The Lunchbox Poisoner [EN]

00:00:05: Welcome to Deadly Connections, the true crime podcast for Dr.

00:00:08: Timo Schühler.

00:00:12: It's just past six thirty in the morning.

00:00:15: The early shift has just started In the cafeteria of a small wealth manufacturer in Schlossholtestupenbrock A town in eastern Westphalia and Germany.

00:00:25: most people have never heard off.

00:00:27: They air smells like coffee And the faint metallic tang Of machine oil that has soaked into walls over years.

00:00:35: Men in work clothes, opening their lunchboxes.

00:00:39: Talking about the weekend... About soccer and what that team!

00:00:43: But nothing particular.

00:00:46: It's a morning like any other.

00:00:50: Udo sets his box down on the table Whole grain bread A bit of cheese Tomato.

00:00:58: His wife packs it for him every morning.

00:01:01: He takes first bite.

00:01:04: The bread tastes as always maybe just a little critty A slight roughness, barely worth noticing.

00:01:12: Maybe his wife used a different floor today... maybe it's the cheese?

00:01:17: He chews, swallows, reaches for his coffee, tiny crystals dissolved on its tongue, vanished without a trace.

00:01:30: and yet not without a trace because what Udo doesn't know is this that pretty feeling has a name three names actually let acetate mercury, cadmium.

00:01:45: Substances that his body will now quietly and patiently collect in its kidneys... ...in His blood!

00:01:52: In the nerve endings throughout his body.

00:01:55: No alarm no pain.

00:01:58: not yet He has no idea that someone tampered with this food.

00:02:03: There's no idea That person is sitting right next to him And he has no ideas at this morning like hundreds of mornings before it is killing him a little bit at the time.

00:02:22: Welcome to Deadly Connections!

00:02:25: I'm Timo, i am not a criminologist nor detective or journalist and someone with background in natural sciences biochemistry toxicology analytical chemistry medical chemistry And have spent years wondering why science so rarely gets real seed on table in true crime.

00:02:45: In this podcast we look at cases where chemistry, medicine or biology aren't just a food node.

00:02:52: They're the actual story.

00:02:54: Today We start in Bielefeld Germany with a man who poisoned people undetected for years With three substances you might remember from high school chemistry and was a question that fascinates me most about This case.

00:03:08: not who?

00:03:09: Not how but why did it take so long For anyone to notice?

00:03:15: Before we get into this case, I want to take a moment explain why the topic matters personally.

00:03:43: Sometimes with intent, sometimes through negligence.

00:03:47: Sometimes simply because no one bothered to look closely enough.

00:03:52: That's deadly connections.

00:03:54: Let's get into it.

00:03:57: The case Schlossholz des Stukenbrock If you've never heard of it.

00:04:04: neither had I before this case But i just remember that was at a safari park in the near distance To this small town.

00:04:15: I remember there are lions and such animals.

00:04:19: But this is a small town in the Güteslo district, just east of Bielefeld about twenty five thousand residents The kind of place that never makes them use.

00:04:29: One over those residents is Klaus Oh A mechanist ,a family man Unremarkable .The type of person neighbors later described by saying i never would have guessed Which honestly fascinates me every single time because What would you have guessed?

00:04:47: Is there a face for what he did?

00:04:49: Probably not, but we'll come back to that.

00:04:52: Klaus-O has worked for years at the company called Ari – a wealth manufacturer.

00:04:57: Wealths, fittings, pipe connectors… nothing glamorous...but solid work!

00:05:03: A workshop, cafeteria, a break room, coworkers who know each other Who say hello and probably eat lunch together hundreds of times And at some point no one knows exactly when Klaus-O starts poisoning them.

00:05:21: The exact timeline has never been fully reconstructed, the state criminal investigation office later examined illness and death records of a company going back to year two thousand... ...the Year Two Thousand which means it's possible not proven but possible that Klaus O went undetected for nearly two decades.

00:05:43: Over the years, several co-workers grow increasingly ill.

00:05:47: Kidney damage, neurological symptoms, fatigue... Nobody connects the dots!

00:05:54: Nobody thinks….

00:05:57: Nobody THINKS that cafeteria might be a problem.

00:06:01: But then there's Nick, twenty six years old and undergraduate working part time job.

00:06:08: On one day, Nick notices his suspicious powder on lunch.

00:06:13: And that's the moment everything changes.

00:06:17: The state criminal office installs a hidden camera in the break room and they wait.

00:06:24: Less than one week later, the cameras rolling.

00:06:27: Klaus Oh enters the breakroom looks around briefly and then calmly methodically as if it were their most natural thing in the world reaches for his cowbockers food and put a small amount of white powder on the co-worker's bread.

00:06:53: I have to stop at that image for second.

00:06:56: Methodically, this wasn't an impulse!

00:07:00: This was not moment of rage... This was routine.

00:07:05: Klaus Orr is arrested that same day.

00:07:11: When investigators search his home they find a makeshift poison lab.

00:07:15: Substances that he And this is the part that really gets me as someone with a science background simply ordered online.

00:07:23: Let's acetate mercury, ketmium.

00:07:27: The trial begins in November.

00:07:28: two thousand eighteen.

00:07:30: Klaus Orr says nothing.

00:07:32: The surveillance footage leaves him no room to manoeuvre at the sentencing.

00:07:38: The presiding judge said the substances found and your possession are more dangerous.

00:07:44: Then chemical weapons used in the Second World War.

00:08:17: are permanently damaged.

00:08:20: And the motive?

00:08:22: Still unknown to this day, and that I think is almost the most unsettling thing about this entire case.

00:08:31: Chemistry!

00:08:34: Let's get into part of a case that fascinates me most.

00:08:37: Klaus Ohr used three substances, leadesitate mercury cadmium – three different poisons but with shared logic…and that logic exactly explains why he went undetected for so long.

00:08:51: Let's start with what all three have in common.

00:08:55: They are heavy metals and Heavy metals, Have a property that makes them from a perpetrators perspective almost perfect.

00:09:03: they don't disappear.

00:09:06: Your body can handle A lot of toxins alcohol for example.

00:09:10: the liver breaks it down you sleep It over The next morning.

00:09:13: its gone pay medication.

00:09:15: similar story Heavy metals Are different.

00:09:18: your Body has no real plan For Them.

00:09:21: It mistakes them for something else.

00:09:23: Minerals, nutrients... Building blocks it recognizes and so it stores them.

00:09:30: the kidneys in the bones a nerve tissue not because it wants to Because he doesn't know what else do.

00:09:40: And here's What makes them so insidious.

00:09:42: The damage Doesn't happen all at once.

00:09:45: It accumulates.

00:09:47: Every poisoned lunch adds another layer Like compound interest, except working against you.

00:09:57: Lead Acetate.

00:09:59: Lead acetate is a soluble lead salt.

00:10:02: Historically it had different name sugar of lead.

00:10:06: and that name isn't the coincidence.

00:10:09: Lead acetates actually tastes mildly sweet.

00:10:12: The Romans used this as a sweatener in wine.

00:10:16: And yes I can already feel my ADHD pulling me straight toward ancient Rome.

00:10:21: Quick detail, because it's worth it.

00:10:23: Historians have long debated whether chronic lead poisoning had a measurable effect on the behavior of Roman emperors – Caligula nero comodos.

00:10:34: The symptoms fit.

00:10:35: Whether its true nobody knows for certain.

00:10:38: That is whole episode.

00:10:41: but back to close-all.

00:10:43: Inside body a lead displaces two essential minerals calcium and zinc.

00:10:49: Now, calcium isn't just important for bones.

00:10:52: It's a critical signalling molecule in the nerve cells.

00:10:57: When lead pushes calcium out, nerve cells start firing incorrect signals Concentration problems Tingling In several cases paralyzes.

00:11:07: At the same time the kidneys take damage because they're trying to excrete the lead and getting hurt.

00:11:14: There's actually a clinical sign that attentive physicians can sometimes spot the burden line.

00:11:21: A blueish-gray discoloration along the gumline caused by lead sulphide deposits, visible to the naked eye... ...a tiny detail that tells the whole story if you know what your looking for.

00:11:37: Mercury!

00:11:39: Mercury is the substance that put Nick into a coma.

00:11:42: Klaus Ohr didn't just grab first mercury compound He could find.

00:11:46: Based on what came out during the trial, The picture that emerged was of someone who tried different compounds systemically to see which one worked best.

00:11:59: I have to stop at...that for a second.

00:12:02: That wasn't random!

00:12:03: It's an experiment with human beings as test subjects.

00:12:09: Mercury exists in several forms and those are not interchangeable.

00:12:14: Elemental mercury, the liquid metal you might remember from old thermometers is surprisingly non-toxic when swallowed.

00:12:23: Inorganic mercury salts are significantly more dangerous but organic mercury compounds methylmercury dimethylmercary that's an entirely different category.

00:12:38: they're fat soluble They crossed the plot brain barrier, they reached a central nervous system directly.

00:12:46: The expert from state criminal office mentioned dimethylmercury in their trial with an example I can't leave out.

00:12:55: Three drops of dimethylmercary absorbed through laboratory club killed a chemist at major american university.

00:13:04: three drops.

00:13:06: Symptoms didn´t appear until months later.

00:13:10: and there is no.

00:13:11: and I don't.

00:13:14: And that's the class of compound Nick was poisoned with.

00:13:17: The irreversible brain damage, the coma death three years later.

00:13:27: cadmium Cadmium is the quietest Of the Three which doesn't make it less dangerous.

00:13:34: It makes it more dangerous in its own way.

00:13:38: cadmum behaves inside the body like sink and zinc is an essential trace element your body needs for hundreds of enzymatic processes.

00:13:47: The problem is that certain transport proteins can't tell cadmium and zinc apart, so cadmum gets actively absorbed.

00:13:56: stored the half-life of cadmume in a human body as somewhere between ten to thirty years.

00:14:03: what get's in stays it!

00:14:10: goes to dialysis, to this day.

00:14:15: Now you can see why Klaus-O choose exactly these three.

00:14:19: All Three act cumulatively.

00:14:23: all three produce a clinical picture that looks like almost anything else kidney problems exhaustion neurological symptoms.

00:14:33: no physician looking at the tired middle aged factory worker is going to think heavy metal poisoning first.

00:14:40: And then there's this thought I can't shake.

00:14:43: Klaus Ohl was a mechanist, not a chemist nor the scientist.

00:14:48: He assembled his knowledge from the internet ordered substances online and build lab in kitchen.

00:14:56: if investigators interpretation is correct he tested methodically to find what worked most effectively.

00:15:05: let say something about availability of knowledge.

00:15:12: How could that have been determined?

00:15:15: Heavy metals can be detected with extraordinary precision today.

00:15:19: Using a method called ICP-MS, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

00:15:24: A sample is fed through an extremely hard plasma That breaks every molecule down to its individual atoms.

00:15:31: Then those atoms are measured by mass.

00:15:34: Heavy metals Can be detected at concentrations below one billionth of a gram per liter.

00:15:39: The problem wasn't a detection method.

00:15:43: The problem was that nobody thought to look, the tools existed.

00:15:50: they were just sitting on a shelf.

00:15:52: what could have been done?

00:15:54: What could doctors have done if there had looked early enough for lead?

00:15:58: their steam is a dimer copter succinic acid an oral medication that binds lead and helps the body excrete it.

00:16:07: odos kidney damage might have been significantly less severe.

00:16:12: For inorganic mercury, DMPS a similar collating agent but close oh didn't poison Nick with inorganics mercury?

00:16:22: he used an organic compound and with organic mercury compounds collation therapy largely fails.

00:16:32: the reason is the same property that makes these compounds so lethal they're fat solubility.

00:16:39: By the time symptoms appear, the substance has already penetrated deep into nerve tissue.

00:16:45: Already crossed the blood-brain barrier.

00:16:48: A collating agent simply can't reach it.

00:16:51: For Nick that means even if a doctor had ordered a mercury test immediately.

00:16:56: whether treatment could have made a difference depends on exactly when the poisoning occurred.

00:17:03: We don't know that.

00:17:05: and cadmium They're still no truly effective collating agent.

00:17:09: The kidney damage is largely irreversible.

00:17:14: Udo will spend the rest of his life going to dialysis.

00:17:19: What remains unanswered?

00:17:23: How many victims, really?

00:17:25: The twenty-one suspicious cases investigated Going back to year two thousand never fully resolved.

00:17:33: A motive Never confirmed.

00:17:35: Klaus Oostate silent He's still hasn't spoken And this question that won't leave me alone.

00:17:42: Where did he learn all of these?

00:17:45: The internet.

00:17:47: What does the tell us about what's out there and who has access to it, what Does this case leave?

00:17:55: as with Nick is dead Twenty six year old.

00:17:58: his parents cared for him at home.

00:18:00: four three years on still He died.

00:18:03: Udo goes to dialyze several times a week close or is in prison.

00:18:08: Yes never spoken.

00:18:10: He probably never will.

00:18:13: What holds me to this case as the starting point for his podcast isn't a drama, it's the silence that came before it!

00:18:21: The years when people kept getting sicker and nobody knows why... ...the tools that existed?

00:18:29: The questions NOBODY

00:18:30: asked?!

00:18:32: I didn´t start this podcast because i have answers.. ..I started it because I know what it feels like when questions stay open And thats why Im here.

00:18:44: In the next week, we look at a different case.

00:18:47: A different substance... ...a different person who killed and a system that looked the other way far too long.

00:18:57: Deadly connections!

00:18:58: See you next week.