Poisoners Beware

Ever since January, the Paris police have felt sure that mousy Dr. Jean Duflos is an unimaginative, old-fashioned poisoner and that he killed his wife with arsenic. They arrested him on the way to her funeral, but for a clear cut case, they needed to know exactly when the poison was given--the one thing their toxicologists couldn't tell them. The body, which tries hard to protect itself from arsenic, stores it away in the skin, fingernails and hair. But even after examining hundreds of samples of such clues, toxicologists can seldom do more than report approximately when the poison dose was given.

In France, where arsenic has been a popular eliminator since the days of the famed Marquise de Brinvilliers,* this lack of precision troubled Henri Griffon, toxicology specialist for the Paris prefecture of police. He discussed the problem with his old friend, Captain Jean Barbaud, physicist and fellow graduate of the Val de Grace military hospital. Together they worked out an answer. They brought the hair from a known arsenic victim to "Zoe," the atomic pile at Chatillon. For eight days they bombarded the hair in the pile's neutron flux. Then, when the elements it contained were thoroughly radioactive, they shielded the hair with lead, exposed it, one millimeter at a time, to a Geiger counter. The rate of growth of human hair is about one-half inch a month, so when the scientists came to a place that emitted rays from more arsenic than any healthy citizen ought to have in his system, they were able to pinpoint the time when the victim had been poisoned.

Last April, Griffon and Barbaud announced their strange new use for atomic energy. But not until last week did they have the satisfaction of seeing the method used in a criminal investigation. A strand of Mme. Duflos' hair was irradiated in Zoe. Later, in the secrecy of the judge's chambers, Toxicologist Griffon reported the results of the test, named the date when unfortunate Mme. Duflos first swallowed a dose of arsenic.

This week, while suspect Duflos remained in jail, the judge set off on a month's vacation before deciding whether or not to order a murder trial. The hair from Mme. Duflos' head, safely locked away in Griffon's safe, will be waiting. "If there is any dispute," says Griffon proudly, "we can radioactivate the hair again. The evidence is permanent."

* Who in the 1670s poisoned her father and two brothers for the family fortune. Even though she was tortured, beheaded and cremated, her methods inspired so many imitators that 17th Century alchemists were soon earning their main income from selling "powders of succession."

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