Murders most foul

Murders most foul

Serial killer Jolly Joseph horrifies and fascinates – she grew fond of feeding her family cyanide.

Data from countries ranging from the US to Sweden shows that men commit more than 90% of murders. Evolutionary psychologists ascribe this to factors such as men’s socialisation into “the warrior syndrome” and women continuing to be more tethered to the home, which restricts their homicidal forays. Jolly Joseph of Kerala’s Koodathayi village is the exception that proves the rule. Police say she has confessed to killing six family members over the years, but the extended family now suspects her role in other deaths too. In one aspect Jolly ran true to the gender stereotype: her chosen method of murder was lacing her victims’ last supper with cyanide.

Jolly’s mother in law died after having mutton soup, her father in law after some kappa. Jolly’s first husband died. Before she married her second husband, his wife and child died. Passion, power, property, inheritance, the motives are the stuff of Sodom and Gomorrah, the family itself provides an unboundedly scandalous scene. That Jolly made it this far reflects very poorly on the police, especially as the postmortem of her first husband had revealed cyanide poisoning way back in 2011.

But still, that she has been caught now has likely saved lives, as she had reportedly already fixed on who would be her third husband – and anybody who stood in the way would have been in danger.

Call it the pornography of pain, but the Jolly Thomas saga has mesmerised Kerala, with other states gradually following suit. It is the same appeal that keeps the crime/mystery genre flying high alongside romance/erotica. And it therefore follows that there is a real competitive race now to see who will get Jolly’s unjolly story to the big screen first. Trauma makes for intense drama.