West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: JTSimon on January 09, 2004, 10:24:56 AM
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Women lovers accused of plot to poison husband
Associated Press
Jan. 9, 2004 08:55 AM
SAN DIEGO - A Marine's wife and another woman were arrested with the deadly poison ricin, and authorities said the pair planned to kill the husband to get insurance money.
No terrorism was involved, the FBI said.
Authorities said Astrid K. Tepatti and Ebony Wood, both 21, were lovers who used a recipe obtained on the Internet to cook up a small amount of the poison out of castor beans.
Highway patrol officers said they found the ricin in a bag in a car the two women were riding in Sunday near Winterhaven, about 150 miles east of San Diego.
The officers also found a pistol, a handwritten recipe for the poison and a container of castor beans, and authorities said the women were wearing clothing - with sales tags still attached - they had shoplifted from a department store.
Tepatti and Wood were being held in a federal detention center in San Diego on charges of attempted murder. It was not immediately clear whether they had lawyers. Tepatti's husband is a Marine at Camp Pendleton, authorities said.
Authorities said it was not the first effort to kill Tepatti's husband. Earlier Sunday, they said, Tepatti, with Wood's help, fired a handgun equipped with a potato silencer at him but he was not hurt.
In late 2003, according to the FBI, Tepatti conspired with Wood to kill him by luring him to the beach and stabbing him in the neck.
FBI agent Jan Caldwell said Thursday the case has no connection to the discovery in October of a package of ricin at a South Carolina post office. The FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information in that case.
When inhaled or ingested, ricin can trigger fever, cough, shortness of breath, chest tightness and low blood pressure within eight hours. Death can come 36 to 72 hours after exposure. There is no antidote.
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Facts About Ricin
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp)
I didn't know ricin could be made that easy...if these ladies can make this deadly stuff we are screwed when it comes to terrorist.
How you could be exposed to ricin
It would take a deliberate act to make ricin and use it to poison people. Accidental exposure to ricin is highly unlikely.
People can breathe in ricin mist or powder and be poisoned.
Ricin can also get into water or food and then be swallowed.
Pellets of ricin, or ricin dissolved in a liquid, can be injected into people’s bodies.
Depending on the route of exposure (such as injection), as little as 500 micrograms of ricin could be enough to kill an adult. A 500-microgram dose of ricin would be about the size of the head of a pin. A much greater amount would be needed to kill people if the ricin were inhaled (breathed in) or swallowed.
In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who was living in London, died after he was attacked by a man with an umbrella. The umbrella had been rigged to inject a poison ricin pellet under Markov’s skin.
Some reports have indicated that ricin may have been used in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s and that quantities of ricin were found in Al Qaeda caves in Afghanistan.
Ricin poisoning is not contagious. It cannot be spread from person to person through casual contact.