06.19.11
Once a ricin kook, always a ricin kook
Back at the beginning of the war on terror I started keeping track of people associated with castor seed pounding.
The “hobby” was popularized by the survivalist and neo-Nazi right in the US. Where it remains popular.
Today, news from the heartland on one of these people, banged up years ago, released and now on the lam again.
Denys Ray Hughes, 64, who has a home in Manitowish Waters in Vilas County [Wisconsin], is wanted and on the run.
According to WITI – TV in Milwaukee, Hughes was to report to a halfway house in Milwaukee on May 25th after serving prison time, but he never showed up.
U.S. Marshals believe he could be somewhere in rural northern Wisconsin or in the south eastern part of the state, where he has family.
He also has family in Arizona.
He was sentenced to 87 months in prison for the attempted production of a biological toxin for use as a weapon, possession of an unregistered destructive device, and possession of an unregistered silencer.
From the old DD blog entry, The Jailbird’s Bookshelf, back in 2006:
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.
