‘Breaking Bad plot’ was fantasy, says woman accused of trying to kill mother

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/30/breaking-bad-plot-fantasy-woman-accused-mother

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A woman who allegedly poisoned her mother in a Breaking-Bad-inspired murder plot has said she imagined herself as a character in the TV series or a “Mexican drug warlord”.

Kuntal Patel, 37, confessed that she had fantasised about killing her magistrate mother Meena, after she “forbade” her to marry her boyfriend, Niraj Kakad.

Patel said she had contacted an American poisons dealer on the “dark web” and talked about needing a “tasteless” and deadly toxin to get her mother “out of the way”.

But she said the emails were a fantasy in which she imagined herself as character in the American TV series – in which the teacher turned drug lord Walter White spikes a rival’s drink with deadly ricin.

She told Southwark crown court: “It was like I saw myself to be some kind of Mexican drug warlord. I would think it through as if I was the main character in Breaking Bad.

“It was all a big mess. A complete and utter mess.”

Patel admitted she emailed the poisons dealer Jesse Korff in America to demand deadly toxins.

In one email sent last December, she told how something had “gone wrong” as the “target drank all” of the poison but was still alive.

But Patel insisted the emails were just a way of her coping with her abusive home life and depression – and she never poisoned her mother.

She said: “By this time, because of the messages I received from my mum and because I couldn’t cope with it and I wanted to escape from it all, I started to fantasise about trying to kill myself or my mum.

“It was as if I was thinking through it as if I was in my own TV programme or a character in Breaking Bad. I was in a really strange place in my mind.”

She said the person who wrote the emails “doesn’t resemble me”, adding: “I know how it appears, but the truth is I didn’t do anything. It’s all fabrication.

“It escalated and I had to go to work and pretend like everything was OK and I had to be at home and pretend everything was OK.

“But I was living this other life. This was my own way of coping – it was my coping mechanism. It was how I survived daily.”

It is claimed Patel got deadly abrin sent to her hidden in a candle and slipped it to her mother in her diet coke. When it did not work, she allegedly begged the poison dealer for another, stronger dose. But Patel claims she panicked when she saw the candle and threw it away.

Patel denies trying to murder her mother, who sits on the bench at Thames magistrates court, and acquiring a biological agent or toxin.

She has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to acquire a biological agent or toxin last December.

Patel wiped tears away from her eyes and told the jury: “I didn’t do it. I didn’t put anything in my mother’s coke.”

The former London Olympics volunteer said that when counter-terrorism police raided her home in January she thought Jehovah’s Witnesses were at her door. But she was arrested and spent four days being questioned by officers at a police station.

She told the court: “I thought it was Jehovah’s Witnesses but it was the police. They had a warrant to search the house.

“I was told to quickly grab some clothing and leave the house. That was the last time I saw my mum and my sister.

“It was like a really bad dream. It just wasn’t the real me. It was like me coming back to my senses and reality.

“It was a huge reality check. It was me coming back into the real world, real life, having to account for my actions.”

But she admitted lying to police because she was terrified they would discover her email exchanges with Korff.

Peter Rowlands, defending, reminded the court that Patel had told her mother in a phone call from Holloway prison: “I was going to kill you and Ambama saw that. That’s why she is punishing me.”

In the call, Patel added: “I have done everything bad and dirty and goddess Ambama has seen what this girl is doing to her mum and so she has sent me here.”

The Hindu goddess Ambama is said to punish bad acts.

But Patel said she did not mean her “confession” literally. She said: “I meant that Ambama the goddess saw that I had these kind of thoughts against my mother. Not that I literally had done anything, which I had not.”