Chapter XXIII: Criminal Poisoning with Bacteria

The exploitation of pathogenic bacteria for criminal purposes has not been neglected by the poisoner, but owing to ignorance on the one hand, and the difficulty of obtaining the material on the other, it has led to failure even with the most cunning. The person with sufficient scientific knowledge to prepare cultures is not as a rule one with criminal instincts, and the clumsy handling of such deadly material would lead to certain detection if used by one who did not understand it.

One of the most remarkable cases on record occurred in Petrograd in 1911, when a man named Patrick O’Brien de Lacy, said to have been a lineal descendant of the Irish kings, was accused of having procured the death of his brother-in-law, an official in the Ministry of the Interior, his father-in-law, General Buturlin, and his mother-in-law, in order to inherit a large amount of money of which rumour said they were possessed.

From his youth upwards O’Brian de Lacy is said to have been a ne’er-do-well. Having left a Russian school without finishing his education, he frequented the London Polytechnic, and also studied naval architecture, but all the plans he founded upon his technical knowledge were nullified by the defeat of the Russian navy at Tsushima and other events. He first married a lady of excellent family, who, being herself married, agreed to divorce her husband in order to espouse him. He then entangled her in all his own financial difficulties, spent her money, and obtained power of attorney to transact her business. Finally, making the acquaintance of a Mdlle Buturlin, he divorced his first wife as she divorced her first husband. Then he sought out a Dr. Panchenko and conspired with him to poison the lady before pledging his troth to her at the altar. After his second marriage, O’Brien is said to have laid his plans to remove every human obstacle that stood between him and his father-in-law’s wealth with extraordinary cunning, and these he endeavoured to carry out by inoculating them with the germs of deadly diseases which included cholera and diphtheria. He arranged his scheme even to the smallest detail, and if there is such a thing as a genius in crime, this most extraordinary man was typical of it.

Having to employ a medical man to carry out his designs, like Romeo he selected a needy practitioner named Panchenko, before whose eyes he dangled a dazzling reward. Money was the magnet to attract Panchenko, and O’Brien de Lacy offered him, it is said, 10,000 roubles to compass the death of his brother-in-law, 50,000 roubles to dispose of his father-in-law, and 500,000 roubles if he put a speedy end to his mother-in-law, who was the richest of the family.

In 1910 the younger Buturlin died at Petrograd after a week’s illness. He was an employee of the Ministry of the Interior, and symptoms during his illness or signs after death suggested foul play. Old General Buturlin, who arrived from Vilna before the funeral, stopped the interment of his son’s body and demanded a post-mortem.

His widow endorsed this demand, both surmising neglect on the part of the physician, but on investigation it was concluded that blood-poisoning was the cause of death.

By a curious coincidence, on the same day, a man named Bobroff called on the Chief of the Secret Police. He told him he was a book-keeper and that a comrade of his named Petropavlovsky possessed proofs that young Buturlin’s death was caused by Dr. Panchenko, who had also designs on the life of the General with a view to inheriting property. Petropavlovsky’s story is a very curious one and may be given in his own words:—

“A conscience is the only possession I can call my own, and it has driven me here to denounce my unique benefactress. She is my landlady, Madame Muraviova, who allows me a room in her flat, and has been very kind to me. She is the mistress of Dr. Panchenko, with whom she has been huggermuggering of late in suspicious ways. The door and walls being thin, I have heard snatches of conversation, which I have pieced together, and I find they point to Dr. Panchenko as the instrument of young Buturlin’s death and O’Brien de Lacy as the employer of that instrument. The penniless Dr. Panchenko often journeyed to Vilna, where O’Brien de Lacy resides, and always returned with a fat purse and high hopes. Madame Muraviova, too, babbled about her improving prospects, saying she was shortly coming into 300,000 roubles.

“One day in April, Dr. Panchenko left for Kronstadt, where plague-stricken dogs are studied, and after his return he talked of little else. Soon afterwards young Buturlin, Panchenko, and O’Brien de Lacy went on the spree together. The next thing I noticed was that Panchenko was weeping and sobbing. I entered the common sitting-room, and found him beside himself with excitement while his paramour was burning heaps of papers. She spoke first, saying that she had been scolding him for visiting a diphtheria patient without disinfecting himself. In an aside to Dr. Panchenko she asked, ‘Did you do it properly?’ He answered, ‘Well, I squirted two full doses, although one would have been enough.’”

After this revelation, Dr. Panchenko was interrogated by the police, and he stated, that he treated the deceased for loss of energy and injected a certain remedy, but knew nothing of the cause of death. He had made O’Brien de Lacy’s acquaintance in the train, and subsequently had business dealings with him. De Lacy was then asked for an explanation by the police, and he stated that his relations with the doctor were purely commercial, and he affirmed that he could not possibly benefit by young Buturlin’s death. The police, however, attached so much importance to the story of the informer that they arrested Panchenko and O’Brien de Lacy.

It was while in prison awaiting trial that Panchenko broke down and revealed the full story in the following words:—

“Patients were brought to me occasionally by a friend named Raffoff, who acted as a tout, receiving a share of the profits. One day he introduced me to O’Brien de Lacy. We adjourned to a private room in a restaurant, where, in Raffoff’s presence, he asked me if I would perform a certain illegal operation for 1,500 roubles. I assented. O’Brien de Lacy seemed pleased, and gave me 100 roubles. I asked him to visit me in my own study. I was a physician of the St. Petersburg district of the Northern Railway.

“Subsequently O’Brien intimated that he would prefer to talk with me without a witness. I acquiesced. He told me he had just become a bridegroom, and the operation he really wanted was to have his future brother-in-law made away with. For this service he would pay 10,000 roubles. After that it would be necessary to remove the father-in-law. For that riddance I would be paid 50,000 roubles, and lastly, the old man’s divorced wife must be launched into eternity. For this job he would not grudge 500,000 roubles. He impressed upon me the necessity of extreme circumspection, and advised me to begin with young Buturlin, to whom he proposed I should administer cholera germs on bread, buttered and covered with caviare. Death by cholera, he explained, would evoke no surprise at a moment when that epidemic was making havoc in Petrograd. Therefore he had much to say in favour of cholera germs, and informed me that young Buturlin was using anti-cholera subcutaneous injections.

“By this time I had extracted 2,000 roubles from O’Brien de Lacy. At last he introduced me to Buturlin, on the ground that we were interested in founding a sanatorium, but I was to whet his curiosity about a certain drug and get him as a patient. Then, instead of the drug, I was to inject some poison or other, and having done the job, to abstain sedulously from writing or telegraphing, as a kinsman of his, Count Roniker, who had been charged with murder in Warsaw, had been tripped up by a telegram. The plan was successful; I treated young Buturlin, substituting diphtheria toxin for the other drug.

“I received the germs from a chemist, who believed my story that it was required for experiments on rabbits. I injected two large doses into the victim’s thigh. Later, I learned he was very ill, and, being conscience smitten, I wired for O’Brien de Lacy, who was furious that the telegram should have been sent. He exclaimed, ‘You may as well give yourself up now.’ I visited young Buturlin after this, and learned from his own lips that he had had high fever and sharp pains, but was now much better. The other physician who was called in did not diagnose the malady. Then I read of Buturlin’s death in the papers. It occurred exactly as had been calculated, seven days after the injection. When I read that the day of the burial would be announced later, I knew it boded evil.

“Meanwhile, General Buturlin arrived and demanded a post-mortem. O’Brien de Lacy supported the demand, convinced that the examination would be fruitless. I, too, was of the same opinion, because throats are never analysed during such investigations, and few symptoms of diphtheria infection would be visible in the throat.”

That is Dr. Panchenko’s last definitive story, to which he added that Muraviova was innocent, having had no inkling of his crime. Muraviova herself asseverated her innocence, affirming that her relations with Panchenko were pure. She accepted material help from him, but deprecated the luxury in which he maintained her. He, however, assured her that he would soon inherit a large sum.

The trial of the prisoners began in Petrograd at the end of January 1911, and excited intense public interest. Bobroff, the book-keeper, who gave away the secret to the Chief of Police, was first examined and adhered to his original story. A servant of the Buturlins related how Dr. Panchenko visited Buturlin for the first time, saying, “Let’s get the treatment over before your wife returns.” After that he came twice daily until the fourth day, when the patient fell ill. When his condition grew serious, Buturlin sent for the doctor, but Panchenko was not to be found. A chance physician had to be summoned, but produced no improvement. Nose-bleeding, vomiting, and sharp pains ushered in the agony, during which the dying man said, “Three months long they were at me to have the injections, but I refused as though I had a presentiment of what was coming.”

The Court asked the experts to answer the question, “What caused Buturlin’s death?” and asked them to bear in mind Panchenko’s admission that he had injected diphtheria toxin, when he made the following statement:—

“On May 16 I visited Buturlin, and injected a pure drug from a phial. I repeated the injection on the following day. Before my evening visit to Buturlin on the same day I broke the necks of the two drug-phials in my own lodging that nobody should notice it. Having emptied the contents, I filled the phials with diphtheria poison by means of a paper funnel, plugged them with wadding, and, putting them into my waistcoat-pocket, set out for Buturlin’s. Before starting I gulped down vodka for courage.

“I got to Buturlin’s about eight or nine in the evening, with trembling in my legs and throbbing waves of darkness filling my eyes and fitfully blotting out my sight. I had been wont to break off the necks of the phials in Buturlin’s presence, first putting them in a handkerchief to avoid cutting my fingers. That is why he could not notice that this time the necks were already snapped off. I made two incisions in Buturlin’s body, injecting each time the contents of one phial of the diphtheria poison. Each vessel held about two cubic centimetres, but as the effects of the diphtheria poison had not been tested on human beings, I injected two phials full in order to be quite sure of a deadly issue. As soon as I had finished the business my face was ghastly, and I quivered in every limb. I was in dread that Buturlin might discern my state. Pulling myself together, and mastering my failing voice, I asked him whether it hurt. He answered, ‘Not at all.’ I then left for home, and threw the phials into the street. The livelong night I could not close an eye. Conscience-ache racked me ruthlessly.”

Panchenko’s career, as revealed at the trial, certainly shows him to be one of the most diabolical characters ever connected with medicine and possibly the worst ever known.

He was sent by the Red Cross Society to Harbin during the War, and was then dismissed for irregularities, after which he introduced himself to the then Premier as a schoolmate of the Premier’s brother, and received an appointment as physician to a railway company.

One witness recounted how a certain banker resolved to poison his own uncle, and had recourse to Panchenko, who initiated his friend Dreyden in the scheme. The latter used the information as a lever to extort blackmail, but the police, being hand in glove with the banker, sent Dreyden away.

Panchenko next edited a periodical entitled _Life’s Mysteries_, which was suppressed. Despatched to Paris for the purpose of advertising a certain drug, Panchenko met a Russian officer bound for Abyssinia, who asked him for a potent poison for suicidal purposes in case he should be taken prisoner there. For forty francs Panchenko furnished prussic acid, and the officer swallowed it and died. Panchenko now assured the Court that what he supplied was not poison, but only magnesia, and that in any case he had confessed since to a Russian priest in Paris, who comforted him by saying, “The officer would have committed suicide anyhow, my son.”

To another witness Panchenko propounded a plan for coming into a heritage of two million roubles by “removing” two persons who stood in the way.

Circumstantial evidence was next offered by experts in the culture of various toxins. Dr. Heinrich, assistant director of the laboratory of plague cultures, spoke of Dr. Panchenko visiting the laboratories, requesting cholera endotoxin, and excusing himself from the obligation of writing his name in the visitors’ book on the ground of haste. Dr. Panchenko received two tubes of endotoxin. One had a label that a dose is mortal for certain animals. Some months later Dr. Panchenko revisited the laboratory, and asked for more cholera endotoxin. Dr. Heinrich gave it, but warned him of its deadly effects.

Dr. Panchenko informed the Court that he gave this liquid to O’Brien de Lacy for twenty-five roubles.

Professor Zabolotny explained the nature of the effects of various cultures, and deposed that he gave diphtheria toxin to Dr. Panchenko, whose object was stated to be the study of its action on the nervous system.

A professor, named Zdrjekoffsky, of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, deposed that Dr. Panchenko, early last year, had asked him for diphtheria toxin.

“I gave him, I forget whether one or two phials of diphtheria toxin, each containing thirty or forty cubic centimetres. I explained to Dr. Panchenko the action of this toxin and the minimum dose that would cause death.”

A criminal called Logatcheff, with whom Panchenko had shared a cell, and who was escorted to court by two soldiers, deposed that Panchenko had repeated to him in gaol the whole story of how he had poisoned Captain Buturlin. He said De Lacy had offered him 550,000 roubles to poison Captain Buturlin and the latter’s father, General Buturlin, and mother, and told him he went to Kronstadt, to the Zabolotny Institute of Experimental Medicine to obtain toxins. Panchenko had described experiments which he had made on a guinea-pig at an hotel, adding that he afterwards threw the body into the street.

De Lacy, while denying that he married for money, made the following statement: “It is true that at one time I was afraid that the general would dispose of his fortune in his will in such a manner that my wife would receive only a fourteenth part. I certainly thought this unjust, but I reasoned as follows: The general is sure to live for a long time, and three years will suffice for me to induce him to enter into all my undertakings, including that of the steamboats. Then his whole capital will be at my disposal.”

Continuing, he said that he was not aware of the total amount, but he knew that a sum of £300,000 was deposited in foreign banks.

At the end of this remarkable case, after a trial which lasted nearly three weeks, O’Brien de Lacy and Dr. Panchenko were found guilty, the latter with extenuating circumstances. The woman Muraviova was acquitted. De Lacy was sentenced to penal servitude for life and Panchenko to fifteen years’ penal servitude.

Another case of attempted murder with pathogenic organisms occurred about ten years ago, when a Hungarian artist was tried with attempting to murder his wife by means of typhoid and cholera germs. The cholera medium in his possession was found to have lost all activity by having been kept too long, while the typhoid culture, though quite a virulent one, failed to kill the victim. The discovery of his crime was made through his attempts to obtain cultures from a private laboratory and demanding virulent strains, but so far, cases of this kind have been extremely rare, and the risk of failure is so great that criminals so inclined are likely to think twice before venturing to attempt life by this method.