A mystery man whose body was found on a remote hillside after travelling by train from London had taken a banned drug and swallowed a lethal dose of poison, it emerged yesterday.
The smartly dressed pensioner found on Saddleworth Moor in December last year had ingested strychnine, one of the world’s most powerful poisons.
Traces of the drug Reserpine — banned in Britain but used in some countries to treat high blood pressure — were also found in his blood by toxicology tests. The development is a bizarre twist in the mystery of why the man — believed to be aged between 65 and 70 — took the 200-mile trip from Ealing Broadway to his death on a hillside called Indian’s Head in the Pennines.
Detectives are not believed to be looking for anyone else over his death, although the cause has yet to be confirmed by an inquest.
A mountain biker found the man lying on his back with his hands by his side by a moorland path. He had no signs of injury. There were no credit cards, wallet or mobile phone on his body and no identifying marks on his clothes. All he possessed were three train tickets, including a return to London, £130 in £10 notes and a small, empty pill bottle which detectives now believe contained the poison he died from.
Strychnine can cause death within three hours and is mainly used as a pesticide. Police have established he travelled to the Pennines after boarding a Tube at Ealing Broadway at about 9am on December 11. He went to Euston and took a train to Manchester Piccadilly, where he bought food with cash at a Marks & Spencer store and made inquiries at the information counter.
He then went by train to Greenfield 15 miles away where he asked at a pub how to get to the top of a nearby hill. The man is thought to have been last seen walking up a track towards the summit. His body was found the following morning.
Detective sergeant John Coleman said: “This is one of those cases when every time you get one answer you get a lot more questions. We are still trying to establish how he got hold of this poison.” He said Reserpine, which can also be used to treat severe agitation in mental patients, was still available in some Asian countries such as Pakistan.  A side-effect is depression with reports it has led to suicides.  
DS Coleman added: “The question you come back to is why a man of that age takes a decision to travel 200 miles to a remote and desolate location and do what he has done. There is no sign he was suffering from a terminal illness.”