04.11.13
The Ricin Kook
One of the old American ricin kooks occasionally mentioned on this blog during the war on terror years was found dead this week.
An AP story explains:
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — A body found nearly a year ago in western Nebraska was that of a Wisconsin fugitive who’d been convicted of trying to produce a biological weapon, authorities say.
DNA samples and other evidence led investigators to conclude that the remains were those of 64-year-old Denys Ray Hughes, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Thursday. Hughes was being transferred by bus from a Colorado prison to a halfway house in Milwaukee when he disappeared in May 2011; authorities believe he got off the bus somewhere in Nebraska.
The body was found April 20, 2012, on private land on the southern side of North Platte, along the South Platte River. Medical investigators said tests on the body showed the man probably died between November 2011 and February 2012. The cause of death was unclear, though Hughes had a handful of health problems.
Hughes, adds the newspaper, had a heart condition and was diabetic.
From the old DD blog entry entitled The Jailbird Bookshelf:
The evidence list from US vs. Hughes is illuminating in that it shows the standard books discussed previously in “From the Poisoners Handbook to the Botox Shoe of Death??? here.
From Hughes’ “library:??? “The Weaponeer,??? a Saxon pamphlet with a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol. 3“, also containing a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol.2,??? Festering Publication’s “Silent Death,??? containing yet another ricin recipe, “Deadly Brew,??? “Deadly Substances,??? and an assortment of what Dick Destiny blog calls really bad science books — cf., “Grandad’s Wonderful Book of Chemistry??? — for idiots or young boys.
Accompanying the books in evidence were a mortar and pestle, bottles of castor seeds, castor beans in a package, castor beans in a bin, and Red Devil lye — which is another reagent dumbly recommended by survivalist literature as useful in purifying ricin. Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is a strong base. Strong bases destroy proteins, like ricin, but for decades the literature of the domestic terrorist has cited it in their ricin recipes and it has become a marker of intent in federal cases where the US is going for a conviction on making or attempting to make a biological or chemical weapon.
Another incriminating marker is dimethyl sulfoxide, also attributed in the Hughes case. Ricin is not a contact poison but because the domestic terrorist-in-training takes seriously material like Hutchkinson’s “The Poisoner’s Handbook,??? which insists it would be handy to combine dimethyl sulfoxide with ricin in plans to poison the Pope or a government employee through the skin, it has been adopted as key part of their chemical armory.
The federal case against Hughes appeared to be an easy one, based simply on showing the jury the man’s books, chemicals, equipment for bomb-making — and one pipe bomb.
For example, it cannot help a defendant to have the jury shown any of Saxon’s books. They tend to include drawings, like Dick Destiny blog’s similar rendition (to the left), on how to attack someone with poison or explosives …
A copy of the original complaint against Hughes from last year describes ATF/FBI flypaper –gunpowder, fuses, road flares, instructions on how to build a bunker, an assortment of guns, silencers and pipe-bomb-building materials.
“Hughes was prosecuted in Phoenix and convicted of trying to produce a biological weapon and for possessing a pipe bomb and illegal gun silencers,” reads the AP report. He received a sentence of 87 months.
During the last twelve years all domestic arrests of people involved in fiddling with castor seeds has been a white man thing. No terror plots have gone forward.
And everyone arrested with the misbegotten recipes for making ricin and castor seeds has been convicted and given to the pleasure of state hospitality. No exceptions.
Castor seed fiddling always ends badly.
mikey said,
April 11, 2013 at 11:30 am
Always tragicomic to me, this thread. Funnier yet, I’m pretty sure one of the strings of “love beads” I had in the flower-power late ’60s when I was a hippie wanna-be was made of castor seeds strung together. They must have had other decorative uses back then, eh?
George Smith said,
April 11, 2013 at 11:53 am
Still do. Various people like the way the plants look, they’re not illegal to own.Lots of pics on the web of potted castor plants in gardens and nurseries.
Mike Ozanne said,
April 15, 2013 at 2:18 am
All our UK ricin plots tend to have one thing in common, the total and complete absence of any ricin. In the one exception, from years ago it was refined by a government lab and injected into the victim.
Given the frequent wrist jerk panics from the authorities, is it even possible to effectively weaponise a heavy protein enzyme like ricin? Wouldn’t it be a bit like trying to make a WMD out of Mamba venom. Any heat, prolonged solvation, explosive shock etc is likely to break it down. Anything using cool, non-shock methods, say compressed air driven aerosol, is going to be non-portable with a limited area of effect.
George Smith said,
April 15, 2013 at 9:30 am
That;s the fundamental problem. Active proteins tend not to stay active forever once removed from where they naturally reside. In any biochemical preparation when you disrupt the cell for the purification process, you release lots of other things, including proteolytic enzymes which go to work on your product. You can minimize the action, or work quickly, but in the end your left with only small quantities of pure material. Proteins denature, they don’t like heat or shearing.
The original US military patent on ricin purification employed heat and the scientists acknowledged the need for modification because it was killing what they wanted. There’s no significant evidence the US ever produced an efficient or practical ricin weapon.
It’s not difficult to come up with castor powder. It’s just that it’s not much of a weapon unless you plan on trying to put it in someone’s food.
We did have a castor industry in this country. And the government spent some time looking at the health aspects of working in a castor mill — allergies and asthma from dust mostly. But castor mills didn’t kill people, they weren’t factories for a WMD.