German worker suspected of killing 21 colleagues by poisoning their sandwiches

A German worker is suspected of killing 21 of his fellow employees by poisoning their lunches, police said
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Hatty Collier1 July 2018
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A German worker is suspected of killing 21 of his fellow employees by poisoning their lunches, police said.

Police officers in Germany are investigating the suspicious deaths of 21 engineering workers at a factory that makes metal components in the town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock in the North Rhine-Westphalia state.

The 56-year-old suspect was detained after police found quicksilver, lead and cadmium at his home after his colleague, 26, complained to his manager that he had found a suspicious, unknown white power on his sandwich.

A spokesman for the Bielefeld Police, Achim Ridder, told ABC News that the company had installed a CCTV camera in the lunch break room and obtained footage of the suspect opening a colleague’s lunch box and sprinkling something on the food inside.

He said the suspect was arrested on May 16 and police are now investigating a total of 21 cases, dating back to 2000, of employees at the same company who died under suspicious circumstances.

The workers died of heart attacks or cancer – conditions that could have been the result of heavy metal poisoning, authorities said.

Tilo Blechinger, a manager at the ARI Amaturen firm, told the DPA German news agency that he initially believed that the alleged sprinkling of the substance on the food was a joke.

He said: “We thought it was a misconceived prank between co-workers and not a murder attempt.”

Mr Blechinger added that the suspect had worked for the company for 38 years and was “conspicuously inconspicuous”.

Police will now speak to the families of the other employees who had died and the doctors who treated them. Mr Bidder said: “Some of the bodies might have to be exhumed and examined for traces of poison.”

Two other employees, one of whom is in a coma and one who is on permanent dialysis, are also suspected to have been poisoned.

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