The new details of Ms. Gu’s suspicions of a murder plot further reveal the atmosphere of fear and tension in the Bo household, which might have contributed to the death last November of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, who had known the family for years.
In August, a court convicted Ms. Gu, a lawyer, of poisoning Mr. Heywood after believing that he posed a threat to her son. Legal experts have questioned the trial and the official narrative of the killing. In September, the Communist Party announced that Mr. Bo would be prosecuted for crimes that included abuse of power and taking bribes. The scandal has disrupted the once-a-decade leadership transition scheduled to begin this fall.
Mr. Li had previously said that Ms. Gu believed she was the victim of a poisoning plot, but not exactly when those fears began or how she believed that the poison had been administered.
Mr. Li said that before 2007, Ms. Gu had been taking a rare and expensive herbal medicine that the Chinese call “winter worm, summer grass” for longevity and better health. The medicine, which Ms. Gu was ingesting in capsules filled with red powder, became popular with middle-class and wealthy Chinese in recent years. It is made from a parasitic fungus found on the Tibetan plateau that uses caterpillars as hosts and kills them.
Ms. Gu fainted in January 2007 at the funeral of Mr. Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, one of the “eight immortals” of the Communist Party known for guiding China’s economic transformation, Mr. Li said. Photographs of the funeral that have circulated on the Internet show Ms. Gu dressed in black and looking gaunt while greeting party leaders and army generals. Mr. Li said a family member who met Ms. Gu at the funeral after not having seen her for a while “was shocked by how much weight Gu Kailai had lost and how frail she looked.”
After the fainting incident, a doctor looked into all possible causes, Mr. Li said. The doctor discovered that the red powder in Ms. Gu’s capsules had a mix of lead and mercury, he said. One of the effects of the poison was that it caused Ms. Gu’s hands to shake, so she took up knitting and embroidery at the doctor’s recommendation, Mr. Li said.
Li Danyu, Mr. Bo’s first wife, said in an earlier interview that Mr. Bo and his family suspected Li Wangzhi, her son from her marriage with Mr. Bo, of masterminding the poisoning. Mr. Bo relayed his suspicions in October 2011 to Ms. Li’s older brother, who is married to Ms. Gu’s older sister, Ms. Li said.
She said that her son was not involved in any murder plot, and that Ms. Gu might have been seeking to frame the son. She said he last saw his father in 2007, at the funeral of the grandfather, where Ms. Gu was said to have fainted. Mr. Bo’s family told the first son to stand at the rear of the large procession.
Mia Li contributed research
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