A wife poisoned the coffee of her estranged US Air Force husband with bleach for months, according to court documents.
Melody Johnson was arrested on 18 July after her husband submitted to police allegedly showing her pouring the cleaning product into his coffee machine.
The husband, who has not been publicly named, first noticed his coffee tasted odd at the end of March while stationed in Germany.
Johnson, 39, and her husband are going through a divorce but lived together with their child.
The husband continued drinking the strange tasting brew two or three weeks before using chemical testing strips to test the water in his tap, which came back normal.
When he tested the water in his coffee pot it showed “high levels of chlorine”, court documents state.
In May, the husband set up a camera in the home which showed Johnson “pouring something into his coffee pot”.
He pretended to drink the coffee until the family moved back to America on 28 June because he didn’t want to file a report in Germany, NBC News says.
While temporarily stationed at a hotel in Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, the husband set up another camera which again allegedly showed his wife “walk to his coffee maker and pour something into his water reservoir” on 5 July.
The husband filed a police report the next day but was told by officers that it wasn’t clear what Johnson was pouring into his coffee pot.
When the family moved to a permanent home on 7 July, he set up more cameras that looked like fire alarms, according to court documents.
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One was placed in the laundry room where bleach was kept, another was placed right over the coffee machine and a third was placed to show walking between those two areas.
After collecting multiple s reportedly showing Johnson “take bleach, pour it into a container and then walk over and pour it into the coffee maker”, the husband went back to police.
He told police he believes his estranged wife was trying to kill him to collect death benefits.
Johnson was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree homicide, attempted aggravated assault and adding poison to food or drink.
A search of the home allegedly discovered a container in Johnson’s bedroom under her bathroom sink that smelled like bleach and had some liquid inside it. There was also reportedly liquid inside the coffee maker that smelled like bleach.
