Murder of Frank Rodriguez: Poisoned by wife Angelina Rodriguez profiled on ID

Mugshot of Angelina Rodriguez
Angelina Rodriguez was found guilty of poisoning her husband, Frank Rodriguez, for financial gain. Pic credit: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office

Til Death Do Us Part is investigating a particularly cruel case of murder involving Frank and Angelina Rodriguez from Los Angeles, California.

Frank was Angelina’s fourth husband, but shortly after their marriage, she set out to murder him. Her driving motivation appeared to have been financial gain.

Angelina and Frank were married in April 2000, but she quickly expressed dissatisfaction with her marriage to her friends and even ‘joked’ about killing her husband.

A few months before the murder, the couple took out a life insurance policy on Frank worth $250,000. Angelina then began plotting to kill him.

She had attempted to kill him by loosening the gas valve caps on their clothes dryer, but when that failed, she resorted to poisoning him with Oleander leaves and antifreeze.

On September 9, 2000, Frank passed away after being ill for several days. The police officer who first interviewed Angelina noted that her crying appeared fake and her answers seemed rehearsed.

Shortly after Frank died, Angelina telephoned the insurance agency to inquire about cashing in her former husband’s life insurance.

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However, there was a problem with her plan, the insurance company needed a certified cause of death, and Frank’s cause of death hadn’t been determined.

Angelina Rodriguez tried to frame a work colleague

Angelina actually pushed the authorities to investigate the death properly and perform proper testing to attain a cause of death. When testing revealed that Frank had been poisoned, Angela tried to blame one of his former coworkers.

However, the investigators refused to believe Angelina’s lies and protestations, and she was arrested in February 2001 and charged with murder.

While Angelina was in custody awaiting trial, she telephoned a friend who she had spoken to about killing Frank and tried to dissuade them from testifying against her. This was subsequently used as evidence of her guilt.

Angelina Rodriguez was eventually found guilty of murdering her husband, and in January 2004, a Los Angeles County judge sentenced her to die by lethal injection. She remains on Death Row today.

During the course of the investigation, detectives learned of a 13-month-old daughter of Angelina’s who died suspiciously in 1993. The police believe that she killed her daughter by shoving a pacifier down her throat and suffocating her, but no charges were ever filed.

More from Til Death Us Do Part

Follow the links to read about more marital murders profiled on Til Death Us Do Part.

Joanna McElrath drugged her husband, 37-year-old police officer Robert McElrath, with narcotics and then had her boyfriend Robin James shoot him and throw him off a bridge in northern California on New Yar’s Day in 2011.

In November 2012, Cynthia Mueller (nee Smith) struck up a relationship with Charles Todd, and the pair plotted to murder Cynthia’s severely ill husband, David Mueller. Using a pillow and a plastic bag, they suffocated David to death.

Til Death Do Us Part airs at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.

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