Arizona woman sentenced to probation for poisoning husband’s coffee with bleach for months

PHOENIX — An Arizona woman who was accused of trying to kill her husband by poisoning his coffee every day for several months has avoided jail time and was sentenced three years of probation, according to court documents filed last week.

Melody Feliciano Johnson, 40, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to two felony counts of adding poison or another harmful substance to food or drink. In addition to her three-year probation sentence, Judge Javier Chon-Lopez ordered Melody Johnson to undergo a mental health evaluation, barred her from consuming alcohol and prohibited her from having contact with her husband unless they were in the presence of a legal team.

Through a plea deal, charges of attempted first-degree murder and attempted aggravated assault were dropped. Prosecutors had alleged Johnson added trace amounts of bleach to her husband Roby Johnson’s coffee maker. Chon-Lopez also noted that Roby Johnson had told the court he did not want his estranged wife to serve prison time, CNN reported.

Roby Johnson, a member of the U.S. Air Force, told investigators in a criminal report that he believed his wife was poisoning him with bleach in an attempt “to kill him to collect death benefits,” court papers said.

He said he first noticed his coffee tasted foul while being stationed in Germany with his family in March 2023, according to court papers. At the time, the Johnsons were living together with their child but were in the process of a divorce.

According to America’s Poison Centers, which represents over 50 poison centers across the country, poisoning is the leading cause of injury death in the United States, followed by motor vehicle collisions and falls. A 2013 study published in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology found that homicidal poisoning is an "infrequently established crime" and that there are several challenges in detecting homicidal poisonings.

The case is the latest incident involving couples across the United States. Poisoning cases have made national headlines in recent years, including a Utah woman who gained notoriety last year after she was accused of fatally poisoning her husband and then writing a children's book about grief.

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Melody Johnson accused of putting bleach into husband's coffee maker

After noticing the foul taste in his coffee, Roby Johnson continued to drink the coffee for two to three weeks before using pool testing strips to determine what was causing the taste. He told detectives that after testing his family’s tap water, which generated typical readings, he tested his coffee and found that it contained “high levels” of chlorine.

Court records showed that Roby Johnson pretended to drink the coffee for the rest of the time that the family was in Germany, as he did not want to alert authorities and file a report abroad.

When the family returned to Tucson, Arizona, in June 2023, Roby Johnson installed a camera inside their temporary housing at an Air Force base to observe his wife’s behavior. The camera recorded Melody Johnson putting bleach in his coffee, according to court papers.

Roby Johnson filed a report with the Tucson Police Department on July 6, but officers did not investigate further because the video footage did not clearly depict what substance Melody Johnson was pouring into his coffee. Roby Johnson then installed higher-quality hidden cameras in the family’s laundry room, where the bleach was, and above the coffee maker.

On July 18, Roby Johnson returned to police with new video footage that allegedly showed Melody Johnson putting bleach into a container before pouring it into the coffee maker, which he said only he used. Investigators discovered that the liquid inside the coffee maker allegedly smelled like bleach.

Both counts to which Melody Johnson pled guilty carried a maximum sentence of two years in prison each.

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Symptoms and signs of homicidal poisonings are often misdiagnosed as natural diseases, which suggests that there is an unknown number of cases that have gone undetected, according to The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology study.

The study analyzed reported cases of homicidal poisoning in in Miami-Dade County, Florida; New York City, New York; Oakland County, Michigan; and Sweden, and found that the "lethal agent of choice" has changed over the years.

"In earlier years, traditional poisons such as arsenic, cyanide, and parathion were frequently used," the study states. "Such poisonings are nowadays rare, and instead, narcotics are more commonly detected in victims of this crime."

Other common agents found in poisoning cases are over-the-counter medicines, household cleaning substances and personal care substances, according to America’s Poison Centers.

Numerous cases of attempted murder and murder by poisoning have drawn widespread attention in the United States in recent years.

Utah widow Kouri Darden Richins, 33, faced additional criminal charges in March linked to the death of her husband of nine years. Richins had wrote a children's book about grieving after her husband died and was later charged with fatally poisoning him with fentanyl.

Prosecutors filed an additional attempted murder charge for an alleged poisoning attempt they believe Richins previously made on her husband before his death in March 2022. Court records also revealed that Richins took out nearly $2 million in life insurance policies without her husband's knowledge.

In January, a Missouri teacher was charged with attempted murder after she admitted to putting Lily of the Valley — which is categorized as having major toxicity — in her husband's food. Her husband told police that he believed his unexplained illness was the result of an intentional act of poisoning

A North Dakota woman was charged with murder last November. Authorities said she poisoned her long-time boyfriend with antifreeze after she discovered that he would receive a multimillion-dollar inheritance and he planned to break up with her. An autopsy later concluded that her boyfriend died by poisoning.

Contributing: Ahjané Forbes and Mary Walrath-Holdridge, USA TODAY