Alaina Urquhart

But yeah.

So under normal circumstances, an elderly woman attempting to poison her husband would have garnered a pretty small amount of attention from the press.

You know, unfortunately, those things don't really get a lot of heat on them.

It would have faded away.

A larger story would have come along.

La-di-da-do.

But in this case, it didn't take long for the press to learn that this wasn't the first time Melissa had been suspected or convicted of attempted murder.

Oops.

She actually had a criminal history in two countries that went back decades.

Holy shit.

Including a lot of crimes that were very similar to this one that she had just perpetrated, only with a much worse outcome.

Oh no.

So she reached a lot of notoriety through this whole Internet Black Widow thing.

But weirdly, there's not a lot known about her early life.

What we do know is that she was born in Burnt Church, New Brunswick, on May 16th, 1935.

And she moved to Prince Edward Island when she reached adulthood.

And that's where she met her first husband, Russell Shepard.

Nobody really knows the quality of that relationship, but after 25 years, Russell Shepard walked out on her, and that left her with nothing.

Whoa.

So obviously, even if it was good at one point, it got real bad.