I happened to catch Nancy Grace last nite and saw her story about the guy getting poisoned by "ricin" (sp?). It comes from a bean you get castor oil from.
This guy - maybe he was a doctor - was on there, and he was telling people what you had to add to it to make it poisonous! Why do people give that information away so publicly like that? It happens so much.
Nancy Grace was talking to several guests and they'd tell us what it was. It's too bad she didn't have Ann Rule on there. Ann Rule had a book out that I read where this woman named Debbie was a doctor, quit to become a lush, and poisoned her husband with "ricin". This woman got it very easily - I won't say how. But it was there for anybody to get if they wanted it. I hope that's changed. (She also burned down her house with her own kids in it. I think all three kids died.)
Actually (if I'm reading this article correctly) you don't really have to do anything to make ricin poisonous - it already is. Ricin occurs naturally in the castor bean, specifically the seeds. http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/tox ... ricin.html
That's the very same bean that castor oil comes from.
I staid the night for shelter at a farm behind the mountains, with a mother and son - two "old-believers." They did all the talking...
- Robert Frost
Yes, the seeds are poisonous. The guy on Nancy Grace's show was telling how to make the seeds into something that could be like mixed in a drink. I don't think "Debbie" could have had some in her hand and said, "Here, take these". CourtTV (now TruTV) did a forensics show on the case. It was good, but Ann Rule's book was even better.
It happens so much. 