Melissa Ann Shepard swindled countless unsuspecting paramours and killed some of them too. The career criminal went to jail — not for the first time — in Canada in 2013 for attempting to poison her 75-year-old husband Fred Weeks. Shepard found her elderly victims on the Internet, with a particular eye toward targeting the recently bereft. (Weeks had lost his longtime wife just the year before Shepard found him.) The Canadian Press reports that her victims — those who are still alive — are wary about her release. “Everything was a lie that she told me,” Weeks, who survived the poisoning, said. “I wouldn’t want her to come around myself or any friends.”
There is little reason to believe Shepard will emerge from prison reformed. In 1992, she was convicted of manslaughter in the death of her second husband, Gordon Stewart. She drugged him and ran him over with a car. Twice. Conditions for Shepard’s release include a prohibition on Internet use. So Shepard, if she’s to look for another victim, will have to ply her evil trade locally, analog-style.
