‘Black Widow’ Killer, 77, Charged with Poisoning New Husband
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Hemera/Thinkstock(CAPE BRETON, Nova Scotia) — An elderly woman known as the “Black Widow” for killing her first husband has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly poisoning her current husband.
Melissa Ann Weeks, also known as Melissa Ann Friedrich, was arrested this week after her husband mysteriously fell and was taken to a hospital in Nova Scotia, where the couple was on vacation. Both Weeks and her husband are 77 years old.
“We were called on Sunday, Sept. 30, by the hospital,” said Desiree Vassallo, spokeswoman for the Cape Breton Regional Police. “The hospital had some concerns about a patient that had been admitted, displaying strange symptoms.”
Weeks’ husband has not been identified by police, but tests confirmed he had been poisoned with an undisclosed substance.
She was charged with “administering a noxious substance,” said Vassallo.
Weeks will appear in a Nova Scotia court Friday to attend a bail hearing. It was not known if she had a lawyer.
Week’s 1991 conviction for murdering her first husband, Gordon Stewart, earned her the nickname, the “Black Widow.”
According to testimony, she drugged Stewart and then ran over him twice with a car outside of Halifax. She was released from prison after serving two years of a six year sentence.
In 2000, she married Robert Edmund Friedrich after just days of courting. The 83-year-old Canadian died in 2002.
Friedrich’s family said that she had emptied his bank account of $400,000 and claims that she drugged Friedrich, according to the Canadian Press. According to reports, he was hastily cremated and no autopsy was performed. Weeks was not charged with any crime in his death.
In 2005, Weeks was sentenced to five years in prison on charges that she stole $20,000 from then boyfriend Alexander Stategos.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio