By Abdool A. Aziz

HE WAS a doctor, now crippled in bed due to a massive stroke. His wife, 10 years his junior was a registered nurse. He loved her so much that he took out an insurance in her name. This would prove fatal. She wanted that bonanza and had no patience to wait.

So she began to put her wicked plan to work. While he had a caregiver, she ensured that she would handle the cooking and feeding of Seth her sickly husband.

THE SECRET POISONING
As a well-trained nurse, she knew of the various food-poisoning chemicals and the one that would most suit her nefarious plan was arsenic. She would introduce it to him in his soup, little by little. This is a slow-acting toxin. It breaks down the body tissues, weakens the heart and damages other organs.

Death is slow, agonising and unnoticed. Even post-mortems fail to detect it, and the nurse was well au fais with this fact. So her strategy worked. The victim, being a doctor, felt its effect within. He was muted by the stroke so he couldn’t raise an alarm. He knew poison was being given to him and by the woman he adored.

THE HIDDEN NOTE
Eventually, he died and was taken to the morgue. The autopsy did reveal a trace of arsenic but not enough to conclude poisoning on a full scale. But just as the coroner was about to sign off suspicious death, he saw something sticking out the ear of the corpse.

He found a note: ‘MY WIFE DID IT’. The police did suspect the wife, now they decided to build a case for murder by the nurse who collected the insurance award and fled the country. A search of the home did reveal phials of arsenic which she obtained from the hospital lab as well as a handbook on sustained poisoning. Only she fed the deceased as testified by the caregiver. Food left over was always dumped. At the funeral, she showed great emotion. All felt sorry for her, but when they learned the truth, they labelled her a Jezebel.

Years went by, she went on the run. Money ran out, she was caught shoplifting and later was identified as a fugitive. She was charged and faced trial. But she never saw a courtroom. She swallowed a cyanide capsule. Her death was quicker than her husband’s. Few folks attended her funeral. The killer nurse was buried in an unmarked grave. Greed for money.