Georgi Markov

Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian-Soviet regime. Markov was assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet that might have contained ricin. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that he had been stabbed in the leg with an umbrella delivering a poisoned pellet, wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. Annabel Markov recalled her husband's view about the umbrella, telling the BBC's Panorama programme, in April 1979, "He felt a jab in his thigh. He looked around and there was a man behind him who'd apologized and dropped an umbrella. I got the impression as he told the story that the jab hadn't been inflicted by the umbrella but that the man had dropped the umbrella as cover to hide his face." It was reported after the fall of the Soviet Union that the Soviet KGB had assisted the Bulgarian Secret Service.

• Name — Georgi Markov • Born — 1 March 1929 • Language — Bulgarian • Birthplace — Sofia, Bulgaria • Died — 11 September 1978 • Place of death — Balham, London, England • Resting Place — Church of St Candida and Holy Cross • Death Cause — Ricin poisoning • Occupation — Writer, broadcaster, playwright, anti-communist dissident • Notable Works — The Truth that Killed

Georgi Markov was born on 1 March 1929, in Knyazhevo, a Sofia neighbourhood. In 1946, he graduated from the Gymnasium (high school) and began university studies in industrial chemistry. Initially, Markov worked as a chemical engineer and a teacher in a technical school. At the age of 19, he became ill with tuberculosis which forced him to attend various hospitals. His first literary attempts occurred during that time. In 1957, a novel, The Night of Caesium, appeared. Soon another novel, The Ajax Winners (1959) and two collections of short stories (1961) were published. In 1962, Markov published the novel Men which won the annual award of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and he was subsequently accepted as a member of the Union, a prerequisite for a professional career in literature. Georgi Markov started working at the Narodna Mladezh Publishing House. The story collections A Portrait of My Double (1966) and The Women of Warsaw (1968) secured his place as one of the most talented young writers in Bulgaria. Markov also wrote a number of plays but most of them were never staged or were removed from theatre repertoire by the Communist censors: To Crawl Under the Rainbow, The Elevator, Assassination in the Cul-de-Sac, Stalinists and I Was Him. The novel The Roof was halted in mid-printing since it described as a fact and in allegorical terms the collapse of the roof of the Lenin steel mill. Markov was one of the authors of the popular TV series Every Kilometer (Всеки километър or At Every Milestone) which created the character of the Second World War detective Velinsky and his nemesis the Resistance fighter Deyanov. Although some of his works were banned, Georgi Markov had become a successful author. He was among the writers and poets that Todor Zhivkov tried to co-opt and coerce into serving the regime with their works. During this period Markov had a bohemian lifestyle, which was unknown to most Bulgarians.

On 7 September 1978, Markov walked across Waterloo Bridge spanning the River Thames and waited to take a bus to his job at the BBC. While at the bus stop, he reported feeling a slight sharp pain, as if from an insect bite or sting, on his right thigh. He reportedly saw a man picking up an umbrella off the ground behind him. When he arrived at work at the BBC World Service offices, he noticed a small red pimple had formed at the site of the sting he had felt earlier and the pain had not lessened or stopped. He told at least one of his colleagues at the BBC, Theo Lirkov, about this incident. That evening, he developed a fever and was admitted to St James' Hospital in Balham, where he died four days later, on 11 September 1978, at the age of 49. His grave is in a small churchyard at the Church of St Candida and Holy Cross in Whitchurch Canonicorum.

• Illustration — Ricin bullet. For comparison, a pin head is about 2 mm. Bernard Riley, the physician treating Markov, considered many possible causes of his illness, including that he had been bitten by a venomous tropical snake. Riley had the inflamed area at the back of his leg x-rayed, but no foreign object was detected at this time. Due to the circumstances and statements Markov made to doctors expressing the suspicion that he had been poisoned, the Metropolitan Police ordered a thorough autopsy of his body. Rufus Crompton performed it, noting a red mark on the back of Markov's leg. He cut a tissue sample from the area, with a matching sample from the other leg. These samples were sent for further analysis at the Porton Down chemical and biological weapons laboratory. There, David Gall, the Research Medical Officer, found a tiny pellet in the tissue sample. The pellet measured 1.70 mm in diameter and was composed of 90% platinum and 10% iridium. It had two holes with diameters of 0.35 mm drilled through it, producing an X-shaped cavity. Further examination by experts from Porton Down could not detect any remnant of poison. Considering possible poisons, scientists hypothesised that the pellet might have contained ricin. Porton Down scientists also thought that a sugary substance had been used to coat the tiny holes, creating a bubble that trapped the poison inside the cavities, with a specially crafted coating designed to melt at 37 C: human body temperature. After the pellet was inside Markov, the coating might have melted and the poison released to be absorbed into the bloodstream and killed him. Regardless of whether the doctors treating Markov had known that the poison might have been ricin, the result would have been the same, as no antidote exists for ricin. • Illustration — A diagram of a possible umbrella gun Ten days before the assassination, an attempt was made to kill another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, in the same manner as Markov, in a Paris Métro station. KGB defector Oleg Kalugin alleged that the Bulgarian Secret Service arranged the murder with help from the Soviet KGB. Nobody has been charged with Markov's murder, largely because most documents relating to it are unavailable, probably destroyed. Kalugin said that Markov had been killed using an umbrella gun. The Sunday Times reported that the prime suspect was an Italian, Francesco Gullino or Giullino, who was last known to be living in Denmark. A British documentary, The Umbrella Assassin (2006), interviewed people associated with the case in Bulgaria, Britain, Denmark and America, and revealed that Giullino was alive and well, and still travelling freely throughout Europe. There were reports in June 2008 that Scotland Yard had renewed its interest in the case. Detectives were sent to Bulgaria and requests were made to interview relevant individuals. Gullino died in Austria in August 2021.

The Markov assassination is the subject of a test in the first season of the show MythBusters. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman test if the assassination could be feasible using an umbrella gun. After testing the duo confirm that an umbrella gun could be used in an assassination in this way. The television show Breaking Bad mentions the assassination when protagonists Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are attempting to devise a plan to kill a regional kingpin threatening their lives. In August 2018 the case was the subject of the BBC Radio 4 programme The Reunion. Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte directed a TV documentary and wrote a book on the Markov case, both under the title The Umbrella Murder. A replica of the umbrella used to assassinate Markov is on display at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC., US

On 11 May 2012, a German man died almost a year after having been stabbed with an umbrella in the city of Hanover. German police – who noted a resemblance to the Markov case – analyzed the syringe which the victim had managed to take from the perpetrator, and found dimethylmercury; the reported cause of death was mercury poisoning. In 2016, police in Chennai, India solved three separate murders when the four killers confessed to having used an umbrella tipped with a potassium cyanide-filled syringe. They had ridden past the victims on a bike and jabbed them in the thigh.

The authorities additionally record the heading Georgi Ivanov Markov. His recorded language was Bulgarian. He married Annabel Dilke. One child is recorded: Alexandra Raina Markov.

Georgi Markov is recorded as writer, playwright, film screenwriter, opinion journalist and dissident.

The archives are cited for the existence and date of each notice; their wording is not reproduced here.