SYDNEY, N.S. – Melissa Ann Shepard, a 78-year-old woman dubbed the “Black Widow,” has pleaded guilty to administering a noxious thing and failing to provide the necessities of life for drugging a man she had married days earlier.
Shepard entered the plea today in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Sydney just as her judge-only trial was supposed to get underway.
She was charged last October after Fred Weeks fell ill at a bed and breakfast in Cape Breton and was admitted to hospital, four days after they married.
The Crown read an agreed statement of facts in court, saying Shepard gave the 75-year-old Weeks benzodiazepine, a tranquilizer, in his drinks while they were on a honeymoon trip in Newfoundland.
An attempted murder charge was dropped.
Shepard acquired the “Black Widow” moniker due to her past criminal record, which includes manslaughter and theft, linked to relationships with other men she met in Canada and the United States.
Her marriage to Weeks was later ruled invalid by the province’s Vital Statistics division after it said false information was provided on the marriage certificate.
Last year a North Sydney inn owner recounted the newlyweds’ bed and breakfast stay where Weeks fell ill.
When checking in, Cheryl Chambers said Shepard told her the pair were feeling sea sick after a rocky voyage on the Newfoundland ferry. Chambers said Weeks looked “gaunt and pale” but described Shepard as not looking like someone who had spent the night throwing up.
The next morning Chambers said Shepard came downstairs without Weeks and said he wasn’t feeling well and may have to take him to the hospital.
Chambers said she finished her breakfast and took more than an hour to pack before calling an ambulance for Weeks, who was left in the room on the floor after falling.
Shepard was convicted of manslaughter in 1992 and served two years of a six-year sentence after killing her husband on a deserted road outside Halifax. Gordon Stewart was heavily drugged when she ran him over twice with her car.
In 2000 she married a Florida man, Robert Friedrich, who died of cardiac arrest two years later after going in and out of hospitals with mysterious fainting spells following their marriage. She was investigated in connection to the death of Friedrich, but no charges were laid.
In 2005 she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison for swindling money from her then boyfriend, Alex Strategos, another Florida man she met on an online dating site.
Strategos was hospitalized several times during their relationship and blood tests in 2005 showed he had benzodiazepine in his system.
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