Prison nurse now a convicted murderer after poisoning husband to marry inmate
A prison nurse has been sentenced to prison for fatally poisoning her husband just so she could marry a man who was serving jail time for murder.
Media outlets like PEOPLE and ABC News reported that Amy Murray of Missouri, US, has been convicted on charges of second-degree murder, second-degree arson, and tampering with evidence. She was sentenced to 12 years for murdering her husband, seven years for arson charges, and four years for charges of tampering with evidence.
The 46-year-old defendant entered an Alford plea—a plea where the defendant maintains innocence but accepts the imposition of a sentence—for the three charges. The prosecutors later agreed to drop the charge of armed criminal action against her, per PEOPLE.
As stated in a probable cause affidavit obtained by PEOPLE, Amy's husband, Joshua Murray, was found dead at 37 in their residence in Iberia in February 2019.
The police believed that the cause of his death was a house fire she set to cover up the crime but upon further investigation, a medical examiner found an "elevated amount of antifreeze" in his system during the autopsy, plus injuries that he had been dead before the fire.
Per the document, Amy left the house with their 11-year-old son and two dogs to get food. Her alibi was that she had found the house on fire and that the "smoke was too heavy for her to go inside."
She was arrested three months after her husband's death.
The investigators also found that Amy had been in constant contact with Eugene Claypool, an inmate at the Jefferson City Correctional Center who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for murder.
Their recorded phone calls suggest that the two had an intimate relationship—Amy talked often about "not wanting to be around her husband" and told Eugene that they could get married after Joshua passed away because he was "out of the picture," according to the affidavit.
Amy posted a $750,000 bail (over P42 million) shortly after her arrest. She is currently under the Miller County Correctional Facility while waiting for her prison assignment.
