On August 16, 2009, a 65-year-old man named Ray Kotomski died of ethylene glycol poisoning. Ethylene glycol is a sugar alcohol compound found in antifreeze. Even though Ray was rushed to the hospital, he sadly did not make it.
His wife, Teresa Kotomski, orchestrated the plot to end Ray Kotomski’s life. She was initially not a suspect. However, as officials kept investigating, they realized how sinister Teresa was. According to Sportskeeda, years after Ray’s, the police could not find any leads regarding this case. Furthermore, Teresa acquired a fortune of $200,000 from Raymond’s property. She then moved to a new place and began staying with a new partner.
Authorities reopened the case in 2012. However, when they approached Teresa for a re-interview, she hired a lawyer and refused to talk to the police. Finally, authorities discovered enough evidence, and in 2014, Teresa was arrested for the murder of her husband.
In her trial, the accused claimed that she was innocent and entered a not-guilty plea. However, this did not work as the court found her guilty of murder. In 2015, she was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
She is currently held in Montgomery County, Ohio, and will be eligible for parole in 2030. To this day, she has maintained her innocence. Furthermore, she claims that her husband died of diabetes.
The case against Teresa Kotomski will be showcased in detail in the upcoming episode of Dateline NBC, which will air on Saturday, December 9, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET. The episode is titled Something Sweet.
Its official synopsis reads,
“A retired corrections officer mysteriously dies from antifreeze poisoning in rural Ohio. Detectives uncover multiple suspects during a five-year investigation that causes two families to collide. Josh Mankiewicz reports on a case that pivots on riveting medical evidence.”
Why did Teresa Kotomski murder her husband?
According to prosecutors, Teresa poisoned her husband to avoid a lengthy divorce settlement. Teresa claimed that her husband was an alcoholic with severe diabetes. However, the postmortem toxicology exam and the hospital suggested that she was lying.
According to Starbeacon, this is what Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court Judge Gary Yost said during the trial of Teresa Kotomski.
“It is notable that when the emergency room doctor determined to intubate Raymond Kotomski, to relieve some of his difficulty breathing — before there was even any diagnosis or prognosis for his recovery — the defendant informed the doctor that he did not want to be on a ventilator for a long period of time”
She further stated,
“The state does not have direct evidence to show that the defendant … administered the antifreeze to Raymond Kotomski or the specific means by which she introduced the antifreeze into his body. To secure a conviction under this statute, the state must present some evidence to identify what the defendant mingled a harmful substance with — that is, food, drink, nonprescription drug, prescription drug or pharmaceutical product.”
At the time of Ray Kotomski’s death, he had been married to Teresa Kotomski for five years. Before Teresa, Ray had been married to a woman named Marylou Kotomski for 36 years. According to the Daily Mail, Marylou and Ray have three children.
