Tissue samples recovered from Khan’s body; autopsy results in 2-3 weeks.
Bureau Report
NEW YORK: The body of an Illinois lottery winner, Urooj Khan, was exhumed today by the Cook County medical examiner’s office after toxicology results showed he died of cyanide poisoning, reported CNN.
An autopsy was performed on Urooj Khan’s body, Dr. Stephen Cina, county medical examiner, told reporters.
It will take a few weeks for testing results and he could not predict the results, he said. Cyanide can evaporate after death, and it’s possible it may not be present, he said, said the report.
Murder by cyanide poisoning is extremely rare, experts say. Khan died in July, the day after the lottery issued him a check for about $425,000 after taxes. He won the money playing a scratch-off game a month earlier.
“We are investigating it as a murder, and we’re working closely with the medical examiner’s office,” Chicago police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton said last week.
Cina said today, “We’ve already determined it was a homicide, and nothing we’ve seen today would change that,” reported CNN.
ABC reported that Cina said enough tissue samples were recovered from Khan’s body to proceed with further testing. The samples taken included those from his hair, finger nails, stomach contents, and other solid organs.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office is trying to find more details about his death, such as whether the poison was inhaled, swallowed, or injected.
Khan, 46, was an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago. He was announced the winner of a million-dollar lottery jackpot in June and chose to take the lump sum payout amounting to $425,000 after taxes.
When he died on July 20 in Chicago, the medical examiner’s office believed he had died of natural causes. It wasn’t until after he was buried that a family member asked the office to conduct further tests. After examining fluid samples, the office found a lethal level of cyanide and Khan’s death was declared a homicide.
Cina said it took “a couple hours” to remove Khan’s body, who was buried according to Muslim tradition. His body was wrapped in a shroud and not embalmed. He was in a wooden coffin that included Styrofoam in the lid, all in a cement vault, said ABC.
At a press conference, Cina said how the cyanide entered Khan’s body could have affected his manner of death, such as whether he had ingested it with a meal.
“I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t,” Cina said of whether the poison was mixed with food.
Cina said he also took samples of the dirt around the coffin to assure that microbes in the dirt did not produce cyanide.
The case has had several twists, with recently the deceased’s ex-wife coming forward to claim that she never knew that her daughter was living in the United States, after she divorced from Khan.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God. My daughter,” Maria Jones recalled of the moment she saw footage of her daughter, Jasmeen, 17, standing next to Urooj Khan as he collected his lottery winnings, reported NBC Chicago.
Jones and Khan were married for three years, she said. But during their bitter divorce, Jones said she didn’t have the resources to fight for custody. Khan took the girl to India and told his ex-wife he planned to stay there.
“She was just like any other little girl; a joy. She loved me to death,” said Jones, who now lives in Indiana. That move was 13 years ago. Jones tearfully recalled the final phone conversation she had with her daughter a few years after the move, reported NBC.
“She didn’t know how far she was. She said, ‘Oh, mommy. Come and get me. I don’t want to be here,” she said.
In the years that passed, Jones said she held tightly to the few memories she had of the girl but had no idea Khan the Jasmeen had moved to Illinois.
Khan died shortly after winning the lottery, last year, in July. Initially it was ruled as a death by natural causes, but since then, after his body was exhumed following complaints of foul play by his relatives, the Cook County Medical Examiner said he was poisoned with cyanide.
Jones said her greatest regret is that she can’t be with her daughter as she faces this family tragedy.
“There is no telling what she is going through and I’m just so sorry that I can’t be there with her,” she said. “I love her with all my heart, and she was always, every minute, every second, in my thoughts and my prayers.”
The Daily Mail reported that though Khan’s current wife Shabana Ansari is not under formal investigation by police, but the dead millionaire’s relatives are extremely suspicious that the victim’s younger wife may have had a role in the 46-year-old’s death. It also reported that Jones was too poor to contest custody of her daughter after her divorce. The disclosure is another sign that the death of Khan has exposed the divisions within his family.
Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times, Jones, 43, said that she was ‘shocked’ when she saw her daughter’s face on TV earlier this week. Jones – formerly Maria Rabadan – met Khan in Chicago where they worked together. They got married in 1991 but they divorced in 1997. She said that she later reached out to Khan’s relatives and was told that he had left the US for India with their daughter.
Shabana Ansari has denied she has anything to do with his death.
Reports said that the court has heard in great detail about the victim’s last meal — cooked for him by his wife Ansari — and how he was the only one at the family dinner table to eat the traditional curry that has come under much scrutiny.
She said that she did not eat the same meal as her husband because she was a vegetarian- and her father-in-law passed because he was on a diet.
The victim was the only one who ate the traditional meat Indian Kofta Curry – the day after he collected his winning check. Jasmeen also did not eat the food.
The initial toxicology report did not show up cyanide so the death was ruled as by natural causes. It was only when a relative intervened that the poison was found by further tests, reported the Daily Mail.
Since his death, Khan’s widow and siblings fought for months over the businessman’s estate, including the lottery check. His father-in-law owed tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. His 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage had moved out of her stepmom’s home and into his sister’s after his death, reported Newsday earlier, surmising the troubles and squabbles in the family.
Reports have said that custody of the daughter might be crucial to determine who gets to keep Khan’s winning ticket money.
Khan’s wife, Shabana Ansari, has endured clutches of reporters outside the family home and business, asking even whether it was a lamb or beef curry dinner she made for Khan on the night he died.
“She’s just as curious as anyone else to get to the bottom of what caused her husband’s death,” said Al-Haroon Husain, who is representing Ansari in the case that will divide up Khan’s estate, including the $425,000 in lottery winnings, said the Newsday report.
Khan seemed to be living the American dream. He had come to the U.S. from his home in Hyderabad, India, in 1989, setting up several dry-cleaning businesses and buying into some real-estate investments.
Despite having foresworn gambling after a pilgrimage to Mecca in 2010, Khan bought a ticket in June. He jumped “two feet in the air” and shouted, “I hit a million,” he recalled at a lottery ceremony later that month, said Newsday.
He said winning the lottery meant everything to him and that he planned to use his winnings to pay off mortgages, expand his business and donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. He was just days from receiving his winnings when he died before dawn on July 20th at his home in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood of West Rogers Park, home to many immigrants from India and Pakistan.
Sometime that night, Khan awoke feeling ill and collapsed as he tried to get up from a chair, his wife has said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.