A remand report on Jolly Joseph, prime suspect in the Koodathayi serial murders, has said that she had poisoned to death her father-in-law Tom Thomas to secure his ancestral property at Ponnamattam.
The report, submitted by the special police team probing the cases before the Thamarassery Munsif Magistrate Court on Wednesday, said Jolly had laced Thomas’s vitamin capsules with cyanide so as to kill him at his residence on August 26, 2008. Investigators had already gathered evidence to prove that she had forged documents and title deeds to convert the landed property to her name.
The Koodathayi incident pertains to the death of retired Education Department officer Tom Thomas; his wife and retired teacher Annamma Thomas; their son Roy Thomas, first husband of Jolly; Sily, wife of Shaju Zacharias, the second husband of Jolly; her two-year old daughter Alphine; and Annamma's brother-in-law Mathew Manjadiyil under mysterious circumstances.
Meanwhile, the Thamarassery Judicial First Class Magistrate Court remanded Jolly in police custody for interrogation till November 18 in connection with the case of murder of Thomas. As of now, Jolly was arrested in five murder cases. She has been in police custody for 27 days in four other cases.
In a related development, the Thamarassery Munsif Court gave permission to the police to record the arrest of M.S. Mathew, aka Shaji, a jewellery employee who had helped Jolly to procure cyanide.
