Researchers creep closer to answers on Pablo Neruda death mystery

For decades, debate has raged about the demise of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda — and now, researchers hope they are inching closer to the truth of what caused his death.

Though the leftist poet was said to have died of prostate cancer in 1973, researchers now say they are confident that's not the case. But figuring out exactly what caused his death — that remains a mystery.

Neruda died in the chaos following Chile's military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the 70s.

Some people have speculated that he was poisoned by agents of the South American country's right-wing dictatorship.

We're driven by curiosity — and this is just such a mystery to me.- Debi Poinar, fellow research associate

Since early 2016, shards of Neruda's bones and teeth have been analyzed by a lab at McMaster University's Ancient DNA Centre and the University of Copenhagen's Department of Forensic Medicine.

Fellow research associate Debi Poinar has been one of the people examining fragments from Neruda's femur, tibia and teeth, looking for answers.

She says researchers are now confident that though the poet had prostate cancer, it didn't kill him. "He was not in the final stages of cancer," she said.

Typically, a person in the late stages of cancer would be quite skinny. "He was a large man — almost overweight," she said. It's also unlikely that someone in the later stages of cancer would be still reading, eating and talking about 10 hours before his death, which is the case with reports about Neruda, she said.

Was he poisoned?

But what is possible, Poinar says, is another illness could have been brought on by a compromised immune system, caused by the cancer. In the midst of that possibility, researchers are also studying bacteria found within his remains to discern whether or not Neruda was poisoned.

They may be able to do so, she said, by tracing specific bacteria or toxins back to the year that the poet died, as well as figuring out if they were deliberately grown in a laboratory setting.

Neruda's body was exhumed in 2013, but tests showed no toxic agents in his bones. Even so, Chile's government said in 2015 that "it's clearly possible and highly probable that a third party" was involved in his death, although it warned that more tests needed to be carried out.

Those tests haven't yet been conclusive, Poinar says.

"There is no smoking gun at this point," she said, adding that the process is so intricate that it's "beyond finding a needle in a haystack."

Still, researchers hope to have a more definitive answer within six months to a year, she said.

Neruda was best known for his love poems. But he was also a Communist Party politician and friend of Marxist President Salvador Allende, who killed himself rather than surrender to troops during the Sept. 11, 1973, coup led by Pinochet.

Neruda was traumatized by the coup and the persecution and killing of his friends. He planned to go into exile, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship.

Driven by curiosity

A day before Neruda's planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to a clinic in Santiago where he had been treated for cancer and other ailments. Neruda officially died there Sept. 23 from what was called natural causes. But suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in the death remained long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990.

Although the tests carried out after the exhumation of Neruda's remains showed no signs that he was poisoned, his family demanded further investigation.

The case is a personal one for Poinar, who grew up reading Neruda's poetry. McMaster's Ancient DNA Centre often deals with just that — ancient cases, with remains that are no more than a skeleton, without a personal story and connection.

While those cases are no less important, she says, this one hits home just a little more because there's a face and a personality behind the mystery.

"It drives us for the possibility of discovery. We're driven by curiosity — and this is just such a mystery to me."

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