With one exception, because it’s a gardening site, I avoid those sites like the plagues they are.
Reading this tonight, I realize I misremembered the title. It’s Fatal Vision, not Attraction.
There’s no way the student was purposely trying to synthesize dimethylmercury. It makes no sense to attempt it, and the process is too complex with too many nasty steps in the middle. If MIT thought it was a real attempt, the building would be closed for more than 4 days for the cleanup.
I suppose it could be an attention-seeking hoax from a student with some mental health issues, but that also seems unlikely.
My money is on a standard experiment that gave an unexpected result, and the student started wondering “what if…” So he raised the alarm out of an abundance of caution, but there was never really any problem. In other words, a lot like one of the commenters on the above-linked article:
In grad school I made propargyl Grignard on a fairly large scale. The goal was to convert propargyl bromide to propargyl TMS, which is a procedure that is well reported in the literature. All procedures I found used HgCl2. I assumed its purpose was to activate the magnesium and that it’d be consumed before the propargyl bromide was added. After some deliberation (it was late at night and I didn’t spend that much time thinking about it), I decided to follow the published procedures rather than trying to come up with my own that doesn’t rely on stirring the magnesium with HgCl2. I finished up the reaction that night, distilled the product, threw it in the fridge, and went home. The next day I started worrying about what you’d make if any of the HgCl2 had stuck around and come in contact with the Grignard. After some searching it did seem like that was a valid way to make alkylmercury species. I reported it to my professor and they immediately sent me to health services. I spent a few weeks getting my mercury levels checked three times (two of them had to be 24-hour urine samples, fun…), giving multiple interviews with EH&S, and helping draft a memo that in the end was distributed to the whole department. The good news was that none of the mercury tests ever showed above average levels. I wonder if something like that happened here, where this chemist didn’t intend to make dimethylmercury, but realized that its creation was one possible outcome from some experiment they ran.
I’m afraid to ask - but what “gsrdening site” are you referring to?
Sounds similar to Cecil Jacobson - Wikipedia, who used his own sperm to impregnate his fertility patients.
The beauty of actually being a professional and not a student. I can say “No, we’re not going with that route” and get very little pushback because while universities may be able to stick grad students in a nebulous OSHA free environment an actual employer can’t.
An upcoming HBO documentary looks at a bizarre 2002 double murder in Kansas, and the even more bizarre obsession of a couple determined to exonerate a woman ultimately convicted in the case.
A casino trip, subsonic bullets and a fishy alibi, oh my!
Huh? I can kinda guess what you’re trying to say but I really can’t. What do you mean?
Unlike the Yates case, I do not believe the husband is culpable.
Ah, okay, thanks for the clarification. It’s stunning that that case took place twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five!
I may have missed this being mentioned in another thread. It looks like a possible suspect in the Chicago Tylenol murders has been identified.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article317342919.html
That is a bizarre story about a troubled individual.
I’m kind of surprised a movie hasn’t been made about the D.C. Beltway snipers. That was an intense few weeks, and the incident would appear all the ingredients for a suspenseful narrative.
(If a movie hasn’t been made, I’m unaware of it)
2010, but no major outlet carried it.
But in today’s climate, it would be rather bold with a movie showing that all the bad guys were Black, as some very loud group somewhere would say it was racist AND Islamophobic.
Very strange about the Tylenol case. I thought that a suspect had been found years ago, but could not be charged for the murders for lack of evidence. The authorities did pursue charges because the person wrote an extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson. I forget how it all turned out without looking it up though.
From the first paragraph of ChicagoTylenol Murders - Wikipedia …
No suspect has been charged or convicted of the poisonings as of 2026. New York City resident James W. Lewis was convicted of extortion for sending a letter to Tylenol’s then-manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, that claimed responsibility for the deaths and demanded $1 million to stop them, but when he was discovered, he said the letter’s claim was false, and further investigation failed to establish his involvement.
A minor footnote to an old case…
The Union Hotel in Flemington New Jersey has been reopened after being basically gutted. The gutting was necessary, the place was in major disrepair. The hotel is across the street from the historic courthouse and features prominently in many photographs from the Lindbergh kidnapping trial. Many of the participants and press covering the trial stayed at the hotel. They were able to keep the facade of the hotel so that part of town looks the same as it did when it was flooded with people gathering for the “trial of the century.”
You think filmmakers are afraid to make a movie where the villains are black and/or muslim?
Here are two crime stories I’ve been following:
-
Kimberly Sullivan who allegedly kept her stepson locked in an attic storage room for 20 years and gave him very little food. Although he was in horrible physical
condition, he mangaged to excape by setting a fire. Stepmother Kimberly is out
on bail at the moment and her trial will start early next year. -
The Easter Sunday heist. A money storage warehouse was broken into and
the thieves made off with about $20 million in cash. Amazingly, the warehouse
did not have security gaurds. So far theft has not been solved.