Bubba sat at a table on his back porch opening some mail. Most of it was dropped into a bucket he would add to a brush pile he planned to burn tomorrow night. But one letter made him laugh, then become reflective. “Here’s a letter from someone who wants to be a pen pal. Is their request legitimate or is it a scam? Is it real or is there a secret behind it? Here’s the story about Barry Hopkins and his pen pal.”
Barry Hopkins had a boring job as an insurance actuary in Rockton, Tennessee. He had very few friends – including his often-absent wife, Marlene, who was a traveling saleswoman for the Superior Cosmetics Company. He was even bored when she was home. She sat in her chair studying a cosmetics catalog while he sat in his chair studying the ceiling. But her absence made boredom feel like a gigantic boulder on his shoulders. Heavy and constant.
Barry was reading one of his wife’s soap opera magazines late one night. He couldn’t sleep, which seemed to happen every night while his wife was on the road. “This looks interesting,” he said to no one as he read the article from a magazine entitled Pals Across the Globe. “That’s what I need – a pen pal!”
He checked out their website. Their services were free unless you chose to pay for a VIP Membership and access to a more select group of writers. He decided to write to a veteran confined to a wheelchair in Jackson, Mississippi. He mailed his letter to the Pals Across the Globe mailing office address, where the letter would be forwarded to the veteran. If the veteran wished to continue the correspondence, he would write back to Barry, again through the Pals Across the Globe.
In ten days, Barry was thrilled when he opened his private Mailbox #288 in the downtown post office. He found a letter from former Marine Sergeant Oliver “Ollie” Ditmer. Ollie wrote how he was injured in combat, then forced to retire when his legs never recovered from the IED explosion on a god-forsaken desert road. Barry responded with, as he described it, a boring life story now buried in death statistics.
They corresponded back and forth, receiving letters about every ten days, which was great for Barry because his wife would be gone. The pen pals wrote about their lives, what they liked to eat, and movies they enjoyed. Eventually, their letters turned darker and more ominous. They discussed movie plots that involved murdering someone like Strangers on a Train or Rear Window (Ollie liked old movies). They began to create intricate plots of their own to kill people.
Ollie wrote about a plot he saw on a TV show. It concerned a large, fast-moving, and highly venomous snake found in Australia called a Taipan. The venom was used to paralyze a person’s nervous system, quickly clotting the blood, which then clogged the blood vessels. The victim died in less than 24 hours. Ollie’s murder plot was to place Taipan venom in Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), an organosulfur compound, which would speed rapid absorption. Ollie suggested the venom-DMSO combo be placed in the victim’s underwear. “Hey, I could do that to some of Marlene’s skivvies,” Barry said, then regretted he had said it.
Barry read that castor beans could produce ricin, a very potent toxin that prevents protein production. Within a few days of exposure, its effects on the central nervous system, kidneys, liver, and adrenal glands appear. Gastrointestinal symptoms would quickly progress to severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and difficulty swallowing. The murderer could substitute the victim’s protein supplement with ricin and kill him or her slowly within a week.
When Barry dropped off his latest letter, he noticed another letter from Ollie in Mailbox #288. His new pen pal wrote about Tetrodotoxin (TTX), an extremely potent neurotoxin. TTX would cause the victim to lose sensation and voluntary muscle control, like the diaphragm. The corresponding death would be due to respiratory failure within 17 minutes. The assassin could draw TTX from a puffer fish and place it in the victim’s ketchup on French fries. Ollie included his letter with a box of personalized stationery with Barry’s name and address in calligraphy on the letterhead and envelopes.
Barry was serious now. He researched several unusual ways to eliminate a person. He smiled when he read about hydrogen cyanide, a gas that kills via inhalation. He devised a plan to connect a five-gallon canister filled with hydrogen cyanide to a hot water heater which would kill the asthmatic victim as he took his morning shower.
Ollie wrote back on an unusual plan involving VX nerve gas, an oily, amber-colored liquid. VX is very slow to evaporate before it becomes a vapor. Repeated exposure can accumulate in the victim. Ollie said the intake filter for a car’s air conditioner would be a great place for drops of VX, and then walk away. It might take days for the victim to die, which would give the killer ample time to create an alibi.
Barry wrote to describe polonium, a highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes. He said he learned it is used as a thin film on a stainless steel disc to eliminate static electricity produced during several processes such as rolling paper, wire, and sheet metal. He wrote that only 50 nanograms ingested or 10 nanograms inhaled would be fatal. But neither correspondent could determine how to murder someone with it.
One day, Barry began to choke and wheeze as he drove to the post office to drop off another letter to his pen pal Ollie, and to check his mailbox for any letters. An ambulance was called, and Barry was taken to Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Room. His wife Marlene rushed from the airport where she had just arrived from Jackson, Mississippi. She threw her arms around Barry and tried not to cry. He whispered, “It’s all right, Marlene. I know.” A tiny smile of recognition shone on his face, and he stopped breathing.
A week after Barry’s cremation, the widow Marlene laughed as she peered through the tiny window of her private Mailbox #333 at the post office. and retrieved a letter. “Well, I won’t need this after today. Barry won’t be able to write me from his coffin.” She tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter to find one word in a typed note.
“Bye”, flatly said the note as she laughed aloud.
“So, ‘Bye’ to you too, Barry! My new stud in Jackson is what I need, not some wimpy milquetoast. Ollie is all man, all 6-feet, 4-inches of hard muscle. I knew if Ollie and I worked this right, we could get rid of Barry, and no one would be the wiser. Now I can cash that million-dollar life insurance policy I made Barry get, and Ollie can chase me on the beaches and bedrooms of Tahiti.”
“Barry never knew what hit him, but every time he licked one of his personalized envelopes, he got a small dose of polonium that his body absorbed. Over time, a lethal toxic level was built.”
Marlene continued to laugh as she drove to the liquor store. “I need a magnum of your best champagne. I’m celebrating my independence tonight!” she told the store clerk. When she got home, she put on her flimsiest nightie and poured herself a glass of champagne in preparation for a celebratory video with Ollie.
Her smile and laughter slowed and changed to panic as she grabbed her throat. Before she could scream for help, she fell on her side on the living room floor in front of the wide-screen television. She twitched three or four times and died with her eyes open in terror and foam oozing from her mouth.
The autopsy later was inconclusive, but she died of a poison soaked in the note. She absorbed thallium through her fingertips as she held the letters. The medical examiner in Rockton had never seen or heard of thallium poisoning and ruled the death as possible heart failure.