‘Internet Black Widow’ charged with attempted murder
Posted Oct 2, 2012 05:40:11 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Cape Breton Police have accused known as ‘the Internet Black Widow’ with trying to poison her most recent husband.
Melissa Ann Weeks, aka Millie Weeks, 77, was arrested Monday after her husband Fred Weeks was taken to North Sydney General Hospital. His doctors were suspicious of the illness and alerted police.
She’s charged with Attempted Murder and Administering a Noxious Thing. Her husband has been treated and released from hospital.
The scenario is similar to what happened to Weeks’ former partner Alex Strategos in 2004. She was going by the name Melissa Friedrich when she moved into his Florida home. Strategos was rushed to hospital eight times over a two-month period.
“I was suspicious. Every night, in a little custard cup she’d give me about two or three teaspoons of ice cream. I feel that was when she was doing it,” Strategos told Global News in 2005.
The prescribed drug benzodiazepine was found in the home and about $18,000 went missing from Strategos’ bank account.
In Jan. 2005, Pinellas Park Police arrested Friedrich. She pleaded guilty to seven charges related to the Strategos case including three counts of grand theft from a person 65 years or older, two counts of forgery and two counts of using a forged document. She served four years of a five year sentence and was released in 2009.
“It’s just unusual to have a suspect of her age bracket,” Sgt. Paul Andrews of the Pinella Park Police told Global News. “Generally we see younger people trying to take advantage of older people. In this case, it’s an older woman trying to take advantage of an older man.”
Friedrich also served two years of a six year sentence for the 1991 manslaughter death of her then husband Gordon Stewart, 44, of Prince Edward Island.
The two lived in Dartmouth, N.S., at the time, when Stewart was heavily drugged, run over twice with a vehicle and left for dead on a deserted road. Non-prescribed benzodiazepine was found in his system.
