeton on Jan. 14, he was
scheduled to appear in court with his wife to finalize their divorce. Hours
before he became ill, however, he called his lawyer, Michael Green. Wang was
distraught, says Green, because he needed to postpone the hearing. His wife
’s aunt was suddenly ill and had been taken to the emergency room.
Although Li’s aunt recovered and returned home that day — she later tested
negative for thallium, according to Li’s criminal attorney, Altman — a
new court date was set for Jan. 27.
But on either Jan. 25 or 26, says Green, he received a call from Li’s
divorce lawyer, Frederick Simon, saying Li had just informed him that Wang
had been in the hospital since Jan. 14 and the divorce proceedings would
again have to be postponed.
"She did not inform my adversary or me that he was sick or passed until the
day he died," Green said. "That was shocking to me to say the least."
RETURNS HOME
heidi.JPGPatti Sapone/The Star Ledger Tianle "Heidi" Li of Monroe, left,
confers with her attorney Steve Altman during her arraignment Wednesday on
murder charges. She is accused of murdering her estranged husband, Xiaoye
Wang, by poisoning him with thallium.
Although Wang had rented an apartment in Jersey City, he had moved back into
the couple’s home in Monroe several months earlier, according to Green,
because he "wanted to spend a considerable amount of time with his child."
Green said he had been trying to reach his client by phone for two weeks,
but to no avail; only when Simon phoned him and told him there was a story
in the newspaper about Wang’s death did he know his client was deceased.
Rich Huang, co-founder of the financial analytics company PolyPaths in
Manhattan, and Wang’s boss for the past four years, did not know either.
"On Monday (Jan. 17) he called in saying he was not feeling well and was in
the hospital," said Huang. "He got along with everyone in the company. …
Everyone is in shock."
Wang is gone, Li is in jail, and the couple’s son, Isaac, is in the care of
the Division of Youth and Family Services. When one of the parties dies
before a divorce can be finalized in New Jersey, the issue of custody enters
what lawyers call a "black hole," said Li’s divorce attorney, Simon.
Last week, the only person answering the door at the couple’s stately home
on Stanley Drive in Monroe was Li’s aunt. Speaking in Mandarin, she refused
to answer a reporter’s questions.
Li has no other relatives in the United States, according to Simon. She came
to America in 1998, he said, married in 2000 and became a citizen in August
2010.
"The issue is whether Mr. Wang’s family (in China) has an interest in
pursuing any of the issues that came up in the divorce proceedings," said
Simon, because right now, "we’re in the black hole."
Staff Writer Amy Brittain contributed to this report. |
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