No poison found in Nobel laureate’s bones
SANTIAGO, Chile — The four-decade mystery of whether Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned seemingly was cleared up Friday when forensic test results showed no chemical agents in his bones. But his family and driver were not satisfied and said they’ll request more tests.
Neruda died under suspicious circumstances in the chaos that followed Chile’s 1973 military coup. The official version is that the poet died of cancer. But Neruda’s driver and aide has said for years that dictatorship agents injected poison into the poet’s stomach while he was bedridden at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago. His body was exhumed in April to determine the cause of his death.
“No relevant chemical substances have been found that could be linked to Mr. Neruda’s death,” Patricio Bustos, the head of Chile’s medical legal service.
Bustos said experts found traces of medicine used to treat cancer in Neruda’s remains but that there’s no forensic evidence to prove that Neruda, who was 69 at the time of his death, died from anything else other than a natural cause.