Leonid Strachunsky

Leonid Strachunsky died on June 8, 2005 after being hit on the head with a heavy object. Strachunsky, an epidemiologist, World Health Organization expert and the director of Russia's Anti-Microbe Therapy Institute, specialized in creating microbes resistant to biological weapons. Strachunsky was found dead in his room at Moscow's Slavyanka Hotel, where he had come from Smolensk en route to the United States.

Investigators speculated that Strachunsky's murder was linked to a sudden outbreak of Hepatitis A which afflicted more than 500 people in Russia's Tver region, and which had reached Smolensk, and which some believed was caused by a biological weapon.