Spelling Error Gets Woman Busted for Poisoning

Here's one reason you might want to pay attention to your spelling lessons, kids: They may come in handy one day should you ever want to ... poison your husband? Behold, the strange case of Jacqueline Patrick. The 55-year-old British woman tried to fatally poison her husband not once, but twice, back in 2013 by putting anti-freeze in his wine, Reuters reports. After the second attempt, she handed the ambulance drivers a note that, she claimed, he had written. In it, her 70-year-old "husband" asked not to be resuscitated because he wanted to die with "dignerty." Police, noticing the misspelling, asked Patrick to spell the word "dignity," and she misspelled it as "dignerty," thus providing the fateful clue.

Patrick ended up being arrested and, on Monday, sent to jail for 15 years after she pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder, the Guardian reports. The couple's 21-year-old daughter also admitted to urging her mother to poison dear old dad (who ultimately survived), and was sentenced to three years in jail. Also not helping their case were text messages between the mother and daughter that said things like, "I got the stuff I will give him some later delete txt tell no one ok" and "He feels sick again I gave him more delete this." (She's not the only spelling-challenged person in trouble with the law.)