Jury Calls for Poisoner's Death

11-13-2003 | Anna Gorman

[boris]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-death13nov13,1,4759947.story Jury Calls for Poisoner's Death

By Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer

A jury called Wednesday for the death of Angelina Rodriguez, a 35-year-old woman who poisoned her husband with a lethal combination of antifreeze and an oleander plant at their Montebello home.

Rodriguez could become the 15th woman on California's death row, joining four others from Los Angeles County. Only four women have been executed in the state since 1893.

[snip]

Jurors found her guilty last month of murdering her schoolteacher husband, Frank, in September 2000 to get the $250,000 life insurance policy he had applied for two months earlier.

[snip]

Rodriguez, a 41-year-old teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District, died Sept. 9, 2000, after ingesting a lethal dose of antifreeze. Prosecutors believe that his wife put enough of the poisonous oleander in his meals to send him to the hospital and then killed him at home by lacing his Gatorade with five or six shots of antifreeze. Investigators never determined exactly how the substances had been placed in the victim's food or drink.

[boris]

I thought it was supposed to be Arsenic and old lace, not oleander and anti-freeze...

[Lee Heggy]

Pretty rough way to die. Oleander poisoning isn't exactly painless.

[footstomper]

So she's creative. Or- perhaps in today's world old lace is hard to find. Either way- it was effective - unfortunately for the husband..