SHE’S 81 YEARS OLD AND USES A WALKER, BUT NOVA SCOTIA’S ‘INTERNET BLACK WIDOW,’ WHO HAS POISONED HER PAST PARTNERS, MUST TELL POLICE IF SHE TAKES UP WITH ANOTHER MAN.
• An 81-year-old woman who killed and poisoned her intimate partners has agreed to peace bond conditions that require her to report any new romantic relationships to police for the next two years.
Melissa Ann Shepard — known as the Internet black widow — used a walker in court Wednesday to stand and agree to 21 conditions negotiated between the Crown and her lawyer Mark Knox.
Under the bond conditions, she is required to report to police any potential relationship with a man and to report weekly to police by telephone or in person. She is also to inform police of any changes to her appearance and provide them with fresh photographs.
The elderly woman was released from prison in March after serving a full sentence of just under three years for spiking newlywed husband Fred Weeks’s coffee with tranquillizers in 2012.
Shepard has a long criminal record.
In 1991, she was convicted of manslaughter and served two years of a six-year prison term after killing her husband Gordon Stewart on a deserted road near Halifax. Stewart was heavily drugged when Shepard ran over him twice with a car.
Shortly after she was released from prison, she travelled to Florida and met Robert Friedrich. They married in Nova Scotia in 2000. A year later, Friedrich’s family noticed his health faltering. He had mysterious fainting spells and slurred speech and was in and out of hospitals.
In 2005, Shepard was sentenced to five years in prison for a slew of charges stemming from a relationship she had with another Florida man she met online.