A Brazilian woman suspected of poisoning her husband’s family with an arsenic-laced Christmas cake was found dead in her prison cell, which police believe was a suicide.
Deise Moura dos Anjos, 42, had been in pre-trial prison since January after prosecutors accused her of killing three relatives on Christmas Eve and attempting to murder another three.
The victims had all eaten from the cake, which forensic investigators discovered had been made with flour laced with the lethal toxin.
Police were also investigating if she killed her father-in-law, who died in September.
Forensic scientists exhumed his remains and discovered high quantities of arsenic, leading them to suspect that he, too, had been poisoned.
Moura dos Anjos denied any guilt, but local police director Cléber dos Santos Lima told reporters last month that he was “certain that she researched, bought, and used the poison to kill her victims.”
He stated that detectives had discovered evidence indicating that she had purchased arsenic on four consecutive occasions.
Investigators investigated various food items in Moura dos Anjos’ mother-in-law’s home, where the six victims were ill, to determine the source of the poisoning.
Eventually, they discovered sky-high quantities of arsenic in the flour—some of which Moura dos Anjos’ mother-in-law, Zeli dos Anjos, had used to bake the Christmas cake.
Even though Zeli dos Anjos had cooked the cake, authorities soon ruled her out as a suspect after she ate it and became critically ill.
Zeli dos Anjos survived, but her two sisters and one niece perished.
Her 10-year-old grandson and the husband of one of her sisters were among those poisoned but survived.
