Kerala cyanide killings accused Jolly attempts suicide in prison
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Jolly Joseph , 47, accused of killing six members of her first husband’s family between 2002 and 2016 in north Kerala’s Koodathayi village, tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrist inside the Kozhikode district prison in the early hours on Thursday, jail officials said.
Joseph was immediately rushed to the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital, where her condition is said to be stable.
Jail officials said that they came to know of her suicide bid around 4:30 am when fellow inmates alerted them. Joseph reportedly told the officials that she slit her wrist with her tooth and sharp edge of the plate used to serve her food. Officials are keeping a close watch on her as she has shown suicidal tendencies in the past as well.
Joseph, who is from Kattappana village in Idukki district, was arrested on October 5, 2019, along with three of her accomplices on charges of killing six of her first husband’s family members between 2002 and 2016. MS Mathew, Praji Kumar and K Manoj, a local CPI(M) leader, who was later expelled from the party, are behind bars for allegedly aiding her in committing the crimes.
Police suspect a similar modus operandi behind all the murders. She allegedly served cyanidelaced food to her first husband, Roy Thomas, his parents and three members of his extended family, including a baby girl, and spaced out her the serial killings over 14 years in her bid to make them appear to be normal deaths.
Police said preliminary investigation has revealed that Joseph became a serial killer to take control of Roy’s property and to live with a person of her choice.
Joseph’s mother-in-law from her first marriage, Annamma Thomas, 57, was the first to die in 2002, followed by her father-inlaw, Tom Thomas, 66, in 2008, her first husband, Roy Thomas, in 2011 and Annamma’s brother ,
MM Matthew, 68 in 2014.
In 2017, Joseph married Shaju, who is the son of Tom’s brother, Zacharias Thomas, as both his one-year-old daughter, Alphin, and wife, Sili , had died under mysterious circumstances. Joseph is a suspect for both these murders as she was nearby when Alphin died in 2014, while Sili passed away on her lap in 2016.
During the investigation, police also found that Joseph, a commerce graduate, lied about her academic qualifications. She used to claim that she held an engineering degree and was a member of the faculty at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Calicut, for 14 years. However, NIT officials said that she was never an employee and used a forged ID card to gain access to its Calicut campus, police added.
Joseph’s cover was blown when a Special Investigation Team of the Kerala Police started probing the case after receiving a complaint on the six deaths from Roy’s brother, Rojo, who lives in the United States, last year. Rojo had filed Right to Information (RTI) pleas to get details on the deaths of his family members and also filed a complaint with the police. Police said that a probe into Roy’s death had found traces of cyanide in his body.