Case Study: Georgi Markov
Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian born protest writer, was born in 1929 and assassinated in 1978. Due to the nature of his work and the communist regime under which Bulgaria existed at the time, he was forced to move west to England. There, he continued his dissenting work until he was assassinated by the Bulgarian secret police on the streets of London. The murder weapon? A ricin pellet injected into his leg with an umbrella.
His assassination became known for the infamously unique weapon used: the umbrella. Known as the "Bulgarian umbrella", the weapon is one that has a hollowed out stem, where the ricin pellet sits. It basically functions as a gun, as it has a trigger and a bullet which is released when the trigger activates the gas chamber inside the umbrella. The metal surrounding the bullet is specifically designed to melt at human body temperatures, meaning that once it enters the body, the ricin will be free to be absorbed in the blood stream. It was used in the case of Georgi Markov, but also 10 days earlier in a failed assassination attempt of Vladimir Kostov. Markov's assassination attempt was unfortunately successful. He was walking to work in downtown London on September 7th, 1978. Suddenly, he felt something like an insect bite on his leg, and when he flinched to look at it, he saw a man picking up an umbrella. That same evening, he got a fever and other flu like symptoms, and he died four days later in the hospital. It has been confirmed that the KGB arranged this murder, essentially to shut Markov up.
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