EDITOR’S NOTE: Watch the premiere of the CNN Films documentary, “ The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door ,” Sunday at 8pm ET/PT on CNN.
Charlie Rowley’s nightmare started the day he picked up what appeared to be an ordinary bottle of perfume.
It was a summer afternoon in Amesbury, England. While searching through a charity bin, he spotted a small cardboard box. Inside was a container, wrapped in plastic, labeled Nina Ricci . Convinced someone had tossed out a bottle of expensive French fragrance, he took it home to surprise his girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess.
Finding treasures among discarded items was one of his favorite pastimes. Over the years, he’d salvaged televisions and other household goods. But on that day in June 2018, he was hoping someone had thrown out a ring he could use to propose. “She often made comments about getting her an engagement ring … a sapphire ring,” he told CNN in a recent interview.
Unbeknownst to him, the bottle contained the same nerve agent investigators believe Russian operatives had used three months earlier to poison a former spy in nearby Salisbury. What followed was a devastating chain of events that left Sturgess dead and Rowley hospitalized, collateral victims of an international espionage saga involving the attempted assassination of a double agent.
“I thought it was a genuine, nice gift, and she was pleased to receive it. But it went so tragically wrong so quick,” he recalled. “She sprayed it and gave it a sniff and applied (it) on her wrist. And a short while after, she said she felt peculiar. She complained of a headache … (then) she wouldn’t respond at all. I tried to revive her. Everything was going in slow motion.”
Later that day, Rowley was drenched in sweat, rocking back and forth and mumbling incoherently as the poison – later identified as Novichok, a Russian nerve agent – took hold of him, too. He lapsed into a coma and was hospitalized for weeks, with little memory initially of what had happened, he said. After he was discharged, he suffered a stroke, sending him back to the hospital for another lengthy stretch.
The ordeal pulled the unwitting Rowley into a battle between Russian and British intelligence agencies.
“Who knew that there was a spy living in Salisbury? It was a shock,” Rowley said. “Who would have thought it (poison) would reappear in a bottle?”
Eight years later, he still struggles to put into words what happened. In a new CNN Films documentary, “ The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door ,” which airs Sunday, Rowley shares his story along with others whose lives were forever changed by the attacks. He oftentimes pauses midsentence, his eyes filling with tears.
“I’ve tried to put it to the back of my mind. I didn’t expect this to happen to me, or Dawn,” he told CNN. “And things haven’t been the same since.”
The couple had dated for about a year after meeting at a facility for unhoused people, where Sturgess lived. Rowley had just moved into a new place, and he was getting it ready for her to join him. Their life revolved around simple pleasures, including treasures Rowley got from the charity bins outside public places.
“It did carry a bit of stigma being seen in a bin,” he said. “But it reaped its rewards most times. I’d always come up with something, whether big or small. Any nice things I would find, they would go straight to … Dawn. I would always dig to the bottom, just in case I’d find that ring.”
In their free time, the couple listened to music and watched movies. Sturgess was into Bob Marley and action films. “She wasn’t really into chick-flick films,” Rowley said. “Occasionally, if the fun fair was in town, we’d go along, walk around the stalls and have a giggle.”
Then one thoughtful gesture put them on an unimaginable path. On June 28, two days after Rowley found the box in the bin, he gave it to Sturgess. It was on a Saturday around midday, and they were watching television after spending the previous day at Queen Elizabeth Gardens, a leafy riverside park with a view of Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest spire in Britain, rising above the trees.
She recognized the brand immediately and seemed excited, he said.
He remembers thinking it was strange that the nozzle came separately and was not attached to the bottle, and that he had to remove the cap and attach it himself.
Sturgess sprayed it, gave it a sniff and spread some on her wrist. It had an oily texture and no fragrance. “Very strange — a perfume with no smell,” he recalled thinking.
Soon after, she told him she didn’t feel well and went to the bathroom, where he heard a thud. He found her unresponsive in the bathtub and called emergency services.
“One minute I was talking to Dawn, the next minute, she wasn’t herself, non-responsive. I just went into panic mode,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
First responders rushed Sturgess to the hospital. Not knowing she’d been poisoned and that it was related to Russian espionage, Rowley decided to run a few errands before joining her there.
“I wish I had gone with her. I was planning on getting a little bag together for her, some knick knacks, some clothing, makeup or whatnot to take to the hospital. But it happened all so fast,” he said.
He never saw Sturgess again. Five hours after her collapse, an ambulance came back to the same address for Rowley, who’d also become sick after returning home from his errands.
Sturgess died 10 days later, while Rowley was in a coma. She was 44.
The little bottle contained enough poison to kill 10,000 people, says Neil Basu, Britain’s former head of counterterrorism policing, in the film.
With a population of about 44,000, the charming, picturesque city of Salisbury looks more like it belongs on a postcard than at the center of an international espionage scandal.
The case unfolded like spy fiction. On a chilly afternoon in March 2018, two people were found slumped on a bench in an outdoor shopping complex in the city’s center.
Investigators identified them as Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer accused of spying for Britain’s MI6, and his daughter Yulia, who was visiting from Moscow. The police officer who first found them was also hospitalized.
“We had a spy in Salisbury,” Rowley said, as if he could still barely believe it eight years later. “Salisbury had secrets.”
Within days, British investigators determined the pair had been poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union.
Investigators said two operatives from Russia’s military traveled to Britain under aliases, smeared the poison on the front door of Skripal’s home and boarded a flight back to Moscow.
Forensic investigators in hazmat suits flooded Salisbury’s medieval streets. Police cordoned off parks, pubs and restaurants as teams searched for traces of the deadly nerve agent. Every time someone fell ill, panic spread that Novichok had struck again. A church leader cleansed the city with holy water to reassure a shaken community.
After weeks in critical condition, father and daughter survived the attack.
“Right from the start, it was clear to me that this wasn’t just a poisoning, but it was an attempted assassination,” Mark Sedwill, the British national security adviser at the time, told CNN.
Three months later, the city was starting to get back some sort of normalcy. Then, about eight miles north of Salisbury, Rowley unknowingly picked up the discarded bottle used to carry the poison.
And the nightmare started all over again.
Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary at the time, said the poisonings sparked troubling questions.
“The public don’t want to hear we’re not actually very sure what this is or where it’s come from or what else it could be,” she says in the film. “They want to know their government … is going to keep them safe.”
The failed assassination attempt on Skripal was seen by some as an embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin, who denied claims that Russia was behind the poisoning, calling them “nonsense.”
After an extensive decontamination effort, authorities declared Salisbury free of the nerve agent a year later. Skripal and his daughter are reportedly in hiding , living under new identities to protect their safety.
But for Rowley, the ordeal was far from over. He woke up from a coma with little memory of what happened. A doctor broke the news that the poison had killed his girlfriend.
“I was in shock because that was the bottle I gave to Dawn as a present,” he said. “I felt terrible, terribly guilty over that … and it’s still hard to deal with today.”
Rowley still lives near Salisbury, and with reminders of the poison. He struggled with balance and visions problems after the attack, and lost use of his left arm. Years later, he said, his memory has never fully recovered.
“I put that down to the Novichok,” he said, “but I don’t know if it has any lasting damage.”
The Russian agents were identified but never arrested. They insisted they’d traveled to Salisbury as tourists to admire its famous cathedral.
A year after the attack, Rowley met with the Russian ambassador in London, hoping for some clarity on what happened.
“I wanted to hear it from the source, really … and get an answer,” he said. “I didn’t really get any answer, just seemed like excuses, passing the buck.”
He said he’s given up expecting justice for the woman he lost.
“It’s out of my hands,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
