Cleaner 'laced office Nescafé with Viagra in poisoning attempt', court hears
A cleaner laced office coffee supplies with Viagra to “poison” colleagues at a factory she was working at, a court has heard.
Karen Beale is on trial accused of spiking the coffee jar with the male erectile stimulant, as well as other chemicals, at the fire protection plant Envirograf in Dover, Kent. Suspicions were first raised after a staff member in the plant's office noticed her cuppa tasted off and had blue and white specks in.
Jurors at Canterbury crown court heard how secret footage - set up after suspicions were first aroused - then captured Beale fiddling with the Nescafé jar. Opening for the prosecution, barrister Matthew Hodgetts told the court: “Not what you would expect to be in Nescafe.”
The jury was shown camera footage from September 2018 lasting 13 minutes showing Beale, 62, handling the jar with blue latex gloves, occasionally shaking it and removing the lid to decant some of the contents before placing it back on a shelf.
In another clip, Beale was seen handling the jar with her sleeve pulled over her hand, which the prosecution claim was an attempt not to leave fingerprints behind. After the footage emerged, police were alerted, testing jars in the offices where she worked to find two contained a number of abnormal "ingredients" including Viagra and a drug to treat high cholesterol.
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Beale was charged with attempting to administer a poison or other destructive or noxious thing with intent to injure, aggrieve or annoy. Beale denies the two charges, claiming she has been the victim of “malicious allegations”, having told police she had only been “inspecting” the coffee.
Mr Hodgetts told the jury that, while neither substance would seriously hurt anyone ingesting it, Beale had intended harm was “hoping and intending it would have some effect and, at the very least, some annoyance”.
The court heard accountant Katrina Gravenor, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, even wrote a letter to her GP in August that year saying something was making her ill and she had “narrowed it down” to her brew. But the doctor told police Ms Gravenor’s arthritis was “unlikely” to be linked to the coffee.
A jar in company secretary Jean Smith's office was found to contain what appeared as a blue, white and pink granulated substance. When interviewed by police and told about being filmed, Beale, now of Westbury, Shropshire, denied any wrongdoing but admitted she had “handled” the jar.
“The reason she had done that, she said, was to inspect its contents because she had heard a rumour something was going on at work,” explained the prosecutor. “But she declined to provide any details of what that rumour was.”
Former holistic therapist Beale also gave evidence, maintaining her innocence and claiming she had been asked to “keep an eye on [the coffee]” by the general manager and, when challenged as to why she had not told police of his instructions when arrested, Beale told the court she feared reprisals from him on her return to work.
“He just said Katrina Gravenor was concerned about her coffee and believed one of the night staff was tampering with it and for me to just take a look and keep an eye on it,” the defendant said. It was also heard Beale's husband and daughter had previously worked for Envirograf, but she denied wanting her family to get both women's jobs or any grievances with Ms Gravenor or Ms Smith.
When asked during cross-examination by Mr Hodgetts whether the alleged contamination was “an amusing power trip” for her, Beale, who has no previous convictions or cautions, replied: “I have never put anything in anybody’s coffee.”
The court also heard that following her arrest she was sacked by Envirograf for gross misconduct. She appealed that decision however because she “didn’t do anything wrong”, she added. The trial continues.
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