01

Russian Spies

17 June

In this episode Sandra talks about 'bee medicine', Joe explains nerve agents, and the case discussed is the Salisbury poisonings, a.k.a the attempted murders of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as well as the death of Dawn Sturgess. Sandra got her information from wikipedia, an article from The Guardian written by Steven Morris & Caroline Bannok, and that random interview with the Salisbury "tourists" on youtube. The image comparison between Mr Boshirov and Col Anatoliy Chepiga was first published by Bellingcat and can be found here. Joe got his information from wikipedia, which is also where we got the image of the forensic tent set up around the bench where Sergei and Yulia was found unconscious.

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

I'm thinking that I might do like: "welcome to midweek murders, and it's time to talk about crime", like separately. Because saying welcome is so awkward.

Do whatever you feel comfortable doing I will support you.

I wish you were my mom.

Tune in next week for the reading of the DNA test, will Sandra find out who her real parents are, will Joe disclose the mystery of how he gave birth to a child... play the jingle [Music]

I took some more beer and now I just feel like eh this podcast it wasn't really a good idea was it? We'll just have a website and then it will be like an internet mystery forever, like the podcast that never was, like did anyone ever find them, are they the ones that got murdered? I should put up some of the like i've made a card for the episodes, so that we can fill it in later on.

Podcast pending.

I should just put up hundreds of them and then someone somewhere will find it being like what, there's no like audio recordings did we not press record god damn it we've been doing this for years. The ultimate unresolved mystery.

We'll be famous famous. But will I have to pretend to be dead?

We'll be famous! Although if they start looking for like your internet presence being like is this a real person they will find... A mystery.

Okay I have made notes, and it looks like someone had a stroke in the middle of making notes.

That's just your writing.

Yeah I know, and it's that bad.

Okay this week we're gonna talk about the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Skripal...

You should probably know how to pronounce their names when you're doing a podcast on them, no offense Sergei and Yulia if you're out there. Skripal.

Oh yeah probably, and I got my research from bbc news, the guardian and the guardian article written by stephen morris and caroline bannock and also wikipedia. Wikipedia I think it started like with them finding Sergei and Yulia on a bench the fourth of March 2000 and 17. 18. 18.

Oh good well somebody did the research and it wasn't me!

It's gonna be a long podcast man.

Yeah I know right, and it won't be any material that we can use. Okay so i kind of figured from the articles that they figured out that they were poisoned quite quickly, right? They were found unconscious on the bench... Yeah but it could have been, you know, something else.

I don't know what they were treated for immediately i would assume resuscitation.

Yeah and then they like started barring off the house and stuff quite quickly didn't they?

Yeah it's quite easy to tell if you've been poisoned in terms of blood work, so I guess they found that out pretty quickly. Determined what it was and then decided that because it's quite easily spread, they needed to quarantine much like the situation we're in now.

I burped while you were talking did you hear that?

I did not hear that but I'm glad the listeners know.

I tried to do it really quietly. So how long would you say like blood test comes back?

Blood tests can be returned within the hour and given that they would have been sent to AE, yeah most hospitals have a 60 minute turnaround time for blood tests so they would have found out pretty quickly. Okay so I looked at a timeline for the case and it was Mr Petrov and Mr Boshirov arrived in london on the 2nd of March so that's two days before. Obviously that's not their real names but that's what it said on their passports which, I find this quite weird, like how could they... Well I guess it's not that hard to fake a passport but i mean like, the the vial how did they ship the vial?

Well the particular poison that they used was first discovered when they were looking for different types of pesticides, so it's perfectly feasible that it was marketed to customs import, whoever would have looked at it, if anyone looked at it, as generic pesticide.

But why would someone bring pesticide to another country?

It's not really a question that customs ask. If it's not on their restricted list then it's not a problem. But it's also the same question as how do people get guns and knives on planes. I think that's a whole different topic of research.

Okay I was also reading that Yulia flied in from russia on the third and I was like what the fuck are the odds. She went to visit him didn't she? Yeah, she wasn't living with him. I feel like she's probably an innocent party in this, I think she wasn't the target. No i think that was accidental but also what are the odds that she flies in on the third, one day after the russian guys flew in, and one day before Sergei and Yulia was found poisoned. That's quite crazy.

I think she's probably asking the same question yeah.

Probably. Then I read that Yulia and Sergei kind of go to different parts of Salisbury, Salisbury. Sorry, I could say it before we recorded and then i was like: "wait, wait can I say this?". So they went to the pub which I feel is understandable.

Understandable.

Like you go to england of course the first stop is gonna be the pub, except for Petrov and Boshirov's alibi, they were like.. oh it was so funny I watched the video when they gave like a interview and I think that was for like a russian news outlet or something, I don't remember. But it was so funny they were like yeah our friends have been telling us for so long that you need to visit this wonderful town of salisbury, and and one of them is like yeah the cathedral isn't just known in europe it's also known around the world! Because it has this type of clock tower and this thing and blah blah blah and he just gives the exact numbers of like how tall it is and stuff like that, and I was like this is so beyond what a normal conversation would be like. Like first of all nobody recommends salisbury to another person.

Um what if you want to go to Stonehenge?

Well...

I'll have you know is a world heritage site, thank you very much! You're welcome salisbury listeners. [Laughter]

It would have been more normal if they were like yeah we went to see Stonehedge but they didn't say that, now did they?

Well they probably needed to cover their tracks as to why they were in and around the area where sergei and Yulia were found unconscious.

Yeah they were spotted by cctv on like the street next to where he lived and the poison was sprayed on the door handle right? Yes. Yeah so administered dermally. Yeah they went to the pub and then they went to a restaurant, not the russian guys, uh Sergei and Yulia. And it's supposed to be so crazily poisonous this poison thing but they... as it seemed they walked around for a long time before they fell unconscious. Well I don't know, and I don't think this was it was ever established where the first point of contact with the poison was. I know they found it on his door handled to his house but that doesn't mean to say that there wasn't any that was also administered at the pub or in the restaurant. I think they kind of figured out that it must have been the door handle because that was the highest like concentration of it. Because in the pub they found like traces of it but the traces came from Sergei and and Yulia.

I mean I can see why they would do it as a precautionary measure given that you need such a low dose to actually succumb to symptoms.

Yeah I guess so, and they must have sprayed such a tiny tiny amount if they were conscious for so many hours after having touched the doorknob right? The timeline between doorknob pub and restaurant, yeah I didn't write it up unfortunately, but it was like hours. They went to the cemetery because uh Sergei's wife and his son was buried in the cemetery so they went to the cemetery to like, visit their family, their family's graves so it kind of felt like that was the last stop. But they had spent hours at the restaurant particularly. Quite possibly. I mean not a lot of toxicity data is available about the particular poison that was used because it is a banned substance, it's outlawed under multiple international laws, so there's not going to be studies about the efficacy with respiration versus dermal contact. I assume it's going to take longer to impact you through skin contact than it would aspirated straight into the lungs. Hmm yeah, that makes sense. But also not a doctor. Hashtag not a doctor.

So some history about Sergei. He was sentenced in 2006 in russia for spying for the UK, so he had been selling information about russian spies to MI6 for years. I think they said like from the 1940s something, and then he was a part of like... What are you doing?

Stirring my dinner.

Are you cooking dinner?

Yeah, I've got to eat. Start that line again. We'll edit that out.

Colonel Skripal, he had been selling information about russian secret agents and stuff like that from the 1940s. Yeah so he was a double agent, wasn't he? So originally he was a spy for russia and then changed sides and started leaking war secrets to MI6. Yeah that is why he was a target, eventually for the russians. Yeah there was a website, or investigative website, called bellingcat that had tried to ID the russians mr boshirov and petrov, his name on the passport was like alexander petrov I think, but that's obviously not what they were called. Also it's very funny in that interview I talked about the interviewer is like "oh but what do you do, like what do you work with" and they were like "oh we can't say that because then you're gonna like, the people we work with are gonna be subject to harassment" blah blah blah. She was like but just tell us anything, like why should we believe you? What do you actually do for a living? And they were like um let's just say we work in fitness. Which is like, what? Perfectly rational area of work. But also, spoiler alert, they don't work with fitness. So bellingcat the investigative website that I mentioned had dug up an image of a colonel anatoly chefiga a natalie yes something along those lines and he obviously works for the russian government and the other guy is a doctor and he also works for the russian government surprise surprise and then also they had contact with another russian guy in england at the time that had contact with the russian government so it was starting to sound a bit suspicious it was the russian government obviously and funny thing is that I actually started like doing my research on reddit there was a lot about a lot of posts about trump saying to theresa may that I don't think the russians had anything to do with it well obviously everybody knows trump's an idiot like...

But I think to be fair, politics at the time was probably not the most reliable source of information given that the uk foreign secretary was a certain Boris Johnson. Putin was asked to comment on the case and his response was something like you sought out the issues there then we'll talk. Which I feel like, when you've been directly accused of murdering ex-soviet spies you might want to have a bit more of a firm comment than "we'll talk later"

But the russian propaganda machine is so horribly successful in russia that they made like, they made some research about what the russian population thinks about this, and most people think that russia had nothing to do with it. In russia. But obviously they did.

Well, didn't something like 36% of people surveyed say that they'd never heard of the case before?

Yeah that too.

Which, I mean, it seems like an unbelievable statistic when just looking at it. But then how remote are some areas in russia, that they're gonna hear about an ex-soviet spy who was discreetly attempted to be killed?

Yeah, no, I get it. I just feel like i've seen like documentaries about how they use the news in russia. And it's very effective, like against their population. And also how they use hackers lol, and bots and stuff, to destabilize every big democracy in the world. It's crazy.

But getting back to the case sorry that was a tangent about conspiracies. They did find traces of novichok, the poison, in the hotel room of these two guys as well. So it's pretty clear that it was them.

It's pretty damning evidence.

And then they were fine found on the 4th of march, right?

Around about then, yeah.

Yeah and then I've prepared a quiz. How much did you pay attention to me, and how much did you pay attention to making dinner? I'm kidding.

30/70.

So the the 30th of June, did I say that correctly? That's a date. Yep. That's a date, all right, we'll go with that. Dawn Sturgess collapses in her flat. No, it was her friend's flat, or her boyfriend's flat, foaming at the mouth. And at first the police said that they thought that it was drugs, like heroin or something, that was mixed with something else. Yeah, and then it turns out that it's the same substance that Sergei and and Yulia was poisoned with. And her friend, or boyfriend, differing reports on that, Charlie Rowley also got sick. And he said that he... Well, this was also varying, depending on which article I was reading, but he said that he had found a perfume bottle that was sealed in its box in a charity bin three days prior. And some friends of his, or them, said that he regularly scavenged recycling bins for items to resell. So I don't really know when he actually found the perfume but if he says that it's three days prior, then probably. I don't know. In Amesbury. Yeah how far from Salisbury is that?

No idea. Listeners comment below.

We don't have a comment section on on the website.

Listeners tweet us.

If we ever go into twitter, yeah sure @midweekmurders

And hashtag Sergei and and Yulia, hashtag not a doctor.

Let's not rope them into this, they're innocent bystanders. This podcast is going to be shit.

So Dawn Sturgess goes like into a coma or something, she was on life support. And in that guardian article that I referenced, they interviewed her mom and dad because she did die, or she was taken off life support after a while. And then they said that she was so contagious that they weren't allowed to touch her. And she had been, the mom had been stroking her hair and then she reached for her face to wipe a tear because she was crying, and the doctors had been like don't touch your face. And I was like "what in the hell?". The thing is like, she's lying in the hospital, obviously they must have removed the clothes and like burned them or something because they must have been contagious, but that she can still be that contagious, or not contagious but like that poisonous, is crazy to me.

Well again it comes down to the difference between aspiration and dermal contact. So if she's been exposed to the nerve agent through a perfume bottle, that's immediately aspirating into the air so you've got a whole load more contamination points than you would by opening a contaminated door.

Yeah.

They have to take considerations into that. And given that it was confirmed as the same nerve agent... It's like having an ebola outbreak, you have to treat everything as highly contagious because you just don't know what's contaminated, how easily it can pass on.

The only like reference point I have to that is when I watched chernobyl the series, and like obviously they were radioactive. Everyone, all of the first responders, the firefighters etc, was so contaminated that their clothes are still contaminated today.

Like Madame Curie who discovered radium, her notebook is still contaminated and gives off a lethal dose of radiation. It's stored in a lead box and can't be accessed by anyone without like proper radiation protection suits. Stuff like that can stick around for years and years and years. And this particular nerve agent is really really difficult to get rid of. You can't just wash it away. If it gets into the water cycle then the water cycle is contaminated. There's... Because so little is known about it, the treatment and cleanup procedures have to be the highest order and the most severe just to make sure that you're reducing the risk of spread.

Yeah her friend or boyfriend, probably boyfriend, Charlie he said that he had probably contracted it while like putting, while handling the bottle. That's why he was poisoned, probably. And she sprayed it on her wrist and that's why she died. Which is horrible, but I feel like it's so crazy that like... I don't know that everything gets so extremely contaminated by that little of a poison.

Well that's exactly the reason that chemical warfare is declared a war crime, and that it's banned internationally.

Yeah no, I get it, but it was very peculiar. Just like what're the chances? How did that perfume perfume bottle end up in a recycling bin, or in charity bin, like that's crazy.

Well it seems most likely that the guys that attempted the murder on Sergei probably disposed of the evidence. And the best way to dispose of evidence is to leave the scene of the crime. You go to a nearby town... Don't take any advice listeners! You go to a nearby town or village and get rid of evidence there. If you've got no history in that town or village then police are less likely to suspect you to move to that place, and it's easier to discard vital evidence.

Yeah but it felt like, why didn't they just throw it away?

Because you spray a perfume bottle on someone's door handle and then go to the nearest bin, that nearest bin is most likely going to be searched by the police in the coordinate limit.

But they could have like thrown it out in another bin. Why was it in the recycling bin?

I'm not a KGB agent, I don't have the answers to this.

I just found it very strange that they just didn't permanently get rid of it.

I mean if you've not got the morals to be able to say no to murdering a former soviet spy, you probably don't care how many more victims you also lay claim to.

Yeah well that's true. Her parents, Dawn's parents, described her as a gentle hippie. I thought that was quite relatable because if somebody asked... if I were to pass away and somebody asked my parents like: "how would you describe Sandra", they would be like: "she was kind of gentle hippy", "What did she do with her life?". I mean like, they would be like: "she had all these liberal ideas, you know she was one of those"...

One of those commies.

Yeah, yeah, so that's the case. Did you have more about the poison?

I've got loads more about the poison, I was waiting for you to ask the questions about the poison.

Tell me about the poison.

So you mentioned earlier that it was called a novichok, and these were a series of chemical weapons developed by the soviet union during the 1970s to the 1990s. And during that time they were also outlawed, so the purpose of developing them in the first place was for the cold war with the united states and...

Wait, what is that? No, I'm just kidding.

Well the cold war...

So this particular agent that they used was called A234 and there's very little scientific data available about it, how to make it obviously, and any studies into their toxicity. But there's certain comparisons to other nerve agents that have been studied more closely. So there's another one called VX and I think it stands for venomous agent 10. I'm assuming the x is roman numerals for ten. Clever boy. Yeah, can't be, can't be sure on that though. Not a doctor. Anyway, so the weapon A234 has been deemed approximately five to eight times more toxic than VX. And when you look at the toxicity data it's actually quite frightening to consider that. So the LD50, which is the lethal dose required to kill 50 % of test participants, is 7 micrograms per kilogram. If you translate that into what they usually extrapolate into, which is a 70 kilogram adult male with no underlying health conditions, the lethal dose of VX is 0.49 milligrams.

Oh shit, that's so much, so much less...

Absolutely tiny amount. Yeah, now imagine that A234 is five to eight times that lethal. It's coming down to like two 0.2 milligrams via respiration to cause death, which is why the medical staff and the police force, and everybody involved in the case was so precautious about containing this case. It's why Dawn showed such severe symptoms and passed away, whereas Sergei and and Yulia didn't, was because a dose of 0.2 milligrams via respiration is a lethal dose. That's like one or two spritzes inhaled of a perfume, and that's enough.

That is crazy, especially thinking like how much milligrams of painkillers you take, or like...

Yeah, you think your standard dose of paracetamol is 500 milligrams, and it takes 0.2 milligrams in order to kill an average male.

Yeah I can't, I wanted to say that's like, blah blah blah percent but let's not do maths. I can't. [Laughter]

But also, so it's a nerve agent which the nervous system controls your actions and your sensory information. So every kind of movement, every smell, every site, is all controlled by the nervous system. And nerve agents all act the same way in that they inhibit the nervous response in the body, and they do that by acting on what's called acetyl cholinesterase. And the way that this works is in your synapses in the brain and in your body between muscles, you create a compound called acetylcholine, which is basically an instruction to either the muscle or the brain synapse to trigger and as soon as that information is passed and the synapse or the muscle has triggered the acetylcholine is broken down by the enzyme acetylcholinase. Now when you've inhaled or been exposed to a nerve agent, it breaks down the acetylcholine esterase, which means that your body is constantly firing instructions to either your muscles or your brain to do something. So the most common effects of nerve agents is paralysis, because your muscles are constantly being told to act. So you go completely rigid, you can't move. That's why it's so painful. Yeah it's why Dawn was found foaming at the mouth, because the salivary response in the mouth is also a nervous system response. But it affects everything so it includes your heart, it includes your diaphragm, and all the muscles included for breathing. Which is why this was such a big issue for the police and the medical departments, and why nerve agents have been outlawed across the world in terms of chemical warfare. Because they're completely harsh, they're completely non-restrictive. The only way to treat them is for doctors to identify via a blood test the acetylcholine levels and administer drugs that counteract the effect of the nerve agent. And on the plus side those drugs themselves are toxic in high doses.

Oh no. So that's like my friend who's allergic to bees, but she's also allergic to bee medicine. Like the medicine you take... What is it called?

Anaphylactics.

Yeah. Oh it's been a it's been a tough ride, you know.

Yeah and the side effects get worse the longer you are exposed and untreated. So it could start with eyes watering, excessive mucus production in your nose, foaming at the mouth, localized paralysis, but the more you are untreated the more this cholinesterase can build up in your synapses. And it just continues until like all of the people, Sergei and Yulia, Dawn, her boyfriend Charlie, everybody was affected in the same way and it eventually leads to coma and unfortunately death.

I think maybe it wasn't that great that they thought that it was drugs at first.

Well foaming at the mouth is also a very common side effect of a lot of overdose drugs, so it's not particularly surprising that they thought that. And I mean most often they'll do emergency blood tests anyway, but ACTR or acth isn't often screened for, it's a specific test request that you need to ask the lab to perform. So you might not pick up on it on a normal routine blood test, which obviously then impacts the patient's rate of survival.

Yeah and also, maybe like, I feel bad for also the hospital workers like they must have been low-key poisoned as well.

Yeah and that's why the measures were taken that the doctor told Dawn's mum not to touch her hair, and why the pub was shut down, and the restaurant was shut down. I think they replaced the roof of the house where Sergei and lived.

Yeah I think I remember reading that. The walls as well, I think.

Yeah but is that like... Novichok, like could that still be found in salisbury, like on that bench, or in that restaurant or like... Would traces of it still be there?

Everything would have been either decontaminated or decommissioned. I know that with other nerve agents when a military response is called for, quite often they'll call the bomb disposal unit and things like that. For other cases that have been documented in the uk, they've actually buried the vehicles that were used to attend the response. So I'd imagine...

That's crazy.

Yeah any kind of issue with contamination now will have been dealt with, and everywhere would have been tested to a sufficient level to be able to say that it's safe. Yeah I think I read somewhere that one of the doctors that were in, I think it was Sergei's house, he was in full hazmat and stuff, but he still had to get rid of all of his... I think he got rid of all of his furniture, they had to move, it was crazy.

Yeah it's a really, really horrible weapon.

But that's why I think that I was so surprised that they were walking and spending time outside of the house for so long before actually having symptoms.

I don't know whether it was confirmed that it was the door knob, I know that that was where the highest dose was found, or the highest concentration, but whether that was just a missed opportunity by the murderers... Because I don't think it was ever established where the initial point of contact was.

Maybe not. I thought it was the doorknob but maybe they weren't sure.

Did I tell you before about one of the times when I called the police?

Which time?

Well there was one time when I was walking in the south of sweden, I think it was on my way home or something I don't remember and there was this girl or woman who was shouting obscenities more or less uh sitting on a stoop outside of a building and I could see that she was foaming from the mouth and I was like: "oh shit that can't be good". So another girl walked up to her and tried to calm her down because she was very upset, and I called the police that's the same number in sweden as like the hospital, like the emergency vehicles in general. So I called that number and I was like: "yeah there's a girl here she's foaming from the mouth, I don't think that's good". So they sent an ambulance. I had never seen that before, I think like, it's a very crazy sight when someone's foaming at the mouth. You immediately think something is very wrong here.

I immediately think rabies.

I'm sure... I don't think it was rabies, I think she was on drugs unfortunately.

Well it could have been nerve agent A234 and you are just as prejudiced as the police officers that attended Dawn.

I know right, funny how that works. Well for the listeners out there, just so you know, I'm not a police officer. [Laughter]

Nice save.

They would call and I would be like: "where? Salisbury? That's not a place".

Never heard of it.

Oh you must've, it's a wonderful town with the fantastic cathedral that has this really old clock...

Did you know it's spire reaches 233 and a half meters?

I would be like: "is it any where close to Amesbury?", they were like: "yeah", and I would be like: "ah doesn't make any sense, I don't even know".

"Then why did you ask if it was close to Amesbury?", "I've got family there",

"I read it somewhere on the internet, that's a place."

"I listened to a really bad podcast about it."[laughs]

Okay, do you have your dinner ready now?

It was already about 20 minutes ago.

I'm so sorry, I'm gonna let you eat now.

How are we gonna close this wonderful virginial podcast?

This very, very professional podcast? Well we could just say bye. Bye! [Music]

Topics

• salisbury posionings
• Sergei and Yulia Skripal
• russian spies
• uk true crime podcasts
• political assassinations
• spies
• assassinations
• nerve agents
• radiation poisoning
• Novichok
• Amesbury poisonings
• radioactive contamination