Suspicious in the poisoning of Christmas cakes found dead in jail

A Brazilian woman suspected of poisoning her husband’s family with a Christmas cake with arsenic was found dead in her prison cell in what the police believe it was probably a suicide.

Deise Moura Dos Anjos, 42, had been in preventive detention since January after prosecutors accused her of the murder on Christmas eve of three relatives and the attempted murder of three others.

All the victims had eaten from the cake, that forensic experts found that they had been baked with flour contaminated with the mortal poison.

The police were also investigating if she could have killed her father -in -law, who died in September.

Forensic experts who exhumed their body found high levels of arsenic, which led them to believe that he had also been poisoned.

Moura Dos Anjos denied any irregularity, but local police chief Cléber Dos Santos Lima told the journalists last month that she was “sure she investigated, bought (…) and used the poison to kill her victims.”

He added that the police had found evidence that showed that she had bought arsenic on four separate occasions.

The researchers tried many foods in the house of the mother -in -law of Moura Dos Anjos, where the six victims became ill, to find the source of poisoning.

Finally, they found high levels of the sky or arsenic in the flour, some of which the mother -in -law of Moura Dos Anjos, Zeli Dos Anjos, had used the Christmas cake.

As Zeli Dos Anjos had eaten from the cake and was taken seriously ill, the police quickly ruled out as a suspect even though he had prepared the cake.

Zeli Dos Anjos survived, but two of his sisters and one of his nieces died.

His 10 -year -old grandson and the husband of one of his sisters were also among the poisoned but recovered.