06.05.09
Presumed Ricin Kook Jailhouse Bound
Updated
It’s part of the mythology of the war on terror that jihadists and al Qaeda men are always waiting to strike with ricin. The reality is far more dull. The guys who are most interested in ricin have traditionally been white American kooks.
The definitive piece on American ricin kooks is here at el Reg. But every few months, one can add another eccentric to the list. The new candidate is a man in Washington state, written about in the news yesterday here.
“The FBI Thursday was investigating ‘a strong suspicion’ that an Everett man had the deadly poison ricin in his home office, and a specially trained hazardous-materials team — including experts flown in from Washington, D.C. — locked down the home,” reported the Seattle PI. (And see here in a later story where the man, Jeffrey Marble, is accused of trying to poison his wife with “eye drops and Ricinus communis and lye and rat bait.”)
The first story intimated that either a small number of castor seeds or a bit of castor powder was found, both enough to have the owner quickly sent over for a few years at the bighouse, regardless of intent or lack of one.
And despite the great amount of literature now on the Internet about the great foolishness in pounding castor seeds into a powder — there are pages and pages on DD blog here, here, here and here — American eccentrics and nutcases continue to show a fetish-like obsession with it.
Credit it to a peculiar mania associated with old white rural America — the whimsy that someone, or the government, is plotting to get you — and that it might be a good idea to have some exotic poison powder handy, just in case you need to defend yourself, assassinate an acquaintance … or rub out a family member.
All ricin poison recipes (now they come complete with Google Adsense), aren’t worth the electrons used to preserve them on the Internet. They stem from Americans: Kurt Saxon and his “Poor Man’s James Bond” series of pamphets and books, and Maxwell Hutchkinson, author of a similar piece of nuisance publishing, “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” and teenage copyists who put them on bulletin board systems in electronic form a couple decades ago.
Many men have been sent, and will be sent, to jail for being hypnotized by the trivial scribble of basically only two people. It’s quite the rich legacy.
The English ricin kook, similar to US counterpart.
“A father and son are being held under the Terrorism Act following the discovery of possible traces of the deadly poison ricin at the house of a suspected white supremacist,” reported Sky News.
“Police said the suspected ricin was found in a sealed jam jar kept in a kitchen cupboard, apparently for up to two years.”
“Ricin was used by the Aum cult on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 in an attack that left 12 people dead,” Sky adds.
Um, no. That was sarin, the nerve poison.
Ricin confirmed, kook eyes long sentence.
Over at Armchair Generalist. Don’t tell the newsmedia ricin kooks are from the far right, the GOP will protest it’s being persecuted.