When cyanide salt is dissolved in water, the reaction of cyanide salt (potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide) will produce a metal chloride and hydrogen cyanide gas?

Left at room temperature, around 25 degree celcius, this hydrogen cyanide gas will quickly evaporate from the water?

About 30 minutes later, most of the hydrogen cyanide gas would have evaporated from the water?

This makes the water safe to drink, or at least much safer to drink, than 30 minutes ago?

Also, as the hydrogen cyanide gas is evaporating from the water, would it be safe to sniff the water?
What if you are seated at an arm's length from this cyanide salt solution for 30 minutes, will the off-gas kill you?

The reason I'm asking is because all of this should be easy to answer questions for people with basic understanding of chemistry. And yet people are debating over this and coming up with opposing chemistry experiments.

What people are debating this? Cyanide salts are pretty well known, as are their exposure effects.

Why the debate?

Anyway, here’s a link to the NIOSH Emergency Response Safety and Health Database entry for Sodium Cyanide:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ershdb/emerge ... 50036.html

54 mg of hydrogen cyanide per cubic meter of air, or 27 parts per million for ten minutes will kill. That is a pretty tiny amount of gas.

quas wrote:When cyanide salt is dissolved in water, the reaction of cyanide salt (potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide) will produce a metal chloride and hydrogen cyanide gas?

Left at room temperature, around 25 degree celcius, this hydrogen cyanide gas will quickly evaporate from the water?

About 30 minutes later, most of the hydrogen cyanide gas would have evaporated from the water?

This makes the water safe to drink, or at least much safer to drink, than 30 minutes ago?

Also, as the hydrogen cyanide gas is evaporating from the water, would it be safe to sniff the water?
What if you are seated at an arm's length from this cyanide salt solution for 30 minutes, will the off-gas kill you?

The reason I'm asking is because all of this should be easy to answer questions for people with basic understanding of chemistry. And yet people are debating over this and coming up with opposing chemistry experiments.

For your questions in order:
Depends a little on how much say sodium cyanide you dissolve but:
1) No, you will get primarily a mixture of sodium cations cyanide and hydroxide anions and some HCN dissolved, the solution will be quite alkaline
2) No it won't quickly "evaporate", HCN will slowly off-gas and the solution will become increasingly alkaline.
3) After 30 minutes ... depends on how much cyanide was added in the first place, but no.
4) Sniff? Again depends on the concentration but as a rule no.
5) In a typical gold plant they use cyanide to leach gold, the residual cyanide concentration is typically about 100 mg/L NaCN (all the 'available' cyanide species expressed as NaCN). The tanks are aerated which speeds up the off-gassing and oxidation of the cyanide, but generally it is safe to walk above the tanks.

From memory, the pKa for HCN is about 9.2, so at this pH, only 50% of the cyanide is available to off-gas. At pH 10.2 only 10% of cyanide will be able to off-gas. A typical gold plant will run a pH of at least 10.3, some higher, and have residence times of up to 48 h. But note as the cyanide off-gasses, the equilibrium will shift, raising the pH but making the HCN available to off-gas.

The_Metatron wrote:What people are debating this? Cyanide salts are pretty well known, as are their exposure effects.

Why the debate?

I suppose some background story is in order.

Recently, Netflix released the documentary "Ice Cold: Coffee, Murder & Jessica Wongso." This documentary is controversial and polarizing, similar to Netflix's "The Making of A Murderer."

"The Making of A Murderer" purportedly exposes the miscarriage of justice, depicting how police and prosecutors "forced" the case, possibly fabricating evidence to frame the suspect. After the documentary's release, public opinion became strongly divided. Whereas previously, the majority consensus would go along with the official narrative from the police and prosecutors, there is now a significant portion of the public who believes that the convicted is innocent and should be released. On the other hand, there are also members of the public who believe the police and prosecutors did the right thing, and Netflix had twisted facts, purposely misrepresented, or left out incriminating evidence to sell a documentary.

Now, we have a similarly polarizing situation with Jessica Wongso. Jessica Wongso allegedly killed her friend Mirna with cyanide-laced coffee.

The murder was carried out in a fancy cafe/restaurant in Indonesia's most luxurious shopping mall. Killing in public. This is the most brazen killing and probably the first of its kind in the world.

People debated whether that's even possible. Who in their right mind would attempt to murder in public?

Jessica had set up a dinner meeting around 6 PM with three friends at the cafe. It was a meetup with old college friends who had studied together in Australia. After college, all her Indonesian friends had gone back to live and work in Indonesia, but Jessica settled in Australia, becoming an Australian naturalized citizen. She had flown to Indonesia on a holiday break to meet up with her old friends. As she was on vacation, and all her friends were preoccupied with work and family, she was the only one who had time to kill, literally.

Her idle schedule allowed her to move the meeting forward from dinner to an impromptu coffee time at 4:30 PM. The meetup venue was a cafe and a restaurant, affording Jessica the flexibility to shift the meeting to any time she pleased. The friends had set up a WhatsApp Group to arrange the meetup, informing each other when they would arrive. Thus, Jessica was able to determine that Mirna would arrive at 4:30 PM, Hani at 5 PM, and Vera at 6:30 PM.

If everything went according to plan, at 4:30 PM, Jessica and Mirna would be alone at the table, accompanied only by a glass of coffee—a drink that Jessica had ordered for Mirna before Mirna arrived. Prior to entering the cafe, Jessica purchased gifts for her friends individually wrapped in three tall paper bags. These paper bags would be placed on the table and then strategically arranged to provide cover from the prying eyes of nearby humans and the cafe's CCTV. So while the act of poisoning was done publicly, in reality, she had all the privacy in the world to carry out this murder.

Jessica needed to have coffee ready before Mirna arrived, because she couldn't be pouring the poison into the coffee in front of Mirna. DUH! To alleviate suspicion, she needed to time everything just right, she needed to be early but not too early. The coffee had to ready only minutes before Mirna's arrival. The coffee drink is called vietnamese iced coffee. To prepare the drink, you need a glass that already contained sweetened condensed milk and ice, then you place a coffee dripper that already contained coffee grounds over the glass, and finally you pour hot water into the dripper. The dripper will filter the coffee grounds, allowing only freshly brewed coffee to drip into the glass. The entire coffee-making process was done at the table, in front of Jessica's eyes. The coffee was ready around 4.20 PM.

Because the newly dripped coffee was hot, it needed some time to cool, even if there was plenty of ice in the glass. People said that Jessica couldn't have poured cyanide right away. Too high a temperature, there would be too much hydrogen cyanide off-gas. Which probably meant that there would be little cyanide left in the drink. And Jessica would have been killed by that cyanide gas. In fact, they said, there would have been too much gas produced that it would have rendered 500 meter radius of people unconscious or dead. Since not everyone died at the cafe that day, some people think that Jessica hadn't poisoned the drink or the poison wasn't cyanide salt.

But everything didn't go according to plan that day. While Mirna had informed Jessica she would be arriving at 4:30 PM, she didn't go to see Jessica right away. After arriving at the mall around 4:30 PM, she waited at another cafe for Hani to arrive. While waiting, she called Hani multiple times, as if anxious for Hani to show up. "Hi! Where are you? Are you here yet?" The calls probably sounded like that. Mirna was still calling her, even when Hani was at the car park looking for a parking space. It had seemed like Mirna was genuinely eager to see Jessica, but she clearly had reservations about meeting Jessica alone. We will never know the exact reason behind her reluctance to be alone with Jessica—even in a public setting such as a crowded cafe/restaurant, because Mirna died before she could tell anyone about that.

Around 5:20 PM, Mirna arrived at the cafe, escorted with Hani. The cyanide-laced coffee was supposed to be sitting around for 10 minutes before being consumed by Mirna, but it ended up off-gasing in front of Jessica for 40 - 60 minutes. The friends greeted, hugged and kissed each other on the cheeks, and promptly sat down. Spotting the coffee on the table, Mirna asked, "Whose drink is that?" Jessica said she had bought the drink for Mirna because Mirna had told her that she really liked the coffee at this cafe.

Mirna immediately sipped with gusto, as if she was really thirsty. But Mirna couldn't have swallowed much because sipping through a straw means no big gulps, and she immediately complained, "Oh my God! This is so awful!" She was seen on CCTV flapping her hand in front of her mouth, as if experiencing a burning sensation inside her mouth. CCTV also showed that, within 2 minutes after drinking the coffee, her head would be violently jerking up and down before it was abruptly thrown back. It looked as if she had been electrocuted, and then collapsed. She would never regain consciousness.

This caused a commotion in the cafe. Customers and cafe workers immediately surrounded Mirna. They all tried to revive her, but to no avail. Jessica, Hani, and cafe workers would corroborate Mirna's symptoms as follows: Though unconscious, her eyes were partially opened and staring blankly. While her head was hanging limply, her legs were stiff and twisted inwards. Knees together, feet pointed towards each other. Several moments later, this unnatural contorted sitting position was still visible, as the CCTV captured Mirna wheeled out of the cafe in a wheelchair. She was incessantly drooling foams from the sides of her mouth. During a television interview, Jessica mimicked Mirna's mouth opening and closing rapidly, like a fish out of water gasping for air. As Hani testified in court, she would attempt to replicate Mirna's loud breathing sounds by blowing short sharp breaths into the microphone, which sounded as if she was spitting into the microphone. A cafe worker said it sounded like loud snoring. From all descriptions, it was clear that Mirna was having difficulty breathing and making loud noises as she struggled for air. They also said she was convulsing as if she had epileptic seizures, even though she had no history of epilepsy.

In a television interview, Jessica stated that at that time, she and Hani both panicked and frantically tried to wake Mirna up. CCTV footage would reveal her to be standing alone, far away from the crowd surrounding Mirna. Strangely, she was also seen to be fidgeting. She was kept playing with her hands, seemingly scratching both hands non-stop. Some people thought she had recklessly spilled the cyanide salt onto her hands. Others thought if she had spilled cyanide she would have died right there and then, because cyanide can seep through the skin. And also, because cyanide is so rapid-acting, 5 minutes and you are dead! At the very least, she would have suffered corrosive wounds on her hands, which would still have been visible when the police examined her days or weeks later. Police would say that, upon examination, no wound -corrosive or otherwise- was ever found on her.

About 15 minutes after drinking the coffee, Mirna was wheeled into small clinic in the mall's basement and the doctor checked her vitals, which surprisingly turned out to be normal. Her heart rate was 80 beats per minute, and breathing rate was 16 per minute. Aside from being unresponsiveness, she was otherwise in stable condition. The doctor also said that, because she wasn't vomiting, she couldn't have been poisoned. Clearly, everyone had heard her loud laboured breathing noises, but the doctor had found her breathing to be normal, and made no mention of hearing unusual breathing noises. She seemed to have miraculously recovered. Jessica would use this fact to prove that Mirna hadn't been poisoned. Because cyanide is so rapid-acting, 5 minutes and you are dead!

Within the 2-minutes window, after Mirna sipped the coffee and before she fainted, Mirna was repeatedly saying, "I swear! I'm not lying! This is so bad!" The coffee was so terrible that she couldn't believe what she tasted, and apparently she wanted someone else to validate what she tasted, probably to make sure that she hadn't gone mad. So she shoved the coffee towards her friends, insisting that they tried it too. "It's only coffee. How bad can it be?" (This is what Hani actually said, as she testified in court, describing her thoughts at that time.) Hani took a sip warily, she had been told that it tasted awful and was prepared to taste some unpleasantness. But nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to taste. She didn't really have words to describe it, but apparently an unspeakable nastiness had stung her tastebuds, shocked her and stopped her cold from sipping more. The sugary milky coffee drink was too bitter and caustic. It left a "disgusting" aftertaste for a long time. It smelled yucky and totally unappealing, unlike regular coffee. This is her first time encountering cyanide, and it seemed like she had difficulty describing a taste and a smell that were unfamiliar to her. She also described the coffee, which was supposed to be pale brown latte, as having a yellowish tint like "tumeric". Cafe workers also mentioned the "tumeric yellow" hue afterwards.

People would do experiments based on these eyewitnesses' descriptions of the coffee. According to one experiment, vietnamese coffee or coffee latte, left on its own, would remain latte brown. But when cyanide is added, it would turn yellowish after some time. Chemistry experts debated this, stating that there is nothing in a coffee and milk drink that could react with cyanide salt and produce that yellow color. Another experiment showed that coffee and milk drink left for 1-2 hours would turn yellowish by itself.

One hour later, after Mirna died at the hospital, Hani panicked. She told the doctors that she had swallowed Mirna's drink too. The doctor checked her repeatedly and said she was fine. No dizziness. No vomitting. Nothing. And everyone knows cyanide is so rapid-acting, 5 minutes and you are dead! So that means, Mirna's coffee couldn't have been poisoned, especially not with cyanide.

Hani wasn't the only one who tried the coffee. The cafe workers were curious. They wanted to know what was wrong with the coffee. Alledgedly, when the cafe employees surrounded Mirna trying to revive her, Jessica had confronted the manager. "What did you put in the coffee?" (She would later on deny this, and then finally admitted it in court.) So they had the coffee brought back to the kitchen, and 2-3 of them tried it. But since they tried the coffee after they knew Mirna had convulsed and fainted, they took more precaution. They tasted the coffee while standing right next to a sink, just in case. The straw was dipped into the coffee, and then using the straw the coffee was dripped onto their hands, and then they licked the few drops on their hands. After they tasted the bitterness and burning sensation, they would quickly spat out and rinsed their mouths. Alledgedly, 2 of them were retching and vomitting for hours that night. Other accounts said nothing happened. Jessica's lawyers would use this fact to prove that the coffee didn't contain cyanide. So many people have tried and they are still alive today; and cyanide's supposed to be so fast-acting, five minutes you are dead!

People seem to have wildly varying descriptions of the taste and smell of cyanide, especially if they are unfamilar with the taste and smell. In this case, the smell is described as "strong", "strange", "piercing like powerglue".

I tried to research this and the more I research, the more confused I get. Most people say or think it smells like "bitter almond", because probably Agatha Christie said it. We have all come to believe that's true, seemingly out of some indolent assumption: If Agatha Christie said it, then it must be true!

But apparently it doesn't smell like bitter almond?!


As if this video isn't confusing enough, the pinned commentary on the video is even more perplexing.

Oh wait, it's completely odorless!

"Unless you want some doctor or detective sniffing your mouth for the smell of benzaldehyde. And getting back to our detective, he was wrong to rule out cyanide poisoning. If potassium cyanide were used instead of bitter almonds, there would be no smell."
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/col ... nd-almonds

Benzaldehyde smells like almonds. Cyanide salts such as sodium or potassium cyanide doesn't contain benzaldehyde. Sodium/potassium cyanide shouldn't smell like almonds, it should smell like something else or be mostly/completely odorless.

The_Metatron wrote:What people are debating this? Cyanide salts are pretty well known, as are their exposure effects.

Why the debate?

We can't even figure out what cyanide salt smells like!

Was any hint as to the possible motive for murder explored in the film?

Thanks for the context, quas.

I sure question the wisdom of those actually testing if they can smell it. Not everyone can, even when the dose is fatal, so I read at NIOSH.

Depending on who you ask, Mirna either died 30 minutes or 1 hour after having a sip of coffee. Her death certificate states the time of death at 6:30 PM. The two doctors who had inspected her and called her time of death thought that Mirna was dead on arrival at the hospital at 6:00 PM. But they suspected that she most probably died on the way to the hospital because she drank the coffee around 5:20 PM, meaning she died 30 minutes afterward.

Jessica's lawyers would insist in court that Mirna only died after the doctor had officially called her time of death. They seemed to be saying that Mirna was probably still alive 1 minute before her time of death. The implication here is that the longer she stayed alive after drinking coffee, the less likely cyanide was the poison because cyanide is supposed to be so fast-acting, and 5 minutes you're dead!

It has been argued that the job of a defense lawyer is not necessarily to prove a client innocent but to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the jury, or rather the judge (Indonesian court doesn't have a jury; the judge is also the jury). What better way to sow seeds of doubt than to confuse the judge? Thus, one common tactic to sow doubt that is frequently used is presenting multiple alternate theories. Never mind if these alternate theories sometimes contradict each other; what matters is the more of them you have, the more likely you are to confuse the jury/judge and thus the more likely to get acquitted.

In this version of alternate theory, the lawyers agreed with the doctors that Mirna died in the car on the way to the hospital. The biggest and most luxurious mall in Indonesia, Grand Indonesia, is located right at the center of the city. It is the busiest with traffic at its worst on a weekday after office hours. It was Wednesday 5:40 PM. Mirna was at the clinic and couldn't be revived. Her husband, Arief, had arrived after Hani had called him informing him of Mirna's situation. The small clinic didn't have much medical facilities and Arief decided that Mirna had to be taken to the hospital ASAP. After getting off work at 5 PM, office workers would flock home or go to the mall. Traffic congestions everywhere around the mall. Using an ambulance to get Mirna to the hospital was not an option. The ambulance would be caught twice in traffic jam: first going to the mall and then leaving the mall. They had borrowed an oxygen tank from the clinic, Mirna laid on the backseat with her head propped up on Hani's lap, while Arief drove the car with Jessica sitting on the driver's side. Because Mirna died in the car, Jessica and her lawyers claimed that Arief is to blame for Mirna's death. He had transported her to the hospital without an ambulance, so it was likely that proper precautions was not taken to ensure patient safety during the car trip.

The_Metatron wrote:Thanks for the context, quas.

I sure question the wisdom of those actually testing if they can smell it. Not everyone can, even when the dose is fatal, so I read at NIOSH.

Yes, not everyone can. The literatures all say around 40-60% of the population can smell it. (Some people say that number is closer to 80%!) They say it's a genetic thing. Some people just don't have the genes to recognise that smell. But even among those who do, there either seems to be a consensus that it should smell like bitter almonds - which should be completely false.

NileRed smelled it with 2 friends, and they all said it smelled like harsh chemical smell of chlorine. Eventually, they settled on the smell of chlorine combined with a musty/moldy smell. Like a pool locker room or shower.

But then the pinned comment:

After posting this video, I got a few messages from people saying that in their experience, cyanide DOES smell like almonds. So, I spent an hour tonight doing some tests, and I think the results are interesting. I did some direct comparisons and the smell of cyanide is distinctly different from the smell of almonds. However, if I EAT the almonds, there is sometimes a faint taste of cyanide. I think this is because sweet almonds still have a very small amount of amygdalin in them, which can release HCN. I don't think it's enough to smell in open air, but in your mouth it can be concentrated enough to be detected at the back of the nose. It's subtle, but it is definitely part of the flavor profile. So, while I still don't think it's accurate to say that it smells like almonds, for some people, it might be similar to the taste. To make that connection though, the person needs to a) be able to smell HCN and b) be particularly aware of that part of the flavor.

I can smell the HCN, but I never noticed it in the flavor of almonds, so I didn't make the connection. I was even looking for a similarity and eating almonds at the same time, but never noticed it. It was only when I became very familiar with the smell of HCN that I started noticing it in almonds. What's interesting too, is that now after noticing it, I feel like I've started to associate the smell with almonds. It's no longer just a "chemical" smell and it feels more almondy. However, on the flip side, I feel like almonds taste worse and are more "chemically."

But either way, I still don't think that saying it smells like almonds or bitter almonds is accurate or helpful. However, based on the messages I've received, some people are naturally associating cyanide with almonds (sometimes without knowing that this was even a thing and not even knowing they were smelling cyanide). This has piqued my interest and I think it could be fun to get to the bottom of this and to do a trial with a lot more people.

What the... How is that even possible??? This completely negates his previous in-video comment about musty chlorine.

quas wrote: We can't even figure out what cyanide salt smells like!

OK, this is like saying we can't figure out what hydrochloric acid smells like because some people think table salt is odourless,

Wikipedia says hydrogen cyanide has a faint almond odour. This may be because of its association with benzaldehyde in pits etc. Sodium cyanide will have no odour because it is not volatile. In the presence of moisture, some (not much) will hydrolyse to hydrogen cyanide.

The little bit about this case that there is in Wikipedia, is not convincing. Wong may have done it, but the evidence is far from convincing.

OK there was no residual cyanide in the coffee, was there any cyanate? Cyanate is an oxidation product of cyanide.
Also to note ... bitter almonds and everyday almonds are not the same.

Wikipedia says hydrogen cyanide has a faint almond odour. This may be because of its association with benzaldehyde in pits etc.

How is hydrogen cyanide related to benzaldehyde?

Sodium cyanide will have no odour because it is not volatile. In the presence of moisture, some (not much) will hydrolyse to hydrogen cyanide.

That's what we are trying to find out. If cyanide salt (sodium or potassium cyanide) is added to water, what would it smell like?
And how safe is it to smell it?

OK there was no residual cyanide in the coffee, was there any cyanate? Cyanate is an oxidation product of cyanide.

What makes you say that?

Also to note ... bitter almonds and everyday almonds are not the same.

They are supposed to be different. But how different?
The almond smell comes from benzaldehyde.
To make almond food stuff like almond cake, almond cookies, almond pudding, etc,
you add in almond essence to get that delicious sweet almond smell.

Almond essence is made from benzaldehyde.

Benzaldedhyde comes from bitter almond.

Why would you make almond cookie with almond essence that comes from bitter almond, if almond doesn't smell like bitter almond?

In bitter almonds ... the "active" ingredient is a compound that is is a combination of a sugar, cyanide and benzaldehyde. Marzipan flavouring is basically benzaldehyde.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzaldeh ... ucture.svg

Depends on the concentration ... Look up the NIOSH data for safety. You are mixing different aspects, toxicity and rate of dissipation. We seem to have a hot water drip and iced coffee. Hot water will speed up the volatilization of hydrogen cyanide. Ice will slow it down. Acidic pHs will speed up the off-gassing. High pH will slow it down. Sodium cyanide dissolved in water is high pH. What was the pH of the coffee? Would you smell the cyanide above the coffee aroma and restaurant odours?

Sodium cyanide has no odour, It is claimed by some that hydrogen cyanide has an almond smell. From personal experience at safe levels I have never experienced an odour. Does it matter what it smells like when added to water when it was not allegedly added to "water"?

I suspect the vast majority of almond flavouring is synthetic, and natural extracts will be a mixture of benzaldehyde and sugar.

The cyanide will degrade cyanate and then to ammonia.

Personally, I would discount all evidence regarding odour or the lack of it.

romansh wrote:Sodium cyanide dissolved in water is high pH. What was the pH of the coffee? Would you smell the cyanide above the coffee aroma and restaurant odours?

For safety reasons, NileRed's tried smelling it, but only with a small dosage.
According to his experiment, it has a harsh chemical smell of chlorine mixed with dampness (lika a pool bath towel).
His friend said the same thing, but the friend said it "pierces the brain."

Coffee spiked with lethal dosage of cyanide will probably smell harsh and acrid.

Personally, I would discount all evidence regarding odour or the lack of it.

In courtrooms, the smell of cyanide can mean the difference between conviction and acquittal.
It happened before in John Tawell's case.

That happened here too.

Dr. Djaja is a forensic pathologist with over 30 years of experience. He also claims to be a toxicology researcher and had conducted research on cyanide. He asserted that not everyone can smell cyanide, but he could. According to him, he conducted an experiment and found that 80% of Indonesians can smell cyanide, which he acknowledged was higher than what most studies had proclaimed, which was 40-60%.

He claimed to be the first doctor to examine Mirna's dead body, 2 hours after she died.

But he couldn't be the first, because according to the police report, 70 minutes after Mirna's death, stomach content was extracted from the body and sent to the forensic lab for toxicology testing. The lab received 2 x 10cc of stomach fluid sample, and a pipette was used to extract 0.1ml from that sample for testing. The test result indicated "negative arsenic" and "negative cyanide."

However, they wouldn't know test result that day. Thinking they had done enough for toxicology testing, the body was then transported to another hospital for embalming. According to hospital rules, a corpse had to be embalmed within 24 hours. Dr. Djaja happened to be stationed there that day, and he was supposed to perform the embalming.

Before he started to work, he inquired about the cause of her death. He was told that she had died suddenly after drinking coffee. Dr. Djaja informed them that this could be a suspicious death, and in accordance with the law, an autopsy is required in such cases. Mirna's father, however, refused to have an autopsy performed. This is probably because, in certain societies, defiling and mutilating the dead is considered taboo. Cutting open the head, chest, and abdomen, and pulling out all organs for examination would be similar to defiling and mutilating the dead. The police officer present there informed the doctor that they would persuade the father later.

Jessica's lawyers would later have Dr. Djaja as their expert witness. In court, he testified that he had done a quick inspection of the body that day. Externally, the body was free from bruises and injuries. The lips, fingers, and the face were bluish. Because he had heard someone mentioned "cyanide" that day, he put his face to her mouth, pressed down on her abdomen, pushing out the air in her stomach, and took a sniff. In his opinion, Mirna couldn't have been poisoned by cyanide because he didn't smell the scent of bitter almond and the body had exhibited cyanosis. A victim of cyanide poisoning was supposed to be "cherry red", so he said.

quas wrote:
Why would you make almond cookie with almond essence that comes from bitter almond, if almond doesn't smell like bitter almond?

Because you want it to be like benzaldehyde.

If you actually listen to the video ... he starts with almost pure benzaldehyde and and finishes up with presumably a slightly purer benzaldehyde.

If I were a juror, based on the scant evidence presented so far, I would vote for acquital, not because she has been proved innocent, but because of the evidence but because of the lack of it. Some claim in Wikipedia there was no autopsy other than the examination of the stomach contents.

Why would you need an autopsy to determine cause of death in a poisoning case? The fact that cyanide wasn't detected was only because cyanide was notoriously difficult to detect and the inexperienced toxicologists had botched up the testing. Normally, blood was tested for poisons. But no one thought of getting blood sample, even though the family wouldn't have objected to that.

They had 2x10cc of stomach sample taken 70 minutes after death to test from, and yet they only tested 0.1ml of that.
That's 0.005%! Oddly, this stomach sample also tested negative for caffein.

Three days later -just before burial the next day- following police persuasion, the family had consented to an autopsy. But it seemed like the police had tried to meet the family halfway, because only a partial autopsy was performed. Amidst all this confusion, the police had issued a letter ordering a full autopsy. That letter would end up in the official investigation report that would be made available to the court.

According to the doctor examining the stomach lining, there was corrosion that could be caused by cyanide poisoning. Dr. Djaja disputed this, saying the corrosion was from an old wound, and that indicated that Mirna had gastric issues. During the partial autopsy, the stomach contents, liver samples, and urine were obtained for toxicology testing. They all tested negative for cyanide, except the stomach. There was 0.2mg of cyanide for the stomach.

But since these samples were gathered 3 days later, and the body had been embalmed within 24 hours, it was no surprise that cyanide wasn't found since the embalming fluid, formaldehyde, would have degraded traces of cyanides in the body. Even the expert witness that Jessica had flown in from Austrlia, toxicologist Michael Robertson, would agree to this.


Jessica's lawyers would make a big fuss about how stomach contents, initially declared to be free from cyanide, would miraculously be found to have cyanide three days later. What they (and subsequently Netflix) neglected to mention, however, was that caffeine had also miraculously shown up three days later. Caffeine was also found in the urine and liver sample. Obviously, the lawyers and Netflix wouldn't admit that the toxicology testing was botched.

Because toxicology testing hadn’t conclusively found cyanide, despite the insistence of police and prosecutors, some people suggested that Mirna might have died from other poisons. They pointed to online news stories where individuals suffered horrific burns after drinking coffee. The cause of these burns was lye used to clean coffeemaker or espresso machines. Improper cleaning procedures resulted in harsh chemicals ending up in the coffee. Notably, even reputable food establishments like Starbucks and McDonald’s have been implicated in such incidents. With few exceptions, most of these accidents didn’t result in deaths.

Reserve Officer Paul Watkins went to the McDonald's at around 10 p.m. Saturday night for a self-serve tea...

He filled his cup halfway with unsweetened tea and went to fill the rest with sweetened tea when he noticed it looked dark, she said. He took the lid off the dispenser to take a look and determined it was OK.

"He filled his cup and took a big gulp and immediately his throat started burning down into his chest".

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/mcdonalds ... d=29249142

Also worth nothing is that it appeared that most of these victims had drunk from a cup or a glass, not through a straw. As mentioned earlier, drinking through a straw means the victim couldn’t gulp down large volumes of liquid, suggesting that whatever had killed her was rapidly lethal, even in small doses.

You can rule out accidental poisoning from cleaning chemicals here since Vietnamese iced coffee doesn't require coffee machines; you just pour hot water over coffee grounds.

As far as I can tell based on what you have brought forward ... the forensics are a shambles

Did anyone assay the iced coffee for sodium/potassium or an elevated pH? Both would be circumstantial evidence for cyanide. Though obviously, other chemicals could do that too. I would expect to find elevated cyanide in the stomach contents 70 min after the alleged event. As far as I can tell no one assayed the blood for cyanide, its degradation products or the metabolites of cyanide poisoning.

Why would you need an autopsy to determine the cause of death in a poisoning case?

You got to be kidding!

The fact that cyanide wasn't detected was only because cyanide was notoriously difficult to detect and the inexperienced toxicologists had botched up the testing.

OK we find people guilty because some scientist is incompetent?

Normally, blood was tested for poisons. But no one thought of getting blood sample, even though the family wouldn't have objected to that.

And?

For me the most telling thing is there was 'no' cyanide found in the stomach contents 70 min after the death. The volatilization of hydrogen cyanide would not be that quick.