UPDATE 09/29: The jury in the Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo case sentenced her to jury 10 years in prison, KHOU Channel 11 reports. She is not eligible for probation and must pay a $10,000 fine.
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In a trial with details of jealousy, a love triangle and attempted murder that sounds like the plot of a Lifetime movie, a jury found M.D. Anderson Cancer Center oncologist Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo guilty of aggravated assault after serving her lover and fellow cancer doctor George Blumenschein a cup of coffee that was laced with a toxic chemical.
The jury deliberated for barely four hours over two days to reach the verdict. The punishment phase of the trial began late Friday morning. Gonzalez-Angulo could receive a sentence anywhere from five years probation to 99 years in prison.
Prosecutors asserted that Gonzalez-Angulo poisoned Blumenschein’s coffee with ethylene glycol in 2012 out of jealousy over his 10-year relationship with his long-time girlfriend Evette Toney. “She was the one person who was with him that entire day, the one person who gave him coffee, the one that tasted terribly sweet,” prosecutor Justin Keiter said.
Lawyers for Gonzalez-Angulo said that it was Splenda that his client put in the coffee, not ethylene glycol. The chemical mimics the taste of the artificial sweetener. Gonzalez-Angulo also drank from the coffee she made for him the same day he went into the hospital after falling ill, her attorneys said, adding that she was a coffee novice, and typically drank Diet Coke. If she were to drink coffee, she would add extra sweetener.
Keiter alleges Gonzalez-Angulo took the drastic steps after discovering Blumenschein and Toney were attempting to conceive through in vitro fertilization. Toney later miscarried the pregnancy.
Blumenschein later confessed the affair to Toney, who then approached Gonzalez-Angulo about the relationship who said it was “only sex.”
Jurors found Gonzalez-Angulo guilty of aggravated assault.
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