WELCOME

The cause of her paralysis was a heart condition known

Nov. 23, 2017 by Paul Fletcher

The cause of her paralysis was a heart condition known as "feral fever," and an autopsy was performed on Zhu Ling. She was pronounced dead in the fall of 1996. In retrospect, a second study, published in 2005, found traces of the poison in Zhu Ling's blood, and another study published in the same year found traces of the poison in the remains of two other individuals killed in the same year (one in 1992 and another in 1993). All three victims were found to be between 15 to 30 milligrams of thallium.

The first person to die of thallium poisoning was a Chinese man named Wang Wen, who was in his early 20s, had been drinking, and had not eaten any of Zonghua's liquor recently. His parents and a friend were concerned about his health due to his unusual age and "lose weight, but not the ability to go to the bathroom".

In the summer of 1995, the couple moved into a quiet residential street in Beijing. It also had a nearby home, and the couple planned to be near the river.

On the day of the murder, Zhu Ling's body was found to be lying in the street, face down, with blood in a tube. This leaves the possibility of a possible link to an earlier case in which a small-scale thallium poisoning was carried out in a Chinese school cafeteria. Yet, this was only the second time in China that the death of an adult has been linked to an individual's death. A similar case in 1998 occurred in the northern Chinese city of Chengdu, where a 21-year-old woman died, after being poisoned after being caught in a school bathroom.

Despite the strong evidence already on display, many still believe the poison was a result of a "thallium-toxin" in a local wine supplier. Yet, that may not come as a surprise—thallium is still the commonest poisonous heavy metal in circulation in China.

"It's important to note that the cause of death is unknown," says Dr. Zonghua Li, a forensic scientist and professor of chemical engineering at the Chinese Academy of Science. "The exact cause is not known and the precise timing of the discovery of thallium is unknown."

Dr. Li has no doubt that the discovery of thallium poisoning has long gone by unnoticed. In fact, he believes the most famous case of thallium poisoning is only the first of many, which may yet yield clues about how to solve the