O'Connor talks about attempt to poison Court
Cookies mailed to the U.S. Supreme Court last year contained enough rat poison to kill all nine justices, retired member Sandra Day O’Connor said at a conference last week.
Barbara Joan March, a 60-year-old Connecticut woman, was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison. She sent 14 threatening letters in April 2005 — each with a baked good or piece of candy laced with rat poison — to a variety of federal officials: the nine Supreme Court justices; FBI Director Robert Mueller; his deputy; the chief of naval operations; the Air Force chief of staff and the chief of staff of the Army.
March pleaded guilty in March to 14 counts of mailing injurious articles.
March’s plea received little public attention until O’Connor discussed it last week.
“Every member of the Supreme Court received a wonderful package of home-baked cookies, and I don’t know why, (but) the staff decided to analyze them,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted O’Connor as saying at the legal conference November 10 in the Dallas area. “Each one contained enough poison to kill the entire membership of the court.”
The letters did not seem to pose much of a real danger since the threatening note told the recipients the food was poisoned.
I was curious to know two things: 1) What was Ms. March’s beef? Specifically, why did she want to, uh, “reverse and remand” every member of the Court — left, right and center? That struck me as oddly fair and balanced. And 2) Why did she announce that the cookies were poisoned? Is there a code of honor among the tiny subset of assassins who snare their quarry with deadly baked goods?
I Googled these pressing questions and found this:
A Connecticut woman picked a frightening and potentially deadly way to strike back at friends and family members who, she felt, had slighted her. Barbara Joan March sent cookies and candy laced with rat poison to Supreme Court justices and top FBI and Pentagon officials.
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The letters seemingly were mailed by acquaintances of March, leading prosecutors to conclude that she was motivated by misplaced anger toward the purported senders rather than a desire to harm the intended recipients.
An FBI investigation found that March sent all the letters, including some that she typed at a public library near her home.
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