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Prosecutor says Monroe woman continued to poison estranged husband at Princeton hospital
Published: Monday, March 14, 2011, 9:27 PM Updated: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 5:44 AM By Star-Ledger Staff
MONROE — While Xiaoye Wang lay dying in a Princeton hospital in January, his estranged wife continued to feed him poison, a prosecutor said today.
And when her husband fell into a coma, Tianle Li, 40, tried to buy two one-way tickets — for herself and her 2-year-old son — back to her native China. Li, a scientist at Bristol-Myers Squibb, was charged last month with murdering Wang in the midst of divorce proceedings.
"She poisoned her husband to death," said Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Nicholas Sewitch at a hearing in New Brunswick.
Sewitch said Li obtained thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal that is tasteless and odorless, from the supply room at Bristol-Myers Squibb, although the research she was doing did not require it.
"She ordered (four) bottles of thallium," he said. "When she returned the bottles, over 90 percent of the thallium was gone."
Today’s hearing was scheduled after Li’s attorney, Steven Altman, filed motions to reduce her bail so his client could return to her home in Monroe and regain custody of her son, now in a foster home under the control of the state’s Division of Youth and Families.
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In part, the hearing was a way for Altman to force the prosecutor to reveal evidence why Li’s bail should remain so high.
Superior Court Judge Michael Toto denied Altman’s motion, keeping bail at $4 million for the charge of murder and another $150,000 on a charge of hindering her own apprehension. A probable cause hearing was scheduled for April 26.
Li sat quietly, her hands cuffed in front of her, during the hearing, an expression of fear and pain on her face. Her mother, Jian Zhang, was in the courtroom, having traveled from her home in Beijing, China. She was accompanied by an attorney who spoke Chinese and translated for her and declined to comment after the proceedings.
Li began feeding her husband thallium sometime in December or January, according to Sewitch, which was before Wang, a computer engineer, admitted himself into University Medical Center in Princeton on Jan. 14, complaining of virus-like symptoms.
The prosecutor did not detail exactly how Li poisoned Wang, and said that when she was questioned by investigators, "she denied anything to do with thallium."
But during today’s hearing Sewitch told Toto that Li applied for a rush visa for her son in order to take him to China, and that two days before her husband died she tried to purchase airplane tickets.
On Jan. 28, just 48 hours after Wang’s death, authorities charged Li with hindering her own apprehension and jailed her. Two weeks later, she was charged with murder.
Li and Wang, who was 39 at the time of his death and also a native of China, were married in 2001 and were in the final stages of divorce, with the final hearing to dissolve their marriage scheduled for Jan. 14, but the hearing was postponed.
That day, Wang, a computer engineer in New York, took himself to the hospital. His condition deteriorated until he died Jan. 26, the day after doctors determined he was suffering from thallium poisoning.
The heavy metal can be bought over the internet, in powder or liquid form. Before it was banned for household use in this country almost 30 years ago, it was popular as a rodenticide and insecticide and is still used in the pharmaceutical industry, in glass and electronics manufacturing and medicinally in stress tests to help diagnose coronary artery disease.
Symptoms of thallium poisoning usually begin with gastrointestinal distress, followed by increasing nerve pain, hair loss, blindness and coma. There is only one antidote, Prussian blue, which is not readily available in the United States. Despite heroic efforts by the New Jersey Poison Control Center, state’s department of health and senior services, a sufficient dose of Prussian blue did not arrive until Wang was near death, and at that point, said doctors, nothing could more could be done to save him.
By Sue Epstein and Amy Ellis Nutt/The Star-Ledger
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