ABC News reports that a neuroscientist from the University of Pittsburgh has been charged with homicide following the death of his wife from cyanide poisoning.
Dr. Robert Ferrante, 64, allegedly killed his wife, Dr. Autumn Klein, 41, by lacing her creatine drink with cyanide on April 17.
According to police records, the couple had been exchanging emails about conceiving a second child. The husband had suggested a regimen of creatine drinks would help them conceive. Police found a glass vial near a resealable, plastic bag holding a white substance in the couple’s home. Ferrante told them it was creatine.
However, police now know that Ferrente had used a credit card to order cyanide not long before his wife’s death. He is a neuroscientist, but he was not involved in any experiments using the chemical.
Police have discovered that there were arguments between Ferrente and Klein about whether she might be having an affair.
Anolther witness reported seeing Ferrente himself drinking creatine samples in his lab in the days before his wife’s death. The cyanide he ordered was locked in a safe that only he and one other person had access to.
Cyanide poisoning as a method of homicide or suicide is still not unusual. We reported here recently about a man who ordered cyanide just before his trial on sodomy charges involving a 14-year-old female. When found guilt, he took the poison right there in the courtroom and died rather than go to jail.
Another man we reported on recently died of cyanide poisoning shortly after winning a lottery of $600,000. No arrests have been made in his death.
Perhaps the most famous case of cyanide deaths was in the Jonestown massacre, where over 900 people drank cyanide-laced Flavoraid and followed their spiritual leader, Jim Jones, to their deaths.
