Daijiworld Media Network - Thiruvananthapuram
Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 12: The Kerala serial murders, where a woman allegedly killed six family members over a span of two decades have become the talk of the state.
The suspected killer Jolly Thomas (47) who was arrested by a special investigation team had a simple modus operandi. She used cyanide laced food to kill her family.
The first murder allegedly committed by Jolly was on September 22, 2002. Annamma Thomas, Jolly’s mother-in-law who was then a 57-year-old, died after consuming a mutton soup laced with cyanide. On September 26, 2008, Tom Thomas, Jolly’s 66-year-old father-in-law, died after consuming poisonous food.
Jolly Thomas
Jolly next targeted her husband Roy Thomas (40). He was found dead inside the bathroom of his Punnamattom family residence on October 30, 2011. The police had conducted postmortem and found traces of cyanide in his body. However, the investigators suspected suicide as Roy was facing financial difficulties. The case file was closed.
Roy’s uncle Mathew Manjadiyil was not convinced that Roy committed suicide and called for a postmortem report and a probe into his death. Mysteriously, Mathew died in 2014 after drinking a coffee laced with cyanide.
The next murder was of toddler Alphine Shaju, daughter of Jolly’s second husband, Shaju. The toddler died while choking on food in 2014. In 2016, Shaju’s first wife Sily died after drinking a glass of water laced with cyanide.
Jolly obtained cyanide from relative MS Mathew who was her accomplice in the murders. Mathew obtained cyanide from Prajikumar, a goldsmith. Both have been arrested.
Police suspect that Jolly murdered her relatives primarily for financial gains. Roy’s brother Rojo in his complaint said that Jolly had forged Tom Thomas's will to show herself as the sole heir. However, there are also other factors that made her commit the murders, investigators said.
Jolly had lied that she was a B.Tech graduate and lecturer at the National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Kozhikode. NIT Kozhikode released a statement that there was no employee by name Jolly. However, Jolly used to walk into the NIT campus with a fake id and pretend to be an employee.