Netflix has just added its latest true-crime documentary about suspected Indian serial killer Jollyamma Joseph, a seemingly devoted wife and mother accused of murdering six family members.
Curry and Cyanide takes viewers inside the pastel pink house in Koodathai, a small town in Kozhikode, Kerala, where Joseph, 47, allegedly poisoned her husband, his parents, and three other members of their family – including a two-year-old girl – by mixing cyanide into their food.
The show’s logline reads: “The team investigates six shocking deaths in the same family and the woman at the centre of the incredible case, Jolly Joseph, to try and uncover what really happened.”
The “Koodathai cyanide killings” were carried out over a 14-year period, as Joseph allegedly plotted to take control of her husband, Roy Thomas’s family home, and marry the man of her dreams, his cousin Shaju Sakhariyas.
Neighbours described Joseph, who married Thomas in 1997, as a talkative and well-mannered woman, with a prestigious job working as a professor at one of the country’s foremost engineering universities. She was a devout Christian and went to church regularly, they said.
Five years after the wedding, Joseph’s mother-in-law Annamma Thomas died suddenly after drinking a glass of water.
Her death was followed by the mysterious passing of Annamma’s husband Tom Thomas in 2008. Joseph allegedly handed her father-in-law a capsule he was used to taking every evening, before the 66-year-old became violently sick. He was declared dead at a nearby hospital.
In 2011, Roy died after eating a meal of rice and chickpea curry prepared by his wife. When his uncle Mathew Manjadiyil asked for a post-mortem examination, it was revealed Roy died after consuming cyanide, a chemical compound applications in the jewelery, textile, and metallurgy industries, which can be fatal in large doses.
His death was ruled a suicide and investigation was closed.
Joseph is also accused of killing Manjadiyil, Sakhariyas’s wife Sili, and their two-yea-old daughter Alphine, over the next five years.
In 2017, she remarried Shaju, with Jolly reportedly telling many people how much she wished for a husband like him.
After six unnatural deaths in his family, Rojo Thomas travelled to Koodathai and filed several Right To Information (RTI) applications and obtained a copy of his brother Roy’s post-mortem report.
This was the beginning of Joseph’s downfall.
Noticing an inconsistency betwen Joseph’s version of the night Roy died and the findings of the post-mortem, Rojo, his sister Ranji, and their neighbour Mohammed Bava filed a police complaint.
A police investigation followed, as it began to emerge that the god-fearing, well-educated and doting wife may not be who she claimed. Altogether, police reportedly said, they discovered over 50 discrepancies between her statements and evidence.
During the investigation, they also learned Joseph had never had a job at the prestigious National Institute of Technology in Calicut. The reverend at the local church Joseph said she attended claimed she wasn’t a member of the diocese and had nothing to with its activities.
She was arrested for the murder of her ex-husband as well as five others on 5 October 2019, when Kozhikhode district police superintendent KG Simon revealed that Joseph had confessed to all six murders.
Joseph has been charged with murder, destruction of evidence and Section 6 (2) of the Indian Poison Act for crimes committed using poison.
The chargesheet also names Joseph’s co-accused as M S Mathew, a jewellery shop employee who gave Joseph the cyanide, and Praji Kimar, a goldsmith who allegedly supplied the poison to Mathew.
“One of the first things that got us to suspect her was her behaviour,” Simon said, when the 1.000-page chargesheet was filed in 2020. “She had even tried to stop the bodies of the six deceased persons to be exhumed. We have gauged her behaviour and found evidence of all her movements and activities.
“When we found out that she was not a professor at NIT, then her false claims started getting exposed.”
“It’s not a small thing to be able to deceive people with the fake identity of an NIT professor for 14 years,” Simon told CNN.
Cyanide and Curry: The Jolly Joseph Story is currently streaming on Netflix in the UK.
