Melody Johnson has also been charged with attempted aggravated assault and adding poison to food or drink. Photo / Pima County Sheriff's Office
Melody Johnson has also been charged with attempted aggravated assault and adding poison to food or drink. Photo / Pima County Sheriff's Office
A woman has been accused of trying to kill her US Air Force husband by poisoning his coffee, after he caught her in the act using hidden cameras.
Melody Johnson, 39, from Arizona, was arrested in July after her husband, Roby Johnson, showed the allegedly incriminating footage to the police.
Roby Johnson became suspicious when he noticed his coffee tasting strange while stationed in Germany towards the end of March.
He continued to drink it for a few weeks before using chemical testing strips on the water in his coffee machine, which apparently showed high levels of chlorine.
Johnson then set up a camera in his home that captured footage of his wife “pouring something into his coffee pot”, the complaint alleges.
He pretended to drink the coffee until they returned to the US in the summer because he did not want to file a police report in Germany.
The airman set up another camera while stationed at a hotel on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona in July. Again, footage is said to show Melody Johnson “walk to his coffee maker and pour something into his water reservoir”.
Johnson reported his wife to the police the next day but was told by officers that it was not clear what she had poured into the machine.
It was only when the family moved into a house in July and Johnson set up several cameras that he was able to record his wife allegedly decanting bleach into a container before pouring it into the coffee maker.
He told the police that he believed the 39-year-old was trying to kill him to collect death benefits, police said.
The couple are going through a divorce but were living together with a child at the time.
Melody Johnson was arrested by police in Tucson and charged with first-degree attempted murder, attempted aggravated assault and adding poison to food or drink. She is being held at the Pima County Jail before her next scheduled court appearance on September 6.
Bail has been set at £197,000 (NZD$414,000), which prosecutors argued was necessary because Johnson had recently bought a house in the Philippines and should be considered a flight risk.
Investigators recovered a container holding a liquid that smelled of bleach from her bedroom, court documents state. The liquid inside the coffee maker was also said to smell of bleach.
