A Baton Rouge jury convicted a woman of murdering her boyfriend in 2015 with Meshell Hale (54) being found guilty of the second-degree murder of 41-year-old Damian Skipper. The trial lasted two weeks.
Baton Rouge Woman Found GUILTY of Poisoning Her Boyfriend in 2015 and Sentenced to LIFE Behind Bars – Believed to Have Also Killed Her Husband In 2016
In the weeks leading up his death, Skipper made several visits to the hospital complaining of vomiting, general weakness, and stomach pains. In reality, Hale had purchased barium acetate and was poisoning him steadily. Skipper had been hospitalized several times because of Hale’s actions before dying on June 30, 2015. His cause of death was listed as a heart attack.
Months after Skipper’s death, the same symptoms turned up with her husband Arthur Noflin. He was hospitalized and it appears that the method was later changed up as Noflin wouldn’t die as a result of suspected poisoning but in a suspicious vehicle fire in March 2016.
While Hale was never charged in Noflin’s death because of the condition of his body, she became the main suspect in 2017 after authorities exhumed Skipper’s body and the coroner did a toxicology test. The coroner’s finding was that Skipper died as a result of barium poison—meaning homicide.
In 2018, she was arrested and an investigation into Hale’s search history turned up various topics involving poisoning with barium acetate. The families of Skipper and Noflin were in court for the verdict on December 16, 2022.
Four days later, she was sentenced to life with parole but was granted $300,000 bond to remain out of prison during the appeals process. It doesn’t give her an undetermined amount of time free as she is scheduled back in court on February 22, 2023.
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