List of incidents involving ricin
Wikimedia list article
This is a list of incidents involving the poison ricin. The incidents are predominantly attempts to use the poison for attacks, rather than accidents and non-criminal events.
1970s
September 1978, London, UK, assassination of Georgi Markov
On September 7, 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was jabbed in the leg in public on Waterloo Bridge, London by a man using a weapon built into an umbrella which fired a small pellet carrying ricin into Markov's leg. Markov died four days later.
1980s
August 1981, Vienna, Virginia, US, assassination attempt on Boris Korczak
On August 14, 1981, CIA agent Boris Korczak, who had infiltrated the KGB but had been exposed, was shot like Georgi Markov with some sort of weapon that fired a minuscule pellet containing a potentially lethal dose of ricin into his kidney while he was shopping at Giant Food Store in Vienna, Virginia. Korczak and the CIA are convinced that this assassination attempt was the work of the KGB, as he had penetrated it deeply and harmed it significantly. Korczak survived, which he attributes to being shot in the kidney, causing his body to expel the projectile as though it were a kidney stone before it could kill him.
1990s
December 1995, Onia, Arkansas, US
In April 1993, Thomas Lavy was caught while trying to smuggle 130 grams of ricin from Alaska into Canada. Lavy stated that he purchased the ricin to poison coyotes on his farm in Arkansas and keep them away from his chickens. Lavy was stopped at the Beaver Creek border crossing by Canadian custom agents who found, along with the 130 grams of ricin, $89,000, a knife, four guns, and 20,000 rounds of ammunition.
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