Urooj Khan (AP Photo)
The manner of death of a Chicago man found dead in his home last July, just weeks after winning the lottery, has been changed to homicide after toxicology tests showed a lethal amount of cyanide in his body. Dr. Stephen Cina, the Cook County Medical Examiner, has requested the man’s body be exhumed for a full autopsy.
Mr. Urooj Khan, 46, died suddenly before he could collect his winnings from the $1 million prize, which he had chosen to take as a $425,000 (after taxes) lump payment. The check for the winnings was reportedly written the day before he died.
At the time, there was nothing unusual about the circumstances, and so it was labeled a natural death and an autopsy was not performed.
About a week later, a relative of Mr. Khan, who is unknown to authorities even now, requested the police look at the death a little closer. It took until December, but toxicology tests showed Mr. Khan had a lethal amount of cyanide onboard when he died.
Dr. Cina will formally request the exhumation in the next few days.
The police have so far questioned Mr. Khan’s wife, who stated Mr. Khan had no enemies.
The Chicago Chief of Police says he has never seen a case like this in his 32 years in law enforcement.
Commentary
Stephen Cina, MD
I found this story to be interesting, given the well known lottery-winner’s curse, and it involves Dr. Cina, a forensic pathologist whom I have written about before.
It is not clear whether the authorities knew of Mr. Khan’s recent lottery windfall when he died. I would like to think they would have been more thorough at the time if they had, but as with all things, hindsight is 20/20.
Cyanide poisoning can be tricky to identify, as it is not a component of normal toxicology testing (at least to my knowledge) and not everyone can detect the board-fodder odor of bitter almonds. The cherry red skin color characteristic of cyanide poisoning can be obscured in people with increased skin pigmentation and furthermore, the same color can also be seen in bodies that have been refrigerated, thereby making the finding easy to overlook.
I’m sure more will come out about this case following the autopsy.
Source: Medical examiner seeks to exhume lottery winner Urooj Khan’s body cyanide probe – chicagotribune.com
The widow of a West Rogers Park man who died of cyanide poisoning weeks after winning a $1 million lottery jackpot was questioned extensively by Chicago police last month after the medical examiner’s office reclassified the death as a homicide, her attorney told the Tribune on Tuesday.
Authorities investigating the death of Urooj Khan also executed a search warrant at the home he had shared with his wife, Shabana Ansari, according to Steven Kozicki, her attorney. Ansari later was interviewed by detectives for more than four hours, answering all their questions, the attorney said.
“She’s got nothing to hide,” Kozicki said.
The mystery surrounding Khan’s death — first reported by the Tribune Monday — has sparked international media interest.
Cook County authorities said Tuesday that they plan to go to court in the next few days for approval to exhume Khan’s remains at Rosehill Cemetery. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Medical Examiner Stephen J. Cina said he sent a sworn statement to prosecutors laying out why the body must be exhumed.
“I feel that a complete autopsy is needed for the sake of clarity and thoroughness,” Cina said.
Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the state’s attorney’s office, confirmed that papers seeking the exhumation would be filed soon in the Daley Center courthouse.
Khan, who owned a dry cleaning business on the city’s North Side, died unexpectedly in July at 46, just weeks after winning a million-dollar lottery prize at a 7-Eleven store near his home. Finding no trauma to his body and no unusual substances in his blood, the medical examiner’s office declared his death to be from natural causes and he was buried without an autopsy.
About a week later, a relative told authorities to take a closer look at Khan’s death. By early December, comprehensive toxicology tests showed that Khan had died of a lethal amount of cyanide, leading the medical examiner’s office to reclassify the death a homicide and prompting police and prosecutors to investigate.
While a motive has not been determined, police have not ruled out that Khan was killed because of his big lottery win, a law enforcement source has told the Tribune. He died before he could collect the winnings — about $425,000 after taxes and because he decided to take a lump-sum payment.
According to court records obtained by the Tribune, Khan’s brother has squabbled with Ansari over the money in probate court. The brother, Imtiaz, raised concern that because Khan left no will, his 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage would not get “her fair share” of her father’s estate. Khan and Ansari did not have children.
Al-Haroon Husain, an attorney for Ansari in the probate case, said the money was all accounted for and the estate was in the process of being divided up by the court. Under Illinois law, the estate typically would be split evenly between the surviving spouse and Khan’s only child, he said.
Kozicki, Ansari’s criminal defense attorney, said his client adored her husband and had no financial interest in seeing harm come to him.
“Now in addition to grieving her husband, she’s struggling to run the business that he essentially ran while he was alive,” Kozicki said. “Once people analyze it, they (would) realize she’s in a much worse financial position after his death than she was before.”
Reached by phone Tuesday evening at the family dry cleaners, Ansari denied reports that she had fed her husband a traditional Indian meal of ground beef curry before he died. She said he wasn’t feeling well after awakening in the middle of the night. She said he sat in a chair and soon collapsed. She then called 911.
Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, speaking Tuesday at an unrelated news conference, remarked that he had never seen a case like this in 32 years in law enforcement.
“So I’ll never say that I’ve seen everything,” he told reporters.
This story has the potential to be a cool “whodunit” or not. Wife, brother, customer who was sick and tired of being taken to the cleaners at the dry cleaners?
Who cashed the check, presumably after his death?
Moral of story – have a will and lay off the curry.
Could be an interesting test for new big city ME.
Just what the subspecialty needs, another reason to question the competency of a medical examiner. I find it pretty enigmatic that Dr. Cina would bury a 46 year old with only an external examination, and which will now mandate an exhumation at additional taxpayer expense. I strongly suspect that in his lucrative consult business that he would look fairly unfavourably upon a pathologist that failed to perform an autopsy in such a situation.
I also found it interesting that a 46 year old was not posted. When Dr. Cina took over Cook County, the office was performing around 5,200 autopsies per annum with only 5 (6, if you include Cina) pathologists. That is far too many for NAME accreditation. I wonder if this case is evidence of rationing at the office.
And allow me to apologize to you in advance, but tomorrow’s post also pertains to forensic pathology, and unfortunately, a pathologist not held in the highest esteem in some circles.
Thanks for the comment.