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A woman dubbed the Internet Black Widow was released from prison in Canada on Friday, prompting police to issue a warning to potential victims - elderly men looking for love. What could have earned a sweet-talking 80-year-old such a sinister reputation?
Alex Strategos was lonely and searching for romance when he met Melissa Ann Shepard on an online dating site.
"At first, I thought she seemed very nice," Strategos, now 84, told the BBC from his home in Florida. Shepard drove down from Canada and quickly moved in with Strategos, who described her as a "very classy lady".
But he soon discovered she was less classy than she seemed. "I went to hospital," says Strategos. "She sent me there."
Their relationship was one of many that have resulted in Shepard serving time in prison.
This week she was released after two years, nine months and 10 days in jail for spiking the coffee of a new partner, Fred Weeks, her neighbour in a quiet retirement community in Nova Scotia. According to court documents, she knocked on his door and told him she was lonely, and she'd heard he was lonely too.
1977-1991: Serves prison sentences for more than 30 separate convictions for fraud
1992: Convicted of manslaughter over the death of her second husband, Gordon Stewart, who she drugged and ran over twice with a car - she is sentenced to six years in jail but gets parole in 1994
1994: Features in a National Film Board documentary, When Women Kill, about victims of domestic abuse who attack their partners
2002: Her third husband, Robert Friedrich, dies just over a year after the couple meet through an online dating site - no charges are brought against her
2005: Sentenced to five years in prison in Florida after pleading guilty to seven charges, including forgery and theft from Alex Strategos, who she had met online - Strategos, now 84, says she stole about $20,000 from him and believes she put drugs in his ice cream
2013: Jailed for two years, nine months and 10 days in Canada for spiking her new partner's coffee with sedatives
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35838340