Lottery winner who scooped $3.7million poisoned by her doctor husband after he found out how she spent winnings
A LOTTERY win turned into tragedy after the winner was poisoned by her husband due to how she decided to spend her money.
Ibi Roncaioli from Ontario and a friend won $7.4million in a 1991 Lotto/649 draw that the pair split evenly between them.
Despite the life-changing prize money, Ibi’s home life was destroyed after she spent her money without telling her husband.
Joseph Roncaioli, a gynecologist, discovered that his wife gave $1.4million away to a child she secretly had with another man.
Jealousy and confusion took over and in 2003 Dr Roncioli poisoned Ibi with painkillers and she died.
The 72-year-old was subsequently convicted of manslaughter in 2008.
Prosecutors said in his trial that the doctor was upset that his wife spent her money without leaving a portion for the couple’s retirement.
The court was told that she gave away $590,000 to the couple’s son and approximately the same amount to another son by a different man who lived with his mother and step-father.
However, she also gave $1.4million to a secret son she had with a third man who her other children had no idea about.
The doctor’s defense argued that his wife’s drug and alcohol issues were an “intervening cause” in her death, according to The Toronto Star.
Roncaioli’s defense continued this argument despite the fact that the doctor had injected her with painkillers twice on the day she died.
The autopsy showed that Ibi had needle marks on her legs and feet and six ounces of alcohol in her body when she died.
It concluded that a cocktail of drugs, including painkillers and alcohol caused her death.
The court was told that the lottery winner was a secret alcoholic and spent most of her time away from her husband at the slot machines.
The couple reportedly spent most of their lives separate from each other in their mansion.
Their home was so large it even had an indoor swimming pool and sauna.
It appeared that there were many secretive elements to Ibi’s life after her husband made a shocking discovery following her death.
The doctor went into their safety deposit box and found a note informing him that the couple had been swindled out of $180,000.
He also discovered that his wife forged his name on bank documents and put the property into her own name.
Ibi’s husband claimed to the court that he injected his wife with painkillers not to poison her but to investigate her health.
He testified that he wanted to numb her arms in order to take some of her blood and test it after her health began rapidly declining.
Prosecutor Martin Dionne said Roncaioli had been acting strangely and drinking on the day he injected his wife, CTV reported.
He failed to call police or attempt to revive his wife, but instead called his bookkeeper and a real estate agent, Dionne told the court.
The prosecutor added that the bookkeeper was the one to eventually call an ambulance.
At his trial, when the judge passed sentence he said that the doctor’s crime “more resembles murder than an accidental killing.
“It was intentional, not spontaneous,” Justice Ferguson told the court.
Outside the courthouse, Ibi sister Magna Vona sobbed and described the five weeks of the trial, in which she listened to repeated testimony about her sister’s often-troubled life, as “horrible”.
“He made my sister suffer and he made me suffer too because I miss her,” she said.