Thallium Poisoning Case of Tsinghua University Chemistry Student Remains Unsolved Despite Police Investigation
Perpetrator Still at Large
A female university student who was a victim of a poisoning incident that shook Chinese society 29 years ago has passed away.
Tsinghua University in China announced on the 23rd via social media (SNS) Weibo that "alumna Zhu Ling (朱令), class of '92, passed away yesterday at the age of 50."
Tsinghua University added, "Zhu Ling had long battled illness, and her life was always surrounded by the concern of many alumni and the school," expressing "deep condolences."
The so-called "Zhu Ling Incident," a poisoning case, occurred 29 years ago in 1994. At that time, Zhu Ling, a 21-year-old chemistry student at Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious institutions, was a promising talent with excellent academic performance and musical skills.
However, in December 1994, Zhu Ling suddenly suffered severe abdominal pain, hair loss, and showed symptoms of mental confusion, leading to hospitalization. After receiving treatment and showing improvement, she was discharged and returned to school in the spring of the following year, but her condition rapidly worsened again in March, resulting in a coma that lasted for five months.
At that time, the hospital, with assistance from Chinese-American doctors working at UCLA in the United States, eventually discovered that Zhu Ling had been poisoned with thallium, a toxic substance. However, by then, she was already paralyzed throughout her body, nearly blind in both eyes, and her brain nerves were massively damaged, leaving her mental state at the level of a six-year-old child.
News of Zhu Ling's death posted on Tsinghua University's social media (SNS) [Image source=Weibo capture]
The female student dormitory at Tsinghua University was strictly controlled against outside access at the time. Also, thallium was not a substance easily obtainable by the general public, so Chinese public security concluded that someone had deliberately administered thallium twice to kill Zhu Ling and launched an investigation.
Two years later, a student named Sun Wei (孫維), who shared the dormitory with Zhu Ling, was identified as a suspect. Testimonies suggested that Sun Wei was jealous of Zhu Ling, who was talented and beautiful. However, Sun Wei was released without charges after one investigation. Rumors circulated that the investigation was not properly conducted because Sun Wei’s grandfather and father were influential figures in politics.
What seemed like a forgotten case resurfaced in April 2013 when a male doctoral student at Shanghai Fudan University Medical School was poisoned by his roommate. Calls for a reinvestigation of the Zhu Ling case grew louder but were not realized. The public security stated 19 years later, "When the Zhu Ling case was reported, it was already six months after the incident occurred, so no clues to identify the culprit were secured."
Since then, Zhu Ling lived under the care of her elderly parents, and it was reported that she fell into a coma last month due to a brain tumor and other conditions before passing away.
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