A 42-year-old Brazilian woman, Deise Moura dos Anjos, was found dead in her prison cell under circumstances that authorities suspect were a suicide.
She had been in pre-trial detention since January, facing accusations from prosecutors of murdering three relatives and attempting to kill three others on Christmas Eve.
All victims had consumed a Christmas cake made with flour that forensic experts later found to be contaminated with arsenic, a lethal poison.
Additionally, police were looking into whether Moura dos Anjos was responsible for the death of her father-in-law, who passed away in September.
After exhuming his body, forensic experts discovered significant arsenic levels, leading them to suspect he had also been poisoned.
Moura dos Anjos denied the charges, but local police chief Cléber dos Santos Lima expressed confidence in her involvement, stating last month, “I am certain that she researched, bought (…) and used the poison to kill her victims.”
Lima also revealed that police had found evidence proving she had purchased arsenic on four separate occasions.
Investigators examined various food items in the home of Moura dos Anjos’s mother-in-law, where the six victims fell ill, to trace the poison’s origin.
They eventually found dangerous levels of arsenic in the flour used by Zeli dos Anjos, the mother-in-law, to prepare the Christmas cake.
While Zeli herself had consumed the cake and fell seriously ill, police swiftly ruled her out as a suspect despite her role in preparing the cake.
Zeli dos Anjos survived the poisoning, but tragically, two of her sisters and one of her nieces did not. Her 10-year-old grandson and the husband of one of her sisters also became ill from the poisoning but fortunately recovered.
