Zhu Ling Obituary-Death; Chinese Victim Of Cold Case Thallium Poisoning Passes Away.

Zhu Ling, who was rendered permanently crippled in 1994 due to an unresolved thallium poisoning case, passed away on Friday.

In a Weibo post today, Tsinghua University announced that Zhu Ling, a 1992 graduate who had battled sickness for years, had died on December 22 in Beijing.

Late in 1994, Zhu—a chemistry major at the esteemed Tsinghua University—began to suffer from stomach pain, hair loss, and other bizarre and incapacitating symptoms. A coma took hold of her four months later.

Eventually, on April 28, 1995, physicians from Beijing Tongren Hospital determined that she had thallium poisoning.

In May, police started looking into the case. The primary suspect was Sun Wei, a Tsinghua University roommate and classmate of Zhu’s who was the only one of the students close to Zhu who would have had official access to the thallium compound.

In 1998, the public security officials declared that Sun Wei was no longer under suspicion since they could not find any concrete proof linking her to the incident.

The identity of the suspect in the case has remained unsolved for several decades despite extensive public awareness of the issue and police investigation into it. This is due to the absence of physical evidence and eyewitness accounts.

In an official reaction to the case in 2013, the Beijing police stated that the case remained unresolved due to a large delay of nearly six months between Zhu’s poisoning symptoms and the police receiving the case report. Physical evidence and criminal traces had vanished by then.

Direct evidence to identify the criminal suspect has still not been found, despite the authorities using every criminal investigation technique at their disposal at the time. This case is still open.

Zhu needed her aging parents’ round-the-clock care due to severe brain damage, loss of most of her vision, and speech impairment.

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