How Terrible is Poverty?

I’m a small-town forensic doctor. Let me tell you a story about a peasant woman who couldn’t bring herself to throw away flour contaminated with pesticide. She made steamed buns with it, and her husband died after eating them. Still unwilling to toss it, she made dumplings, and her daughter died. Even then, she didn’t discard it and fed it to the cow—which also died.

Many people question this, thinking it’s made up. How could anyone be that foolish? But hold off on doubting it, because there’s another similar case.

In early summer 2009, around noon, we got a call from the police station about a poisoning case in their jurisdiction: a family was poisoned, the mother died, and the son was fighting for his life. Shockingly, the suspect was the daughter of the deceased woman.

Captain Wang and I drove to the scene. The police station’s jurisdiction covered a vast mountainous area with rough roads, so it was nearly dusk by the time we arrived. At the station, we met the suspect—the daughter—a thin, small woman who looked about thirty years old. Her face was blank, and she sat numbly in the interrogation room. When questioned, she gave short, one- or two-word answers, showing no hint of sadness or happiness.

The officers briefed us: the deceased was a woman in her sixties, the family matriarch. Her son, forty, was the one being treated for poisoning. The suspect, in her thirties, was her daughter.

That morning, the daughter had brought sacrificial meat to her mother’s house because it was the anniversary of her father’s death—he’d passed away from illness the previous year on that day. She made breakfast and cooked some plain meat, as the family planned to visit her father’s grave at noon to pay respects.

She prepared a pot of cornmeal porridge, stir-fried some simple vegetables, and mixed them together for breakfast. Her mother and brother ate it, and soon after, her mother started vomiting and then slipped into a coma. Her brother, unsure what to do, ran to get an elder from their village, a senior family member.

The elder arrived and assumed it was a sudden illness requiring hospital care. He loaded the mother, daughter, and son into his three-wheeled vehicle and took them to the village clinic. The local doctor quickly realized it wasn’t a disease but poisoning—a sharp call that helped us immensely—and said they needed a major hospital right away.

At that critical moment, the son vanished. They found him collapsed on the three-wheeler, unconscious too. With two family members poisoned and out cold, the daughter was the only one left to decide. But she insisted her mother and brother were just feeling unwell—not poisoned—and didn’t need treatment, just rest at home.

The elder and doctor were floored. With lives on the line, they couldn’t take chances, so the elder decided they had to go to the big hospital. As they took the patients there, the daughter slipped away, claiming she had business at her husband’s place.

As I mentioned, the mother died, and the son was still in treatment. Two poisonings in a row, plus the daughter’s odd behavior, made the village doctor suspicious, so he called the police.

The officers tracked her down and found she hadn’t gone to her husband’s home—she was back at her mother’s, casually feeding the chickens. They brought her to the station. The case seemed clear-cut: the daughter was the prime suspect.

There were five reasons:

1. She made the breakfast.

2. She was the only one who didn’t eat it.

3. She refused to get help when her mother and brother were poisoned—the most damning point.

4. From a criminal psychology angle, poisoning is often a woman’s crime, since they’re typically weaker than men and use indirect methods.

5. She had a motive: a long history of bad blood with her mother and brother.

That fifth point needs some context. Years ago, while working away from home, she fell in love with a man from another town, and they were close to getting engaged—young love, mutual and real. But her parents objected. Why? Because her brother wasn’t married yet. In poor rural areas, it’s tough for men to wed. They can’t afford steep bride prices, and few women want to marry into such poverty. The usual fix? Parents marry off a daughter for a big bride price, then use that cash to get a wife for their son.

So, her mother lied, saying her father was gravely ill, luring her back home. They locked her up and forced her to marry a man over a decade older—all because they’d taken his bride price.

After getting the rundown, since it was late, we split into two teams: one headed to the hospital, the other to the deceased’s home. It was a trek from town—mountain roads all the way—but a small path, built around 2000 after a mining company found minerals nearby, let our police car reach the village. That road gave those isolated folks a window to the outside world.

The house sat halfway up the mountain: three mud-brick rooms—two big bedrooms and a small kitchen, no fence. Poisoning cases hinge on scene investigation since evidence is tricky without knowing the poison’s type or source. We sampled everything: water, rice, flour, seasonings, the breakfast, vomit, anything they might’ve touched—even the air.

Then we hit a snag. The key evidence—the breakfast—was gone, and the pot was scrubbed clean. That was odd. Per the daughter’s story, her mother got sick mid-meal and was rushed for help—there should’ve been leftovers. Then we recalled: the cops found her feeding chickens. Chickens? We searched and found over a dozen behind a house—all dead. That looked bad for her. She’d dodged the hospital, come home with an excuse, and likely fed the toxic leftovers to the chickens to ditch the evidence, killing them too.

Everything pointed to her, but we had no hard proof of the poison’s source or how it got there. That’d have to come from her confession.

We stayed in town that night while the station’s team grilled her overnight. The next morning, Captain Wang called: “Barring a twist, the case is cracked!” He’d been at the hospital. I asked, “She confessed?” “No,” he said. “Her brother woke up.”

The case might’ve been an accident. Once revived, the brother learned from the cops that his mother died of poisoning and instantly thought of the salt. Two days earlier, shopping in the village, he’d passed the mining company and spotted a brown bottle in their trash labeled “some kind of salt.” Inside were white, fine granules. He tasted it—salty! He suspected it might be off but, hoping to save a buck, poured it into their salt jar and tossed the bottle by a nearby river.

Following his tip, we found the bottle riverside. It read: “nitrite.” Nitrite? Deadly stuff! It looks and tastes like table salt—white grains, salty flavor. Sodium nitrite, often a food preservative or lab reagent, was the culprit here. Turns out, it came from the mining company’s lab. They’d carelessly dumped it, and this poor, half-literate guy, recognizing only “salt” on the label, took it home. He used it, killed his mom, nearly died himself, and landed his sister in hot water.

Case closed, right? But if she wasn’t the killer, why’d she act so strange?

There’s a saying these days: “Poverty limits my imagination.” Regular folks can’t grasp the ultra-rich, just like the rich can’t get regular folks—or how we can’t fathom the desperately poor. Put yourself in her shoes, though, and it makes sense. It all comes down to two words: poverty.

She cooked but didn’t eat because, at her husband’s or parents’ home, her status was low—custom said she ate after her mother and brother. She didn’t push for a big hospital because, in her world, that wasn’t an option; you tough out sickness. When her mom and brother fell ill, her husband was useless, she was powerless, and the elder insisted on the hospital—so she bolted. Why feed the leftovers to the chickens? Lifelong poverty breeds frugality, a bone-deep habit to waste nothing. She knew the food might be bad, but if people couldn’t eat it, chickens could—anything but throwing it out!

She didn’t expect the chickens to die too. I’d heard poverty called the worst cancer, stripping humanity and leaving numbness. It’s true.

Some wonder if it was really an accident. Theories abound: Maybe she knew about nitrite from her work days and saw her brother grab it, seizing the chance to kill. Or her boyfriend at the mining company planted it, banking on her brother’s penny-pinching. Or the brother and sister were in love, forbidden by morals, so he poisoned their mom and took a bit himself to dodge suspicion. Wild ideas, sure, but they stretch the mind and show healthy skepticism.

No one’s mentioned the second suspect we checked out, though—someone whose actions raised flags. Guess who? I’ll reveal it at the end.

Some ask why the brother didn’t get sick tasting the nitrite. It’s about dosage—talking poison without amounts is nonsense. Nitrite’s lethal dose is around 3 grams, toxic at 0.3 grams. A few grains on his finger? Nowhere near deadly. It’s in instant noodles, snacks, cured meats, leftovers—safe in tiny amounts.

Why just “nitrite” on a brown bottle, not “sodium nitrite”? Lab folks might scoff, but real-world labs can be a table with bottles, run by people who barely finished middle school. “Mining company” sounds fancy, but it’s often just a hole in the ground and some shacks. A handwritten “nitrite” label was them being thorough. I’ve seen cyanide labeled “qing hua na” in marker on a sack—don’t expect chemical precision in the wild.

Did the mining company face consequences? Yep—they paid the family a hefty sum. Would the sister have been wrongfully convicted if her brother hadn’t woken up? That’s a deep question, too long to unpack here.

Now, the second suspect: the village doctor who saved lives and called the cops. Why suspect him? He pegged it as poisoning fast, no tools or tests. With countless poisons and symptoms, even labs struggle to ID them quickly. How’d he know without knowing the poison? Unless he already did—suspicious, right? But we cleared him fast.

We asked how he knew. He said, “Symptoms? Who cares—fed their vomit to chickens, they died! Poison, no doubt—wash the stomach first!” Hard to argue with that logic. Later, I realized my suspicion came from my forensic mindset—focused on evidence, poison type, lethal levels. He’s a doctor—time’s life, save first, figure it out later.

Rich and poor think differently; so did we. Huge thanks to that doctor—his quick call kept the brother alive, sparing the sister a ruined life!