Angelina Rodriguez

Rodriguez met her husband Frank, a special education teacher, while they were employed at a camp in San Luis Obispo, California. The couple married in April 2000.[2] It was her fourth marriage.[1] Prosecutors argue that within months of the marriage, Rodriguez took out a $250,000 (2018 value of $366,000) life insurance policy on Frank and began plotting to kill him. She was suspected of poisoning Frank's tea with oleander leaves, loosening the gas cap on their clothes dryer, and finally adding antifreeze to her husband's Gatorade. Frank Rodriguez died on September 9, 2000. His death was initially ruled undetermined, but the lack of a cause of death meant that Rodriguez could not get a death certificate or Frank's life insurance. She pushed for more testing, and these results showed that he intentionally had been poisoned. Rodriguez was arrested for murder in Paso Robles, California in February 2001.[3]

Three years after Frank's death, Rodriguez's murder trial began in the fall of 2003. During the years since her arrest, prosecutors discovered that her 13-month-old daughter Alicia died suspiciously in 1993. Rodriguez claimed that her daughter choked on a pacifier that became dislodged, but investigators believe that Rodriguez removed the pacifier's nipple and used it to suffocate Alicia. Rodriguez then sued the pacifier manufacturer and was awarded a settlement of $700,000. After Alicia's death was ruled accidental, she also received a $50,000 life insurance policy. Although she never was charged with her daughter's death, this evidence was presented at her trial to show that Rodriguez's motive for the murder was financial.[4]

In October 2003, Rodriguez was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, murder for financial gain, and attempt to dissuade a witness. She was not convicted of the charge of soliciting murder. The following month, the jury rendered a sentence of death.[2][5]

Rodriguez was sentenced to death by lethal injection on January 12, 2004. In her sentencing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders stated that she killed her husband in an "exceptionally cruel and callous" way and that her guilt had been proved to be "an absolute certainty...In the past 20 years, I have never seen a colder heart." Despite her conviction and death sentence, Rodriguez argued her innocence and maintained that her husband's death was a suicide by antifreeze poisoning.[4]

Rodriguez was awarded a new sentencing hearing in 2010 but was re-sentenced to death in November 2010. Her most recent appeal was denied by the Supreme Court of California in February 2014.[6][7] Rodriguez remains on death row at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, California. However, she is planning to appeal her case to the United States Supreme Court.[8]

The murder of Frank Rodriguez has been profiled on several television shows, including North Mission Road on truTV, Deadly Women[9] and Happily Never After on Investigation Discovery, Snapped[10] on the Oxygen Network, and It Takes a Killer[11] on Escape TV. The crime was featured on an episode of NBC's Dateline, titled "The Devil in Disguise".[12]

Published in February 2016, the book A Taste for Murder, written by Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot, covers the details of the crimes committed by Rodriguez.[13]

The articles listed are based on women who committed murders for financial gain, the noted years are the span of the killing(s).

• Supreme Court of California case and opinions hosted at FindLaw, February 20, 2014
• Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office Press Release, Jury Recommends Death Sentence for Woman Convicted of Poisoning Her Husband, November 12, 2003