Santa Monica : Man Arrested in Poisonings

A man has been arrested in Belgium on attempted murder charges for allegedly sending candy laced with rat poison to a Santa Monica woman and a woman in New York who had spurned his romantic advances, authorities said Wednesday.

Filip Semey, 28, was arrested Sunday by Belgian authorities at his home in Ghent, Santa Monica police Sgt. Gary Gallinot said.

Semey is charged with poisoning Marie Aline Stacanov, 26, of New York and three of her friends with thallium-laced marzipan and attempting to poison a 26-year-old Santa Monica woman with thallium sprinkled on candy shaped like male genitals, authorities in Santa Monica and New York said.

Thallium is a slow-acting metallic element that was used in rat poisons until it was banned in the United States in 1960, authorities said.

Semey will face trial in Belgium on a complaint by U.S. authorities, because there is no extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium, Gallinot said.

In both cases, the candy was mailed anonymously on Nov. 25 to the women, each of whom Semey had harassed in the past, investigators said.

Gallinot said the Santa Monica woman, a student at Loyola Marymount University, became suspicious about the candy and turned it over to police without eating it. The woman’s name was not disclosed.

Semey was a student at Loyola Marymount but left in May, 1991, after being charged with harassing the woman, authorities said.

“It was nothing more than a casual association. . . . He apparently had this fixation for her,” Gallinot said.

Investigators in New York described a similar pattern involving Semey’s alleged intended victim there.

The four victims of his New York package, including three foreign students studying at Columbia University, were expected to be released from a hospital on Wednesday, more than two weeks after they were admitted, New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Borrelli said.

The three students with whom Stacanov shared her candy were Nedim Nomer, 25, of Turkey, Ingeborg Van Den Wyndaert, 25, of Belgium, and Herman Schultz, 27, of Germany, authorities said.

Investigators said that Semey bought his sweets at a New York erotic candy store. The Santa Monica woman received hers Nov. 29; Stacanov received hers Dec. 4.

On Dec. 6, the four New York City victims went to St. Luke’s Hospital, where they reported that they suspected they were suffering from food poisoning, Borrelli said.

A doctor at the hospital, however, “felt it was a hell of a lot more than food poisoning” and began treatment appropriate for poisoning by compounds such as thallium, Borrelli said. “(The doctor) saved their lives.”