Texas woman admits sending Obama ricin letter
Source: news.yahoo.com
The FBI says a Texas woman admitted sending ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but only after trying to pin it on her husband. Shannon Richardson, shown with her husband, Nathan, is accused of mailing ricin to the president. |
The 35-year-old actress and pregnant mother of five contacted authorities on May 30 to implicate her husband.
An FBI affidavit says she failed a polygraph test and investigators found inconsistencies in her story.
The affidavit says she later admitted mailing the letters knowing they contained ricin, but said her husband typed them and made her do it.
No charges have been filed against her husband. His attorney says the couple is divorcing and the letters were a setup.
Article from: news.yahoo.com
According to an FBI affidavit, Richardson contacted authorities on May 30 and implicated her husband, Nathaniel Richardson. She described finding small, brown beans with white speckles -- a description matching the key ingredient in ricin, castor beans -- at the couple’s home in New Boston, Texas. She also told investigators that she had found a sticky note on her husband’s desk with addresses for Bloomberg and Obama, the affidavit said.
But she later failed a polygraph test, the document said, and investigators looking into her story found numerous inconsistencies. Among them: Nathaniel Richardson would have been at work when Internet searches tied to the letters were made on the couple’s laptop and when the envelopes containing the letters were postmarked.
Finally, the affidavit says, in an interview with authorities on Thursday, Shannon Richardson admitted that she had received syringes and lye -- a caustic chemical used in making ricin -- in the mail; that she had printed the labels for the letters; and that she mailed them. However, she insisted her husband typed them and "made her" print and send them, the affidavit says.
No charges have been filed against her husband. His attorney, John Delk, told The Associated Press on Friday that his client was pleased with his wife’s arrest and was working with authorities to prove his innocence.
Delk previously told the AP that the couple is going through a divorce and that the 33-year-old Army veteran may have been "set up" by his wife. In divorce papers filed Thursday, Nathanial Richardson said the marriage had become "insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities."
Source: CTVNews
