File this one in your Lorena Bobbit related file. This one gets curiouser and curiouser. It’s a case of tainted soup and cold cuts:
A Garden Grove woman charged with cutting off her husband’s penis served him a strange-tasting tofu soup that police believe was poisoned, according to a law enforcement source.
Detectives have sent evidence to a laboratory to try to determine what kind of poison was used, the source said.
The suspect, Catherine Kieu Becker, is scheduled to appear in court Friday for arraignment, but the hearing may be postponed.
Becker, 48, faces one felony count each of torture and aggravated mayhem with sentencing enhancements for great bodily injury and personal use of a knife. Orange County prosecutors charge that she cut off her husband’s penis and threw it in a garbage disposal after drugging him and tying him to a bed.
If convicted on all counts, she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
The law enforcement source told The Times that a dispute over an “inappropriate relationship” may have been the motive in the case.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said the couple had argued earlier in the day and that Becker was angry at the husband over a relationship. Police said that when they confronted the woman, she said her husband “deserved it.”
She thinks her husband deserved it, no matter how you slice it.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.