HOUSTON (AP) – A cancer researcher in Texas was convicted Friday of aggravated assault for poisoning her colleague, who was also her lover, by lacing his coffee with a sweet-tasting chemical found in antifreeze.
Dr. Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, 43, a breast cancer doctor based at Houston’s famed Texas Medical Center, had been involved in a sexual relationship with her fellow researcher, Dr. George Blumenschein.
Prosecutors told jurors that Gonzalez-Angulo was a devious and diabolical person who became obsessed with Blumenschein. They said the affair turned into a “fatal attraction” and she poisoned him with ethylene glycol after Blumenschein spurned her in favor of Evette Toney, his live-in girlfriend of 10 years with whom he was trying to start a family.
Jurors deliberated for about four hours over two days before reaching their verdict. Gonzalez-Angulo had no visible reaction after the verdict was read.
Blumenschein told jurors that he became sick Jan. 27, 2013, not long after he and Gonzalez-Angulo had been intimate, and that he immediately suspected his lover of spiking his coffee. Witnesses testified that Gonzalez-Angulo had access to ethylene glycol at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center where she and Blumenschein worked.