Kriti Mehrotra
As a documentary film living up to its title in every way conceivable, Netflix’s ‘Curry & Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case’ can honestly only be described as bewildering, intriguing, and haunting. That’s because it delves deep into not just the titular local Keralan woman’s background but also the core reasons she has been accused of causing six untimely deaths over the span of 14 years. So now, if you simply wish to learn more about the same — with a specific focus on her roots, upbringing, and possible motives as well as her current standing — we’ve got all the details for you.
Who is Jolly Joseph?
It was reportedly back when Jolly was a mere young girl growing up alongside her farmer family in the small town of Kattappana, Sahyadri, that she first wished for a completely different life. The truth is she’d realized she had some particularly flashy and high-class interests without any real desire to study or work to support them, driving her to conclude she needed to marry well. Hence came her approach to entrepreneur Roy Thomas of the Ponnamatt am family, wherein the matriarch was a teacher while the patriarch was an education department executive turned consultant.
Jolly’s efforts panned out as Roy soon fell in love with her, leading to them gladly tying the knot in 1997 despite some family disapproval since they were actually distantly related, as per the production. It later came to light that by this point, to soothe things gown and impress in-laws, she’d gone as far as to claim she held a Master’s in Commerce while, in reality, she’d only completed undergraduate studies. Therefore, when her mother-in-law Annamma Thomas began urging her to find a job instead of weakening her qualifications by staying at home, she allegedly saw no way out apart from poisoning.
After all, in 2002, the Thomas’ had planned a get-together wherein Jolly’s loved ones were invited too, and she was sure the topic of her employment and thus educational history would be raised. So, to avoid losing everything she’d aspired for in the past five years, she apparently obtained some cyanide upon reading the way it quickly worked in a local newspaper before using it on Annamma. According to reports, this worked out perfectly in her favor because she consequently became the woman of the house with no suspicions — it was believed the latter had passed from a heart attack.
Then there was the eerily similar passing of patriarch Tom Thomas in 2008 following a few disagreements he’d had with Jolly over her connection with her husband’s first cousin, MS Matthew. Allegedly, apart from ensuring he didn’t disclose her affair, she also wanted to financially secure a place by having his will specify the inheritance of their ancestral home toward her and Roy. However, per the aforementioned production, this final will was as fake as her college credentials plus eventual claims of employment at the renowned National Institute of Technology- Calicut.
Jolly’s husband Roy was ostensibly well aware of her bond with MS, yet it wasn’t until finances came in between their relationship years later that she supposedly poisoned him with cyanide too. It was 2011, and his sudden demise was the first time family members questioned precisely what was going on by demanding a postmortem, which positively revealed traces of cyanide in his system. Though his widow soon somehow managed to convince them he’d died by suicide owing to his failing business as well as crushing debt — debt that no one has ever actually come forward to claim.
The sole individual to not wholly believe Jolly was Roy’s maternal uncle Mathew Manjayadil, according to the documentary, so she seemingly ended up giving him cyanide-laced whisky in 2014 too. Then there were the deaths of Roy’s close cousin Shaju Zacharias‘ 2-year-old daughter Alphine in 2014 and his wife Sili Sebastian in 2016, shortly following which the two survivors decided to marry. It has since been contended the mother of two wanted a husband like Shaju ever since 2011 because his stable job plus family’s financial standing spelled out comfort, so she made it happen.
Jolly Joseph is Still in Remand
Despite all the six mysterious deaths over 14 years happening in Jolly’s presence, it wasn’t until around 2019 that her sister-in-law Renji Wilson connected the dots and filed a case against her. This caused her elder son Remo to also look into the matter, just for her to apparently confess everything to him – it’s briefly indicated in the film she’d maybe planned to poison him and his brother too. With all this, she was hence arrested in October of the same year, not long after which the authorities reportedly found a bottle of cyanide in her home, and she admitted to every single one of the murders.
Nevertheless, it’s imperative to note that because court proceedings concerning this alleged serial killings are still ongoing, Jolly is currently just in remand at a district facility in Kozhikode. As for how she got her hands on the drug, she purportedly asked her lover MS Matthews, a jewelry shop employee, to procure some from his boss by asserting she needed it to kill some massive rats in her home. Per his police statements, he had no idea she’d use the chemical employed by them in their line of work to murder several innocent individuals one by one. We should also mention that traces of cyanide were only found in Roy’s system as well as Sili’s exhumed remains; the forensic analysis concerning the same on the other four exhumed bodies came out negative.
Read More: Where Are Jolly Joseph’s Kids Now?
