Thallium is element 81. A heavy metal banned in the United States since 1972. Colorless, odorless, and tasteless in its soluble form. It mimics potassium so convincingly that your cells invite it in. It starts with nausea, fatigue, stomach pain — things that look like a hundred other conditions. Weeks later, the hair falls out in fistfuls. By then, the nervous system has already taken serious damage.

The antidote is called Prussian blue. Doctors almost never think to use it, because they almost never think to test for thallium. That gap between exposure and diagnosis is exactly what makes it a weapon.

In the fall of 2017, a woman named Brigida started feeling sick in her home in Dulzura, California. She went to doctor after doctor. She was told it was fibroids. Cancer. Lupus. An autoimmune disorder. One doctor told her she probably just had bad menstrual cramps and needed to relax.

Her husband made her food. He went to appointments with her. He watched her lose her hair and told her she just didn't know how to cook.

He had purchased thallium online, from an overseas supplier. Three times.

This episode covers the full story of what thallium is and what it does to a human body, Brigida's case and the one doctor whose specific expertise saved her life, the 1994 poisoning of Chinese student Zhu Ling and the Usenet SOS that reached 1,500 researchers worldwide, and what happened when a state used the same logic as a kitchen.

In this episode:

What thallium actually is, how it works inside a human body, and why it is almost never caught in time
Prussian blue: the antidote that sounds like a paint color, because it is one
Brigida's story: months of wrong diagnoses, progressive nerve damage, and the moment her mother drove her to the hospital because she couldn't breathe
Dr. Jeff Lapoint: the one ER physician in the right place with the right board certification
The search history that ended Race Uto's marriage and his freedom
Three separate poisonings. Three consecutive life sentences.
The detail about the breakfast that Brigida remembered at sentencing
Zhu Ling: the 1994 Beijing case, the Usenet SOS, the 1,500 responses, and the hospital that didn't act
The suspect with political connections whose case was closed in 1998
Zhu Ling's death in December 2023, at age 50, with no one ever charged
Alexander Litvinenko and what it looks like when a state does this with polonium instead

People mentioned:

Brigida — survivor, special education teacher, Dulzura, California

Race Uto — convicted of three counts of premeditated attempted murder, sentenced to three consecutive life terms

Dr. Jeff Lapoint — board-certified toxicologist, emergency physician, Kaiser Permanente San Diego

Zhu Ling — thallium poisoning victim, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 1994. Died December 22, 2023

Sun Wei — identified as the only person with documented access to thallium in Zhu Ling's case. Never charged

Alexander Litvinenko — former FSB officer, poisoned with polonium-210 in London, November 2006

Marina Litvinenko — Alexander's wife, still seeking justice

Sources:

Dateline NBC, "The Prussian Blue Mystery" (July 2019)
NavyTimes, Times of San Diego, East County Californian, San Diego ABC 10News
National Center for Biotechnology Information
American Chemical Society
Wikipedia: thallium poisoning, Zhu Ling poisoning case, poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko
European Court of Human Rights ruling on Litvinenko, 2021

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