There’s a bar in Gijón, Asturias called El Lavaderu where staff relations were bad, poisonous, in fact, as it later came to light: somebody had been literally putting it in their food.

Whilst the food and drink served over the counter was healthy and very popular, the stuff that the staff ate caused nothing but health problems. Only when one of chefs died of a heart attack in the kitchen did suspicions result in an investigation. An autopsy showed that the victim had alarming quantities of calcium cyanide, also known as black cyanide. Whilst it is used in very small amounts for treating alcoholism, the amount Juan ‘el Pistolas’ had washing around in him was decidedly lethal. Besides, he wasn’t being treated for an alcohol condition, anyway.

Well, during the first week of February the mystery was solved: the 55-year-old assistant chef from the town of Candás, was the alleged culprit! According to the police, the suspect had been using the substance to treat his alcoholism; the product is called Colme and requires a doctor’s prescription. But being a generous fellow, he habitually slipped some into his colleagues’ food and drink.

In constant doses it produces vomiting, headaches, heart fluctuations, cirrhosis and dead head chefs. In fact, mixed with alcohol, it is particularly lethal. One of the barmaids had been taken to the emergency department of the local hospital on three occasions without the doctors stumbling on what was wrong with her.

How it escaped everybody’s notice that the only member of the staff that wasn’t constantly sick was the assistant chef is anybody’s guess. The husband and wife owners, after the husband started having heart problems, decided to lease the business out and stop working there and lo, they soon recovered.

Anyway, this is all reportedly and allegedly until the judge decides otherwise.

(News: Gijon, Asturias, Spain)