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1. He was poisoned using Polonium 210
2. Polonium 210 requires a fairly substantial nuclear reactor emiting large numbers of neutrons, or (with difficulty) a cyclotron to make. These are not a common or garden devices found even in most university Physics departments, but very expensive, limited access, special equipment.
3. Polonium 210 has a 138 day half life -- so it does not keep for long on the shelf. If you planned to poison someone you probably would have to make up the Po 210 specially.
4. It is fairly easy to determine how long ago the Polonium 210 was made by looking for certain isotopic abundances (i.e., Bi 210 and Pb 206).
5. Someone poisoned with Po 210 will tend to excrete it in sweat and urine -- most of the London locations contaminated appear to have been places the victim visited -- this may allow backtracking to determine when he started to excrete Po 210 and hence a time close to when the poisoning took place.
6. There is a Russian connection -- both because the victim is Russian and because the aircraft on which Po 210 was found have been on the London-Moscow run.
7. It seems pretty unlikely that one of the victims physician (or at least a radiologist) would not have recognised the symtoms of radiation poisoning at some point, and worked out that it was Po 210 -- so it seems likley, but not certain, that whoever did this wanted people to know how the victim was poisoned and how.
8. But against 7, who could have carried the Po 210 in such a way as to contaminate 4+ aircraft -- this is really astonishingly sloppy, unless the poisoners themselves ingetsed the Po 210 and were excreting it (which is also, it seems, sloppy.)
9. Knowing the schedules of the aircraft and perhaps localising the contamination by seat, it may be possible to take a stab at the identity of who occupied common seats on 2-4 aircraft.
10. This is really quite a bizarre way to kill someone.
11. No schlub off the street would have been able to secure enough Po 210 to do this.
The article is not that bad -- a bit simplistic, but it was an interview, and that may reflect the interviewer.
