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: Silent Decay: What Happens When a Murder Weapon Emits Radiation · Inside The Criminal Mind

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone. So our second case today happened in
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  Speaker 1: November of 2006. Alexander Levitnico entered a London hospital with
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  Speaker 1: symptoms that could have belonged to dozens of illnesses. Vomiting, diarrhea,
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  Speaker 1: abdominal pain. Then his condition became far stranger. His bone
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  Speaker 1: marrow began failing. His hair fell out and his blood
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  Speaker 1: cell counts deteriorated. Despite intensive treatment, his organs were being
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  Speaker 1: damaged by something physicians initially could not identify. The answer
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  Speaker 1: would eventually transform an unexplained medical collapse into one of
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  Speaker 1: the most extraordinary poisoning investigations in modern history. The poison
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  Speaker 1: was radioactive. Levenko, who died at University College Hospital on
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  Speaker 1: November 23, 2006, after suffering cardiac arrest, A subsequent official
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  Speaker 1: inquiry concluded that the arrest resulted from acute radiation syndrome
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  Speaker 1: caused by an enormous internal exposure to polonium-210. Postmortem examinations
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  Speaker 1: and tissue analysis showed radiation damage affecting multiple organ systems,
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  Speaker 1: particularly important for the bone marrow, kidneys, and liver. The
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  Speaker 1: estimated intake was approximately 4.4 gigabit per rolls of polonium-210.
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  Speaker 1: An amount experts concluded was far beyond survivable. But examining
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  Speaker 1: the body created another problem. The body itself was radioactive.
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  Speaker 1: The forensic pathologist and post-mortem team therefore required extraordinary precautions
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  Speaker 1: to prevent contamination. In the toxicology report, this is where
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  Speaker 1: the case becomes really interesting. Polonium-210 is primarily an alpha
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  Speaker 1: particle emitter. Alpha radiation cannot penetrate intact skin very effectively,
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  Speaker 1: making polonium far less dangerous outside the body than many
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  Speaker 1: people might imagine. Inside the body, however, the situation changes.
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  Speaker 1: If swallowed or inhaled, polonium can enter tissues and bombard
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  Speaker 1: nearby cells with highly energetic alpha particles. In ordinary radiation,
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  Speaker 1: screening initially wasn't enough. Standard Geiger counter-testing did not reveal
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  Speaker 1: what was happening. Specialized examination of Leventico's urine ultimately detected
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  Speaker 1: evidence of polonium-210. Scientists later estimated that almost all the
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  Speaker 1: fatal dosage had been ingested. What the findings mean is
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  Speaker 1: to think of alpha-radiation as something with extremely short range
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  Speaker 1: but enormous destructive potential when placed directly beside living cells.
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  Speaker 1: Then Vaneco wasn't simply carrying a poison in his bloodstream.
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  Speaker 1: His tissues had effectively become the location of continuing radiation exposure.
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  Speaker 1: Bone marrow is particularly important because it produces blood cells,
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  Speaker 1: so destroy enough of it and the body progressively loses
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  Speaker 1: its ability to maintain essential blood components and normal immune defenses.
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  Speaker 1: This is what happened to the multiple organ failure. It
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  Speaker 1: was inevitable. The medical cause was exceptionally clear, acute radiation
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  Speaker 1: syndrome caused by ingestion of polonium-210. The death was not
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  Speaker 1: regarded as accidental exposure. A later UK public inquiry concluded
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  Speaker 1: that Levenko had been deliberately poisoned while drinking tea at
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  Speaker 1: London's Millennium Hotel. The inquiry found that Andrei Lugovoy and
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  Speaker 1: Dmitry Kovtun carried out the poisoning. Those were findings of
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  Speaker 1: the public inquiry. The inquiry itself did not constitute a
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  Speaker 1: criminal conviction. The crucial forensic evidence wasn't merely finding polonium
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  Speaker 1: inside Levenko. Investigators found a radioactive trail. Polonium contamination appeared
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  Speaker 1: in multiple locations connected with the movements under investigation. Analysis
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  Speaker 1: of Levenko's hair also produced evidence consistent with a smaller
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  Speaker 1: earlier exposure during October. Suddenly, radiation wasn't merely explaining the death.
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  Speaker 1: It was helping reconstruct the events. The body could establish
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  Speaker 1: what killed Levenko. It could not by itself establish who
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  Speaker 1: administered the poison. Those conclusions required combining pathology with radiation measurements,
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  Speaker 1: environmental contamination, surveillance. Few deaths demonstrates the power of forensic
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  Speaker 1: toxicology more dramatically. An illness that initially resembled gastrointestinal disease
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  Speaker 1: ultimately became identifiable as catastrophic internal radiation exposure. Levenko's body
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  Speaker 1: contained the evidence investigators needed to identify the weapon that
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  Speaker 1: killed him And this case teaches perhaps the most important
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  Speaker 1: lesson in forensic toxicology. Sometimes the deadliest poison is the
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  Speaker 1: one ordinary testing isn't designed to see. Hopefully you enjoyed
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