12.10.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 8:00 pm by George Smith
In the last twenty years, nobody has ever been released on bail in a ricin case. That’s NOBODY.
Get arrested for making castor powder. Go to jail. Stay there. Eventually, prison. It’s what happens to everyone in this small uniquely American demographic.
All that changed this week when Preston Rhoads of Oklahoma City was bailed on $200,000 and left to house arrest in the home of parents:
OKLAHOMA CITY – A man who was accused of plotting to kill his pregnant girlfriend with ricin has been released from jail.
Preston Rhoads was granted a $200,000 bond on Friday.
He will now go home to his parents’ house in Ada, where he will remain under house arrest.
Rhoads was charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of solicitation to commit murder in April.
Police received a tip that he was looking to hire someone to slip his girlfriend ricin in order to kill his unborn child.
Earlier, on Preston Rhoads, from the archives:
Today, Preston Rhoads, 30 of Oklahoma City, makes the second young American in 60 days to have been tabbed as influenced by Walter White, Breaking Bad and its secondary plot of ricin poisoning. Rhoads is the fourth young man arrested this year in connection with ricin-kookism, already up one from three arrests in the 12 months of last year.
The first [this year] was young Danny Milzman, a student at Georgetown University, of whom much has already been written here …
Wire news reported: “Test results have confirmed ricin was a substance found in the home of murder-for-hire suspect Preston Rhoads.
“A law enforcement source confirmed with News 9 the substance tested 100% positive for the deadly toxin. However, the substance was only found inside the home and police officers were not exposed.
“Oklahoma City Police and FBI agents say Rhoads was planning a murder before they searched his home on Thursday. The FBI says it processed his place for hazardous materials after finding the unknown substance, now identified as ricin.”
As in the case of Georgetown student Danny Milzman, Rhoads — although much older — was described as a perfect son by distraught friends and family members.
And, indeed, what profiling material exists upon the net supports this view.
Smiling faces of many friends [adorned] his Facebook page. And a self-made video of Rhoads on Vimeo shows an affable young man describing his career and education as a creator of digital art.
This year there have been more ricin cases than ever, up from 2013, which was also a bumper year in this small but nationally famous trend.
In 2013, three people were arrested and two already convicted in ricin, cases, all three which involved mailing castor powder to the president.
This year there have been five young men arrested in ricin cases this year: Rhoads, Danny Milzman of Georgetown University, Nicholas Todd Helman of Hatboro, PA, for a contaminated scratch-and-sniff card sent to a rival, Jesse Korff of Labelle, Florida, for ricin production and sale of abrin, the latter on which he has pleaded guilty, and — most recently, University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh student Kyle Allen Smith.
Smith remains in jail as does Nicholas Helman whose case was complicated by alleged additional death threats made while jailed. Danny Milzman pleaded guilty to making ricin, received a sentence of one year and one day, and will probably be released in January.
Much more on these cases can be found in the Ricin Kooks tab.
The archive of ricin case lore produced by this blog is comprehensive. Nothing else exists, anywhere, like it.
It makes troubling, confounding, and strange reading since the phenomenon of ricin-makers, or castor powder tinkerers, is almost entirely American. No other culture, no other western civilization, has anything like it. It is American exceptionalism in pure form.
While the numbers of people involved in it are small they always make national news.
Why are certain people drawn to pounding castor seeds? It would take a book to explain it.
Initially it was born of the belief in the far right in this country, now virtually universal in many quarters, that one had to be armed to the teeth to fight off tyrannical government, the encroaching UN, or anyone who might be coming for your stuff if civilization collapsed.
That cultural DNA inspired, and still inspires, a voluminous production of samizdat literature on weapons and the making of them from whatever is at hand. Poisons, like ricin, were and are part of it.
But today, ricin-making, that is the alleged easy production of a weapon of mass production, is part of American culture as accepted wisdom and entertainment. Movies and dramatic television (party like Heisenberg/Walter White!), books — fiction and non-fiction, and many related things now regularly stew American audiences in the lore of ricin.
The result: A civilization that thinks it knows a lot about it, the a lot being all rubbish.
No fatalities have ever been attributed to ricin in the war on terror. Indeed, there have been no ricin murders during the same period. Occasionally, castor bean mash is used for suicide. From the information that can be found, most attempts are unsuccessful.
One made the news earlier this year.
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12.03.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 9:14 am by George Smith
What the calling of a grand jury on 24th November in Oshkosh in the case of college student Kyle Allen Smith is hard to determine.
Initially I thought it indicated a slight difference in the trajectory of ricin cases in the US.
Apparently not.
It took a few hours, maybe minutes, maybe a day (the news coverage was very poor and confused) for the judge in the case to declare Smith would stand trial.
From the wire:
a Green Bay federal judge ruled there was enough evidence against 21-year-old Kyle Smith [to try him on a ricin complaint].
Prosecutors say Smith, a senior majoring in biology at UWO, admitted he knew what he was making and shouldn’t have been making it. According to Smith defense attorney William Kerner, Smith never intended to use ricin on humans. Kerner adds that the ricin powder found in Smith’s home was castor bean meal, which is used across the country and falls under different laws and regulations.
The judge ruled Smith would remain in jail. No lab equipment was found in his home, it was said.
In the past there was a decent-sized industry producing castor meal and castor oil, the first for fertilizer and occasionally as ineffective pesticide, the latter for lubrication, in this country.
Accordingly, there was federal regulation 173.955 governing the transport of castor powder.
It is here and shows no particular requirements that would lead one to think it was regarded as a serious hazard.
A recent regulation sheet shows castor to be at the same level of control it was when I first wrote of the matter back in 2008.
And emergency telephone number must be provided on the bill of lading and now, as then, the material was in the same category as this list of transportable commodities:
Battery powered equipment.
Battery powered vehicle.
Carbon dioxide, solid.
Castor bean.
Castor flake.
Castor meal.
Castor pomace.
Consumer commodity.
Dry ice.
Engines, internal combustion.
Fish meal, stabilized.
Fish scrap, stabilized.
Krill Meal, PG III.
Refrigerating machine.
Vehicle, flammable gas powered.
Vehicle, flammable liquid powered.
Wheelchair, electric.
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11.25.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 9:11 pm by George Smith
In the last fifteen years the trajectory of ricin cases in America has been constant.
Someone, almost always a white male, is arrested with castor powder after a joint anti-terrorism task force descends on his neighborhood. The powder is sent off to Frederick, MD, for assay at the multi-million dollar national facility built during the war on terror for just that purpose.
The arrested man either pleads guilty or goes to trial and is convicted.
But this year, and last, there has been a slow up-tick in people caught turning castor seeds into powder. While they may be nuisances and a danger to themselves, they are not obviously criminals or terrorists.
This year four young white man have been arrested. One used castor powder in a scratch-and-sniff card, part of hare-brained plot that went nowhere, one to allegedly retaliate against the new boyfriend of a former love. And another, in Oklahoma, by a young man who allegedly wanted to enlist someone in the poisoning of a pregnant girlfriend.
Two other cases, however, appear to be by two college students, mentally upset young men who exhibited extremely poor judgment.
Today, in Oshkosh, WI, a judge sent he question of whether or not University of Wisconsin student Kyle Smith would be indicted, and what he might be charged with, on a ricin complaint to a grand jury.
This just doesn’t happen in ricin cases and it is, perhaps, an indication that the senselessness of these alleged crimes and resulting history of convictions is beginning to sink in, if only in a minor way. Updated: There is, of course, the ham sandwich comparison which could mean, in this instance, the result will be as usual.
Or perhaps it means nothing at all, being too early to tell.
From the Oshkosh newspaper:
FBI special agent David Ratajczak testified in court Monday that the FBI submitted 1.624 grams of white powder in a vial for testing at the Homeland Security lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland. The substance tested positive for ricin and it was determined it contained 0.5 percent ricin.
It is evidence of another first: An actual laboratory characterization of the amount of poison in a small amount of castor powder.
In this case, 8 milligrams in the entire powder.
For reference purposes, the scientific literature indicates that anywhere between 350-700 micrograms of pure ricin constitutes a lethal dose in a 150 pound man — by injection.
In the historic literature there is only one case of death by lethal injection of ricin: the assassination of Georgi Markov. And ricin was never isolated in that case.
This year, there has been one case of death from ricin, an apparent suicide. And it is reported here.
A failed suicide was also reported earlier this year in southern California, on this blog.
In the United States, no one has died in any of the ricin cases reported during the last fifteen years. In one case, that of Roger von Bergendorff in 2008, the man accused of making the material was hospitalized for an emergency condition that was never specified.
As always, read the Ricin Kooks tab on this blog for a historically complete and comprehensive view of the topic.
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11.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 1:16 pm by George Smith
Last week saw an eruption of news on one of the genuinely exceptional things in our country: the small demographic of white usually guys who let an interest in castor seeds and poison lore get the best of them. It’s an interest that inevitably brings hazmat trucks and a joint anti-terrorism strike force to their neighborhoods.
And the news covers the age spectrum, from the youthful to the old.
In contrast to prior years, 2014 has turned into one in which young nerds, a couple of them university students, try their hand at pounding castor seeds into powder.
The newest bean-pounder is University of Wisconsin (in Oshkosh) student Kyle Smith.
From the Green Bay newspaper:
A University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh student has been suspended after he was charged with possession of ricin.
University officials announced Tuesday that 21-year-old Kyle Smith has been placed on interim suspension and cannot set foot on campus for the time being. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of the biological weapons offense. He made his first appearance Monday in federal court in Green Bay.
Two of Smith’s professors contacted police last month when they became suspicious he was making the deadly toxin, WLUK-TV reported. Tests confirmed a vial of white powder found in Smith’s off-campus home was ricin, according to a criminal complaint. The Oshkosh Police Department and Wisconsin National Guard also found a lab notebook during the search.
And a judge has now handed down the shortest sentence in ricin convictions on the book in the case of Georgetown University student Danny Milzman, covered much here.
Milzman, readers may recall, was a great fan of Breaking Bad, showing appreciation of Walter White’s “cooking” of ricin and its recurring role in the drama.
For the record, much in the series concerning ricin was almost total rubbish, from the way it was made to its eventual use.
From the Washington Post:
A Georgetown University student who was arrested for manufacturing the deadly chemical ricin in his dormitory room in March, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to a year and a day in prison.
In issuing her sentence, Judge Ketanji B. Jackson said Daniel H. Milzman’s intentions for manufacturing the chemical were “ambiguous at best??? but that Milzman put numerous people, including his classmates and dormitory roommate, at great risk.
Jackson also ordered Milzman, 20, to undergo a mental health evaluation …
Since Milzman has already served seven and a half months in jail, he will be released early next year.
The unique short sentence is as close to a diversion as one can get, I suppose. This year I argued for the worth of a diversion track for many first-time castor bean pounders.
Most of them cannot be described as terrorists and they pose mostly only a threat to themselves as they become a source of heartbreak for their families.
In the last fifteen years there have been zero fatalities associated with all ricin cases in the US.
In 2013 those arrested on ricin cases were all older than this years batch. They were unique in that all three were caught in schemes that mailed ricin-containing castor mash to the president of the United States. All three appear to have been frame-up jobs, one against a rival, one against a husband, and one against the office of a small business where a secretary ignored the romantic affections of a janitor.
This years ricin complaints all involve younger men, two of which are the university students mentioned here.
The old ricin-powder criminal, someone middle-aged or very old and angry with the federal government, was represented yesterday when sentences were handed down for two men involved in a domestic terrorism plan in Georgia.
From the New York Times:
Ending a case that involved questions about the line between rhetoric and criminal conduct, a judge on Friday sentenced two men to a decade each in prison for their roles in a plot that included using ricin in a series of attacks in major cities.
The decision by Judge Richard W. Story, of the Federal District Court, came nearly 10 months after a jury here convicted Samuel J. Crump [71] and Ray H. Adams [58] on a pair of charges connected to possession of ricin for use as a weapon …
Mr. Crump, by his own acknowledgment, was something of an excessively ambitious conspirator.
“There’s no way I could make that stuff,??? Mr. Crump said of ricin. “It takes a scientist and a million dollar lab, which we didn’t have.???
Judge Story agreed that it was unlikely that the plans Mr. Adams and Mr. Crump mapped out would have been successful.
However, this appeared to not be ameliorating.
Crump and Adams have been in jail since 2011. There original plot was a cracked scheme that involved the theoretical distribution of ricin-containing bean powder out of car speeding along on the highway, the idea being that it might drift over a town. [1]
Ricin cases and those convicted in them are almost entirely unique to the United States. In the last fifteen years this country has generated a steady stream of them. And they all make headlines.
In fact, 2013 and 2014 have shown an upward trend in this very unique phenomenon. That is, there are now more guys (and one woman) arrested on ricin beefs than at any other time.
The numbers are still very small. But the imitation, fascination and absurd appeal of castor bean pounding refuses to die and is even increasing, a bit more each year.
Ricin-making, from old neo-Nazi and survivalist poison recipes, to Breaking Bad, to an almost monthly presence in episodic crime television and in movie dramas about terrorism, is solidly embedded in the culture and character of the United States.
[1]. From the Atlanta Journal & Constitution:
According to testimony, the men talked of a plane dropping ricin on Washington and spreading the poison on federal government buildings in Atlanta, Athens and Gainesville and in public areas, such as on I-85 in Atlanta.
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09.15.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 1:32 pm by George Smith
Nineteen year old Georgetown U. student Danny Milzman has pled guilty to “making ricin.”
Like everyone else in America, Milzman actually made castor powder, which contains some ricin.
Allegedly inspired by the Walter White character in Breaking Bad, this is another sad case, one in which a troubled student made one serious lapse in judgment. In the past, I’ve argued for diversion programs for some first-time American ricin offenders. Daniel Milzman is one such a person, not a threat to the community or his school.
Wire news indicates he could be sentenced to one to two years in jail.
From the net:
A former Georgetown University student accused of making ricin in his dorm room pleaded guilty Monday, and could face up to two years when he’s sentenced …
The amount of ricin Milzman produced was enough to kill an average person weighing 220 pounds if inhaled or injected, officials said. According to court documents, Milzman spent [about] a week researching ricin online, and watched 13 episodes of the show “Breaking Bad,” during which ricin was used as a weapon to injure or kill someone.
When sentenced, Milzman faces between 366 days and two years behind bars.
The news is in error. In Breaking Bad, Walter White “cooked” ricin to put into the meal of a drug lord who was holding him and his partner hostage in Mexico. The plot failed.
Ah, my bad. Must be the heat wave. In the final episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White finally puts his “cooked” ricin in the hot drink of a former partner in crime, apparently killing her.
Danny Milzman — from the archives.
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09.06.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 12:01 pm by George Smith
Or what’s new in the laboratories of clickbait today?
Ricin gets its moment:
N.I.H. Lab Search Uncovers Forgotten Ricin
WASHINGTON — The National Institutes of Health said on Friday that it had uncovered a nearly century-old container of ricin and a handful of other forgotten samples of dangerous pathogens as it combed its laboratories for improperly stored hazardous materials …
They included a bottle of ricin, a highly poisonous toxin, found in a box with microbes dating from 1914 and thought to be 85 to 100 years old, the memo said.
Ricin, which is a protein that relies on retention of its activity for its toxic quality, would never last a century in a bottle. It probably died a year or two, at most, after it was bottled, depending on conditions, leaving only debris.
Plus it was 1914. Protein chemistry was in its infancy. The sample would have been highly impure. No arguments.
The news, by AP by way of the New York Times, noted that all samples, which included other abandoned pathogens, were destroyed.
Runner-up, Vox — again.
What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano actually erupted?
“It would be bad. But that doesn’t mean you should start freaking out.”
How considerate to include the optimistic qualifier. In any case, the piece is littered with classic clickbait nosegold: Illustrations, illustrations, illustrations, the same illustrations, crabbed from the original source, used by every other clickbait farm doing the exact same piece.
Written by Brad Plumer, ridiculed previously for being “[on] the apocalypse beat, more or less.”
Last time, in case you forgot, this from the Vox masterclickbaiter:
“The world is on the brink of a mass extinction. Here’s how to avoid that.???
A silver lining in every cataclysm.
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08.12.14
Posted in Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 2:09 pm by George Smith
Rosary peas — the source of abrin. Number of fatalities from abrin poisoning in the last decade: zero.
Jesse Korff, a nineteen-year old from LaBelle, Florida, today pleaded guilty to a murder conspiracy involving abrin and ricin and the smuggling of those poisons. He stands to be sentenced to life in prison.
From this blog, in February:
A 19-year-old boy in south Florida is set to be imprisoned, possibly for life, as the result of a federal investigation of the Black Market Reloaded website, a replacement for the infamous Silk Road, where there were “numerous offerings for the sale of illegal and harmful goods, including but not limited to biological agents, toxins, firearms, ammunition, explosives, controlled substances, counterfeit goods and fraudulent documents,??? according to an FBI document …
Jesse Korff of Labelle, Florida, was arrested by agents of the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations when he delivered two vials of liquid containing a small but detectable amount of the poison abrin to them. It was the final part of a transaction started on the Black Market Reloaded site when one of the undercover men contacted Korff, inquired about buying the poison and advanced him 1.608 Bitcoin for it.
Like the Silk Road, Black Market Reloaded was hosted on the encrypted Tor network where many people seem to still believe federal agents cannot get at them. Black Market Reloaded was subsequently taken down and the sting shows that Homeland Security and the FBI are well into operations aimed at keeping similar websites and Bitcoin markets for crime under heavy surveillance.
In an FBI press release on the matter today, Korff was also linked to a British case noted in this blog around the same time:
A banker accused of trying to kill her magistrate mother at their Stratford home by lacing her Diet Coke with a poison more deadly than ricin is to stand trial in July after appearing at Southwark Crown Court today where she was further remanded in custody.
Kuntal Patel,36, is alledged to have plotted to kill Meena Patel,54, using abrin – a rare poison extracted from the seeds of a Peruvian plant.
She was arrested by counter terrrorism officers at the £450,000 home they share in Park Road earlier this month after US homeland security is believed to have tipped off Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command about a website based in the US which specialised in selling lethal toxins.
She is not facing terrorist charges, but is accused of attempted murder between December 10 2013 and January 26.
Today’s FBI release does not mention Kuntal Patel by name but it is quite obviously the same case, an arrest stemming from Homeland Security and the FBI’s investigation of the Black Market Reloaded website:
In December 2013 Korff provided a quantity of abrin to a purchaser in London who claimed she intended to kill her mother. After the purchaser’s receipt and administration of the initial dose, which she claimed was ineffective, Korff agreed to provide a second quantity of the toxin in order to assist the purchaser in the implementation of the murder plot.
Before Korff had an opportunity to smuggle the second dose of abrin to the London purchaser, a federal undercover agent contacted Korff through BMR and negotiated the sale of two liquid doses of abrin. Korff told the buyer about his delivery methods—concealing vials in a carved-out and re-melted candle—and discussed how much abrin was needed to kill a person of a particular weight and how best to administer the toxin. Korff also assured the buyer that a victim’s death would appear to be similar to a bad case of the flu.
Following Korff’s arrest, FBI agents searched Korff’s property over three days and recovered several computers, castor beans, rosary peas, capsules, vials, jars, syringes, filters, respirators and other items commonly utilized in the manufacture, production, sale, packaging, and shipping of toxins and chemical substances. Among the items recovered was a liquid dose of abrin that Korff had intended to ship to the London purchaser.
Nineteen year olds can’t make weapons of mass destruction. They can, however, use old literature published by the American neo-Nazi and survivalist violent right in the Eighties to make powders and liquids containing some small amount, to be identified by federal laboratories, of the poisons ricin and abrin.
These recipes now exist in digital form. And through technological progress the products from them can be marketed on black internet sites. In much the same way the original poison recipes were distributed world-wide on underground hacker bulletin board systems in the Nineties.
Another summary of that world, along with original notice of the arrest, is included here at Jesse Korff and the legacy of The Poisoner’s Handbook.
Images for castor plants and crab’s eye — the latter being the source of abrin, are here and here, respectively.
Both can be found in Florida.
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07.16.14
Posted in Ricin Kooks, Uncategorized, WhiteManistan at 10:40 am by George Smith
Eighteen years is hard punishment for someone who appeared and appears to not really be all right in the head. Shannon Guess Richardson, like all of the Americans who try this, wasn’t capable of purifying ricin from castor seeds.
They grind the seeds to powder and, in this case, famously mailed part of the slightly oily mess containing some poor characterized amount of ricin to the President and others as part of a cracked frame job. Astonishingly, two ricin cases were frame jobs, the other being the case of guitarist, Budweiser Beer Battle of the Bands winner and karate teacher J. Everett Dutschke of Tupelo, Mississippi, in the very odd summer of last year.
From the wire:
A federal judge gave Shannon Guess Richardson, 36, the maximum sentence under her plea deal on a federal charge of possessing and producing a biological toxin. Richardson was also ordered to pay restitution. She had pleaded guilty to the charge in December.
“I never intended for anybody to be hurt,” she told the court, adding later, “I’m not a bad person; I don’t have it in me to hurt anyone.”
Richardson, who had minor acting roles in film and television, said she thought security measures would prevent anyone from opening the letters addressed to Obama and the now-former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
She acknowledged in a signed plea agreement that she ordered castor beans online and learned how to process them into a substance used to make ricin.
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06.13.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 1:18 pm by George Smith
What was the Poisoner’s black market for young American men? Apparently, Black Market Reloaded, accessed on TOR, before it was taken down.
A San Francisco Chronicle piece tells the story of another arrested man, one who had purchased what he thought were liquid poisons on BMR.
I’m not going to try to paraphrase it:
Court filings by FBI Special Agent Michael Eldridge allege that Chamberlain sought to buy abrin, a natural poison that is found in rosary pea seeds and is considered to be a potential weapon of terrorism, among other illicit chemicals, and to have the toxins shipped to his Polk Street apartment …
In February, Eldridge said, a New York City man told police and the FBI that he had bought cyanide and abrin on Black Market Reloaded so he could commit suicide, before apparently having second thoughts.
It turned out, the FBI said, that the same online seller had sent abrin to Chamberlain. When that man, a Sacramento resident, was arrested last month, he told the FBI that Chamberlain had previously sought to buy liquid ricin from another seller but balked at the high price. Ricin comes from castor beans.
Chamberlain “indicated that he was seeking abrin to ‘ease the suffering’ of cancer patients” and asked the Sacramento seller whether abrin could be detected in the autopsy of a dead person, Eldridge wrote …
Abrin, ricin, even nicotine and bomb-making show up: The stars of the death files of the old computer underground, now peddled on-line, or at least ersatz versions of them. Chamberlain, the story reads, complained that the BMR seller’s abrin did not work.
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06.10.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 12:51 pm by George Smith
Jeffrey Levenderis of Akron, OH, was convicted in a ricin case that had been on the books since 2011 when the FBI discovered a mixture containing it in a jar in his former dwelling.
The government said is was to be part of a plot to kill his stepfather and “against first responders who might respond to a fire Levenderis planned to set at his house as part of an elaborate suicide plan,” according to a news report.
This, perhaps, speaks to the state of Levenderis’ mind. As described in the news the plan makes little sense. Ricin is a protein and is destroyed by heat. How it would be used in a fire is a mystery. That would now seem immaterial.
The jury trial took four days. Levenderis had been in jail since 2011 and was confined to a wheelchair.
Details are here and here.
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