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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com/ForensicTales Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. For years, the Thomas family from India seemed to be cursed, leaving six people dead in mysterious ways.
It wasn't until people started to realize that there always seemed to be one person present every time someone died that foul play was suspected. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 230, The Cudete Cyanide Killings. ♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to the episode, we've got two new Patreon supporters to thank this week. Thank you so much to Adam and Della J.
Now, let's get to this week's episode. Our story this week takes us abroad to Kudate, a small village in the southern part of India. Before 2019, this village of only about 12,000 people wasn't known for much. You've probably never even heard of it, until six people all from the same family were discovered murdered by cyanide poisoning.
After exposure, cyanide quickly enters the bloodstream. If the body can handle the amount ingested, it usually just passes through our body and then out through our urine. Or it can combine with another chemical to form the vitamin B12. But when the body ingests an amount it can't handle, it prevents our body's cells from using oxygen, and eventually these cells die.
Our heart, respiratory system, and central nervous system all shut down within seconds to minutes. And then we die. Cyanide poisoning is believed to be one of the most painful ways that someone can die. For 14 years, one family from Kudate seemed to be cursed. One by one, they started dying. Some old and others young. At first, they seemed to be just bad luck.
But eventually, people started to suspect something else was happening. Someone from their own family was poisoning them. The Thomas family was considered one of the most well-respected families in this particular village of India. Tom Thomas was the patriarch, and his wife was Anima Thomas. Tom was a retired education department clerk, and Anima used to work as a schoolteacher. Together, they had two sons and a daughter.
Rojo and Roy were the boys and Renji was the girl. It all started in 2002 when 57-year-old Anima suddenly died from what doctors thought was a heart attack. Her death was sudden and really shocked the family because before that she didn't have any health conditions and the day that she died was completely normal. She started it by going for a walk and ended it by having a bowl of soup for dinner. After that she was dead.
No autopsy was performed because the family didn't want one. In India, autopsies are usually only done if the death is thought to be suspicious. They can also be requested by the family, but most Indians don't because of the cultural belief that they disturb the deceased person's body. So if the death isn't suspicious, nothing's usually done. Plus, Anima was close to 60 years old, so they just chalked up her death to a heart attack and that was it.
Then six years later, Anima's husband, Tom Thomas, also died. In 2008, 66-year-old Tom was found dead in his bathroom from what doctors thought was also a heart attack. And at 66, no one felt like an autopsy needed to be done, so he was buried alongside his wife. By 2012, the death seemed to get stranger. Three years after Tom died, a third person turned up dead.
This time, it was one of Tom and Anima's sons, 40-year-old Roy Thomas. Roy's death was almost identical to his dad's. He was even found inside the same exact bathroom that his dad died in. And like both of his parents, it looked like a heart attack. But this time, the family wanted an autopsy. Roy's uncle Matthew was the one who raised his hand first, saying that he wanted an autopsy for his nephew.
He thought it was just way too much of a coincidence for all three of them to die from heart attacks when they otherwise seemed healthy. He also didn't think that Roy's death made any sense. He was only 40 years old with zero health conditions, so a heart attack just seemed unlikely. Plus, what are the chances that he would die in the same exact way in the same exact bathroom that his dad did?
At the time of Roy's death, he was married to a woman named Jolly Joseph. And when Roy's uncle Matthew asked for an autopsy, Jolly was completely against the idea but eventually gave in. But Roy's autopsy wasn't at all what the family thought. According to the medical examiner, Roy died from a suicide. It wasn't a heart attack like everyone had thought.
When Roy's body was discovered, the bathroom door was locked from the inside, so he had to be the one to do it. He also had a lethal amount of cyanide in his system that the medical examiner thought that Roy gave himself. So the locked door and cyanide all pointed to one direction, suicide. Roy ingested a lethal amount of suicide and then locked himself in the same bathroom that his dad died in.
Even Roy's wife, Jolly, the one who didn't want an autopsy, thought it was a suicide. She said they were having financial problems at the time, so he was probably depressed and killed himself because of the money issues. So for the authorities, this was case closed, and they didn't investigate it any farther. Little did they know, this was just the beginning. More deaths followed three years later in 2014.
Now, it was 67-year-old Matthew's turn, Roy's uncle, the same person who wanted the autopsy. He died of what authorities thought was a heart attack as well, and no autopsy was done. He was buried, and the authorities didn't bother to collect any forensic evidence. The final two deaths happened right after that. First, it was 2-year-old Alphine Chajou in 2014.
She was the daughter of Shaju, Roy Thomas' first cousin, and died after allegedly choking on food at a christening ceremony. After that, Shaju's wife, Silly, passed away two years later in 2016 after she collapsed at a dental clinic, bringing the death count now to six. By 2016, Rojo and his sister, Renji, started having their doubts about what was really going on.
Instead of being plagued by heart attacks, suicides, and mysterious illnesses, they thought someone in their own family might be behind the deaths. Jolly Johnson, the third victim, Roy Thomas' wife, and the only person who seemed to be around every single time someone died. Jolly Joseph was born in 1972 to a family of farmers.
Her family was just one of the many to migrate to that area to farm, and her childhood was every bit traditional Indian. Growing up as the fifth of six children, Jolly was described as the sweet one of the bunch. All of her siblings said that she was the last one any of them fought with growing up. She just never did anything to make them mad or angry with her. Jolly knew from an early age that she didn't want to grow up to become a farmer like the rest of her family.
So that's why she became the first in her family to go to college, something that they were very proud of. She attended a government school before getting her pre-degree in humanities at the Muslim Education Society College. She then got a bachelor's degree at a private college in Pella. In 1997, Jolly met Roy Thomas at his uncle's house where he was having a housewarming party.
After that first meeting, they talked on the phone every day, and by the end of the year, they were married. For Jolly, Roy Thomas was everything her family wasn't. He came from one of the wealthiest and well-respected families in this part of southern India. They owned land and property, which meant they had status, and they definitely weren't farmers.
For the Thomas family, Jolly seemed to be the perfect woman. She was well-educated, claiming to have earned both bachelor's and master's degrees. She spoke the right way and dressed the right way. She was every bit a traditional Indian woman should be, according to all of the cultural norms. After Jolly and Roy got married, she moved into his house in Kudateh.
Their marriage meant financial stability for Jolly and status for Roy. But not long after she moved in, a web of lies emerged between the two of them. Neither one of them were who they really claimed to be. Do you know what I don't miss at all? That vicious week before my period each month.
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That's happy mammoth.com and use code tails for 15% off today. On the outside, Jolly and Roy's marriage seemed picture perfect. They were both well-educated and nice people who got along with all of their neighbors. And despite living in a predominantly Muslim village, Roy and Jolly were Christian and avid churchgoers. But in reality, their marriage was nothing like it seemed.
For starters, although Roy's family had money, he was actually unemployed and spent most of his days at home, something that Jolly hated. She feared that if Roy didn't have a job, they would eventually run out of money and she would have to go get a job to help support the family, something that she never wanted to do. And Jolly wasn't who she claimed to be either.
She didn't actually have a master's degree. She had lied to everyone about her education, including her own family, as well as Roy's family. The first person to die was Roy's mom, Anima, in 2002. Well, right before she died, she was pressuring Jolly to go out and get a job.
When Jolly married into the Thomas family, she wanted to be more financially secure. She didn't think that she would have to work and she would get all the benefits of marrying into a well-off family. Well, Anima had a different idea about what Jolly's role in the family should be. Since Jolly claimed to have a master's degree, Anima thought that she should get out and get a job to help her husband out financially and basically pull her own weight.
However, Jolly had no intention of getting a real job. That's not why she married into the Thomas family. So that's when Jolly started telling people that she got a professor job at the National Institute of Technology Calicut, or NIT, a prestigious university about a half hour drive from the Thomas' house. But that was a total lie.
For 14 years, Jolly told everyone that she worked at NIT, but she never did. She even went as far as creating a fake ID badge and pretending to leave the house every single day like she was going to go to work. She had everyone believing that she had this prestigious university job, when in reality, she never did. She only made it up to make her mother-in-law happy.
And when Jolly started to worry that Anima might find out about her lies, that's when the authorities say that that's when Jolly poisoned her with cyanide. Getting her to ingest the cyanide was pretty easy. All Jolly had to do was put a small amount of it in the soup that she had for dinner the night that she died. And then within minutes of eating the soup, she was dead, leaving everyone to think that it was a heart attack.
And no one had any idea about the cyanide because no autopsy was done. At least not then. Now, the second person to die was Anima's husband, Tom. Remember, he was found dead inside the bathroom and everyone thought that his death was a heart attack as well. Well, according to the authorities, Jolly's 66-year-old father-in-law was her next victim. At first, Jolly and Tom had a good relationship.
After she moved into the property, Tom encouraged her to learn how to drive and even sold a property and deposited money into her bank account. But their relationship took a turn when Jolly found out that Tom sold two additional properties and decided to give the money to his other children.
By 2008, Tom still owned a significant amount of land, somewhere between 1,600 square meters, which he intended to give to his younger son, Rojo. Well, Jolly didn't want her brother-in-law to inherit the land. She wanted it for herself, and fearing that she would be left with nothing if her unemployed husband had no inheritance. So, she planned to take the land for herself.
While Tom was in Colombo visiting his daughter, he got a call from Jolly saying that she was pregnant and she was worried that Roy was drinking too much so he should come back and Tom agreed. Well, before Tom got there, Jolly had managed to create a fake will that gave the land to her and her husband Roy instead of Rojo.
Then, on August 22, 2008, exactly six years after the first murder, Jolly poisoned her father-in-law using cyanide before he could find out about the forged will. So when he died, almost everything he owned went to Jolly and Roy. And even though Tom's two other children questioned the will's validity because it didn't have a witness signature,
Nothing could be done because no autopsy was performed. So essentially, there was no proof of foul play. So in the end, Jolly temporarily got ownership of the land with the forged will. No one really doubted the first two deaths. But when Roy died, that's when people started looking at Jolly. But why would Jolly want to murder her own husband? And how was she getting all of this cyanide in the first place?
Well, the answer to the motive was simple, money. And when it came to getting her hands on the cyanide, that came down to an affair. The Indian authorities suspect that Jolly was getting cyanide from her boyfriend, Matthew. Now, Matthew, not to be confused with Roy's Uncle Matthew. This was a different Matthew who just so happened to also be related to the Thomas family.
Jolly was said to have always loved to shop, and she especially loved to buy jewelry. Well, Jolly's husband, Roy, had a cousin, Matthew, who worked as a salesman at a jewelry store. So he and Jolly struck up a friendship that eventually turned romantic. He was also the one who got the cyanide for Jolly because as a jeweler, he had connection to someone who could get cyanide. Cyanide is sometimes used in the jewelry business.
so Matthew knew a guy who could legally get it for him. So when Jolly went to her boyfriend to ask for cyanide, he was the one who allegedly got it for her. When it came to killing her husband, the authorities suspect she did it because she wanted out of the marriage and she wanted to inherit all of his family's money. Remember, after her father-in-law was dead, Roy inherited the money and the land through the forged will.
Well, you guessed it. If Roy was also dead, that meant all of the money would be left for Jolly. This is the part where Jolly almost got caught because Roy's death was the first to have an autopsy done. But when all was said and done, it was ruled a suicide. She was able to convince the police that her husband was depressed and that he was the one who poisoned himself.
So even though he was the first person with confirmed cyanide in his system, the police still don't think that Jolly had anything to do with it, not at this point. But not everyone in the Thomas family was convinced by the police's findings, especially Roy's uncle Matthew. Again, not to be confused with the boyfriend.
He was convinced that Jolly had something to do with all three deaths, which made him her next target. The police believed she poisoned him because she knew he was onto her, and the only way to make sure that no one found out what she was doing was to kill him too. She slipped a few drops of cyanide into his drink, and within minutes, he was rushed to the hospital where he died just like the others.
In 2017, Jolly remarried, but she didn't get married to her jeweler boyfriend, Matthew. Instead, she married a guy named Shaju. Now, this name probably sounds familiar. Shaju was the father of Jolly's fifth victim, two-year-old Alphine, and the husband of her sixth victim, Silly. He was also Roy Thomas' cousin.
So not only was Jolly now married to her ex-husband's cousin, but he was also the husband and the father of two of her victims. The police suspect she killed Silly and her daughter so that she could be with Zha Zhu and eventually marry him.
Like I've mentioned throughout this episode, Jolly always wanted to be financially secure. That's why she married into the Thomas family in the beginning. And now, Shaju provided that same stability because he also had money. She had convinced his wife, Silly, to take some mushroom capsules that her father-in-law used to take to help treat depression.
and since Silly trusted Jolly and they were friends, she started taking them, not knowing that one of them was laced with cyanide. Even though doctors in her case insisted that an autopsy should be performed, Shaju didn't want one for his wife, and not long after that, he married Jolly. By the time Jolly remarried, almost everyone suspected that she had something to do with what was happening.
She killed her mother-in-law so she wouldn't find out about the fake job and the fake master's degree. She killed her father-in-law to get his money. She murdered her husband so she wouldn't have to share that money. And then she killed her now husband's daughter and wife so that they could be together. The police in India normally only investigate a death if foul play is suspected or if someone close to the victim files a complaint.
But without autopsies or forensic evidence, the police didn't have any evidence of foul play. So this meant the only way the police would get involved was if a family member made a complaint, which they eventually did. Roy's brother, Rojo, was the one who went to the police to request a copy of his brother's autopsy report, the one that confirmed that he had cyanide but was attributed to a suicide.
And when he looked over the report, he found discrepancies in Jolly's story. She originally said that she was making her husband an omelet for dinner when he suddenly ran to the bathroom and collapsed. But according to the autopsy report, Roy had eaten a full dinner of rice and chickpea curry the night that he died.
She also claimed to have made the omelet hours before Roy died. But again, according to the autopsy, the food was only recently digested, suggesting that he ate it right before he died. This might have all just been a simple mistake, but the family thought it could be a lot more than that. When Rojo confronted Jolly about all of these small discrepancies, she stuck to her original story.
But no one in the family was convinced. So that's when Rojo and his sister Renji looked closer at all of the deaths and discovered one common denominator in all of them. Jolly Joseph. She was present every single time someone died. They went to the police, but they were told there wasn't much that they could do.
Roy's death was already ruled a suicide and they didn't really have any evidence that Jolly had anything to do with the others. It was all pretty much circumstantial. They didn't have the actual proof that she ever slipped them cyanide, but the family didn't stop there. They kept going to the police until they eventually agreed to look into them.
When they did, when they eventually agreed, investigators quickly found a lot of holes in Jolly's stories too. Like the family already knew about, the police discovered that Jolly actually wasn't a professor at NIT. According to the school's records, she had never been employed there, despite lying about it for the past 14 years.
She also didn't have a master's degree either. She lied about that too, even going as far as stealing another student's degree, photocopying it, and putting her own name on it. In total, according to the Indian authorities, they found over 50 discrepancies between her statements to the police and other evidence.
The police ordered the other five bodies to be exhumed so that autopsies could finally be done. And when they did, they discovered that all of them had cyanide in their system, just like Roy Thomas. All of them had been poisoned. After two months of looking over everything, the Indian police were finally ready to go public with where their investigation stood.
And on October 5th, 2019, they held a press conference saying Jolly Joseph was under arrest for at least three of them. According to the police documents, Jolly was arrested for the murders of Roy's uncle Matthew, the two-year-old, and her father-in-law, Tom Thomas.
She was actually arrested just a few weeks before another person in India was arrested after allegedly confessing to killing 10 people by giving them cyanide-laced religious offerings or medicine and then stealing their money. Jolly's arrest was really big news in India, especially since we're talking about a female. And by definition, if Jolly really is guilty, we're talking about a female serial killer.
So not surprisingly, after her arrest, her story instantly made headline news, not only in India, but also throughout the world. Although she's only officially been charged with three of the murders, she's allegedly confessed to all six of them. Jolly's ex-boyfriend Matthew was also arrested on suspicion of supplying the cyanide to her, but he claims he didn't know what she planned to do with it.
According to him, he told her it was to kill rats at her house. The guy who gave Matthew the cyanide was also arrested and charged, although he claims the same thing. He thought it was just being used to kill rats. He claims to have no knowledge about the murders or Jolly's true intentions. As of today, Jolly's been charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, and forging documents.
The case is currently in the trial stage. If she is eventually convicted, she could face life in prison or even death. However, according to her defense lawyer, the police don't have enough evidence to convict her despite her alleged confessions to all six murders. So for now, we'll have to wait and see if the forensic evidence is strong enough to send Jolly Johnson to prison for poisoning almost her entire family.
If you want to learn more about this story, you should check out the Netflix documentary Curry and Cyanide, The Jolly Joseph Case. The documentary dives deep into the case and was a big source for me to put together this episode. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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