A Colombian woman accused of killing two children with poisoned berries dodged capture from international police but was no match for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).
The Chiswick branch of the lifeboat rescue organisation pulled the businesswoman who was the subject of an international manhunt from the Thames on December 16, after she had evaded Interpol.
Zulma Guzman Castro, 54, was on the run from Colombia after she was accused of killing Ines de Bedout, 14, and Emilia Forero, 13, with poisoned raspberries that were injected with toxic thallium.
It was alleged this was an act of “vengeance” after her six-year affair with Ms Bedout’s father ended in 2020.
Ms Castro denies the charges.
Just before 7am she was pulled from 9C water by the RNLI crew, often two staff members and two volunteers, consisting of an ex-journalist, former postman, ex-soldier and a retired business mogul.
Successfully completing such a technical manoeuvre in a tidal river “requires practice” and “is not for the faint hearted”, Thames commander James Anthony wrote on the Chiswick Calendar blog.
Mr Anthony, a former Evening Standard journalist, said the crew was not aware who they were rescuing, but found it “quite odd” that she seemed “determined not to be assisted”.
Once on dry land, she was handed over to an ambulance team.
It wasn’t until the next day, when a police officer sent a news story to Mr Anthony, that he realised who they had saved.
He said: “But, like every rescue carried out by the RNLI in the past 201 years, there was no judgment.
“Just pride in a job well done. And a joke about how you might outrun Interpol but you’ll never outpace Chiswick lifeboat.”
Colombian authorities made a request to the UK to capture Ms Castro and Westminster Magistrates’ Court released a warrant for her arrest days before she was found.
After being rescued from the Thames, she was sectioned at a psychiatric hospital, where she was later arrested by the National Extradition Unit on January 6.
The National Extradition Unit said Ms Castro was arrested by officers in the W10 postcode of London.
The unit said she is “wanted by the Colombian authorities in relation to murder and attempted murder”.
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