Georgi Markov umbrella assassination

Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian novelist and playwright who defected in 1969 and worked for the BBC World Service and Radio Free Europe, where his broadcasts mocked Bulgaria's communist leader Todor Zhivkov. On September 7, 1978, Zhivkov's birthday, Markov was waiting for a bus near Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sharp sting in the back of his right thigh. He saw a man pick up an umbrella and hurry into a taxi. That evening he developed a high fever, and he died in hospital on September 11. A pathologist found a metal pellet the size of a pinhead, drilled with tiny holes, in his thigh; scientists at Porton Down concluded it had most likely held ricin, a poison made from castor beans.¹²⁴

Markov had received earlier death threats, and a similar attack on another Bulgarian exile in Paris days before had failed. After the fall of communism, former KGB general Oleg Kalugin said the KGB had supplied the poison and weapon to Bulgarian state security. Bulgarian files were partly destroyed, but researchers identified an Italian-born Danish agent codenamed Piccadilly, Francesco Gullino, as the likely assassin. He was questioned in Denmark in 1993 but charges were dropped for insufficient evidence, and Bulgaria closed its investigation in 2013 when the statute of limitations expired.²³⁴