exotic weapon? and just how did they deliver the fatal dose? when detectives went step by step with litvinenko through the day he was poisoned, he named three potential suspects the two russians and the italian. the first one we found was the italian. so now in rome, we re on our way to see mario scaramella, who hopefully can shed some more light on who killed alexander litvinenko and why. scaramella has been a hard man to pin down. first, he wanted to meet us in naples, then new york, then london. he finally agreed on rome, and we re about to find out why he s been so skittish. [ speaking italian ] reporter: how to describe scaramella? he s a lawyer, an academic, a security analyst and also someone litvinenko never completely trusted. scaramella, you ll remember, is the contact litvinenko met at the sushi bar on the day he was poisoned. litvinenko thought you poisoned
reporter: so if you re warning your russian business partner that you ve been shot, you clearly didn t think this was a botched robbery, carjacking? you thought this was related to your work, related to your russian connections? well, i don t think there s any doubt. someone had tried to kill him, just like the other guy in in london. reporter: the other guy? a former kgb agent and friend of joyal s killed three months earlier in london. assassinated with a weapon so frightening and exotic investigators almost missed it. a weapon that raised the specter of state-sponsored murder. coming up we trace the steps of a mysterious attack from bus to bar to deathbed. he was going through unspeakable torment. an amusement park. bill s back needed a vacation from his vacation. so he stepped on the dr. scholl s kiosk.
that s because they found polonium on the table in a conference room where he and litvinenko had met two weeks before the pine bar encounter. was anything spilled on the table? translator: richard, you are asking questions. i remember some things. i don t remember other things. i cannot answer these questions because these can be used against me in the court, which is done frequently. reporter: as for his last meeting with litvinenko at the pine bar, lugovoi says there s no way he brought polonium on that trip because his wife and children were with him. translator: a person s weakest spot is his family. and i m a rational man. even if i had taken part in an operation, even if i had known what was in the container, would i take my family along? i m a rational man. i couldn t do it. reporter: not only did he continue to maintain his innocence, he offered his own theory about who poisoned the tea. could someone had put something
kind of substances for killing people that you never will be able to recognize. why do we have to go into some kind of a bar and put it in someone s tea cup and everyone s laughing at it? i mean, the state cannot be involved in that. reporter: litvinenko s friend paul joyal, who believes he was the target of a botched assassination, agrees that in some ways litvinenko s killers were indeed clumsy and careless. but he says that s because they were probably just pawns in a much bigger game. do you think that any of them knew what that substance was? do you think that they knew they were handling polonium? reporter: why wouldn t they have known what they were handling? because you don t want them to know.
to his house just outside washington d.c. it was quiandt dark. i got out of my car, one waiting in the bushes and this one said to someone else i didn t see. shoot him. so i covered my heart with my arms, i turned to the side and i thought went through me. one shot? one shot and then another click. so you re shot once. and i hear a chamber to clear it has jammed. at that point in time the lights went on in my house. his wife heard a commotion. i knew it was a gun shot and