DANE COUNTY, WI- A 63-year-old Wisconsin woman who was convicted last month on two counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide may not be a first-time offender, authorities say.
Kore Bommelli Adams was convicted of the crime, where she spread ricin, a poison, around her neighbor's home in the spring of 2014 while they were away on vacation, Law & Crime reports.
According to Dane County Assistant County Attorney Jack Schneider, Adams was hoping her neighbors would die.
“No one is putting ricin in someone’s bed, in their sock drawer, in their office–if you’re not trying to kill them. You’re not trying to have them consume a tiny amount just to get sick; there’s no conceivable reason to put ricin in someone’s house other than to cause their death,” Schneider said, according to ABC affiliate WKOW.
WKOW said ricin “is a powdery toxic substance made from castor beans.” Authorities said they found castor beans in a lockbox inside the suspect’s home. Adams’ sentencing is scheduled for August 15.
Meanwhile, an Oklahoma court has found probable cause to indict Adams in connection with the murder of her roommate, Talina Galloway.
On April 17, 2020, Adams reported Galloway missing.
The country was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Adams told authorities that Galloway said she had contracted the coronavirus and was going to “her favorite lake to be alone,” the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma stated.
Adams allegedly told police that Galloway had tested positive for COVID and was told to quarantine.
Upon investigating Adams’ claims, Wagoner County investigators found Gallway “was never screened at any hospital for COVID-19 and there was no contact with her doctor.”
In January 2021, Galloway’s body was found about 150 miles away in a wooded area near Mena, Arkansas.
Sheriffs from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, based on a tip, responded to the forest after being advised that there was a freezer in the middle of the woods.
When deputies investigated, they “discovered what appeared to be dismembered human remains inside the freezer,” the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office reported in August 2021.
It was later learned that the same witness who found the freezer had contacted Polk County sheriffs in June 2020 to report a truck was “suspicious,” and there was a “foul odor coming from the trailer, and that there was a foul-smelling thick liquid pooled on the floor of the trailer.”
That body would later be confirmed as Galloway.
As the investigation into Galloway’s disappearance and subsequent death progressed, the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office said Adams “exhibited suspicious behavior, gave inconsistent statements, and later was proven to be deceptive in her reporting of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance.”
“Timelines were examined, investigated, and verified,” the agency added.
“Investigators soon realized that Kore Bommeli knew much more than she was sharing with investigators.”
It was then that Adams became a “person of interest” in the case.
Adams eventually broke off communications with investigators and “refused to cooperate,” the sheriff’s office said.
A subsequent search for Adams led sheriff's deputies to Dane County, Wisconsin, where she was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and desecration of a human corpse.
Law & Crime said it wasn’t clear how the Oklahoma case ended up in Dane County, nor was it clear what Adams’s motive in the case was.
Nonetheless, she will be extradited to Oklahoma to make a court appearance in that case, where a plea is expected to be entered. It is possible that since the Oklahoma charges are more serious, she may face incarceration there (if convicted), with her sentence in the Wisconsin case to follow.
In speaking of Galloway’s death, Wagoner County District Attorney Jack Thorp said in January 2021:
“Talina Galloway died a brutal death, where her killer had no regard for her life in any way,” Thorp told reporters at a press conference at the time, as reported by WHBQ.
“While all murders are abhorrent and detestable, the grisly manner in which Galloway was dismembered and disposed of makes this case one of the worst I have seen in my career.”
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