Man Buys Puffer Fish Poison To Kill Wife

Chicago, Illinois - A northwest suburban man has pleaded guilty to trying to kill his wife with poison from a puffer fish. Edward F. Bachner IV, of Lake in the Hills, apparently wanted to collect $20 million on the life insurance for his wife, Rebecca Bachner. The federal indictment against Bachner says starting in 2006, he used the alias of Dr. Edmund Backer of EB Strategic Research to purchase four different orders of the deadly puffer fish poison tetrodotoxin from the biochemical manufacturing firm Biotium. Tetrodotoxin has a fatality rate of 50 to 60 percent, and has no known antidote.  More