Nobel Prize Poet Murder Mystery

The body of Chilean Nobel poet laureate Pablo Neruda has been exhumed by forensic specialists in an attempt to try and solve a forty year old murder mystery.  Officially he died of natural causes brought on by cancer on 23 September 1973 but people close to the poet claim he was poisoned by the then military dictatorship that governed Chile in the 1970s and 1980s.

The poet, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1971, was best known for his romantic poetry, notably his collection of verses 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.'

Pablo Neruda, aside from being an accomplished poet, was a left-wing politician and close friend of  ousted socialist president.Santiago Allende who committed suicide rather than surrender to the military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet which staged a military coup in Chile on September 22, 1973.

It was believed Pablo Neruda would provide an influential voice in exile for the Chilean opposition.  He died only twelve days after the 1973 military coup in hospital in Santiago, just a day before he was scheduled to leave the country.

The suspicion that he was poisoned is given credence by the fact that a former president and vocal critic of the Pinochet regime, President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who died nine years ago at the same clinic was found on investigation to have been slowly poisoned.  The remains of Pablo Neruda are now being sent for tests to ascertain whether he too was poisoned to prevent him leading the opposition in exile to the military dictatorship.