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The Umbrella Assassination

2 December

A smiling Georgi Markov sitting on a lawn in front of some bushes.
Diagram of the small metal pellet found in Georgi Markov's thigh.

This week, we discuss the assassination of Georgi Markov, shot in the leg with an umbrella. Sandra asks questions about the evidence, and Joe highlights the inadequacies of the Queen's diet.

Joe got his information from:

Sandra got her information from:

Audio transcript

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

I had some seaweed at some fancy-ass Australian brunch spot in London, when those things were still allowed. The fancy-ass Australian brunch spots, no I'm just kidding.

Sounds real fancy. "G'day mate! For your starter today we've got something that some jobby just picked up off the beach. Enjoy that, you fucking cunt." [Laughter]

Incredible. I didn't know you could do Australian.

Everyone can do Australian.

I can't. Well, maybe I can. No.

Well that's an invitaion right there. Abort, abort!

[Music]

Okay. It is Wednesday, which means...

Do you not want to wait until I finish my burp? I'm like full-on belching and you're like: "la la la la la, podcast la la la".

I had too much steam, I just plowed on.

More heat, less foam.

It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. You're listening to Midweek Murders and I'm your host Sandra.

And I'm your co-host Joe. That will never cease being my least favorite part of this podcast. Me having to introduce myself.

I can introduce you and you can introduce me.

Then we'll confuse our listeners.

They will be like: "who's this dark testosterone voice? Must be Sandra".

"Sandra was the guy?!"

Sandra was the guy all along, we all knew it. I have the biggest dick.

Pew pew.

That's the sound my dick makes when it clonks against the toilet when I sit down to pee. Wow.

Poseidon's kiss. That's when it splashes back up after you've pooped and you get a little bit of bog water in your bum hole.

Oh yeah, I've heard about that. I don't do that, because I always put down a splash pad.

Yeah, me too.

Got to keep it safe. Be safe out there, kids!

I mean, your splash pad is more like a splash parachute given how often you clog the toilet.

I have some explosive shits, man. I don't know what to tell you.

Gotta make sure, okay?!

I'm a lady!

I'm delicate! Apart from one's shitting their innards out. The queen shits, you know. It's nothing abnormal.

You could make the case that my shits are abnormal

So are the Queen's probably, she's quite old now.

True.

Doubt she gets enough fiber in that diet of poor people and prawns to be able to form a solid stool.

Poor people and prawns! [Laughter]

If you're listening Lizzy, please don't write to us. We're not interested.

Sometimes you are funny, man.

Queen Elizabeth II will not be writing to you.

Speaking of which, this week we have a very special fan pick. Picked especially by our loyal Russian bots. Here we go! [Laughter]

This one is for you. Please do not write, we are not interested. Unless it is for review or comment, then please leave good review.

Yeah. And also, I should probably say, it was not picked by our Russian bot fans. But we do appreciate you bumping our numbers up. Okay. This week we're going to talk about the murder of Georgi Markov. I got my information from wikipedia, BBC News, About Forensics by J. Emsley, a Guardian article from 1978 by David Pallister, The View East by Dr Kelly Hignett and The History Herald by Richard H. Cummings. He knows the comings and goings of history.

Oh god. [Laughter]

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Yeah, you guessed it listeners, this is gonna be a long one. I got my sources from a couple of journal articles, a transcription in a meeting that was held between a leading scientist at the time and one of the pathologists who performed the autopsy. Ooh! And Wikipedia.

Yeah, always there, Wiki-wiki-wah. So Georgi Markov was a 49 year old man who had defected from the People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1968, where he had worked as a novelist and a playwright. And he wasn't like, just a normal failed author, he was very famous in Bulgaria. After his relationship with the Bulgarian regime soured, he was sentenced in absentia for defecting. He relocated to England, where he started working for the BBC World Service. And other things, so there was a radio thing... Oh shit, I'm on the wrong Wikipedia page. Radio Free Europe, I think it was in Munich, actually.

That's where it's hosted, but it's a free broadcast across all of Europe.

That was broadcasted also in the Eastern block. So this was during the Cold War, and he used this platform to, among other things, criticise the communist party that ruled in Bulgaria and the communist party leader Todor Zhivkov. He got married in England to Annabel Dilke who, I must say, looks a lot like Rachel Weisz. So I was like, lucky man.

Good job, Georgi.

Yeah. The couple also had a daughter. On the 7th of september 1978, Georgi parked his car underneath Waterloo Bridge, as he did...

He parked in the Thames?! [Laughter]

It's not funny. Okay. As he did every morning on his way to work. Near the bridge was a bus stahp. "Near the bridge was a bus stahp!".

A bus stahp?

Near the bridge was a bus stop, where he went to catch a bus that would take him to his office. At the bus stop, he suddenly felt a sharp prick on the back of his... [Laughter]

Doesn't mean penis.

Sorry, sorry. I wrote this myself, I didn't see the humor in it at the time. There, he suddenly felt a sharp prick on the back of his right thigh and turned around to see what could have brought it on. What he saw was a heavyset man with an accent, that was briskly walking away and hailed a taxi on the other side of the street. Some sources say that he could tell that the man had an accent because he mumbled an apology, and some sources say that he noticed the accent because of the way he was talking with the taxi driver.

Yeah. One of the sources that I read said that the taxi driver was struggling to understand the instructions of where he wanted to go.

Yeah. So Georgi concluded that the man must have accidentally prodded him with the umbrella he had picked up from the street, as if he had recently dropped it. Georgi carried on with his day and recalled the umbrella incident to a colleague after noticing a small red spot, like an insect bite with a swollen red circle around it, on the back of his thigh. And then later on to his wife when he returned home. So that evening, Georgi fell ill with a high fever and was hospitalized the next morning. Some people talked about it as if he was vomiting a lot, did you read anything about that?

I didn't think he started vomiting until he was in hospital.

Okay, okay. He told the medical staff about the umbrella incident, insisting that he had been poisoned by the KGB with a toxic dart, as he had been warned about there being a plot to assassinate him a couple of months earlier. But the medical staff at the hospital was unconvinced by this. And I don't know if it was because they just didn't think that that would happen, or if it was something about his symptoms, but I'm guessing it just seemed implausible because, you know, KGB.

I think they originally diagnosed him with septicemia, which is blood poisoning. And so I think, being a combination of quite an outlandish claim really, when you think about it, as well as a clinical picture that matches almost perfectly with septicemia, they were probably reluctant to accept that theory.

So even though they say that the medical staff was unconvinced, Dr Bernard Riley who examined him at St James's hospital had phoned the Scotland Yard about his patient, and the Scotland Yard launched an investigation into it. Dr Riley stated to the BBC that he thought that it couldn't be cyanide since that would have killed Georgi quicker than the four days it took for him to succumb to his symptoms in the hospital. He said that he ruled out thallium or arsenic, as it would have taken longer for the symptoms to set in.

Both cyanide and arsenic present very specific side effects. When you overdose on cyanide, or if you get poisoned with cyanide, you turn blue in a condition called cyanosis. Which is also where the ink cartridge color... That's why they're all: "cyan", "cyanide", because they're all related to blue. I think arsenic does something strange to your fingernails, I think it affects your keratin production, so there are very obvious clinical signs for both cyanide and arsenic poisoning.

Yeah. The doctor concluded that it must have been a toxin. And then at home, in a strange coincidence, his wife who had just read an Agatha Christie book suggested that it might be ricin because that was the poison used in the book. So at the autopsy they removed a small part of the tissue surrounding the swollen spot on his thigh, and found a small circular metal pellet with holes in it, in the tissue. And when I say small, it was like super small.

1.53 millimeters in diameter.

Yeah, that's extremely small.

Yes, they're very small.

So the autopsy findings were surprisingly similar to an incident in Paris that happened only 10 days prior, where another Bulgarian exile named Vladimir Kostov had come down with a high fever and been hospitalized. In this case it was a failed assassination attempt, as Kostov survived. They did retrieve the same kind of small circular pellet embedded in his back. So the theories about how he survived, or why he survived, varies. But I picked out some that I thought were most plausible. It might have been a combination of Kostov being shot from a further distance away than Markov, as well as him having worn a very thick sweater on the day, and a lucky coincidence of the outer layer of the coating of the pellet failing to fully dissolve.

It was in his back, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was in his back.

Obviously, because that's where your spinal cord runs, there's a lot more bone protection there than there is in the thigh. So it's a lot harder to get that pellet to the same depth than it would be for a meaty area like the thigh. So it was never going to be as deep, which, you don't even need to accommodate for the fact that he was shot further away.

Okay.

It could be exactly the same distance, but because the location on the body was different it wouldn't have penetrated as far. It was mentioned in a couple of the sources that I read, that they all agreed he was wearing either a thick jumper or a thick jersey, I think one of them said. Which obviously would have slowed the impact, whereas Georgi was wearing jeans which is just one layer. Although they couldn't prove, with Georgi, that there was a covering on the pellet, it has been implied that there was one. Which did, obviously, fully dissolve. Because they couldn't trace it. If the other one didn't, then he would have received a lower dose of the poison as well.

Yeah. Here, maybe we should talk about ricin.

I think we should probably talk about the autopsy first.

Yes. Hit me with your rhythm stick, I'm ready.

Hit me! So as you said, they found the spherical metal pellet embedded in his thigh meat.

Wow. [Laughter]

They obviously cut that out, but they also took an identical tissue sample from his other leg in order to be able to compare what, in air quotes, would be normal compared to what was causing the problem.

The swelling, yeah.

Yeah. The pathologist that was looking at it, the tissue sample got sent away so the second pathologist that looked at it, could see it visually in the sample tissue.

The pellet?

Yep. And assumed that it was a marker that the first pathologist had put in the tissue to indicate where to look, or what to examine microscopically. And he said that the whole case was incredibly lucky, because if he had popped that out and it had rolled off the table onto the floor, they wouldn't have been able to examine it because it probably would have been lost, it was so small. But he managed to extract it, and they did look at it. Obviously they measured it 1.53 millimeters, and it had two holes that had been drilled into it and the holes were 0.34 millimeters wide.

Oh god, that is so tiny.

Absolutely minuscule.

Can they even see that in a microscope? Was it an electron microscope?

No, just a visual microscope. It's millimeters not nanometers. [Laughter]

Here I go again with my science.

But the fact that there were two identical holes of exactly the same dimensions showed the pathologist that this wasn't a natural defect, in the pellet. So it could have been like a ball bearing that you have in BMX's, or any kind of wheel basically, but they knew that it wasn't and it was manufactured this way because these holes were so perfect, really. The original pathologist saw that Georgi had lungs full of fluid, which indicated heart failure. His liver was damaged severely, which would indicate blood poisoning which coincides with the septicemia that the doctors diagnosed him with. However, they also found that the intestines, the lymph nodes, the heart, testicles, pancreas, and the lymph glands in his groin, all had small hemorrhages in them. So they were bleeding out internally.

That would indicate that this tiny, tiny, tiny amount of ricin that they think was in the pellet must have been incredibly poisonous, no?

Well, I'll get onto that a little bit later.

I have another question, sorry if I'm interrupting you. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, no?

I think they originally labeled it as cardiac arrest.

Okay.

But then, once they dug a bit further, I think they amended it. But we could talk about that a bit later as well.

Okay.

So he had a couple of ECG's while he was still alive, obviously, you can't do an ECG when someone's passed away.

What is an ECG?

A test that measures the electrical voltages in your heart.

Oh, okay.

During the autopsy they found that his atria had actually stopped pumping. So the heart is divided into four pumps, essentially. You've got two pumps at the top which are called the atria, and two bigger pumps at the bottom which are called the ventricles. The atria pump the oxygenated blood from the lungs into the ventricles, and the ventricles pump it everywhere else to the body. So they found that his atria had stopped pumping completely, which means that he's not getting any oxygenated blood supply to the rest of his body, because there's nothing to supply it into the ventricles for it to be pumped out. So heart failure was probably the initial cause of death, based on that finding. While he was still alive they took multiple blood tests, obviously, and also found that he had a white cell count of 33 200. The normal range is between 4 and 11 000.

Okay.

So white cell count increases when you've got some kind of infection in your body. The white blood cells are used to fight off the infection. And at the time of drawing these bloods, and when the whole incident occurred, they thought that this was a record high level of white cell count in his blood. So they were absolutely astonished to find that it was that high.

So that means they've never seen that before?

I don't think the doctors at the time would have seen it before. I did try and find the world record for highest white cell count, and these days it goes up into the hundreds of thousands. So that is all I have for the autopsy.

Okay. The question that I have now is, what do they know about ricin poisonings? Do they know anything about how ricin affects bodies, or can't they tell because they can't study it because it doesn't happen? That's a bad question, what I'm trying to get at is...

I got the question. [Laughter] So at the time of when this happened, there were a couple of places that were looking at developing ricin based chemical weapons. So there were a couple of institutes, I think there was one in Norway, obviously the Russians did a lot, I think the Americans did some research, and there was a research institute in Great Britain, that were all looking at the viability of ricin as a biological weapon. So there were a couple of places that were looking at it. But like you said, because it's so toxic there's no real in vitro studies, so studies in the human body, that they could look at to compare it. Now the pathologist that was... I don't know if he conducted the autopsy, but he was definitely there, gave a wonderful explanation of the thought process behind how they came to the conclusion of ricin. And they basically thought of any kind of toxicity, or bacteria, or fungus, or nerve agent, that could cause death and ruled them out based on clinical symptoms. So they ruled out all nerve agents, because a lot of them will cause paralysis or convulsions, and they act super quick. So because Georgi didn't present with any of those symptoms, they knew it wasn't a nerve agent. They knew it wasn't anything viral, because either his death was too quick or too slow, I think it was probably too quick. And again, a lot of his clinical symptoms didn't fit. They ruled out everything bacterial, again through clinical symptoms and because of time frame, bacterial cause of death is a lot slower. And they also took cultures from his blood, and they all came back negative for everything that they tested them for, so they knew it was nothing bacterial or microbial. And then that sort of left them with toxins, and so they went through the list of known toxins. And it's worth pointing out at this stage, that ricin was always a contender. It wasn't one of the last on the list that they were like: "well, we've ruled everything else out, it must be ricin", it was always at the top of their list because it matched all of the clinical symptoms and time frame. But because there's no test for ricin, in terms of a blood test or anything like that, there is now but there wasn't at the time, they had to rule out everything else. I think there was only one other contender that it could have been by the time they'd gone through everything. So they'd got down to toxins, and it was either between ricin or something else. And again, they ruled out that something else because it didn't fit the clinical picture. So once they'd sort of ruled out everything else, they were quite sure that it was ricin. And this bit disturbed me a little bit, so vegans - turn off now. They got a lab pig...

I heard about that as well!

And injected the pig in a similar location, so back of the right thigh, with a dose of ricin and monitored the pig for the same clinical symptoms and speed of death. So the pig died in 26 hours after being injected, showed all of the same clinical symptoms as Georgi did, apart from vomiting.

Yeah.

So the pig didn't vomit, but they did note that it had gone off its food, so it wasn't eating. I don't know the ins and outs of pig emetic system, whether it's even possible for them to vomit, some animals can't vomit, whether they have the same internal mechanism that would stimulate vomiting, whether it's a built-in response that if they are feeling nauseous they just don't eat so there's nothing for them to vomit up, can't comment. Not a pig farmer. But when...

We haven't forgotten, Cammy! [Laughter]

Pig fucker. When they did the autopsy on the pig, they found exactly the same internal hemorrhaging, build up of fluid, heart failure, that they found in Georgi. So they were quite convinced that it was ricin. They did note that the pig had died a lot sooner than Georgi did, I think he died four days...

Yeah, four days.

...after he was shot. So the pig lasted just over a day. But also, we can take into consideration that the dosage they would have given the pig of ricin, would have been a lot higher. Because at that stage they didn't know the dosage that Georgi had been administered. So I think that can pretty much cover why the pig died faster. And the fact that all of the clinical symptoms remain the same, and all of the autopsy findings remain the same, lends pretty conclusively to show that it was ricin

Yeah.

Now I mentioned earlier that the ricin theory is interesting; because there is no test, or was no test for ricin, they couldn't detect it in his bloodstream, they couldn't find it on the pellet, it still has to go down as a theoretical cause of death.

Yeah.

They can't say for sure that this is what caused it, even if they're 99% sure that this is what caused it, because they have no scientific evidence to show 100% they found this in his body and therefore that was what killed him.

Yeah. And I feel bad about the doctor that I mentioned, Bernard Riley, who was interviewed. Because he was like: "I always wanted to be a forensic pathologist", and then when this happened and he treated Markov, after everything, he did come to the conclusion that actually, he wanted more than anything else to be able to save people's lives. Instead of just looking at the autopsy and trying to find out what killed them.

In the doctor's defense, a lot of people might be thinking: "well, if his wife had identified it as ricin"...

Yeah.

I mean, obviously you're not just going to be like: "oh, you read that in a fictional whodunit story? Well, it must be ricin". If he had some clinical inkling that it was ricin poisoning, I feel that it's important to point out at this stage that there is no cure for ricin poisoning. Because it was basically injected, it was intravenous through his tissue straight into his bloodstream, all of your typical poisoning treatments wouldn't have worked. So one of the most common ones is activated charcoal, which sits in the stomach and absorbs the poison before it can be absorbed into the bloodstream. Now, because he didn't have any in his stomach, that wouldn't have worked. Ricin can't be removed by dialysis, so they couldn't have filtered his blood artificially to get rid of it, that wouldn't have worked. So all they can really do is administer fluids and certain drugs that could have kept his heart in rhythm, and helped his kidneys, or his liver, and things like that. Given the degree of internal hemorrhaging that they found in the autopsy, I don't think there was anything that the medical team could have done to save him.

Yeah, but for me it was impressive that the doctor even concluded that it was a toxin. And also impressive of Agatha Christie to even think up that story.

I'm pretty sure she's done this a couple of times. Whether it be in her stories, she's thought this up and then someone has done it, or whether a medical professional has read that story and successfully treated someone. I'm sure that this is not the first time that Agatha Christie has been... Or one of her stories rather, has been involved in a medical case.

That is quite impressive. She's quite an impressive lady.

Yeah. I'm almost certain that it was a doctor, or a nurse, some kind of medical professional, that had read an Agatha Christie story and identified the exact same symptoms of one of the murders in the Agatha Christie novel, and saved the patient because of that.

That is quite cool.

The amount of research that she'd have had to go into, and at the time of her writing, that's like, so many trips to the library. [Laughter]

Yeah, definitely. If you don't get the jokes, they're all references to our previous episodes. Because we're not that creative to come up with new jokes.

Behave, I just like to pick something funny and stick with it. [Laughter]

Okay, so...

This is for you forest dwellers that listen to every episode. [Laughter]

That's for you, Susanne! Forest dwellers. So according to...

Should we talk about ricin? Or do you want to do that in a bit?

Oh! I thought we did that?

No. That was autopsy, babe. [Laughter]

Oh, okay. Let's talk about ricin.

Okay. So ricin is produced within the seeds of the castor oil plant.

Oh, wait! Castor oil is a skin care product! Amongst other things.

Yeah. It has a multitude of different uses, castor oil has been commandeered for a million and one things. The oil company castrol actually came to be by starting out in castor oil, so a multi-billion international company founded themselves on castor oil. According to the guinness book of world records, it's the most poisonous common plant in the world.

What?! And it's used so wild... widely!

Wildly! I bathe in castor oil!

No reigns!

For all the paranoid hypochondriacs out there, castor oil is completely safe to use.

I just wanted to say my joke: "castor oil, no reigns - just oil". That's the slogan for my skin as well. Okay, that's not funny. Carry on. [Laughter] Carry on.

I'm just waiting for the tumbleweed to roll by. [Laughter] Yeah. So the process of manufacturing castor oil removes all of the ricin from the product, so there's no concerns about using castor oil. It's completely safe, in as much as an oil can be. So the plant that is responsible for both ricin and castor oil grows in warm climates. It's a super common plant. So some indigenous people used to chew on the seeds of the castor oil plant for their purgative effects, which has been known to result in death.

Oh.

Also, the seeds of the plant can pass through the human body completely perfectly fine, without causing any side effects, unless you chew them.

Okay.

So if you break that seed casing by chewing it, or it being a particularly weak shell and your stomach acid breaking it down, then you will die. But swallow them whole, you're golden. Pop them down like sunflower seeds.

I think normal people chew their sunflower seeds, just saying.

Fuck you. [Laughter] The clinical symptoms of ricin poisoning include a burning mouth and throat sensation, abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. So all of you conspiracy theorists out there: it does cause vomiting.

Yeah. Stick that sunflower up your ass!

It causes severe dehydration and the inability to urinate, which is a nice combination. And also, a very interesting combination: it can cause tachycardia, which is a raised heart rate, and a drop in blood pressure. Oh, interesting.

So it's like you're pumping on an empty tank?

You're pumping extra fast, but the amount of blood you're pumping is reduced.

That sounds dangerous to me.

It's exactly what happened to Georgi. Because obviously your blood pressure is going to drop if half of your heart isn't working.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's a bit like rabies in that it causes an insatiable thirst, but also a fear of water.

Yeah. That is the craziest shit I've ever heard. When you told me about that, I was like: "this is nightmare fuel".

Can we do a rabies episode? It's not going to be a murder, but rabies is so interesting as a pathogen.

Yeah. And also, nightmare fuel.

So they have done studies in animals, and the lethal doses are super, super low.

Yeah. I did actually clock onto that, because I was like: "in this tiny, tiny, little metal ball with tiny, tiny holes in it. Must have been a very, very small amount of ricin".

So the LD 50...

Lethal dose for 50% of the...

Population, yeah. Well remembered. I was just gonna explain that for any new listeners, but...

Oh, sorry. I was like: "I know this one!". [Laughter]

Yeah. So the LD 50 for rats intra dermally I'll say, so under the skin rather than inhaled or swallowed, is 5 to 10 micrograms per kilogram. So multiply that up to a 70 kilogram person, which is the scientific standard. I'm not sure how many people weigh 70 kilos, definitely not me anymore. [Laughter] So the LD 50 for a 70 kilogram person is 0.35 milligrams.

Oh god, that is so tiny!

Yeah. If we take into consideration how much could have been packed into the pellet, it's between 0.2 and 0.5 milligrams, so well within the lethal dose. They've also found, in some studies, that the lethal dose can be as low as 0.7 micrograms per kilogram. So where the LD 50 is 5 to 10, it can be as low as 0.7.

Oh god.

Also, the way that it works in the body is particularly interesting to you scientifically inclined people out there. So ricin inhibits protein synthesis, so it stops cells from assembling the amino acids into proteins, which is like the fundamental level of cell metabolism. So basically, the whole purpose of cells in your body is to merge amino acids into proteins and then the proteins go about and do their happy life business. So ricin stops that from happening, so it's causing cell death right at the basic level of what your cell is in your body to do. And the reason that it took as long as it did for Georgi to die, and why it couldn't have been some of the other things, is because obviously, when you're causing cell death at that level, it needs to hit a lot of cells for that to have an impact. Ich bin fertig.

Oh, sorry. I was pouring my beer, and I was like: "oh, was that a question?".

"That was so interesting, I might just have a little snooze".

No, sorry. I was listening. So I was gonna say that some other theories around this case are like: "oh, it couldn't have been administered by an umbrella".

We can rule out it being administered by injection, because even though the pellet was so small it still would have needed quite a wide board needle, so the size of the needle would still need to be quite big compared to your usual when you go and have your blood taken. And they would have been able to pick that up on autopsy. They know that it was some kind of gas or compressed air powered device, rather than it being some kind of explosive device like a gun. Because 1) the pellet would have morphed shape if it were anything more powerful than compressed air, or compressed gas. And there was no burn marks on Georgi's jeans, which would have come from the gun powder needed to fire a gun like weapon. It couldn't have been anything like a blow dart, because no human is gonna have the lung capacity to be able to fire that projectile that hard. So you quickly run out of options as to what it could have been. And there's also been, I think either the ex-KGB guy or somebody from the Bulgarian secret service, came forward and gave a schematic of the umbrella and how it would have worked. I think it's pretty covered now that it was some kind of gas-powered umbrella projectile. They also know that because of the height that Georgi was shot, that it wouldn't have been something other than...

A long thing. [Laughter]

Not a long thing. But if it were anything small and handheld, why would he shoot him in the thigh rather than his shoulder, or the back of his neck, or somewhere where there's a faster, or easier to access, blood supply. The easiest place to administer a poison would be in the side of the neck because it's so close to the carotid artery, which is a massive transport route for blood, so it's going to spread that poison really quickly. There's no logical choice to shoot someone in the back of the thigh unless you were carrying something that is easy to just flick up a little bit and fire. Like walking with an umbrella would be, or a cane, or something like that, rather than it being something small and handheld. Are you laughing?

Yeah, I'm laughing because I just thought that you would say: "if you weren't carrying a long thing". [Laughter]

We know it's a long thing because of science.

Sorry. So according to some sources, the prime suspect in this murder is a man named Francesco Gullino, a dane of italian origin. Allegedly, he was a smuggler who was arrested in Bulgaria and given the choice of either prison or to become a secret agent stationed in the west. He was awarded medals in Bulgaria for services to security and public order. He was questioned by the British and Danish police in 1993, following which he promptly disappeared.

Yeah. There's a couple of other names as well, that I came across.

Okay. I have a little bit more about him though, first.

Ah! Fine. [Laughter]

So in the documentary film Silenced: The Writer Georgi Markov and the Umbrella Murder; they interviewed Francesco Gullino, who they found in Austria? Switzerland? Some country. They asked him:

Were you the murderer of Georgi Markov, or not?

He said:

I have nothing to do with this story. I am sorry. I wish I could give you a straight answer. But, think for a moment. If I were the murderer, do you think I should just say it? The real truth, you don’t throw it away because it is so important. But for your broadcasting, you can just say what want, just like all the others. … But in general, why should one say the truth? What for? You live so well with lies. Isn’t it? Or say nothing.

I think his answer was a bit weird.

It's very weird.

I don't think his English is very good, so it might have been that. But I also think he's just talking around the question.

Yeah. He could make a good politician.

But it also kind of sounds like he could be guilty, because he was like: "but think for a moment, if I were the murderer, do you think I should say it? Why should one say the truth? What for? You live so well with lies". It kind of sounds a bit like an admission of guilt, but it might not be. Did you have other names?

Yes. So I have three names. One of them is General Todorov, who at the time was the chief of intelligence for the Bulgarian Bulgies. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison for destroying the case file that involved Georgi's death. It's important to mention that this was after the fall of communism. So once all of these politicians and power crazy "equal but more equal than the rest" - communists lost power, they destroyed the Bulgarian intelligence regarding this case. Another was another General, this was General Savov, committed suicide rather than going to trial for the same crime. And the final name is Kotsev, who was a Bulgarian spy widely believed to be the operations commander behind this assassination. So not proven, but widely believed to be the guy that was in command. He died in an unexplained car accident. So it seems like a lot of the higher-ups of either the Bulgarian secret service, or interior ministry, mysteriously died when spotlight was put on them regarding this murder.

The plot thickens.

Thickens like gravy with a little dash of corn starch.

A weird coincidence is that the Party leader, Todor Zhivkov, his birthday was actually on the day that Georgi got murdered. To me, it sounds like he was definitely assassinated by the KGB.

He was definitely assassinated. I think the order came from the Bulgies, and they got assistance from the KGB.

Yeah, they do this a lot. I don't know if you've listened to our other episodes... [Laughter]

What episode are we on now, 21?

21.

I think 19 of them have been Russian assassinations. [Laughter]

They do poison in interesting ways.

They fucking love a poisoning, those soviets.

So the last thing I have, is that in 2000 Georgi Markov was awarded Bulgaria's most prestigious honor, the Order of Stara Planina for:

significant contribution to the Bulgarian literature, drama and non-fiction and for his exceptional civic position and confrontation to the Communist regime.

So I think in Bulgaria, which is probably why this whole "burning of the case files and suicides and stuff like that" was a big thing, because I think in Bulgaria, now, they really feel like it was a very unfortunate thing that he got assassinated.

Even at the time, his writing was really highly regarded.

Yeah. What are you going to do now?

Sleep. Some of us have got work in the morning.

Sleepy sleep. Yeah. Bodil was in the room for a minute or so, maybe an hour. She was laying on the floor being like "mee mee". Did you hear her?

"She was in the room for a minute, maybe an hour". [Laughter]

I don't know.

What even is time. [Laughter]

I can't tell anymore, I don't even know what day it is. Well, I do, it's Sunday because I knew you were gonna work tomorrow.

Because there's no post?

No, I knew you were gonna go to work tomorrow.

Oh, you completely missed the Harry Potter reference.

Oh shiit! Why are we friends, even.

I know, right?!

You were like: "you're the one that gets the Harry Potter jokes", and I completely missed it.

And I put one on a plate for you, and you're like: "hurrduur Vernon Dursley, hurrduur".

Loooord Dudley. Well, she was in the room and she wanted the attention but you didn't hear her, right?

I didn't hear, no.

No. That's good, that's good. She was up sniffing my stuff, she was like: "oh! Beer!", I was like: "not for you, kitty cat cat".

All right, let's end this shit.

Yeah, we usually have a couple of more upbeat things to say before we sign off, which was what I tried to fish out of you.

Uuuum... I like..... uuuum... [Laughter] So, nice weather we're having. [Laughter]

It's snowing in Sweden.

It always snows in Sweden.

Yeah, true. It was funny, on the call today with my family, they were like: "oh, is corona making you want to move back to Sweden?", Niklas was like: "not even corona could make me want to move back to Sweden", they were like: "what the fuck". It was funny.

I thought Sweden handled it really badly?

Yeah, they did.

They've never done a lockdown, have they?

Well, apparently... Oh! This is funny! Apparently my mother has been in lockdown in her childhood, in a syphilis lockdown. A couple of people in Greenland got syphilis, and they couldn't contain it. So they just ordered everyone to stay in their homes for like, I don't know how long, but it was maybe a couple of weeks. And my grandpa was like: "no, I have to go back to Sweden", because it was a family emergency. They were like: "you're not allowed to leave", he was like: "I'm married, I have children, I'm not in some sex orgy situation. I need to go back to Sweden", they were like: "nope". So she's been in a syphilis lockdown, which is crazy.

It's a lot sexier than a covid lockdown. [Laughter]

She doesn't remember this, or she didn't remember this, because she was four at the time. But her parents told her that she... They told her that she's been in a lockdown, and she was like: "oh! What for?", they were like: "syphilis". [Laughter]

Sy-sy-sy-sy-sy syphilis.

Oh, crazy. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to Midweek Murders. We'll see you next week.

Oooooh what's the point. [Laughter]

What day even is it? [Laughter] Bye-bye!

Love you.

[Music]

Topics
  • Georgi Markov
  • ricin
  • toxicology
  • forensic science
  • The Umbrella murder
  • KGB
  • the assassination of Georgi Markov
  • political assassinations
  • Cold War
  • Bulgarian dissident
  • poisoned by the KGB
  • poisoning murders
  • Bulgarian communist regime
  • Bulgarian Umbrella
  • Radio Free Europe
  • Vladimir Kostov
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