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The Umbrella Murder: The Hunt for the Cold War's Most Notorious Killer
In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it.
The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.
Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw-dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft.
The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.
Written as a modern-day thriller, and drawing on an incredible thirty-year cache of original documents and recordings and never-before-seen archive material -- some not even seen by police or secret services -- this is a jaw-dropping and page-turning search for justice in the murky underworld of intelligence and across the shifting sands of spycraft.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published July 11, 2024
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August 16, 2024
I can remember the umbrella murder being on the TV news in the UK when it happened. I was in my late teens at the time. It’s the sort of event that stays in the memory, since it was so unusual and seemed straight out of a spy movie. For anyone unfamiliar with the case, in 1978 a Bulgarian dissident and political exile, Georgi Markov, was murdered in London with a poisoned micro-pellet which contemporary reports suggested had been delivered via an umbrella adapted for the purpose. It was widely accepted that this had been done by the Bulgarian secret service, probably with technological assistance from the KGB. I listened to the audiobook version of the book.
The Danish author, Ulrik Skotte, was working as a sports journalist in 1994 when he was given a contact for a documentary filmmaker, Franco Invernizzi, an Italian living in Copenhagen. Skotte had a side interest in the history of the Cold War. Invernizzi said that he knew the identity of Markov’s killer, identifying one Francesco Gullino, a crooked art dealer, who was also an Italian living in Copenhagen. Invernizzi was planning to make a film on the case, and asked Skotte to collaborate on his investigation. Skotte would write a book to complement Invernizzi’s film.
For about the first 40% of the book, I wasn’t sure where it was leading. There were some interesting aspects, particularly featuring a trip to Bulgaria in the 90s, but this initial section of the book was really about Skotte’s relationship with Invernizzi, who was secretive about his work and refused to share information. For around 2 years Skotte worked with Invernizzi, but for the most part the investigation went round in circles and got no further forward. Part of the issue was that Invernizzi was convinced some wider conspiracy was afoot, and that Gullino had not been arrested because he was a double agent for a western intelligence service, and therefore protected by them. Skotte decided that Invernizzi would not finish his documentary until he had found evidence to support his hypothesis, which would probably be never, so he quit the project.
It wasn’t until the Salisbury poisonings of 2018 that Skotte took a renewed interest in the Markov case, the similarities jolting his memory. What he found, as he started to re-investigate, disturbed him greatly and added to his determination. What follows is a well-told and fascinating investigation, with a quite remarkable ending.
The Danish author, Ulrik Skotte, was working as a sports journalist in 1994 when he was given a contact for a documentary filmmaker, Franco Invernizzi, an Italian living in Copenhagen. Skotte had a side interest in the history of the Cold War. Invernizzi said that he knew the identity of Markov’s killer, identifying one Francesco Gullino, a crooked art dealer, who was also an Italian living in Copenhagen. Invernizzi was planning to make a film on the case, and asked Skotte to collaborate on his investigation. Skotte would write a book to complement Invernizzi’s film.
For about the first 40% of the book, I wasn’t sure where it was leading. There were some interesting aspects, particularly featuring a trip to Bulgaria in the 90s, but this initial section of the book was really about Skotte’s relationship with Invernizzi, who was secretive about his work and refused to share information. For around 2 years Skotte worked with Invernizzi, but for the most part the investigation went round in circles and got no further forward. Part of the issue was that Invernizzi was convinced some wider conspiracy was afoot, and that Gullino had not been arrested because he was a double agent for a western intelligence service, and therefore protected by them. Skotte decided that Invernizzi would not finish his documentary until he had found evidence to support his hypothesis, which would probably be never, so he quit the project.
It wasn’t until the Salisbury poisonings of 2018 that Skotte took a renewed interest in the Markov case, the similarities jolting his memory. What he found, as he started to re-investigate, disturbed him greatly and added to his determination. What follows is a well-told and fascinating investigation, with a quite remarkable ending.
July 10, 2024
In 1978, a man with an umbrella and a foreign accent bumps into Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov as he crosses Waterloo Bridge. Markov feels a sharp pain in his leg. The man with the umbrella disappears into a taxi. The next morning, Markov falls ill and, days later, dies in hospital. As strange as any spy thriller, Markov's murder captured the imagination of the media and the public but remained unsolved.
16 years later in Copenhagen, young Danish sports reporter Ulrick Stotte meets enigmatic film maker, Franco Invermizzi, who is sitting on the 'story of the century'. But talking to Invermizzi is like squeezing blood from a stone. He's evasive, paranoid, and protective of his story but enjoys the power of that information and mixes in rumour and conspiracy. But what Stotte learns at that first meeting is that Invermizzi claims to personally know Markov's killer. So begins a relationship and an investigation that spans decades.
This is as much a story of Stotte's investigation as that of Markov's murder. It's an investigation that's dogged, at times frustrating, and sometimes falls by the wayside for the sake of family. It's also a nice tale of teamwork. For Stotte, things don't really happen until he has the right people in place, and it's clear how key each person is. There are deaths and intrigue, curious characters, big characters, and strange characters. But most of all, there's the resolve of two men to tell a story and how a story can take over lives. Despite Stotte's attempts to let go of the investigation, it doesn't let go of him, and he's compelled to see it through to the end. An intriguing read and definitely a case of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction.
16 years later in Copenhagen, young Danish sports reporter Ulrick Stotte meets enigmatic film maker, Franco Invermizzi, who is sitting on the 'story of the century'. But talking to Invermizzi is like squeezing blood from a stone. He's evasive, paranoid, and protective of his story but enjoys the power of that information and mixes in rumour and conspiracy. But what Stotte learns at that first meeting is that Invermizzi claims to personally know Markov's killer. So begins a relationship and an investigation that spans decades.
This is as much a story of Stotte's investigation as that of Markov's murder. It's an investigation that's dogged, at times frustrating, and sometimes falls by the wayside for the sake of family. It's also a nice tale of teamwork. For Stotte, things don't really happen until he has the right people in place, and it's clear how key each person is. There are deaths and intrigue, curious characters, big characters, and strange characters. But most of all, there's the resolve of two men to tell a story and how a story can take over lives. Despite Stotte's attempts to let go of the investigation, it doesn't let go of him, and he's compelled to see it through to the end. An intriguing read and definitely a case of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction.
July 29, 2024
A well-written, diverting enough read, without the satisfying ending of a full confession. Not much you can do if the main suspect refuses to play ball. My only gripe - and it isn't Skotte's fault, so he can't be marked down for it - is the price. £25 for a book this size, Scandalous.
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July 7, 2024The Umbrella Murder by Ulrik Skotte review – the tireless pursuit of Agent Piccadilly
This masterly investigation, spanning 30 years, into the assassination of a cold war dissident, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978 exposes an assassin worthy of James Bond
The killing of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, on Waterloo Bridge in September 1978 is a case to clinch the truism that real life is better scripted than fiction. As Markov was crossing the Thames, heading back to BBC headquarters, he bumped into a man with an umbrella and felt a sharp pain in his leg. The man apologised, got in a taxi and disappeared.
Four days later, Markov was dead. Doctors discovered a pinprick irritation on his right thigh. They removed the flesh and found a 1.7mm pellet containing 0.45 mg of ricin, a poison that had almost certainly come from Russia.
From the start the story seemed staged and stylised: a refugee intellectual from behind the iron curtain, now working for the BBC, had been killed in the British capital using an object forever associated with London: a brolly. It later emerged that the assassin had been given the codename Agent Piccadilly. Markov had been attacked on 7 September, the birthday of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s long-term, de facto dictator.
Ulrik Skotte has been on the story since the early 1990s, when he was a rookie journalist working at DR, the Danish broadcasting corporation. He had contacted a perky, anarchist film-maker, Franco Invernizzi, who lived in Copenhagen and who boasted that he knew the real murderer: another Italian who lived in the Danish capital.
The book recreates the early conversations between Skotte and Invernizzi to perfection. Given the decades that have passed, you doubt they are word-for-word authentic, but they convey very convincingly the character of both men. Skotte is eager but frustrated by the older man’s procrastination and his inability to deliver on the promise of an interview with the assassin. Invernizzi is covetous of his story: he’s big-hearted, but paranoid and as the years pass he gets sucked into the quicksand of intelligence conspiracy theories.
Skotte later became a documentary maker, and he paces and structures this book masterfully, jumping back and forwards to fill out the canvas like an impatient painter. Markov emerges as a womaniser with a betting habit, but also as someone who had once been on close personal terms with Zhivkov. The two men used to walk and dine together, which is perhaps why Markov’s subsequent takedowns of Zhivkov from London hurt him so much. There are deft pages on Russia’s mokroye delo, or “wet jobs” – poisonings that evolved from the work of Grigory Mairanovsky, a sadist who had pioneered ways to administer curare, thallium, dimethyl sulfate and ricin to enemies of the Soviet Union.
But the central character of the book is the assumed assassin. Francesco Gullino was born – it does get a bit James Bond at times – in Bra, Piedmont, in 1945. He was brought up by his aunt, who either ran a bar or a brothel, depending on your definition. Sent to a religious secondary school run by monks, he became, in his teens, a wood carver, equestrian and chameleon.
In later years Gullino became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety
In his 20s he started selling secondhand paintings along the Tuscan coast and the Côte d’Azur. He worked for a Turin-based import-export firm, Mondial, that was thought to have links to far-right organisations. Gullino was a confirmed fascist (he carried copies of Mein Kampf) and had soft-porn proclivities: he liked to pay sexworkers to pose for him and was responsible for publishing the erotic novel, Emmanuelle, in Italian.
Gullino had an uncanny ability to calm horses, but was also able to slip into different characters and countries. An Italian fascist working for the Soviet side in the cold war, he veered inexplicably from squalor to international deal-making. He had stacks of empty frames and ran some kind of stolen/counterfeit art scam that had connections to Palermo and, believed Invernizzi, organised crime.
At some point in the mid-70s, Gullino was recruited by Bulgarian secret services in order to duck a smuggling accusation (he had been caught with narcotics, it’s thought, returning to Italy from Turkey). All these details only emerged 20 years later when Soviet archives were opened and various Bulgarian spooks began to testify.
Skotte and his team – he’s generous about the collegiate nature of research – did the hard miles. They interviewed Zhivkov outside Sofia with courtesy but bluntness. He denied any involvement, naturally, but Skotte’s character sketch is in some ways better than a confession. The author also taped a three-hour interview with Gullino a month before he died – as close to closure as the book gets. Gullino walked a fine line between boasting and denying, toying graciously, sometimes childishly, with his interviewer.
There’s no clinching piece of evidence, of course, and Skotte realised, like Invernizzi before him, that Gullino would never be tried. It’s true that he had been in London in September 1978, and he had been interviewed by British and Danish investigators in the 1990s. But in later years he became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety.
Two other deaths lend weight to the evidence against him, though. In 1990, a young sex worker was murdered in Copenhagen. Among the victim’s possessions was a photograph of herself riding a horse (“with Gullino” was written on the back). Gullino provided a false alibi, claiming to have been at a party whose host Skotte tracks down: they deny Gullino was there that night.
Invernizzi himself died in suspicious circumstances. He had appeared in a documentary badly anonymised and had named Gullino as the Markov murderer (until then the Danish media had only used the initials FG). That night, the two men had dinner and Gullino was, according to Invernizzi’s widow, “furious. He felt that Franco [Invernizzi] had betrayed him by going on camera. So they went out to Nordsjælland and ate at some restaurant there. The next day, Franco wakes up feeling terrible. After that, he goes to the hospital. And a day or two later, he’s dead.”
Most of us on the Italian true-crime beat have always assumed that the most compelling Italian crime story linked to London was the murder of Roberto Calvi, found under Blackfriars’ Bridge in 1982. But Skotte tells the Markov story so crisply that this other bridge killing, in 1978, seems even more poignant: somehow more international, evocative and satisfyingly odd.
From the Guardian Sunday 7th July 2024
This masterly investigation, spanning 30 years, into the assassination of a cold war dissident, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978 exposes an assassin worthy of James Bond
The killing of a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, on Waterloo Bridge in September 1978 is a case to clinch the truism that real life is better scripted than fiction. As Markov was crossing the Thames, heading back to BBC headquarters, he bumped into a man with an umbrella and felt a sharp pain in his leg. The man apologised, got in a taxi and disappeared.
Four days later, Markov was dead. Doctors discovered a pinprick irritation on his right thigh. They removed the flesh and found a 1.7mm pellet containing 0.45 mg of ricin, a poison that had almost certainly come from Russia.
From the start the story seemed staged and stylised: a refugee intellectual from behind the iron curtain, now working for the BBC, had been killed in the British capital using an object forever associated with London: a brolly. It later emerged that the assassin had been given the codename Agent Piccadilly. Markov had been attacked on 7 September, the birthday of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s long-term, de facto dictator.
Ulrik Skotte has been on the story since the early 1990s, when he was a rookie journalist working at DR, the Danish broadcasting corporation. He had contacted a perky, anarchist film-maker, Franco Invernizzi, who lived in Copenhagen and who boasted that he knew the real murderer: another Italian who lived in the Danish capital.
The book recreates the early conversations between Skotte and Invernizzi to perfection. Given the decades that have passed, you doubt they are word-for-word authentic, but they convey very convincingly the character of both men. Skotte is eager but frustrated by the older man’s procrastination and his inability to deliver on the promise of an interview with the assassin. Invernizzi is covetous of his story: he’s big-hearted, but paranoid and as the years pass he gets sucked into the quicksand of intelligence conspiracy theories.
Skotte later became a documentary maker, and he paces and structures this book masterfully, jumping back and forwards to fill out the canvas like an impatient painter. Markov emerges as a womaniser with a betting habit, but also as someone who had once been on close personal terms with Zhivkov. The two men used to walk and dine together, which is perhaps why Markov’s subsequent takedowns of Zhivkov from London hurt him so much. There are deft pages on Russia’s mokroye delo, or “wet jobs” – poisonings that evolved from the work of Grigory Mairanovsky, a sadist who had pioneered ways to administer curare, thallium, dimethyl sulfate and ricin to enemies of the Soviet Union.
But the central character of the book is the assumed assassin. Francesco Gullino was born – it does get a bit James Bond at times – in Bra, Piedmont, in 1945. He was brought up by his aunt, who either ran a bar or a brothel, depending on your definition. Sent to a religious secondary school run by monks, he became, in his teens, a wood carver, equestrian and chameleon.
In later years Gullino became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety
In his 20s he started selling secondhand paintings along the Tuscan coast and the Côte d’Azur. He worked for a Turin-based import-export firm, Mondial, that was thought to have links to far-right organisations. Gullino was a confirmed fascist (he carried copies of Mein Kampf) and had soft-porn proclivities: he liked to pay sexworkers to pose for him and was responsible for publishing the erotic novel, Emmanuelle, in Italian.
Gullino had an uncanny ability to calm horses, but was also able to slip into different characters and countries. An Italian fascist working for the Soviet side in the cold war, he veered inexplicably from squalor to international deal-making. He had stacks of empty frames and ran some kind of stolen/counterfeit art scam that had connections to Palermo and, believed Invernizzi, organised crime.
At some point in the mid-70s, Gullino was recruited by Bulgarian secret services in order to duck a smuggling accusation (he had been caught with narcotics, it’s thought, returning to Italy from Turkey). All these details only emerged 20 years later when Soviet archives were opened and various Bulgarian spooks began to testify.
Skotte and his team – he’s generous about the collegiate nature of research – did the hard miles. They interviewed Zhivkov outside Sofia with courtesy but bluntness. He denied any involvement, naturally, but Skotte’s character sketch is in some ways better than a confession. The author also taped a three-hour interview with Gullino a month before he died – as close to closure as the book gets. Gullino walked a fine line between boasting and denying, toying graciously, sometimes childishly, with his interviewer.
There’s no clinching piece of evidence, of course, and Skotte realised, like Invernizzi before him, that Gullino would never be tried. It’s true that he had been in London in September 1978, and he had been interviewed by British and Danish investigators in the 1990s. But in later years he became more brazen, turning himself into a caricature, posing with an umbrella for photoshoots and milking his notoriety.
Two other deaths lend weight to the evidence against him, though. In 1990, a young sex worker was murdered in Copenhagen. Among the victim’s possessions was a photograph of herself riding a horse (“with Gullino” was written on the back). Gullino provided a false alibi, claiming to have been at a party whose host Skotte tracks down: they deny Gullino was there that night.
Invernizzi himself died in suspicious circumstances. He had appeared in a documentary badly anonymised and had named Gullino as the Markov murderer (until then the Danish media had only used the initials FG). That night, the two men had dinner and Gullino was, according to Invernizzi’s widow, “furious. He felt that Franco [Invernizzi] had betrayed him by going on camera. So they went out to Nordsjælland and ate at some restaurant there. The next day, Franco wakes up feeling terrible. After that, he goes to the hospital. And a day or two later, he’s dead.”
Most of us on the Italian true-crime beat have always assumed that the most compelling Italian crime story linked to London was the murder of Roberto Calvi, found under Blackfriars’ Bridge in 1982. But Skotte tells the Markov story so crisply that this other bridge killing, in 1978, seems even more poignant: somehow more international, evocative and satisfyingly odd.
From the Guardian Sunday 7th July 2024
September 9, 2024
Outstanding story of the murder of Georgi Markov and how his alleged killer was tracked down. I would have liked some more detail on certain parts, especially Operation Gladio and perhaps Gullino's other activities, but that may well have spoilt the pace of the book, which was very good. Contender for my book of the year.
September 3, 2024
This is a true story about the mysterious Cold War-era assassination of Georgi Markov that reads like a page-turning thriller. It is undoubtedly one of the most readable historical nonfiction books I've encountered.
While you receive sufficient factual detail to place this story in a historical context, it is certainly not a history book in the traditional sense. This is a book written by a journalist, not a historian, and it is all the better for it.
In 1978, Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge when he bumped into a man with an umbrella who injected him with a pellet likely containing ricin. He died four days later. The man responsible for the murder, codenamed Agent Piccadilly by the Bulgarian intelligence services, then vanished.
Skotte, according to his telling, first became involved in the story of the Umbrella Murder years later in the early 1990s while working as a young sports journalist in Denmark. He was approached by Franco Invernizzi, an Italian filmmaker with an anarchist bent who had become obsessed with the Umbrella Murder after realising one of his acquaintances and political opposites- a mysterious Italian fascist called Francesco Gullino was responsible. Despite Franco's conviction regarding Gullino the evidence proving his guilt proved hard to come by. Eventually Skotte gave up on the story having fallen out with Franco.
Years later, Skotte becomes aware of Franco's death in mysterious circumstances. He is now a documentary filmmaker and decides to reopen his investigation into Markov's murder. He assembles a team to help him with the work, and together, they trawl through Franco's files on the case and approach key figures in the government and security services in Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, and the UK. Slowly, the truth becomes clear as the evidence assembles.
Finally, Skotte manages to score an interview with Gullino in which the Italian toys with the author, never giving a clear answer to the question of his guilt. Three months later he died. While a clear confession would have bullet-proofed the story, I think the evidence unearthed in this book would have been strong enough for even a skeptical jury to convict Gullino had he ever been brought to justice. It is a shame that he was not, as it seems likely Markov was not the only person Gullin killed. The evidence strongly indicates he also murdered at least one sex worker as well as his former friend Franco.
In The Umbrella Murder, Skotte deftly blends his journey to uncover the truth in this case with historical and medical detail, never getting too bogged down in any one place and recounts the sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous encounters he had along the way.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in this case, Cold War history, investigative journalism, or telling a good story.
While you receive sufficient factual detail to place this story in a historical context, it is certainly not a history book in the traditional sense. This is a book written by a journalist, not a historian, and it is all the better for it.
In 1978, Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge when he bumped into a man with an umbrella who injected him with a pellet likely containing ricin. He died four days later. The man responsible for the murder, codenamed Agent Piccadilly by the Bulgarian intelligence services, then vanished.
Skotte, according to his telling, first became involved in the story of the Umbrella Murder years later in the early 1990s while working as a young sports journalist in Denmark. He was approached by Franco Invernizzi, an Italian filmmaker with an anarchist bent who had become obsessed with the Umbrella Murder after realising one of his acquaintances and political opposites- a mysterious Italian fascist called Francesco Gullino was responsible. Despite Franco's conviction regarding Gullino the evidence proving his guilt proved hard to come by. Eventually Skotte gave up on the story having fallen out with Franco.
Years later, Skotte becomes aware of Franco's death in mysterious circumstances. He is now a documentary filmmaker and decides to reopen his investigation into Markov's murder. He assembles a team to help him with the work, and together, they trawl through Franco's files on the case and approach key figures in the government and security services in Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria, and the UK. Slowly, the truth becomes clear as the evidence assembles.
Finally, Skotte manages to score an interview with Gullino in which the Italian toys with the author, never giving a clear answer to the question of his guilt. Three months later he died. While a clear confession would have bullet-proofed the story, I think the evidence unearthed in this book would have been strong enough for even a skeptical jury to convict Gullino had he ever been brought to justice. It is a shame that he was not, as it seems likely Markov was not the only person Gullin killed. The evidence strongly indicates he also murdered at least one sex worker as well as his former friend Franco.
In The Umbrella Murder, Skotte deftly blends his journey to uncover the truth in this case with historical and medical detail, never getting too bogged down in any one place and recounts the sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous encounters he had along the way.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in this case, Cold War history, investigative journalism, or telling a good story.
August 13, 2024
For those of us interested in spy novels, who love Mick Herron and Le Carre, this is a story that may well live in your memory. I was twelve in 1978, so am old enough to recall this story on the news - a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, was crossing Waterloo Bridge when he was stabbed by a poison tipped umbrella. Markov was an author, an activist, a playwright, whose life ended and who, despite the best attempts of Scotland Yard, nobody was ever charged with his murder. This despite another victim having experienced a similar attack, but thankfully not killed, and another man found dead in similar circumstances.
Fast forward to Danish journalist, Ulrik Skotte, who is a sports reporter and nothing whatever to do with politics or even main news stories, who meets a charismatic Italian, named Franco. Franco carries around a battered brown folder and he reveals he knows who killed Markov - Agent Piccadilly. However, he really does not reveal enough detail and Ulrik, tired of being an outsider, eventually walks away. Franco, he believes, is unable to allow himself to tell this story, or share his access to the man he claims was responsible, Francesco Gullino.
Although Ulrik Skotte walks away and goes on to have a successful career making documentaries, the story stays with him and, twenty years later, after the poisonings in Salisbury, it begins to intrigue him again. Novichok on a door handle, ricin on the tip of an umbrella... Thinking of making the documentary that Franco always wanted to make, he throws himself back into researching who was Gullino, is he still alive and can Ulrik convince him to talk?
This is a fascinating read. It involves spying, involving everything from dead letter drops to murder. For people involved in this story, who pry too hard, do die in suspicious circumstances. At the heart of the book are not only Ulrik, determined to put the story to rest, but the obsessive Franco and, at the heart of things, Gullino himself. A man who posed for photos with umbrellas, who seemingly was protected and able to move around Europe with ease. The umbrella murder was very James Bond and it did cause public interest. However, it also involved a victim and Markov knew almost immediately that he had been poisoned. Unfortunately, by the time that Ulrik Skotte did his documentary and finally wrote this book, those involved were either very elderly or dead, but it is always good to have answers and this is an important book, written not without risk to discover the truth.
Fast forward to Danish journalist, Ulrik Skotte, who is a sports reporter and nothing whatever to do with politics or even main news stories, who meets a charismatic Italian, named Franco. Franco carries around a battered brown folder and he reveals he knows who killed Markov - Agent Piccadilly. However, he really does not reveal enough detail and Ulrik, tired of being an outsider, eventually walks away. Franco, he believes, is unable to allow himself to tell this story, or share his access to the man he claims was responsible, Francesco Gullino.
Although Ulrik Skotte walks away and goes on to have a successful career making documentaries, the story stays with him and, twenty years later, after the poisonings in Salisbury, it begins to intrigue him again. Novichok on a door handle, ricin on the tip of an umbrella... Thinking of making the documentary that Franco always wanted to make, he throws himself back into researching who was Gullino, is he still alive and can Ulrik convince him to talk?
This is a fascinating read. It involves spying, involving everything from dead letter drops to murder. For people involved in this story, who pry too hard, do die in suspicious circumstances. At the heart of the book are not only Ulrik, determined to put the story to rest, but the obsessive Franco and, at the heart of things, Gullino himself. A man who posed for photos with umbrellas, who seemingly was protected and able to move around Europe with ease. The umbrella murder was very James Bond and it did cause public interest. However, it also involved a victim and Markov knew almost immediately that he had been poisoned. Unfortunately, by the time that Ulrik Skotte did his documentary and finally wrote this book, those involved were either very elderly or dead, but it is always good to have answers and this is an important book, written not without risk to discover the truth.
August 16, 2024
I can well remember the killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978 with the newspapers full of the story of a mysterious assassin using a poisoned umbrella to stab their victim on Waterloo Bridge. It was a story that captured the public imagination, although the killer was never found, and the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018 brought references to the case back to attention.
Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte was brought much closer to these incredible events when he was contacted in the 1990s by a man named Franco, who claimed to have lived with the alleged assassin Francesco Gullino (Codename Piccadilly) and had spent time amassing evidence of the involvement of various nations, espionage services, and other individuals in the killing and its failed investigation. Ulrik is actually a sports reporter, but the case excites and fascinates him and he gets involved in researching it until Franco’s unwillingness to be open and share information eventually drives him away.
The Novichok case triggers memories for Ulrik and he decides to use the greater experience and knowledge that time has given him to try once more to resolve the umbrella killing, bringing together a team to follow up all the threads and attempting to track down Gullino. Of course, many of those involved are now elderly or dead, but the team painstakingly review every scrap of evidence and determinedly follow the trail of Gullino across Europe.
This was a fascinating and very engaging account which illuminates the secrecy and paranoia of the Cold War period and shows all the ramifications of a single notorious crime. I really enjoyed how Ulrik added chapters that explain the background to the case, for example Markov’s early life and his relationship with the Bulgarian dictator Zhivkov, and the use of poisons and poisoned weapons by the secret services. Most of all, I was totally engrossed in the search for the shadowy Gullino and the attempts to answer the many questions posed by the Markov case.
Danish journalist Ulrik Skotte was brought much closer to these incredible events when he was contacted in the 1990s by a man named Franco, who claimed to have lived with the alleged assassin Francesco Gullino (Codename Piccadilly) and had spent time amassing evidence of the involvement of various nations, espionage services, and other individuals in the killing and its failed investigation. Ulrik is actually a sports reporter, but the case excites and fascinates him and he gets involved in researching it until Franco’s unwillingness to be open and share information eventually drives him away.
The Novichok case triggers memories for Ulrik and he decides to use the greater experience and knowledge that time has given him to try once more to resolve the umbrella killing, bringing together a team to follow up all the threads and attempting to track down Gullino. Of course, many of those involved are now elderly or dead, but the team painstakingly review every scrap of evidence and determinedly follow the trail of Gullino across Europe.
This was a fascinating and very engaging account which illuminates the secrecy and paranoia of the Cold War period and shows all the ramifications of a single notorious crime. I really enjoyed how Ulrik added chapters that explain the background to the case, for example Markov’s early life and his relationship with the Bulgarian dictator Zhivkov, and the use of poisons and poisoned weapons by the secret services. Most of all, I was totally engrossed in the search for the shadowy Gullino and the attempts to answer the many questions posed by the Markov case.
August 11, 2024
Good start but dragged in a bit
September 27, 2024
One of the Cold War’s most enduring mysteries, the apparent murder by poisoned umbrella of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London, is revisited by Danish documentarian Ulrik Skotte in this fascinating book that is part detective story, part history and all memoir.
Markov died suddenly in 1978, shortly after a curious incident on Waterloo Bridge, leaving police to wonder whether or not he had been murdered. But evidence was frustratingly hard to come by and while the lurid details of the story entered espionage folklore, the actual investigation fell into decline. Whereupon the story unexpectedly switches to Copenhagen to be taken up by Skotte, a fresh-faced sports reporter, who meets an Italian conspiracy theorist with a crazy story that rings just true enough to keep him interested: about a man who claims to be the Umbrella Killer.
However, the evidence is still vanishingly thin and the paranoia of the many characters involved means the necessary work never gets done. Years pass. But the story and the obsessions never die away. They just leave our intrepid band of citizen journalists trailing across Europe, interviewing esteemed Italian judges, secretive agents of foreign intelligence agencies and, incredibly, the fallen dictator of Soviet-era Bulgaria.
Finally, after decades of chasing their man, Skotte tracks him down, points a camera at him and asks the question he has been waiting years to have answered, ‘Who killed Georgi Markov?’
The Umbrella Murder is a brilliant slice of narrative non-fiction, taking in the mythology of the Cold War, the nature (and cost) of obsession, and, perhaps, finally closing one of the most peculiar cases of political assassination.
(Proof copy supplied. Opinions my own.)
Markov died suddenly in 1978, shortly after a curious incident on Waterloo Bridge, leaving police to wonder whether or not he had been murdered. But evidence was frustratingly hard to come by and while the lurid details of the story entered espionage folklore, the actual investigation fell into decline. Whereupon the story unexpectedly switches to Copenhagen to be taken up by Skotte, a fresh-faced sports reporter, who meets an Italian conspiracy theorist with a crazy story that rings just true enough to keep him interested: about a man who claims to be the Umbrella Killer.
However, the evidence is still vanishingly thin and the paranoia of the many characters involved means the necessary work never gets done. Years pass. But the story and the obsessions never die away. They just leave our intrepid band of citizen journalists trailing across Europe, interviewing esteemed Italian judges, secretive agents of foreign intelligence agencies and, incredibly, the fallen dictator of Soviet-era Bulgaria.
Finally, after decades of chasing their man, Skotte tracks him down, points a camera at him and asks the question he has been waiting years to have answered, ‘Who killed Georgi Markov?’
The Umbrella Murder is a brilliant slice of narrative non-fiction, taking in the mythology of the Cold War, the nature (and cost) of obsession, and, perhaps, finally closing one of the most peculiar cases of political assassination.
(Proof copy supplied. Opinions my own.)
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