Alison Redford ordered $24 in coffee on taxpayers dime, and other revelations from her expense reports
Joe Biden delivers soundbite gift to Romney campaign, says U.S. middle class buried the last four years
Alison Redford ordered $24 in coffee on taxpayers dime, and other revelations from her expense reports
Joe Biden delivers soundbite gift to Romney campaign, says U.S. middle class buried the last four years
Romancing the Internet Black Widow: Man recounts alleged poisoning as fresh accusations emerge inN.B.
They hit it off immediately. Alex Strategos was divorced, a lonely old man, he says, twice married and looking for new love when he connected with Melissa Ann Friedrich on an Internet dating site in 2005.
She was a few years younger, full of life and fully prepared to do something crazy, like driving down to Pinellas, Fla., from Prince Edward Island for a dinner date with a man she had never met. She moved in with Mr. Strategos that same night.
She seemed like a real classy lady, he recalls. I was lonely, and she was a woman.
He read with interest this week as Ms. Friedrich, already convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of a husband in 1991, was charged with attempted murder and administering a noxious thing in a Sydney, N.S., courtroom in connection with her latest whirlwind romance allegedly gone awry.
Its a familiar story for Mr. Strategos, whose romance seven years ago with Ms. Friedrich, since dubbed the Internet Black Widow, almost immediately took a sinister twist.
The then 73-year-old felt ill, bone-weary and weak. He fell down a lot. He blamed old age, concluded that the years, sadly, were catching up to him at the worst possible time.
He tucked into bed early each night. Ms. Friedrich would bring him a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
Mr. Strategos alleged then, and maintains to this day,外汇 that the nightly desserts were responsible for his precipitous decline in health.
The doctors couldnt figure it out, he says, chuckling, from his home in Pinellas. I ended up in a rest home and they discovered the drugs in my system there. Melissa wanted my money. She got about $18,000 out of me.
I was basically sprawled out flat [in bed] when she got power of attorney. I can thank my son for saving my life, because the rest home discovered the drugs in my system and he and his girlfriend called the police. And thats how it all began.
How it ended, at least on this occasion, was in a Florida courtroom in March, 2005. Ms. Friedrich pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including three counts of grand theft from a person 65 years of age or older and two counts of forgery. (Florida police investigated the allegations of poisoning, though never pressed charges.) Ms. Friedrich spent four years in a Florida prison.
Now, the cycle of love-and-near-death has allegedly begun anew in Cape Breton, and the story of Melissa Ann Friedrich also known as Melissa Ann Stewart and presently known as Melissa (or Millie, for short) Weeks continues.
Fred Weeks, the alleged target, is 75, a resident of the Quinnway senior villa in New Glasgow and a newlywed. He and his bride, Melissa, age 77, who he reportedly barely knew, were on a Cape Breton getaway last weekend and staying at the Chambers Guest House Bed and Breakfast. The couple appeared at the North Sydney General Hospital Sunday morning. Mr. Weeks was unwell. He had apparently fallen. Police were called and, after a brief investigation, charges laid.
Mr. Weeks was released from hospital Monday. He could not be reached for comment. Melissa Ann Weeks is due back in court for a bail hearing Friday, a legal proceeding the Burnt Church, N.B., native became familiar with in Ontario during the 1970s and early 80s, where she compiled a lengthy criminal record peppered with forgery and fraud convictions.
She added homicide to her repertoire in 1991 on an empty stretch of road near Halifax airport. Drugging her then husband, 美容 Gordon Stewart, running over him, twice, and reporting the incident to police three hours after the fact while claiming that her husband had attempted to rape her.
Mr. Stewart, an ex-military man, penned a letter not long before his death chronicling how his wife had drained their joint bank account, lied, and cheated.
I took her back, he wrote. I still loved her and kept hoping she would change.
She was convicted of manslaughter in his death and free after two years. She became a spokesperson for battered women syndrome. She even won a government grant.
Eric Hickey is the Director for Forensic Studies, at Alliant International University in Fresno, Calif. He knows nothing about these cases, but has studied the phenomenon of black widows.
They see these men as simply objects, someone who can get them to where they need to go. They are black widows, says the New Brunswick-born academic.
They are quite calculating and they are pretty good liars and they have gotten more sophisticated: they used to use formaldehyde and arsenic to poison their victims that was a real popular one but also quite detectable.
Robert Friedrich, a Florida man, met Melissa Stewart through an Internet dating site in 2001. They were married within days and Mr. Friedrich was dead within 14 months. The new Mrs. Friedrich inherited everything. Criminal charges were never laid.
Four years later, Alex Strategos, a lonely old man, found love.
Today he is 81, following the proceedings in Canada involving the woman he once knew with interest and scooping his own bowls of ice cream.
Sure, I still eat ice cream, he says, chuckling. And just as long as I feed myself, I know it is OK.
National Post
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