Wife Tries to Poison Husband's Pregnant Lover

Feb. 22, 2011 — -- Sex, lies and chemical weapons abound in this soap opera thriller turned Supreme Court debate over federal authority, with Carol Anne Laletta Bond at the center.

Bond, a Barbados native, was excited when her closest friend, Myrlinda Haynes, announced she was pregnant. Bond's excitement turned to rage when she learned that her husband of 14 years, Clifford Bond, was the child's father. She vowed revenge, according to a federal appeals court summary.

Bond, 40, who worked as a microbiologist outside Philadelphia, stole arsenic-based chemicals from her company and ordered potassium dichromate on the Internet.

In large doses, both chemicals can be lethal if ingested or exposed to the skin.

Judging on the attempts that followed, it can't be said that Bond has an 007 at the end of her name. Over the next several months, Bond tried at least 24 times to poison Haynes. Her attempts included placing chemicals in Haynes' car muffler, sprinkling chemicals on door knobs and car door handles. Bond also tried stealing mail and putting chemicals inside Haynes' mailbox.

Haynes suffered only a chemical burn on one thumb but became suspicious, as one of the chemicals was bright orange. She called the police, who told her to wipe her doorknobs and car regularly. When she found the chemicals in her mailbox, she contacted the U.S. Postal Service. Federal postal inspectors set up surveillance cameras, which caught Bond in the act.

"[Bond] wasn't intending to kill her or poison her," said Robert E. Goldman, Bond's attorney. "The intent was to cause her skin irritation to heal some of Bond's pain. The chemicals were also found spilled throughout my client's car, and the point is that she herself didn't think they were so toxic, as she was treating them so casually."

Haynes was not seriously injured.

Postal inspectors arrested Bond and turned the case over to a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania instead of handing her over to state prosecutors. Bond was indicted on two counts of mail theft and two counts of possessing and using a chemical weapon, in violation of federal anti-terrorism law created to fulfill the U.S.'s international treaty obligations under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. Bond pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years in prison.

"Assault cases are typically handled by state prosecutors. Had that occurred, Ms. Bond would have faced a sentence of six months to a year. Instead, federal prosecutors charged her under the federal chemical weapons statute, which was passed pursuant to a treaty and was intended to combat international terrorism and the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction. Under that statute, she faced incarceration of at least six years," said Goldman.

Arguing that the federal statute was unconstitutional and inappropriate in this circumstance, and that federal prosecutors risked invalidation of the statute by using it this way, Bond's attorneys offered to plead guilty for Bond in state court. But their request to transfer the case was denied.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that as an individual or "private party," Bond lacked the standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute based on the Tenth Amendment.