According to an AP report, a 51-year-old woman in upstate New York poured a shotglass-full of ethylene glycol into a container of margarita mix last October and left the cocktail in the refrigerator, assuming (correctly) that her boyfriend would drink it. She says she didn't expect him to die, just get sick. But she must have mixed the drink a little too strong because he did indeed die, and now she could get life.
Thing is, no one would have known she was responsible for the death if she hadn't gone to sunny Florida three months later and confessed to a friend, who then told Clearwater police, leading them to contact authorities in New York.
Read an excerpt from the AP story after the break. And check out this classic of local TV-news reporting, with the traditional quotes from neighbors who are shocked, I tell you, shocked that such a thing could happen in their midst: "It’s kind of disturbing that it would happen in such a quiet place."
Quiet? What could be quieter than a spiked margarita?
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.