A woman mixed ground-up Viagra tablets into coffee in an attempt to poison her co-workers, but was found out when her colleagues became suspicious and set up a camera to catch her in the act.
Karen Beale, 62, was employed as a cleaner at Envirograf, a factory that makes fire protection products in Dover. She was caught on film tampering with a jar of Nescafé, and that’s when her two (female) colleagues realised she was ‘poisoning’ them with Viagra.
The camera was set up after the women noticed a ‘strange taste’ to their coffees any time Karen made them. The coffees also had ‘blue and white specks’ in them, which you’d think would be enough stop you drinking them, but apparently not.
Police were alerted and found two coffee jars containing sildenafil – an erectile dysfunction treatment sold under the name Viagra – and a medication for high cholesterol.
The contaminated coffees were served to Katrina Gravenor, the firm’s accountant, and the company secretary, Jean Smith.
Karen Beale, who had worked at the company for seven years, told police she was the victim of malicious allegations, even though she was blatantly caught in the act on camera. She denies two charges of attempting to administer a poison or other destructive or noxious substance with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy.
Prosecutor Matthew Hodgetts said none of the chemicals found were toxic, but alleged Beale still intended to harm her colleagues: “She was intending that there would be some effect on those two women by putting it in their coffee. That’s why the prosecution say she was attempting to poison.”
Who knows, maybe Karen was just trying to get out of coffee-making responsibilities by making the coffees so disgusting so that no one would ask her again. Apparently that didn’t work, so she kept on making Viagra coffees and was stunned that her colleagues kept drinking them. Aside from that I’m not sure what her end-game was, although despite the prosecution stating that none of the chemicals were ‘toxic’, Viagra can still be harmful if administered in high enough doses.
For the man who noticed his coffee was tasting weird and so set up a camera which caught his wife trying to poison him, click HERE.
