The Still-Unsolved “Umbrella Assassination” in London

Because Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov was born this week, on March 1, 1929, I thought today would be a good say to tell his compelling, if tragic story.

While waiting at a bus stop in London, he was stabbed with an umbrella that inserted a ricin-filled pellet. He died several days later. It’s believed that the KGB was behind the assassination at the request of the Bulgarian Secret Service, but no one has ever been charged with his murder.

Markov originally worked as a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright in Bulgaria, eventually defecting and relocating to London in 1968. He worked there as a broadcaster and journalist criticizing the Bulgarian regime.

After relocating to London, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe, and West Germany's Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian regime, which, according to his wife at the time he died, eventually became "vitriolic" and included "really smearing mud on the people in the inner circles".

On September 7, 1978, Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames, and waited to take a bus to his job at the BBC. While at the bus stop, he felt a slight sharp pain, as a bug bite or sting, on the back of his right thigh. He looked behind him and saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground. The man hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street and got in a taxi which then drove away. The event is recalled as the "Umbrella Murder".

When he arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, Markov noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC, Theo Lirkov, about this incident.

That evening he developed a fever and was admitted to St James' Hospital in Balham, where he died four days later, on 11 September 1978, at the age of 49. Dr. Bernard Riley, the attending physician treating Markov, considered many possible causes of his illness, including that Markov had been bitten by a poisonous tropical snake. Dr. Riley had the inflamed area at the back of Markov's leg x-rayed, but no foreign object was detected at this time.

The cause of death might have been poisoning from a ricin-filled pellet.

Annabel Markov recalled her husband's experience: “He felt a jab in his thigh. He looked around and there was a man behind him who’d apologized and dropped an umbrella. I got the impression as he told the story that the jab hadn’t been inflicted by the umbrella but that the man had dropped the umbrella as cover to hide his face.”

Between 1975 and 1978, Markov worked on his In Absentia Reports, an analysis of life in Communist Bulgaria. They were broadcast weekly on Radio Free Europe. His criticism of the Communist government and of the Party leader Todor Zhivkov made Markov, even more, an enemy of the regime:

“Lies and truths swap their values with the frequency of an alternating current...We have seen how personality vanishes, how individuality is destroyed, how the spiritual life of a whole people is corrupted to turn them into a listless flock of sheep. We have seen so many of those demonstrations which humiliate human dignity, where normal people are expected to applaud some paltry mediocrity who has proclaimed himself a demi-god and condescendingly waves to them from the heights of his police inviolability...”

— Georgi Markov describing life under an authoritarian regime in The Truth that Killed

Due to the circumstances and statements Markov made to doctors expressing the suspicion that he had been poisoned, the Metropolitan Police ordered a thorough autopsy of Markov's body. Dr. Rufus Crompton performed the autopsy, noting a red mark on the back of Markov's leg. He cut a tissue sample from the area, with a matching sample from the other leg. These samples were sent for further analysis at the Porton Down chemical and biological weapons laboratory. There, Dr David Gall, the Research Medical Officer, found a tiny pellet in the tissue sample.

The pellet measured 1.70 millimetres (0.067 in) in diameter and was composed of 90% platinum and 10% iridium. It had two holes with diameters of 0.35 mm (0.014 in) drilled through it, producing an X-shaped cavity. Further examination by experts from Porton Down could not detect any remnant of poison. Considering possible poisons, scientists hypothesized that the pellet might have contained ricin.

Porton Down scientists also thought that a sugary substance had been used to coat the tiny holes, creating a bubble that trapped the poison inside the cavities, with a specially crafted coating designed to melt at 37 °C (99 °F): human body temperature.

After the pellet was inside Markov, the coating might have melted and the poison released to be absorbed into the bloodstream and kill him.

Regardless of whether the doctors treating Markov had known that the poison might have been ricin, the result would have been the same, as there was no known antidote to ricin at the time.

Ten days before the murder, an attempt was made to kill another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, in the same manner as Markov, in a Paris metro station.

KGB defector Oleg Kalugin alleged that the KGB arranged the murder, even presenting the Bulgarian assassin with alternatives such as a poisonous jelly to smear on Markov's skin, but to date, no one has been charged with Markov's murder, largely because most documents relating to it are unavailable, probably destroyed. Kalugin stated that Markov had been killed using an umbrella gun.

The British newspaper The Times has reported that the prime suspect is an Italian named Francesco Gullino (or Giullino) who was last known to be living in Denmark.

A British documentary, The Umbrella Assassin (2006), interviewed people associated with the case in Bulgaria, Britain, Denmark, and America, and revealed that Gullino, is alive and well, and still travelling freely throughout Europe. There were reports in June 2008 that Scotland Yard had renewed its interest in the case. Detectives were sent to Bulgaria and requests were made to interview relevant individuals.

On May 11, 2012, a German man (not named in press reports) died almost a year after being stabbed with an umbrella in the city of Hanover. German police – who noted a resemblance to the Markov case – believe the umbrella was used to inject mercury, and the reported cause of death was mercury poisoning.

Georgi Markov's grave is in a small churchyard at the Church of St Candida and Holy Cross in Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset, England.