Why murder by poison is rare

(mth/NG) A recent case in Bereldange of a police officer suspected of poisoning his sister, age 29, and her 31-year-old partner, has sent shockwaves throughout Luxembourg.

The incident was at first a mystery, as it had been claimed the couple had been nauseous at the police officer's apartment following a hike in Vianden on September 25.

Merely days later, however, the 26-year-old police officer was arrested: the presence of a toxin in the couple's blood had led to their deaths, thereby confirming the poisoning theory.

Poisoning: a criminal rarity

But cases like this are rare--and increasingly so, according to chemist Serge Schneider who works in toxicology at the national health laboratory in Dudelange: "If I wanted to poison someone nowadays, I wouldn't know how to do it without being detected."

In Schneider's laboratory, most of the toxicology cases are carried out on behalf of the prosecutor on evidence involved in a police investigation, but that mainly involves drugs or alcohol being used behind the wheel. As he points out, "Suspected cases of deliberate poisoning in this country are extremely rare. Personally, I can only remember a single case during my career."

Statistics like these don't exist, given the fact that judicial archives are not adapted to research details of cases, such as murder methods over a longer period: the acts oare searchable only by name or offense.

The Missenard case

Schneider only remembers the most famous case in Luxembourg, in which Charles Missenard, biologist and head of the medical laboratories of the Clinique d'Eich, was found guilty of killing his wife on her sick bed with cyanide.

The incident occurred on July 26, 1999, and involved a long trial. Missenard denied having committed the crime, pleading not guilty throughout his trial. After the court of appeals upheld his judgment, the French national fled to his home country in hopes of escaping punishment. Nevertheless, on August 13, 2007, he was arrested in Paris, where the now 72-year-old is serving his sentence.

Detecting 99.99% of toxins

The first half of the 19th century saw the science of forensic toxicology in full swing, meaning the decline as well of poison as a murder weapon. Two chemists, Frenchman Mathieu Orfila and Briton James Marsh, had developed a method to detect the murder involving arsenic.

“ Most people simply underestimate the power of modern laboratory analyses."

After a series of spectacular murder trials, providing invaluable information on an ever-increasing number of toxins, it became much more difficult to carry out murder through poisoning--something that has continued through today, as Schneider explains: "Today a toxicological analysis is carried out with every death that appears suspicious. Not only when it involves a murder suspect, but also to be able to determine medicine or drugs as a cause of death."

Thanks to today's state of the art technology, it is virtually impossible that a toxin goes by undetected after such an analysis, Schneider explained. "We are able to detect 99.99% of all toxins that exist, in fact even in such small quantities that it's nearly impossible to conceal. Most people simply underestimate the power of modern laboratory analyses." Such analyses can even be feasible years after the death, even if the corpse is cremated.