Originally published at: Woman accused of spiking hubby's coffee with bleach charged with attempted murder | Boing Boing
…
4 Likes
bleach? so the poisoner wasn’t a faithful maga’t or else she would think she’d be curing his covid…?
One shouldn’t expect much of prospective murderers, but how th’@#$ did she think he wouldn’t smell bleach in his coffee!? (“Well… it was folgers™”)
(actually takes a lot! LD50: 8200 mg/kg (Rat) … 90kg unwitting husband…)
5 Likes
The man kept drinking the coffee for 2-3 weeks despite it tasting bad, so…
I do wonder how many poisoners are actually competent enough not to get caught every year.
6 Likes
Anything to avoid making it himself. He’s a man, for gosh darn it all!
5 Likes
I’m skeptical it wasn’t something annoying he was doing. Like loud chewing.
2 Likes
Bernie like to chew gum.
No, not chew. POP.
5 Likes
Honestly? I’d guess close to zero.
Actually poisoning someone to death probably isn’t that easy. Most poisons taste extremely bitter (which is why we can taste bitter). Hiding them in food isn’t easy. Furthermore most poisons will make you sick and vomit, but to actually kill you, you have to get more in the person than will simply land them in the ER. If they do, and the person has no reason to have the symptoms, a toxicology screen is probably going to find whatever you gave them.
You gotta figure there’s a reason the Russians use exotic shit like polonium. There presumably aren’t that many substances that will kill someone, won’t be obvious in an autopsy, and will actually do the job before they get sick enough to go to a doctor.
Disclaimer: I’m not any kind of medical professional and this is all speculation.
10 Likes
I guess we cab never know how many killers were successful in not getting caught, since they were not caught.
This guy targeted women with a history of alchoholism, then killed them with alcohol. The victims were written off as having caused their own deaths. He may have gotten away with it had it not been for fingerprint evidence left at one crime scene.
5 Likes
I think the polonium and nerve toxins are a statement. Those require state level actors, there’s zero question on the means and who did it.
10 Likes
Well, yes and no. Sure, it’s tempting to play the Toupée Fallacy here, but we know roughly what percentage of crimes do and do not get caught. Like we only catch a small percentage of the drugs that move over the border, but we know roughly what percentage that is (triangulated from other evidence), so we know roughly how much we’re not catching and thus how much the total is.
I’m willing to bet the same is true for all crimes- we can make educated guesses about how much we don’t catch. Since catching poisoners is incredibly rare, it’s reasonable to say the total amount of it happening is low. Compounding this is the fact that getting away with poisoning is incredibly difficult (assuming all my assumptions above). I wouldn’t be surprised if we catch all of them except one in a million.
3 Likes
Let me just point out the ridiculousness of this murder plot.
There’s no way anyone can drink enough bleach in coffee to be killed. It would need to be violently forced down the guy’s throat. A lot of it. And then that person would have to be restrained to not get to the ER. Bleach in coffee to the level of doing any harm at all would be something no one would drink.
I always assumed that was to send a message. There are some non-exotic poisons that would definitely work. They’re not available at Walmart but they are readily available to anyone who can order industrial chemicals. But polonium sends a very clear message - only a few high-level people in some very well equipped government laboratories could get a hold of that.
10 Likes
Thallium Tea.
2 Likes
For when you want implausible deniability.
4 Likes
There is a woman in Australia this week who cooked and served death cap mushrooms to her parents in law and their friends. They died. She is yet to be charged. It might have been a terrible accident.
5 Likes
Polonium, and Novichok.
4 Likes
I think that’s hilarious, and I’m a man
That movie came out in 1995? I know it’s a period peice, so the costumes and hair are misleading but from the look abd sound I still assumed this came out before I was in highschool for fuck’s sake. Pour my old ass a cup of Thallium.
3 Likes
I remember seeing it in college, loved it, and mentioned it to my chem prof, who was distinctly unimpressed.
IMDB says that the Newton’s Diamond thing was completely made up, which cripples the narrative.
3 Likes
Yes, exactly, They could easily have used cyanide or whatever other common chemicals are available, or just used a bullet for simplicity, but no, it had to be a highly classified Russian nerve poison, to send a message to all the other Russians out there: we’ll get to you no matter where you go.
2 Likes
