German authorities are investigating 21 deaths that occurred over the since 2000, after a recent incident where an employee was caught trying to poison a colleague’s sandwich, according to a report by CNN.
A 56-year-old employee with a metal fittings company was arrested in May after surveillance videos showed him slipping a suspicious powder into a coworker’s sandwich, according to a local news agency, Deutsche Welle.
The coworker noticed a white powder on his sandwich and alerted his boss, who reviewed tapes and caught the suspect who is being referred to as “Klaus O” by a German tabloid, Bild.
Police revealed that the white powder was a highly toxic and tasteless substance called lead acetate, which can cause serious organ damage and death, but is hard to diagnose because the symptoms are similar to those of other illnesses.
When police searched the suspects house, they found mercury, lead and cadmium — all substances that can be used to make poison.
The newest incident has caused German homicide investigators to look into past deaths at the company and are even considering exhuming the bodies of dead workers to determine if they had metal in their systems, according to multiple reports by German news agencies.
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