POISON MYSTERY

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 98, 30 August 1923, Page 5

POISON MYSTERY

VIENNA POLICE BAFFLED, SEVEN VICTIMS DEAD. (Received 10.30 a.m.) United Service.) London, August 29. The Daily Mail’s Vienna correspondent states; One of the strangest poison niysterieg of modern times is completely baffling the police. There hare already been eleven victims, seven of whom are dead.

The central figure in the tragedy ig Joseph Mold, a Roumanian railway official, who is at present in prison charged with poisoning five persons, including his brother, who are witnesses against him in an embezzlement charge.

Since Mold has been in prison five other witnesses were strangely striken by poison administered by an unknown hand. Recently a secret service man who was sent specially from Bucharest collapsed after drinking coffee in a public restaurant. The coffee contained belladonna, but he recovered. While dining in another restaurant, he collapsed in convulsions. Analysis showed that in the soup there was sufficient arsenic to kill fifty.

Tlie latent victim is a railway official, who collapsed after smoking a cigar taken from his own private locked cabinet. The cigar was impregnated with belladonna.