Serial syringe killings: Suspect Stephen charge-sheeted in illegal arms case

Chennai: Serial Syringe-killings suspect Stephen, who was arrested by the Neelankarai police during the investigation of a burglary in his house four months back, has been chargesheeted by the city police for possession of illegal arms and storing lethal chemicals.

The sordid story of loot, lust and murder blew up when Injambakkam realtor Stephen, 41, lodged complaint with the police that 125 sovereigns of gold jewels and other valuables were stolen from his house on April 4. The investigators suspected it was an insider job and quizzed three of Stephen’s aides, who spilled the beans, confessing that they had helped Stephen in carrying out the ‘burglary’ of his own house. Among the valuables in the loot recovered from the three men, Satish Kumar, Balaji and Anandan, were two 9 mm pistols and a kilo of the deadly potassium cyanide.

An officer privy to the investigation said Stephen had used his men to kill three men by shoot at them with pellets packed with cyanide and fitted to the head of an umbrella—he was inspired by a German docufilm- Silenced: Georgi Markov and the Umbrella Murder. The movie revolves around the murder of the Bulgarian playwright who moved to London where he was murdered after being shot by a poisonous pellet fired from an umbrella, when he was working as a Broadcaster for BBC World Service, in 1978.

The victims were shot with cyanide pellets as they passed on the street and collapsed within a few steps. Interestingly, the police had closed all the three cases as ‘natural’ deaths following postmortem findings of ‘acute myocardial infarction’.

The first victim was John Philomenan, who died on a Thousand Lights road on April 19 last year; the second was Sridhar dead on a road in Uthiramerur (Kancheepuram district) on May 17 last year; and, the third was Henry collapsed on a road in Madipakkam on October 10 the same year. While Stephen suspected John, his wife’s brother, of instigating her to walk out of the marriage, he got Sridhar and Henry eliminated as they were married to his ‘companions’, both sisters, said the investigator.

He said, “It was found that Stephen had spent nearly '16 lakh to acquire the two pistols from a Mumbai contact. He said he needed them for self-defence as he was dealing in high-value assets in real estate and indulging in speculative trading. And he got the cyanide paying '1.5 lakh for a kilo to an agent”.

Following the confessions made by Stephen’s three aides, the police have reopened the deaths of John, Sridhar and Henry, and had their bodies exhumed for fresh forensic probe.

The final word is yet to come—perhaps, it will take several months to emerge from the dusty police files and the forensic labs. Meanwhile, the chargesheet for possession of illegal weapons and potassium cyanide has now been slapped on Stephen.