What Happened to Benjamin Marcos?

So, I need some help deciding on a poison to kill Benjamin off. I did a bit of research but I'm stuck between these two poisons.

The two I have picked (I'm welcome to some more suggestions):

Arsenic?

Spoiler

• Symptoms of arsenic poisoning vary with the type and concentration of poison.
  
• Diagnosis of arsenic poisoning is made by determining inorganic and organic levels of arsenic in the blood and urine.
  
• White lines appear in fingernails.
  
• Targets the reaction allowing cells to store energy.
  
• Block energy production and cell signaling, making it impossible for cells to keep up the basic processes that keep us alive.
  
• Damages bodies' functions simultaneously.
  
• Holds important amino acids in a specific formation.

Side Effects: Vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dark urine, dehydration, cardiac problems, hemolysis (destruction of red blood cells), vertigo, delirium, shock, and death

Scenario: Arsenic is commonly served in a small jar. Fredrick will reach into his pocket and pour some of it into Benjamin's drink. After Fredrick leaves, Benjamin will go into shock and start to feel loopy. He will then stumble around the kitchen to leave and take deep breathes. Patsy will enter and stab him in the shoulder blade. Benjamin ends up hitting his head on the counter and dies of cardiac arrest or cardiac death.

Pros: Silent killer, doesn't have a trace and doesn't smell.
Cons: The noise from the kitchen could attract someone. Fredrick would be suspicious as he was leaving the kitchen as Benjamin was dying.

Cyanide?

Spoiler

• Cyanide pill.
  
• A fatal dose of cyanide for humans: 1.5 mg per kilogram of body weight.
  
• Death occurs 1-15 minutes.
  
• Works in the bloodstream.
  
• Attaches iron within red blood cells responsible for oxygen transport.
  
• Suffocates blood cells.
  
• Tears into the body's aerobic respiration process, starving the body from oxygen.
  
• Important organs including the brain and heart will shut down within minutes.
  
• The victim may pass into a deep coma, followed by cardiac arrest.

Side Effects: General weakness, confusion, bizarre behavior, excessive sleepiness, coma, shortness of breath, headache, dizziness, vomiting, abdominal pain, and seizures.

Scenario: Fredrick has a capsule of cyanide pills in his pants pocket. He could break open the pill and pour the contents inside the drink. They have a toast. Fredrick leaves. Benjamin then starts to feel the effects of cyanide poisoning take over. He tries to breathe but can't. Patsy comes into the room and stabs him in the shoulder blade, which causes the pain to rise even more and Benjamin then passes out onto the floor, dying shortly later.

Pros: Fast and doesn't have a smell.
Cons: Patsy may have to enter quickly to stab Benjamin because after he takes a sip of his drink, he will have been passed out.

I kind of want him to be poison when he drinks out of his drink and after Fredrick leaves. Also, to have his death be quick because of Patsy. Again, if anyone has suggestions/if I got something wrong, let me know!

Arsenic is a nasty, slow death. I'm not as familiar with lower doses, but I know higher doses usually lead to stomach flu instead of confusion, and it can take days for it to kill you. The fact people have different sensitivities to poison makes it feel a bit unbelievable that they got the exact dose right for just confusion, and I really would struggle to believe arsenic was used as a plain old knockout drug. If you want a knockout drug, slip a date-rape drug into the person's drink instead of going for poison.

Cyanide does have a smell. It's just only detectable by 1/3 of the population, but it smells like bitter almonds— one of the most common natural sources of it, although cyanide is found in a lot of stone fruits and seeds. It would be more than possible for nobody in the region to smell it, but it would also have a risk somebody could detect it. Plus, tracing a (pure) cyanide buy is relatively easy when it comes to forensic accounting.

More alternatives:

- Antifreeze, which at the time would have had a taste that could have been hidden in sweet foods (it no longer can be hidden this way). This causes crystals in the liver and can cause death in 12-36 hours.

- Ricin, which can be found in castor beans so it's really easy to gain access to. It also leaves the body incredibly quickly, so it's very difficult to detect. You can detect it if you know what to look for, but it's tricky.

- If anyone involved is a nurse, succinylcholine is basically sudden untraceable death. Inject it, your whole body is paralyzed in about a second, you die of respiratory failure, and it only became detectable in the 2000s (it has a half life of about 30 seconds). The only evidence basically every time is a pinhole where the injection was made.

Something to keep in mind is blood loss or lack thereof. You can physically tell a stab wound that was made before vs after death, so if Patsy stabbed him and there was less blood that came out of the wound than normal, or there's no way the wound could have been fatal, a good blood spatter expert or mortician would be able to tell.

Also, if the stab wound punctured an artery or major vein, then the poison wouldn't have had a chance to take effect unless it was one of the very fast acting ones/Patsy only found him after the poison took effect. So the stab wound would still be the official cause of death.

@Rosendorn - thanks for your answers!

A date-rape drug could work in replace of using arsenic or cyanide because if I were going down the path of having Fredrick use either or, it may be a bit messy about getting it, I think. But with the date-rape drug, I do think it'll be an easier option as it can knock out Benjamin for a certain amount of time and then Patsy can come in and find him, passed out. She may think he one too many and just stab him.

Or, I could go down the route of using ricin. I basically just want his death to be as painless as possible, and I think the date-rape drug can work. I still have to work out the stabbing ordeal, but the main idea I have for it would be in the back area as he isn't facing Patsy at the time of his death.

Ricin is another very nasty death, again going for stomach flu like symptoms. So if you want painless... well, you're not going to get painless with most poison, because one of the appeals with those poisons is the fact it looks like a bad flu when you're at lethal doses. So the death looks accidental or as a result of illness.

Cyanide produces the "drop dead" result, though, so if you want that then by all means. And it is very easy to miss— it's not routine to test for.

Like I said. You have to decide if you want a mortal stab wound or a moral poison. Because the poisons that produce quick death, you'll have a not-mortal stab wound, and if you go for a slow death poison, you'll likely have either a non-mortal stab wound, the bleedout happened very slowly (but faster than poison), or they received medical attention in time to make the stab wound non-lethal but the poison was already beyond the point of no return.

Oh, that makes sense. Sorry that I was confusing in any way! I think I may go with the cyanide poisoning and then Fredrick possibly posing the body in some sort of way. Then Patsy comes in and stabs him somewhere that isn't damaging, I guess.

I'd suggest to change your mindset from "isn't damaging" to "not chronically damaging if the correct medical attention is received." Because getting stabbed is always going to be damaging. The question is more the level and speed of lethality for anything other than the superficial. The body is very dense when it comes to critical things, and there really isn't any "safe place" to stab somebody.

Posting on The Character Clinic will clear that up far more than I ever could.

I was just looking for that place, haha. And yeah, I'll post there, thank you again for your help!

If you want to know where I learned all of this, watch Forensic Files. The majority of all episodes made are free to watch on youtube, and you will get a very good sense of how forensics works for a large variety of cases, from stabs to poisonings to cold cases.

Hey, can you tag me when you start this? I don't read a ton of mystery, but this one sounds super cool!

Of course, @Mea and thank you! ^^ I'll be my first time writing mystery so I hope it'll be alright, haha.

Possible Suspects of Who Killed Benjamin Marcos:

There are mentions of heavy violence in some of the descriptions

Spoiler

Henry Buckets - Crime: Stealing from a store.

Molly Lindason - Crime: Uses her cats to commit murders.

Marvin Franks - Crime: Ran a car into a schoolhouse and almost killed several children. Ends up kidnapping two kids. Their bodies were found in the woods two days later with their throats cut.

DeVincent "Smasher" Jones - Crime: Known to smash his victim's bones. He would then place the bones in foods and give them to his friends and family at parties.

Tim Rossville - Crime: Targeted younger women at parties and lied about his occupation to take ladies home (he was an accountant). When they would get home, Tim would poison their drink and when they passed out, he would kill them with whatever he could get his hands on (example, a remote or lamp). After they were dead, Tim would then break their bones and skin them off the meat. He would then store these pieces in containers and sell them, telling people it is animal meat.

Maggie "Seductress" Higgins - Crime: Seduced clients as Maggie worked at a strip club. When she seduced them, she would then snap their necks and throw them in the dumpsters out back. The strip club doesn't know of this and usually doesn't keep track of clients (unless they are really important ones).

Bob Grizz - Crime: Uses a bird army against his victims. He is a renowned bird catcher (I don't know the name) and when he has the victims, Bob sends the birds to that victim. One of his favorite birds to send is the woodpecker as that can jam the beak human skin and bone. Once the bodies are done, Bob just leaves the body outside for the wolves or any other animal.

The main reason why they are not the true suspects as there wasn't a lot of evidence back it up.

Return to Shortcut

A little update: I changed the date from 1997 to 1987 and 2024 to 2018. I'll figure out the age stuff once I get around to editing it because I'm just playing around with some stuff now.