The Black Widow

Melissa Ann Shepard was born in New Brunswick in 1935. For decades she targeted lonely older men, often widowers met through church circles or online, and used several married names.

In April 1991 her husband, Gordon Stewart, died near Halifax, Nova Scotia, after she ran over him with a car; tests found tranquilizers in his system. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1992 and sentenced to six years but was released after about two. Her next husband, Robert Friedrich, died in the early 2000s after a steep decline in health. His sons blamed her, but she was never charged. In Florida she took money from Alex Strategos, a man she met online, and in 2005 she was sentenced to five years for grand theft and forgery.

In September 2012, at 77, she married Fred Weeks, a widower in his late seventies, in Nova Scotia. He became seriously ill on their honeymoon trip to Newfoundland and survived, and she was charged with attempted murder. In 2013 she pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of administering a noxious substance and failing to provide the necessaries of life and was sentenced to three and a half years. Released in March 2016 under a peace bond that barred her from using the internet, she was arrested the next month for allegedly using a computer at a Halifax library. Prosecutors withdrew those charges in December 2016.