Sofia Sam and Arun Kamalasanan jailed for killing her husband Sam Abraham with cyanide
THE cyanide, the sleeping pills and the secret diaries of a cheating wife and her lover who got away with a Melbourne murder, until a diligent pathologist and an undercover cop undid the sick plan.
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A WOMAN who plotted with her lover to kill her husband with cyanide-laced orange juice has been jailed for at least 18 years.
Sofia Sam and Arun Kamalasanan were both sentenced in the Supreme Court today after a jury found them guilty of murdering Sam Abraham at his Epping home in October 2015.
Sam, 34, will spend 18 years of a 22-year sentence behind bars before she is eligible for parole.
Justice Paul Coghlan said Kamalasanan, 36, was “the architect and driving force of the murder”, jailing him for 27 years, with a non-parole period of 23 years.
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“This is a very serious example of the crime of murder,” Justice Coghlan said.
“I’m satisfied the poison was chosen as your weapon in an attempt to avoid detection.”
He told Sam while it was not possible to know the full role she played in the killing, “I’m satisfied your husband wouldn’t have been murdered without your knowledge”.
Both Sam and Kamalasanan denied any involvement in the murders, both pleading not guilty.
But in February, a jury found them guilty following a three-week trial, which heard secret recordings of Kamalasanan confessing to the killing, and diaries of the pair admitting their love for one other, despite both being married.
As their sentences were read out to the packed courtroom, they both stared ahead, not showing any emotion.
Justice Coghlan said the pair had shown no remorse for their actions.
Mr Abraham’s death was initially considered to be from a heart attack, and not investigated by police.
But when an autopsy later returned his cause of death was cyanide poisoning, an undercover operation by members of the police’s homicide squad was launched.
The cause of death was purposefully not made public, even Mr Abraham’s family were not told, to allow for the investigation to take place.
It was during this operation, Kamalasanan told covert officers who had befriended him how he snuck into Mr Abraham’s house and slipped sleeping pills into an avocado shake that Sam had made for the family.
He then waited for them to all fall asleep, before forcing the young father to drink cyanide-laced orange juice as he slept in the bed beside his son, then six.
The jury dismissed Sam’s claims that she was an innocent party and simply woke up and could not rouse her husband from his deep sleep.
HOW MURDER PLOT CAME UNDONE
PATHOLOGIST ORDERED EXTRA TEST, PROVED IT WASN’T A HEART ATTACK
HE couldn’t say what made him do it. Cyanide is not routinely tested for when people die.
But it was a decision to tick a box by forensic pathologist Michael Burke that led police to uncover the truth about the death of young dad Sam Abraham in his suburban home in Melbourne’s north.
In performing an autopsy on Mr Abraham’s body for the Coroner in 2015, he would check a box on the toxicology form that would request an extra test to be conducted for any presence of cyanide.
Giving evidence later in court, the senior pathologist could not explain why he took that extra step that day.
But the results would reveal Mr Abraham had “extremely high” levels of the toxic poison in his system; and that was the cause of his death — not heart attack, as had originally been thought.
Homicide detectives were notified and an investigation began. But it was tricky.
They had treated the death as non-suspicious and did not seize anything from the scene that could have been used as evidence.
Because time had passed, any forensic evidence at the scene was lost.
All they had were some photos taken of the scene for the Coroner by a local police officer. One photo in particular showed a plastic cup on a bedside table in the bedroom with an orange liquid in it. Mr Abraham’s body lay nearby.
It was clue that would help to build their case against the two people police suspected were behind Mr Abraham’s death.
FROM COLLEGE IN INDIA TO SECRET MELBOURNE RENDEZVOUS
FRESH-FACED and with big dreams and aspirations, Sofia Sam and Arun Kamalasanan first crossed paths at an Indian college some 15 years ago.
The Mahatma Gandhi University classmates quickly bonded and formed part of a close circle of friends who did everything together.
Almost 9000km away from their home in the Indian state of Kerala, they would again become close.
The friendly pair had always stayed in touch and when Ms Sam was to marry Sam Abraham in 2008, Mr Kamalasanan was a guest at the traditional Indian wedding.
Again, when Ms Sam and Mr Abraham, both 33, had baby boy Reyhan, Mr Kamalasanan says he loved him as if he was his own as he always wanted a child.
And when the young family moved to Australia in late-2012, seven months later Mr Kamalasanan followed, despite having a pregnant wife.
He quickly became entwined in Ms Sam’s life.
They would meet on their work lunch breaks in the city; and have secret rendezvous at his house.
His housemate told how he once came home early from work to find them acting suspiciously in the lounge room with the door locked.
Ms Sam told police, when being charged with murder, her husband was also friends with Mr Kamalasanan. He was not jealous of their friendship. He trusted her, she said.
It was that same trust that likely lead to his death.
HOW THE COPS CLOSED IN ON SECRET LOVERS
IN THE weeks and months after the murder, under the watch of investigators, the pair were seen together running errands, shopping, meeting in parks and CBD cafeterias.
They were spotted visiting VicRoads, where she signed over ownership of her dead husband’s car to Mr Kamalasanan.
CCTV footage also captured the pair, six weeks after the murder, arriving in the same car together at Lalor train station. But bizarrely, as they stepped from the vehicle, they quickly walked in different directions to be not seen together.
Ms Sam looked back over her shoulder several times like she was worried someone was following or watching her.
She can then be seen entering the train platform, with Mr Kamalasanan following about 2 metres behind her. When she stops to top up her Myki, he walks straight behind her like they don’t know each other.
He goes out of the camera’s sight behind a pole.
But as Ms Sam later goes to walk past that very spot, she briefly stops and can be seen handing something to him, before continuing further down the platform on her own.
“The two of them would not have been able to have any open relationship in Australia until all of this had been sorted out,” Prosecutor Kerri Judd QC said, trying to explain their suspicious actions later to a Supreme Court jury.
The final piece of evidence that allowed police to swoop and arrest the pair in August 2016 was a secretly recorded confession made by Mr Kamalasanan.
“I am a murderer,” he tells an undercover police officer who had befriended him over five months.
“I took that guy off.”
He then details how he poisoned Mr Abraham drawing a detailed map of the house to point out how he sneaked in.
As he became drowsy and slipped into a deep slumber, he was carefully fed cyanide-laced orange juice over a period of time.
“I went there with the powder, sleeping pills ... and I gave it,” he says.
Asked why he did it, he replied: “You know, I’ll do anything for my friends. This guy was troubling her for some time.”
He says he brought the cyanide powder back in his luggage on a flight from India.
Mr Kamalasanan had tried to protect Ms Sam, telling the covert officer she had no knowledge of his murderous plan.
He tells one undercover cop: “Even if I’m going into under law I don’t want her to.”
The defence tried to argue the confession was simply not true, and that tactics used by police to get it were deceitful.
A court-imposed gag order prevented the Herald Sun from detailing how police befriended him or got him to confess.
But police said, at the time of the confession, the only people who knew the cause of death had been determined as cyanide poisoning were at the Coroner’s office, and the police.
“It is too great a coincidence that the very way in which he describes killing Sam Abraham is the very way in which Sam Abraham was killed,” Ms Judd told the jury.
ACCUSED CYANIDE KILLER ‘LAY IN WAIT’ BUT DENIES TAKING PART
CYANIDE MURDER SECRET RECORDING PLAYED IN COURT
SOFIA SAM’S 2013 DIARY ENTRIES
(Diary entries are published as they appeared)
January 28: Brought this diary for 3$ you know why i need this diary?? its a secret I will tell you later ok
January 29: We never know why we like someone more than others why...we love someone without reason. Why we feel happy to them...some relations has no explanation
January 30: I feel to hug uou and comfort you. Dont look at me like this or I will start crying. I want to hug you and make all your sorrws disappear
February 2: Was waiting...with your memories on my mind I’m waiting for you
February 3: You are unable to meet me. I’m unable to live. Miss you a lot. What kind of senselessness is this. I fail to understand.
February 8: I wish to sleep in your arms but I cant do that. I want to be yours but you are not mine. You are the one for me but you dont belong to me.
February 14: I do remember you first in this day. I’m the lucky girl in this world.But on the other hand I am still the unlucky girl
February 17: Miss you a lot dear. Can you hold me tight. I want to drift away in your love. I want to forget myself in your arms hug me tight...hold me rude
March 5: Why I am made with rock heart. Why I am so cruel. Why I am so cunning...why you make me bad
ARUN KAMALASANAN’S 2013 DIARY ENTRIES
July 9: Met my love for the first time in Melb after 7 months. Yes I reached near her. A promse, to be there, wherever you go.
July 23: It may take thousands of books to describe how much I love my love my eternal love. It took a long time to gather the strength to let her know about my love and how much I love, now she knows how much I love her.
I just need to love you until my last breath. But i wish to live a life with you...i wont be enjoying my life till i get a life to love with you.
September 10: She’s best match for me in all ways. What to do. I am sure that one day she will be mine, this life or next. I iwll wait for her. I am afraid...how many more days i need to live in pain without her.