Texas man says cyanide was enough 'to kill a city'

By Johnny Johnson
Staff Writer
MUSKOGEE — A Texas man, who made his initial appearance in federal court Wednesday, had bragged earlier of trying to sell 100 pounds of cyanide briquettes and said he had enough of the deadly chemical to kill a city, court documents show.

He wanted to trade it for a pound of methamphetamine, the documents said.

The deal to sell the cyanide to an unknown buyer in Oklahoma City ultimately "fell through,” according to the affidavit, but the FBI worked with an informant to set up a sting operation to continue the investigation. The investigation culminated Monday when Jeffrey Don Detrixhe of Higgins, Texas, was arrested in southeast Oklahoma where he was planning to attend a funeral in the Holly Creek area north of Idabel. Earlier in the day, federal agents had raided his house in Texas and taken possession of a container of material suspected to be sodium cyanide.

Detrixhe, who has lived in Woodward and Shattuck and has strong family ties to Oklahoma, was arrested on a complaint of possession or transfer of a chemical weapon.

On Wednesday, he appeared in federal court in Muskogee where he was turned over to U.S. marshals to face possible charges in the Northern District of Texas. Federal prosecutors in Texas have 30 days to present the case to a grand jury.

Federal authorities first learned of Detrixhe's possible possession of cyanide in November from an inmate at the Potter County jail in Texas, who apparently was a friend of Detrixhe, according to an affidavit signed by FBI agent John Whitworth.

In late March, FBI agents asked the informant to tell Detrixhe that someone in the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist organization, wanted to purchase the cyanide to use it against people.

In a taped conversation with the FBI informant, Detrixhe reportedly tells the informant "there's only one use of cyanide that I know of,” and that he had enough of it to "kill a city ... euthanize a whole village,” according to the affidavit.

Detrixhe goes on to explain that the briquettes look like small charcoal briquettes but are white. They can be activated with hydrochloric acid to make cyanide gas, he said, which was the principal genocidal agent used by Nazis in World War II.

‘Blood money'
In a later recorded conversation contained in the affidavit, Detrixhe apparently agrees to sell the briquettes to the fictional buyer for $10,000, a thermal imager and a fully-automatic AK-47 assault rifle. Detrixhe was told that the cyanide was going to California, which agents claimed Detrixhe said "was a good place for it.”

Detrixhe also said he did not want to know how the buyer would ultimately use the cyanide because he would "probably see it on CNN,” and that he knew the money he would get was "blood money.” Detrixhe also asked the informant if he thought Detrixhe would go to hell for selling the cyanide, the affidavit said.

After purchasing a sample of the cyanide for $450, FBI forensics tests determined the material was a 77-gram sample of sodium cyanide, a "rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical” that prevents the body from processing oxygen.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Source: NewsOK