A former Lehigh University chemistry major has been charged with respect to incidents where his roommate had thallium poisoning, among other things.
And another case:
Apparently the original thallium poisoning case was pretty well known in China and supposedly thallium is a common ingredient in rat poison sold in China.
Thallium poisoning is pretty well known in the United States as well, due people watching TV or movies. For example, I watched an older episode of the show Elementary last night in which the antagonist poisoned two scientists using thallium. He put the thallium in food and drinks, including milk, like guy from the article. Watson was able to recognize the symptoms immediately and described thallium as a common choice for poisoners because it is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
There was a series called “I Know who Killed me” in which one episode concerned a man, in Pennsylvania, of all places, was murdered by his wife with thallium.
Agatha Christie supposedly wrote about it as well, but most of the recent cases involved chemistry students from China, so I wasn’t really surprised that the suspect was Chinese.
Stop blaming the fact that this person was Chinese.
He’s an absolutely deplorable and horrible person, but being Chinese has nothing to do with it. Cut it out.
I thought cyanide was colorless tasteless and odorless also.
Cyanide supposedly has an almond smell.
I’m amazed that the police got involved in a campus graffiti incident and did a thorough investigation. I wondered how the thallium was discovered in his blood? Also a smarty pants whoever figured that one out. If this had happened at my college in the 90s the police would never have gotten involved and the affected roommate would never have figured out why they were sick. I’m so impressed. I read something else recently about the Northampton County police and it was equally impressive but I can’t remember what it was.
Only 1 of the 20 “notable” thallium poisoning incidents listed in the Wikipedia article involved a Chinese person. That 1 of 20 is the same one you linked in your earlier post. The other “notable” cases involved persons from Australia, Cameroon, South Africa, Qatar, East Germany, Ukraine, USA, Iraq, Norway, Russia, Japan, and the UK. Persons from all over the world have poisoned using thallium. There have been dozens of similar news stories about incidents from all of the world in recent years, with many from the US. It’s far from primarily an issue with Chinese persons.
Oh my. That’s terrifying
Being Chinese has nothing to do with this and I find it really offensive to suggest it does.
There was a case a year or so ago with roommates, two women, one was putting all kinds of stuff in the other’s drinks and shampoo and stuff. It was discussed here on CC at the time…I think the roommate doing the poisoning was white and the victim roommate was black.
Edited to add: found the case, it wasn’t poison per se but the roommate did get sick - https://nypost.com/2017/11/01/roommate-from-hells-sick-sabotage-involved-bloody-tampons-licked-utensils/
…then there was a set of roommates where one was secretly videotaping the other (who was gay) and posting the video online…somewhere in NJ as I recall. The victim committed suicide.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/nyregion/conviction-thrown-out-for-rutgers-student-in-tyler-clementi-case.html - that guy got off it appears.
My long ago co-worker told about a patient in the hospital (circa '60s) . They couldn’t figure out why he was so sick He’d get better and then suddenly take a turn for the worse.
They finally figured it out.
His wife would visit and bring him a milkshake. They confiscated the drink and had it tested. It was laced with cyanide.