The Umbrella Assassin
If you’re gonna kill someone, at least do it creatively
Mystery Mob!
Happy Friday. This week we scoured the interwebs for some of the most creative assassinations. We landed on three that we, umm, liked? To be clear, we don’t like murder. Just creativity! We found an umbrella murder, a tea poisoning, and a cigarette gun. Oh my!
But before we get too far into this week’s post, here’s the solution to Wednesday’s email riddle:
Where can one find shops, cities, and streets… but no people?
Answer: A Map
Did you solve it? I hope so, you had two whole days! We’ve got another fun one set up for next week so be sure to check on Wednesday.
But back to regular programming -- let’s check out these assassinations!
A poison umbrella --- for killin’ in the rain
On September 7, 1978, Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov waited for a bus at the Waterloo Bridge in London. He was on his way to work - his job at the BBC entailed broadcasting a regular program to Bulgaria on cultural affairs in Britain. Someone wanted him to stop.
While he sat waiting that day, a mysterious assailant stabbed Markov in the thigh with the tip of his umbrella. Markov finished work that day, then returned home. That night he fell ill with a fever. Four days later, he died.
The autopsy revealed a small capsule of ricin - a deadly poison - in his thigh. The umbrella tip had been laced with it. Ricin is a naturally-occurring poison in castor beans. It is incredibly toxic and stops cells from producing the proteins the body needs to function. It is the most effective when injected into the body (via an umbrella, in this case).
Before Markov died, he told doctors that he thought the KGB may have had a hand in the killing. But no one was ever charged.
Here’s a longer write up in The Guardian.
How do you take your tea? Sugar? Milk? Radioactive poison?
Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian spy who defected. He fled to Britain after he became a vocal critic of the Motherland. In exile, he became a journalist and vocal critic of Putin. He then began working for MI6, the famed British intelligence agency.
While at MI6, his work focused on trying to link Spain and the Russian mob. The trail he was on led him back to the 1990s when Putin, then aide to St Petersburg’s mayor, worked closely with gangsters. With this knowledge, he was scheduled to testify before a Spanish prosecutor. Then the Kremlin stepped in.
Litvinenko took a meeting at the Millenium Hotel on November 1, 2006. There, he had a cup of tea. Unfortunately, it had radioactive polonium-210 in it. The poison is an aggressive isotope that tears the body apart from the inside out. In fact, the isotope works so quickly that if Litvinenko wasn’t such a health nut before ingesting it, he would have died without any trace of the polonium-210 showing up in his system.
Here’s a longer write up about how he helped solve his own murder while dying.
Leave the gun, take the….cigarettes
Like the others, this one seems to come right out of a spy novel and involves the KGB (seriously, don’t get on their bad side). Fortunately, this attempt was unsuccessful.
Georgiy Okolovich lived in West Germany in 1954. He was an exiled leader of an anti-Communist group in Russia.
The KGB, doing what they apparently do best, sent an agent named Nikolai Khoklov to supervise two other agents sent to assassinate Okolovich. The preferred weapon? Cigarettes. Or rather, more specifically, an electronic, silenced gun disguised as a pack of cigarettes. It apparently fired cyanide bullets.
Only, Khoklov had a change of heart after speaking with his wife, Yana. She apparently told him, “If this man is killed, you will be a murderer. I cannot be the wife of a murderer.” And well, that was that.
Khoklov went to Okolovich and warned him, then defected to the US. As punishment for alerting Okolovich and defecting, the KGB ordered Khoklov’s assassination. Naturally.
Khoklov was poisoned with Thallium—a soft metal rat and ant poison—but survived when doctors cleaned out his system with antidotes.
Here’s a longer write up on the story of Khoklov.
Any we missed?
Odd question I guess, but any of you have favorite assassination attempts you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments (there was one with a lethal nerve agent planted in a man’s underpants that didn’t make our list…)
As always,
Stay ‘spicious
-Andy & Mark
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