Spanish Court Sentences Francisca Ballesteros to 84 Years for Poisoning Her Husband and Two Daughters
She dosed her family with an anti-alcoholism drug in Melilla. Her son, 12, survived, and the court also convicted her of killing a baby daughter who died in 1990.
Published
For months, the family of Francisca Ballesteros kept falling ill in Melilla, and two of them died. On September 26, 2005, a court sentenced her to 84 years in prison for poisoning them.
The Melilla section of the Provincial Court of Malaga convicted Ballesteros of three murders and one attempted murder. She received 25 years for the murder of her 15-year-old daughter, Sandra, with treachery and cruelty; 20 years each for the murders of her husband, Antonio González, 42, and of her baby daughter Florinda, who died in 1990; and 19 years for trying to kill her 12-year-old son, who survived. The court found that she had given them calcium cyanamide, the active ingredient of the anti-alcoholism drug Colme, a tasteless and colorless substance.
Ballesteros, 36, had met several men online in the summer of 2003. That November her husband and children were hospitalized with poisoning, which she blamed on fumigation. Her husband died in January 2004, and his death was put down to a heart attack. Sandra died on June 4, 2004, shortly after being admitted to the hospital with signs of poisoning, and traces of the drug were found in her body and in a bottle of water by her bed. Ballesteros told investigators she had given the drug to her husband because he drank and mistreated her, and to her children so they would not suffer over their father's death. She gave no explanation for Florinda's death.
Sources
- Sentencia Penal Nº 71/2005, Audiencia Provincial de Málaga, Section 7, sitting in Melilla (via Iberley)
- Más de ochenta años de cárcel para la Envenenadora de Melilla, Adegüello