FBI, Everett police search home for deadly poison

Published 5:31 pm Thursday, June 4, 2009

EVERETT — The FBI and Everett police are searching an Everett home this afternoon for ricin, a deadly toxin.

Officials believe the house in the 1200 block of 50th Street SW may contain ricin, the poison made from castor beans. The case is not believed to be connected to terrorism, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said.

A declaration filed in court Wednesday indicates the poison may be in the home as part of a murder plot.

People living in the neighborhood aren’t in danger and no evacuations have been ordered, officials said.

Police were first called to the home Monday night after a domestic violence incident, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said.

The husband, 48, and the wife, 43, both were hospitalized.

The man remains in the hospital with an undisclosed medical condition, Goetz said.

When doctors clear him for release, he likely will be jailed for investigation of first-degree assault and unlawful imprisonment, Goetz said.

The wife was treated for injuries received Monday and released.

The woman petitioned for a protection order against her husband Wednesday.

She reported that he beat her with a dumbbell, causing wounds that required stitches and staples to close.

She also reported possible poisoning with “Visine eye drops and ricinus (sic) communis robust seeds and lye and rat bait,” according to the petition. She alleged her husband tried to push her down the stairs and may have been on his way to get a gun to harm her.

The woman’s sister filed a declaration as part of the petition, alleging she saw blood on the stairs, large bags of used Visine bottles, unidentified seeds, lye, rat poison and guns.

The woman wrote that she was afraid her husband “will succeed in killing me,” according to the petition.

Also included in the petition are two photocopied pages with notes in which someone has scribbled the scientific names for ricin and lye.

Today’s search was prompted after the woman returned to the house Wednesday, found something suspicious in her husband’s office and became alarmed, Goetz said.

Police investigated and believed they found ricin, he said.

They backed off and called the FBI.

An FBI hazardous materials team from the Washington, D.C.-area joined Everett police this afternoon to serve a search warrant.

Burroughs said ricin, which is extracted from castor beans, is illegal to possess or manufacture.

The FBI found ricin in Kirkland a few years ago but never determined why the man there was making the dangerous substance.

“A lot of people hear ‘ricin’ and they think terrorism,” the FBI’s Burroughs said. “”That wasn’t the case in Kirkland, and it isn’t the case here.”

Ricin is deadly in small amounts but easily contained, she said. Specially prepared ricin can be fatal in minute amounts and there is no antidote, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.