Charlie Rowley’s life changed forever on a summer afternoon in Amesbury, England. While digging through a charity bin, he spotted a small cardboard box. Inside, he found a container wrapped in plastic with a Nina Ricci label and thought he had stumbled upon an expensive French fragrance and took it as a gift for his girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess. On this day in June 2018, he was actually hoping to find a ring to propose to Sturgess. Unbeknownst to him, the bottle contained a lethal nerve agent that had been used months earlier in an international espionage plot. Now, CNN is capturing his story in a documentary, The Salisbury Poisonings: A Spy Next Door. Rowley told CNN that he remembers giving the perfume to Dawn on June 28. He thought it was strange that the nozzle came separately, so he had to attach it himself. When Dawn sprayed it, she noted it had an oily texture and no fragrance. She complained of feeling peculiar, developed a headache, and soon became unresponsive. A few days later, he collapsed. In that little bottle was Novichok On the 28th, Rowley tried to revive her, but he said, “Everything was going in slow motion.” First responders rushed Dawn to the hospital, and Rowley went back to his daily routine. However, he had also been exposed to the poison. After his collapse, the nerve agent left him in a coma for weeks. When he woke up, he was told that Dawn had passed away on July 8. “I thought it was a genuine, nice gift, and she was pleased to receive it. But it went so tragically wrong so quickly,” he recalled. Their tragedy, however, stemmed from the earlier deaths of a Russian duo. Per CNN, investigators concluded that Dawn’s perfume bottle contained the same nerve agent used to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter. In March 2018, the BBC reported that a former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were found collapsed on a bench in a Salisbury shopping center. It was later determined they had been poisoned with Novichok, a highly toxic nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. The BBC reported that in the final inquiry into the case, it was found that the poison had been smeared on the doorknob of Skripal’s home. The inquiry, which concluded at the end of 2025, shed light on the sheer scale of the danger. Lord Anthony Hughes, the inquiry chair, reportedly stated that the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death were “clear but also quite extraordinary.” He added that her death was collateral damage from an “astonishingly reckless” plot intended to be “a public demonstration of Russian power.” The report concluded that everyone involved in the attempt to assassinate the Skripals, including President Vladimir Putin, who was found to have authorized the attack “at the highest level,” was “morally responsible” for the death of the 44-year-old mother. The investigation into the attack revealed that the perfume bottle contained a “significant amount” of the nerve agent. According to Neil Basu, Britain’s former head of counterterrorism policing, the bottle held enough poison to kill 10,000 people. Per CNN, two Russian intelligence officers, Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, were identified as the primary suspects who had traveled to Britain under aliases. They were spotted on CCTV in Salisbury, though they later appeared on Russian television claiming they were merely tourists visiting to see the famous cathedral. The aftermath of the poisoning left the city of Salisbury in a panic. Per reports, forensic investigators in hazmat suits scoured the streets, and church leaders even used holy water to cleanse the area. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, commenting after the 2025 inquiry report, called the case a “grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives,” and “reckless aggression.” Novichok was most famously used on Alexei Navalny in 2020. Navalny later died in 2024, and evidence points to an assassination by a different rare toxin, which Western countries attribute to Russia. Russia, however, maintains that he died of natural causes. The case remains highly disputed, and there has been no trial. Recently, to deal with other enemies, Russia attempted to use a $500,000 bounty, only to be tricked. Rowley continues to live with the physical and emotional scars of that day. He has suffered from vision problems, balance issues, and the loss of use of his left arm. He told CNN, “I’ve tried to put it to the back of my mind. I didn’t expect this to happen to me, or Dawn. And things haven’t been the same since.” Although he once met with the Russian ambassador in London, hoping for answers, he says he has given up on finding justice. “It’s out of my hands,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do.”