An elderly woman convicted in 2006 for mailing poisoned baked goods to all nine Supreme Court justices and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller pleaded guilty Friday to escaping federal custody.
In April of last year, 73-year-old Barbara March signed out of a halfway house in Washington where she was serving out the remainder of her 15-year sentence and fled. She was arrested in October in Bridgeport, Conn.
March was originally arrested back in 2005 after mailing 14 different cookies and baked goods packed with bromadiolone — rat poison — to all nine Supreme Court justices, Mueller, and other top-level officials. Along with the sweets, she attached letters that read roughly, “I am going to kill you. This is poisoned.”
The poisoned packages all had return addresses from different people in her life who she held grudges against, among them an ex-husband, her brother, a former coworker, and an old roommate. She hoped to get her enemies in legal trouble by sending the baked goods.
None of the justices ended up receiving the poisoned desserts as mail sent was screened. In 2006, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recounted the story at a legal conference.
“Every member of the Supreme Court received a wonderful package of home-baked cookies, and I don’t know why, [but] the staff decided to analyze them,” O’Connor said. “Each one contained enough poison to kill the entire membership of the court.”
For last year’s attempted escape, March faces an additional five years in prison.
