The woman thought she had gotten away with murdering her husband. The unfortunate man was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car that had careened into a ditch about 100 kilometers from his home in Belgium. As is common in such a case an autopsy was performed and tissues from his liver and kidneys as well as a sample of urine were analyzed for drugs. No pharmaceutical drugs were detected, but subjecting the samples to liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS), a technique that can reveal the presence of substances at the nanogram level (one nanogram is about 1/60,000th of a grain of salt) revealed the presence of aconitine, the highly toxic alkaloid found in all parts of the plant known as monkshood or wolfbane. Flowers of the plant resemble the hood worn by monks and the plant was also supposed to keep wolves away, which it does not.
Monkshood has been known to be poisonous since ancient times and is even referenced by Shakespeare in in Henry IV, Part 2: "Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum or rash gunpowder". Scholars also believe this is the poison Shakespeare had in mind in Romeo and Juliet: "Let me have a dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear as will disperse itself through all the veins, that the life-weary taker may fall dead." Aconitine interferes with voltage-gated sodium channels, disrupting electrical signaling in nerves and the heart. Severe poisoning can cause dangerous cardiac arrhythmias and death.
The man’s death was suspicious not only because of the aconitine found in his body but also because he had bruises all over his body and lesions on his neck compatible with strangulation. A piece of carbonized fabric was also found in the tailpipe of the car. A thorough investigation was launched and a clue was found on the stamp of a letter alluding to suicide supposedly sent by the victim. When DNA analysis of saliva on the stamp demonstrated that it belonged to the wife not the victim, she confessed to the crime. She admitted to boiling monkshood leaves and stalks and mixing the decoction with red wine her husband drank at supper.
The aconitine did its job but she was worried about an investigation if the body was found in the house, so she decided to move it. She tied a rope around the body that also encircled the neck, dragged it down the stairs and placed it in the driver’s seat of the car. Sitting on the lap of the dead body she drove 100 km away and pushed the car into a ditch and called a taxi to go home. Before leaving she attempted to set the car on fire by lighting a fabric she pushed into the tailpipe hoping to destroy all evidence. The flame never reached the gas tank. Unfortunately, the forensic investigators who described this case in the International Journal of Legal Medicine did not report on the outcome of the woman admitting her crime, but one hopes justice was served. It certainly was in the celebrated case of the poisoned curry and the jealous lover!
London resident Lahkvir Singh did not like the idea of her former lover, Lakhvinder Cheema, planning to marry another woman and contrived to poison the couple’s curry with monkshood extract. Lahkvir died but the fiancée survived. As he was dying, Lahkvir complained of numbness in his mouth and accused his former girlfriend of poisoning him. The survivor also described such numbness which a forensic investigator recognized as a symptom typical of aconite poisoning. Once again, LC-MS came to the fore and aconitine was detected in the curry. The case became iron-clad when plant residue with aconitine content was found in Singh’s coat pocket and handbag. She was convicted of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 23 years.
Long before modern technology was instrumental in convicting the killers in the Belgian and British cases, back in 1881 Dr. George Lamson was accused of murdering his brother-in-law with aconite based on the rather primitive methods of analysis known at the time. Because the victim was only 18 years old, experienced sudden symptoms typical of poisoning, and there was a large inheritance at stake, foul play was suspected. Two distinguished British chemists were asked to investigate and began by examining the victim’s vomit, urine and stomach contents from which they extracted an alkaloid, defined at the time as a nitrogen-containing substance found in plants that chemically behaved as a base, that is, had alkaline properties.
The chemists were not able to identify the substance as aconitine, but cautiously applying a tiny amount to their tongue found it to be numbing, an effect that at the time had already been linked with aconitine poisoning. Next, mice were injected with the extract died quickly as they did when injected with a known sample of the poison. When a pharmacist read newspaper reports of the case, he remembered someone of Lamson’s description purchasing aconitine which at the time was considered a legitimate medicine for nerve pain. He informed the police and the prosecution now armed with the accumulated evidence was able to secure a conviction. Dr. Lamson was hanged for his crime.
Sometimes fact is more astonishing than fiction.
