Inmate Says He’s Responsible For Sudafed Tampering Convicted Bank Robber Tells Judge That Man Imprisoned For 1991 Deaths Didn’t Do It

A bank robber testified Wednesday that he was responsible for the Sudafed tampering episode in which two people died in 1991 - not the husband of a woman who nearly died of cyanide poisoning.

Monte Lee Bridges said a guilty conscience prompted him to come forward and rejected a suggestion by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joanne Y. Maida that he was “making this up as you go along.”

He was the principal witness in a bid by Joseph E. Meling, 35, a former insurance salesman in Tumwater, Wash., for a new trial.

U.S. District Judge Barbara J. Rothstein said she would rule on Meling’s bid for a new trial after the hearing, which began Tuesday.

Bridges, 59, is serving a five-year, three-month sentence for bank robbery in northern California.

Meling is serving a life term for two counts of product tampering causing death, four of nonlethal tampering, two of perjury and three of insurance fraud.

Meling’s wife, Jennifer, nearly died after taking a cyanide-filled capsule on Feb. 2, 1991, the day after his $700,000 accidental death policy on her became effective. Kathleen Daneker, 40, of Tacoma, died that Feb. 11 and Stan McWhorter, 40, of Lacey, died that Feb. 18, both of cyanide poisoning, after taking what they thought was Sudafed.

Two tampered Sudafed packages were found in homes and one was recovered from a store during a $17 million nationwide recall.

Jennifer Meling stood by her husband during the trial but later divorced him and said she believed he was responsible.

Bridges and Joseph Meling are inmates in the same no-smoking section of the minimum-security federal prison in Sheridan, Ore., but never were cellmates and did not appear to be more than casual acquaintances, testified Dr. Michael Brent Nelson, health services director at the lockup.

Nelson said he saw Meling almost daily to administer osteopathic treatment for an old back injury and Bridges about a dozen times to discuss medication and other treatment for anxiety and related disorders.

Rothstein refused to let one of Meling’s lawyers, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., ask Nelson about the credibility of Bridges’ account.

“He does not have a personal psychiatric relationship with this guy,” the judge said.

Bridges, a motel manager in Edmonds at the time, said he and a woman who is now dead decided to place cyanide capsules in packages of Sudafed 12-hour decongestant on store shelves so they could claim damages from Burroughs Wellcome Inc., the manufacturer.

He said he shoplifted boxes of Sudafed, slit open each blister pack and replaced one regular capsule with one containing cyanide.

Then, over a four-hour period in which he was high on Irish coffee and Vicodan, a synthetic form of codeine, he went into eight stores in the Olympia-Tacoma area and replaced intact blister packs with tampered packages in Sudafed boxes on the shelves, Bridges said.

He indicated he thought no one would take the cyanide capsules because they were slightly larger than Sudafed capsules and a bit different in coloring.

Maida pointed out that the tampered package that was involved in Daneker’s death was not purchased in any of the stores Bridges visited and that if his account were true, two tampered packages never were found.

“Yeah, and there’s still two packages out there somewhere,” he said.

She also questioned why it took him five years to come forward with his account if he was as upset as he claimed when the deaths were reported and when Meling was arrested and convicted.

Bridges said he never thought of making an anonymous warning by telephone or unsigned letter in the early stages and couldn’t believe it when Meling was arrested in 1992 and convicted in 1993.