An Arizona woman tried to kill her husband – a US military member – by poisoning his coffee with bleach daily since March before her arrest, authorities allege.
Melody Felicano Johnson faces charges of attempted first-degree homicide, attempted aggravated assault, and adding poison to food or drink after her husband sent video to police of her apparently pouring bleach into his coffee pot. A state grand jury indicted her in Tucson in July.
According to court documents, Johnson was in the process of divorcing her husband, whom CNN has identified as Roby Johnson. The Johnsons were living together and share a child but were going through a divorce, the court documents said.
Melody Johnson fell under scrutiny after her husband started noticing at about the end of March that his coffee tasted bad while stationed in Germany as part of the US air force.
Roby Johnson continued to drink the coffee for the next two to three weeks; but when he noticed the peculiar taste remaining, he bought pool chemical testing strips.
He tested the faucet water, which came back with normal results. Then, upon testing his coffee pot, the strips indicated high levels of chlorine.
Court documents recounted how he suspected that someone was tampering with his coffee, and in May he set up a camera in his house that recorded Melody pouring something into his coffee pot.
Roby Johnson stated that his wife knew that he would prepare the pot the night before so that all he needed was to turn on the machine the next morning to make his coffee. At that time, he stopped drinking the coffee but continued to pretend to drink it “as he did not want to make a report of this while in Germany”.
The couple returned back to the US on 28 June. And on 1 July, they arrived in Tucson’s Davis-Monthan air force base, where they were placed in temporary hotel housing. While at the hotel, Roby Johnson set up a camera again. And four days later, the camera recorded how “Melody [walked] to his coffee maker and pour[ed] something into his water reservoir,” court documents said.
He went on to file a report on 6 July with Tucson police. And according to court documents, he showed officers at the front desk the camera footage.
Police took the report but didn’t follow up because officers “could not clearly see what she was pouring into the coffee maker”, court documents said.
As a result, Roby Johnson bought additional cameras that looked like fire alarms and attached them to the ceiling of the permanent housing into which he and Melody were transferred on 7 July.
One of the cameras was in the laundry room where the bleach was kept. Another was directly over the coffee maker. And another was aimed at a walkway from the laundry room to the coffee maker, court documents said.
The cameras eventually collectively captured Melody Johnson as she grabbed bleach, poured it into a container, and then poured that container into the coffee maker after walking up to the machine, court documents said.
After officers obtained a warrant to search the home, they found liquid which smelled like bleach inside of the coffee maker. There was also a container inside Melody Johnson’s bedroom – under her bathroom sink – which “smelled like bleach and had a very small amount of liquid inside”.
A judge set Johnson’s bail at $250,000 after her arrest. Authorities had requested a high bond because they said she has family in the Philippines, where she bought a house late last year.
Prosecutors had also argued that Johnson was a flight risk. She had not made bail and remained in custody at a local jail as of Sunday.
Court documents make it a point to say that Roby Johnson believed his wife was trying to kill him to collect death benefits.
• This article was amended on 6 August 2023 to correct a reference to the first of the charges that Melody Felicano Johnson faces, which is attempted first-degree homicide.
