An Arkansas man who produced jars of the lethal poison ricin on his property with the intention of setting traps for trespassers was sentenced to eight years in prison for possessing a biological agent, prosecutors said.
The man, Jason Kale Clampit, 44, of Winslow, Ark., made the ricin himself by extracting it from castor beans. He was sentenced Friday to 96 months in prison without the possibility of parole, the US attorney for the Western District of Arkansas said in a statement.
According to court documents, a citizen, who was identified as Clampit’s sister, made an anonymous tip to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in January 2024 and said that Clampit was manufacturing ricin and may have poisoned his mother with the substance in Winslow.
Ricin is a chemical that is present in castor beans, which have been cultivated for millenniums for their oil. In the 1940s, the US military experimented with it as a possible warfare agent.
NEW YORK TIMES
