A Redmond woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison today in King County Superior Court for poisoning her ex-boyfriend to death with insecticide-laced Jagermeister in 2006.
Janjira Jeffrey Smith, 58, killed her former ex-boyfriend, Kirkland resident Roger Lewis and severely injured his girlfriend using a highly toxic insecticide, methomyl, to poison a bottle of alcohol the two drank from in a Kirkland apartment in 2006. Smith was also sentenced to an additional 14 months in prison for second-degree assault.
During the seven-year investigation, first-degree murder charges were filed against Smith, who went on the lam to her native Thailand before she was eventually extradited from England in June 2011.
Smith pleaded guilty on May 10 to second-degree murder and also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault for poisoning Lewis’s girlfriend, Thanyarat “Nina” Sengpharaghanh.
In her plea for second-degree murder instead of first-degree, she claimed that she was a victim of domestic violence, according to court records.
However, Carla Carlstrom, senior deputy prosecuting attorney, said that “no evidence supports this long history of abuse,” court documents continue.
Carlstrom continued that Smith “was so obsessed with Roger Lewis that she threatened to have his ex-wife killed if she would not divorce him. Something was very wrong with her. She is the classic scorned woman who decided that when Roger Lewis wised up and decided to move on with his life that if she could not have him, no one would. And she killed him.”
Before the poisoning, Lewis had recently ended an 18-month relationship with Smith, according to charging documents. Lewis took a trip to the Philippines and upon his return to Kirkland, he informed Smith that he met another woman who he was going to marry.
Smith contacted Sengpharaghanh and told her that Lewis liked to drink alcohol and that Jagermeister was his favorite drink. She told the woman she would send over a bottle of Jaegermeister with a friend and urged the woman to have Lewis drink the alcohol before they went out that night.
Smith had her friend deliver the bottle to Sengpharaghanh at the Wells Fargo in downtown Kirkland.
The woman’s friend also reportedly told her that the bottle might be poisoned, the documents continue.
Sengpharaghanh later that night poured Lewis a full shot glass of the alcohol and he drank it. The woman also drank a smaller amount, according to the Kirkland police’s investigation. The woman told police that she immediately felt ill, lost her sight and blacked out.
A friend found the two victims the next day; Lewis was pronounced dead at the scene and Sengpharaghanh was taken to EvergreenHealth Medical Center. She was diagnosed with having a stroke from lack of oxygen to the brain and was temporarily blind.
Smith told police she purchased the bottle of alcohol at a Redmond liquor store and had stored the open bottle in her freezer prior to the murder.