Ramble.
Bada bing, bada boom.
They say the house picks you.
Once the house is chosen, there's really no escaping.
You're a prisoner of that house until it decides to let you go.
That's what the neighbors say anyway when they walk past that baby pink colored pastel mansion.
Address 121, the pink house.
There's a giant fence that surrounds the entire property.
It's made out of iron and stone.
It looks honestly, it looks a little daunting.
That fence is like a prison wall.
It's always locked.
They want to keep people out.
But you do know how doors work, right?
It also keeps people in.
It keeps in all those little secrets that are best not let out into the public.
Who are the neighbors talking about?
Why are they talking about the pink house?
There's only two people that live in the pink house.
Outside the pink house, there is a plaque on the gate.
It's a sign that reads Tom Thomas.
Was Tom Thomas one of the residents there?
No, he was killed in there.
The house chose a new owner, I guess you could say.
Kids would also start trading stories about the pink house.
They would run around screaming.
A lot of them would hold their breath past the house, because it was almost this little curse of if you breathe when you walk past the pink house, they're going to suck the soul out of you.
But once they're in a safe enough distance, they would poke fun.
Did you know that if you're quiet enough, you can still hear the baby crying?
What baby?
The baby of the guy that lives there.
The baby died.
The adult neighbors, they're no better.
They'll walk past that house, drop their voice.
The priest told the family if they want to live, they need to cut down that haunted tree.
Apparently the roots of the tree.
They go all the way into the ground and then the branches start following all of the evil spirits and then they sprout out from the trunk of the tree.
Now, I heard it was the well.
That well is like a portal to hell.
It goes all the way down into the depths of the earth.
And they say that if you stand at the very edge of the well and you bend over to look down, you peer over the edge for a little too long.
A hand is going to reach up and snatch you by your hair and drag you down under.
But the only thing scarier than the paranormal is the priest told the family if they don't put a wall around the well, three people are going to die in that house.
So fence the well in the middle?
Yes, otherwise three people are going to die.
He was wrong.
Three people would not die.
Six people would.
Six.
And it wasn't haunted.
There was a serial killer in the family. and even legal change in advocacy.
This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators.
We would also like to thank you guys, our listeners, for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes.
Now, as always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com.
Before we get started, there are a few quick disclaimers for today's case.
It is important to note that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in the court of law and, as of right now, there have been no official sentencing of the suspects charged.
The trial remains ongoing.
We've also changed a few names in this case, but the alleged killers names remain the same.
The majority of the sources were available in english, but some of them were still translated.
So, as always with any international cases, or really any case at all, please let us know if there was anything miscommunicated, mistranslated or any additional information that you might have down in the comments.
So, with that being said, just an additional reminder everything is alleged.
There have been no convictions.
We will discuss the many theories towards the end of this episode.
But this is the story that the family members, including the sons of the killer, as well as the prosecutors, believe has taken place.
So with that being said, let's get into that version of the story.
Do you know what a locked house mystery is?
Yes.
So no in, no out.
Exactly.
To put it simply, it's when someone dies in a house with no signs of forced entry or break in.
So meaning every resident, every guest in that house is suddenly a suspect.
The pink house would have its own locked house mystery.
It's a typical locked house scenario.
You've got a limited number of suspects.
They're all somewhat interpersonally connected with the victim, a confined space and then a death.
But in the pink house, there was an open door policy.
Anyone was allowed to come and go as they please.
And in the middle of this giant celebration, someone screams, I'm gonna die.
The lights shut off and suddenly every guest, every caterer, every neighbor, extended family friends, everyone is a suspect.
It just becomes that much more complicated because you don't know who slipped in and out unnoticed.
The timeline is fuzzy.
To place every single person in which room what they had access to, what they were doing?
What if they were lying about what they're doing?
All of this gets even more messy when the authorities don't even realize it's murder until a decade later.
The Pink House resident list consists of the Thomas family.
The Thomas parents, Anne and Tom, and their adult children, and a grandson.
But for 10 days, I mean, the Pink House was absolute chaos.
The Pink House would be open to any and all guests, known or unknown to the family, during the Festival of Onam celebrations.
Meaning anybody who needs a place to be was more than welcome to be at the Pink House.
Now, this is not really something that's out of the norm for the area.
Festival of onam is a 10-day celebration that is literally based off of community, the collective human spirit.
It's literally time for everyone to get together.
Come come, find strength within one another.
Guests are shuffling in and out of the house.
I mean the kitchen is packed with people trying to push past each other to finish their little dish.
There's people washing, cutting vegetables, measuring ingredients just These massive mounds of bright orange carrots on the kitchen island, green beans piled high in the little colanders.
In the living room, men are setting up chairs and tables.
They're arranging the seating.
They're hanging up the flower decorations for the festival of Onam.
That's what it's known for.
Some of the kids are tasked with laying out banana leaves on the table.
So first, you need to find large, fresh, green, unblemished banana leaves.
Then you have to give them a good rinse, pat them dry with a clean cloth, or you let them air dry.
When it comes to placing them on the table, you want it positioned so that the tip of the leaf, the pointer, is pointing towards the left to the person who will be eating from it.
Because it's going to serve as a plate.
So it's all organized.
It all points to the left.
When it comes to arranging the food on the banana leaf.
Typically, salt is placed at the left corner of the leaf.
Pickles and chutneys go on the top right.
Main dishes go straight in the center and then the various side dishes go around the entree.
And it's so fascinating because the veins of the banana leaf keep from all of the juices merging together.
August 22nd, 2002.
Lila Thomas is in the pink house kitchen.
She's cooking.
She's listening to the loud conversations in the dining room.
She's yelling at the kids.
Hey, put the banana leaf down.
Lila is interrupted by her mom, Anne Anne Thomas, who walks into the kitchen and she grabs a glass of water.
She doesn't look good.
Lila's kind of worried about her, but her mom just shakes her off.
It's fine.
It's fine.
I'm just, I think it's fatigue.
It's been so loud in the house with this nonstop music during the celebrations.
I'm just going to go lay in my room.
Leela nods, but she's a little concerned.
In the past few weeks alone, her mom has already been hospitalized twice.
Each time, the doctors did not have a precise answer for what was wrong.
They would send Anne back home with some holistic medicine, and they would just hope for the best.
Leela, her daughter, is not hopeful.
She thought about stopping mid-recipe, but another family member walks into the kitchen and starts prepping a bowl of soup.
I'm going to bring some soup up to mom.
So Leela goes back to her dish.
But the more she cooks, the more she starts feeling this nagging sense of unease.
She's like, I can't do it anymore.
I'm not even focusing on my cooking.
She wipes her hands on the apron, decides to go check up on her mom.
It's been about 20 minutes since soup has been brought up to her.
She just wants to check and see if her mom ate it.
Is she okay?
Is she taking a nap?
Leela is weaving through all the people in the busy house.
She walks upstairs to her mom's room, and it is the strangest sight.
Her mom Anne, is laying on the bed leaning up against a window, and she just has silently, tears streaming down her face.
Oh my god, what happened?
Call everyone.
I'm gonna die.
Leela runs out of the room.
She's trying to get everybody's attention or at least the attention of somebody that can help her.
But the music is so loud.
So, instead of finding each stereo, turning down the music, Leela runs to shut the power off of the house.
The lights go off.
Hurry, someone help me.
The Thomas brothers, they can recognize their little sister's voice from anywhere.
They could also tell this is serious.
So they rush to the sound of Leela's voice.
They run into their mom Anne's room following Leela's lead.
And their mother is laying there convulsing.
Her body is jerking around.
She tries to grab at her adult children.
I can't breathe.
I'm dying.
Mother Anne is quickly taken to the hospital.
There was a white frothy substance that is coming out of her mouth.
She's literally foaming at the mouth.
Within five minutes, the doctors pronounced her dead.
And a little 5'4 tall woman soft-spoken, with big round eyes, gets out of the jeep that drove Anne to the hospital.
She walks straight up to the doctors who just pronounced her dead.
It was a heart attack, wasn't it?
Yeah, I mean, just moments before she collapsed, she was complaining of chest pains.
So if you knew the family tree intimately, you could potentially recognize that she was Anne's distant niece by way of marriage.
But if you're like the doctors, if you're like you and you don't know the giant Thomas family tree, you would ask and what's your relation to the deceased?
Oh, right.
I'm her daughter-in-law.
I'm married to her son, Roy.
So they're cousins.
Wait a minute.
Hold on.
This is Anne's niece, but also her daughter-in-law.
Oh, Anne's son married his cousin.
By marriage, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
When it comes to talking about someone, okay, there's two ways people go about it.
When they're around, it's all smiles.
Oh, Roy, he's a gentle, kind soul.
I mean, he's a bit introverted, that's all.
Very shy, but...
Or two, when you don't think anyone is listening.
Roy's a loser.
Lazy, too.
Yeah.
That's what the neighbor said about Roy.
We have no way of knowing which version is true, but we do know that on paper, Roy and his cousin, Shaju, they have a lot in common.
They're both shy and introverted.
They mainly keep to themselves.
I mean, make of that what you will, right?
They both grew up in well-off families.
Their parents were the financially stable ones.
Neither of them had this intense, crazy pressure to work and they would both make a single decision that would destroy their families.
It would set off a chain of events that would kill their closest family members one by one, until six of them are dead.
Both of them would marry their cousins.
Roy's cousin, Shaju, I mean, he must have known to some degree about the deaths in the pink house.
Everyone in town is whispering about how cursed the house is.
There's no way that he missed it.
How could he not?
It's literally his cousin's side of the family that are dying in there.
It's like his aunt.
It's his uncle.
They're dying.
It was always a thought that crossed his mind, though.
Maybe the family's cursed.
But if he's just my cousin, that means I'm not cursed though, right?
Like whatever dark entities are cursing that family.
Technically the pink house, they're the Thomases.
I'm a Zachariah.
So that means the curses are attached to names, aren't they?
Besides, it's not like he even lives in the pink house.
May 1st, 2014, the curse would move into Shaju's home.
Shaju had lost his aunt Anne, uncle Tom, cousin Roy, uncle Manny.
They all died mysteriously.
And now he was going to lose one of his own.
And it seems like now the curse is deciding which one of Shaju's loved ones to take.
His wife, Silly, his 10-year-old son, or his sickly two-year-old daughter.
Just like at the party of the pink house, the day that Anne died Shaji threw a party as well at his house.
It's a communion celebration for his 10-year-old son.
There's hundreds of people shuffling in and out throughout the day.
And at the center of this party is not his son, but rather his two-year-old daughter, Alfin.
She's running around like a tornado.
She's being passed from auntie to auntie because her parents are so busy with their big brother's big day.
And near the end of the celebrations, she's running laps around these adults.
And they're like, it's time for some food.
Like, you got to sit down and you got to eat your dinner.
Her aunt sits her down, grabs a piece of bread, dips it into the curry.
Here, bite.
Chew slowly and make sure to swallow.
Alphine smiles before she takes that bite and then runs off again with the other kids to play.
Alphine, you come back here.
You need to eat.
Alphine would find her way back to her aunt's lap.
Another piece of bread ripped off, dipped in curry and placed in front of her mouth.
Bite, chew, swallow.
But the minute that that bite hits her throat, Alphine starts coughing and screaming.
Her parents rush over.
They're so embarrassed.
I mean, she'd always been kind of a picky eater, but even so.
I mean this is like a tantrum that she's throwing.
It's a little bit out of character.
They're thinking, if she doesn't eat now, she's only going to get more and more hungry and more and more cranky throughout the day.
So they strike a deal with the two-year-old.
The auntie leans down and says, one more bite and you can go play all you want, Alphine.
She takes one more bite.
Bread, curry, bite, chew, swallow.
Alphine would be hospitalized immediately and she would be dead in three days.
The doctor said the cause of death was choking.
Shaju wouldn't find out until years later that it was murder.
So, within those two years, Shaju's just trying to comfort his devastated wife Silly, and he's trying to be this stable figure for his son.
He's too busy.
He's swept up by all this grief that he doesn't even think about the family curse.
He doesn't even think about the pink house anymore.
If he had just taken a single moment, just to think a little bit longer, a tiny bit deeper, maybe he would have seen that there's one person that is at the center of all of the family tragedies.
First the tragedies in the pink house and now his and one more would die in his family.
But this would be someone that he and his wife would let into their own home.
They would welcome this person with open arms like family.
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Lila Thomas had moved out of the pink house.
I mean, she can't really bear to be there anymore, not after everything that's happened anyway.
Back when she was a kid, she would run around the giant tree in the yard with all of her two older brothers, Roy and Arnav.
They would chase her around, threatening to stick a caterpillar on her.
She would escape into her room and she would just lay down with the book open and the afternoon sun would hit her and she would just feel so sleepy.
And by the time that she wakes up from her nap it's dinner time.
Her parents, ann and tom thomas they would always have the neighbors over for dinner.
I mean, it's customary open door policy at the pink house.
So this giant gate surrounding the entire property it was never locked.
That was when they were kids, the three thomas siblings roy, arnav and lila.
They'd all grown up and of the five family thomas members, only two of them are still alive.
It's like the house is eating people alive.
Once you step foot into that pink house, it grips onto you.
It decides whether or not it wants to let you go, let you leave, or if it wants to keep you forever.
It wants to plant you with the tree.
And for years, Leela had no idea.
Is this a curse of the family?
Are we just unlucky?
Is it the house?
Is there like, I don't know, toxic mold infesting the house?
Because why are three people dying in there?
She's trying to bend over backwards, thinking of any sort of reasoning behind why her whole family left her so early.
But now, now she has the evidence in her hands.
She knows exactly what killed her family.
Or rather, she knows who killed her family.
And right now, there are two people inside of the pink house that Leela needs to save.
She calls her nephew.
Hello?
Where are you right now?
Are you in the house?
Hurry.
Go take a piece of clothing or a bed sheet and stuff it in your mouth and your brother's mouth.
Avoid falling asleep.
Don't eat anything.
Don't drink water or anything from inside of that house.
Do you hear me?
I'm on my way right now.
Hurry right now.
Are you getting the bed sheet?
Are you?
Lila is already in her car when she hears knocking on the other side of the call.
She can hear her nephew Remo opening the door to his bedroom and him saying why are you standing here?
Are you trying to listen to me?
What are you trying to hear?
Lila realizes the killer is standing outside her nephew's bedroom door and then the line goes dead.
The voice speaking to Remo on the other side of the line is muted.
It's a little muffled.
Leela didn't hear every single word that was said, but she had never been more sure of anything in her whole life.
Her brother Roy had not taken his own life.
Her brother Roy was killed.
Leela's nephew Remo remembers that night so well.
He woke up from a deep sleep.
His eyes were squinting from the light and he's confused.
Why are the lights on in the bedroom?
He glances out the window.
Oh my God, it's still dark outside.
Why are the lights on?
And then from his peripheral vision, he sees someone and he almost jumps out of his own skin.
Oh my God, auntie, what are you doing here?
She's sitting in a chair, spine stiff as a board.
She's slightly leaning forward as if she had been waiting for him to wake up this whole time.
Her lips are just like in a thin, straight line, and she glances at Remo's little brother, Reynolds.
He's still asleep.
Remo quickly catches on and gently nudges his brother awake.
Okay, okay, wake up.
What's going on, Auntie?
Is something wrong?
Your father slipped and fell in the bathroom.
Your mother and your uncle, Manny, are taking him to the hospital right now.
What?
Remo's trying to shake off the sleepiness from his mind.
Like, what do you mean he slipped and fell in the bathroom?
Is he okay?
He gets up from his bed with his brother and they follow his aunt down to the ground floor.
Someone set up a framed photo of their father on the table, and it was surrounded by these candles and flowers.
Is this like a show of support or something?
Is it for like a prayer?
He would learn that day that it was an altar.
Their dad gets taken to the hospital and someone sets up an altar.
Like they don't know if he's dead?
It seems like the timing doesn't make sense.
It doesn't seem like they know that he's dead.
So someone set it up ahead of time.
Yeah.
Their dad was dead.
The kids initially thought, okay, maybe it's a trip and fall in the bathroom.
Did he hit his head on the tub?
But eventually they were told it's a self-exit.
That's what their mother, Roy's wife, told them.
I mean, who are they not to believe her?
That's their mom.
I mean, really, who would question her?
Lila Thomas didn't even question her.
But now, now she's got all the proof.
She has her brother's autopsy in her hands.
Cherry red skin, small hemorrhages in the skin, a distinct bitter almond smell.
Everything that she knew from the night of the murder was wrong.
The night of Roy's death, Roy had just come home from a night out with his cousin Matthew.
It's a Friday night, so he's expected a late night home.
Likely he would swing open the door into the pink house and his wife and two young sons would be watching the TV in the living room.
That's what he's thinking.
But when he walks in, it's unusually quiet.
The lights are off in the living room.
He checks in the kitchen.
There's just a bowl of rice and chickpea curry waiting for him next to a tall glass of water.
Roy smirks.
He takes a seat at the table.
I mean his wife is always thinking about him.
Just thinking ahead to the fact that he might be hungry when he gets home.
His mouth starts watering.
I mean the roasted coconut, the sauteed onions and garlic, the chickpeas curry leaves.
The combination is like the perfect balance of spicy, citrusy.
It's a little bit nutty.
Roy digs his spoon into the curry, takes a mouthful.
He would spend the rest of the night in the bathroom.
I mean, strange.
He'd always been one that can handle the spice rather well.
Jolly wakes up to the sound of a gurgle.
A sort of wet, splattering sound that sounds like it's coming from deep inside someone's throat.
Like if you're gargling mouthwash, but also simultaneously choking on it.
And then it turns into this very strong retching noise.
It sounds violent, like the person's stomach is trying to turn itself inside out.
The sound is wet, almost viscous.
The gagging, the retching, the heaving.
Jolly opens her eyes, straining her ears to hear more.
Then she gets up calmly, walks to the kitchen, passing the medicine cabinet, heads over to the table where she spots her husband's half-eaten curry.
She can hear the clear, distinct sound of someone vomiting.
The splattering sound, and it just keeps going on forever.
And then the sound of someone trying to catch their breath before it starts all over again.
That's what she hears.
She reaches out, scoops up the half-touched bowl of curry and the empty water glass, brings them over to the kitchen sink and starts doing the dishes.
She makes sure to scrub and rinse every bit of that curry off.
She's wiping the plates dry.
She's placing them back in the cabinet.
Jollies always like to keep a tidy house.
That's what perfect wives do.
I mean all the while.
Like a perfect wife, she kept her ears strained for Roy's continued gasping and retching in the bathroom.
Wait, what was that?
She stops.
She wipes her hands on her nightgown and she walks to the bathroom.
She puts her ear up to the door and she's just listening.
She crinkles her eyebrows and she's trying to understand what's going on on the other side.
She's glancing at the staircase to make sure that neither of their sons are walking down the stairs.
And 15 minutes later, Jolly finally hears exactly what she was listening for.
Silence.
Silence.
Her husband, Roy Thomas, was dead in the bathroom.
Jolly calls for help and then she faints.
Neighbors and family members rush into the house.
I mean, they had to break down the bathroom door.
And once they did they find Roy Thomas, father of two, husband of Jolly, first son of the Thomas family of the Pink House, dead.
But it wasn't just that he was found dead.
His mouth was open and there was a foam, like a white frothy substance spilling out of it.
Before Roy Thomas could even be declared dead which he would be very quickly the whispers already start traveling around the town.
Did you hear?
The oldest of the Thomas siblings, he died.
I mean, just suddenly.
They're saying it's a heart attack.
He's only 40.
Poor Jolly and their two boys still so young.
Leela heard those whispers too.
She rushed home that night that her brother passed, but also she heard other conversations take place.
Private ones.
She saw Jolly faint and family members huddling in a corner.
They're trying to keep their tones hush so that Jolly doesn't hear.
Roy had always been a big drinker.
And it had only gotten worse lately.
There was also that black magic stuff that apparently he was into.
Jolly said that he had debts, like thousands of dollars of debt.
And it's pretty obvious he took his own life.
Well, we're just going to have to tell everyone that it was a heart attack.
If the town finds out that he self-exited, leaving his wife and children with his debt, it's going to tarnish the family name.
The boys are already traumatized as it is.
Why would we put them through that?
And at the time, Lila believed it.
It kind of made sense.
Even Lila helped keep everything under wraps.
I mean, she would repeat the family cover.
He had a heart attack.
It was unfortunate.
Genetic heart condition.
Might run in the family.
We miss him oh so very much.
Jolly's doing her best to raise her children as a single mom.
But over time, as Leela keeps repeating the story she realizes with each retelling she believes it less and less.
Three deaths in the pink house?
What are the odds?
Her mom?
Then her dad?
And then her brother?
She requested his autopsy.
Time of death, 11.20 p.m.
Stomach contents, curry and rice.
Undigested.
Cause of death, cyanide poisoning.
Leela's hands gripped the paper.
Her mind is racing.
No, she had a conversation with Jolly the night of Roy's death.
She remembers it so vividly.
I mean yeah, she's thick in her grief and shock at that time, but she remembered it because it's important.
Jolly had told her Roy came home at around 3 p.m.
For lunch, he had curry and rice.
Then at night, he said that he wasn't hungry.
So I went to the kitchen to fry up some eggs.
And that's when he walked into the restroom.
When I was done, I tried to get him to come out, but he wouldn't even open the bathroom door.
She had said that, but that doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't match up with the autopsy results.
The autopsy stated that his death was 1120 p.m.
There were undigested food in his stomach, curry and rice.
But Jolly had told her that he ate the curry around 3 p.m.
There's no way it would still be undigested at the time of his death.
So why on earth would she lie about something like that, about what he had for dinner or what time he ate?
Because cyanide.
Cyanide takes effect almost instantly after exposure.
Leela did think it was odd that her brother would choose to self-exit with cyanide.
It's very difficult to obtain poison and it feels like utter hell to ingest.
Like, why would he do that to himself?
Leela's mind starts racing and she's putting two and two together.
If Roy hadn't eaten dinner and just lunch, the food in his stomach would have already been digested.
But it wasn't.
The food had to have been eaten later for dinner.
But Jolly said he didn't have dinner.
She said at night he didn't have dinner.
At night he didn't have dinner.
At night he didn't have dinner.
Leela remembered her repeating this same story to every single person that she met.
Lila was racing to the pink house to get her nephews out of there before it was too late.
Because the killer, the killer is in the house with them.
It was their own mother, Jolly.
She screamed into the phone, do not eat anything under any circumstances.
There might be cyanide in your house.
Your mother might try to kill you.
Lila remembers all the love letters that her brother received, her brother Roy.
They were probably somewhere inside of that pink house.
They were full of flattery, promises of the future, and at the end of each letter was a signature Jolly Joseph with cute little loopy letters and hearts.
Everything ended with Jolly.
Leela had already gone to the police by this point.
She turned in everything that she could as evidence.
She rushes to her old family home.
And when she gets there, her nephews, I mean, the entire house is a mess.
There is insects everywhere, dirty dishes, rotting food.
The smell is pungent.
Leela barely notices.
She rushes into her nephew's room.
Bring only what's important to you quickly.
We have to go.
As they're leaving, the sky flashes bright, lightning, and then boom, thunder strikes.
So how long after was this?
Like the mom, dad, husband all died in like what kind of time span?
Six years.
So it's a long, long process.
She would not be caught for 14 years.
And when was Lila like trying to get the kids out?
14 years later since her mom's death.
Oh, this is like complete out of the blue.
Yeah.
Yeah, type of because of a funeral.
Oh okay, oh yeah, we're gonna get into it.
So, thunder strikes.
Lila stops momentarily at the gates of the pink house.
The pink house.
It used to always remain unlocked.
I mean, it would welcome anyone in for a warm meal or a place to stay.
Every christmas, the pink house used to turn into this pink and green color because of the christmas lights.
It used to be a home, But now the place looks abandoned and sinister more than anything else.
Like the pink house, was where most of her family members had died, and everything started and ended with Jolly.
Leela looks back at the gate and then at the sky and she says, I did what I could.
It was a message for her family.
They were all dead.
Jolly had killed almost all of them, but Leela felt like they could hear her.
They were with her.
They were encouraging her to take Jolly down.
Her mom, her dad, her brother, her uncle, baby Alphine, and even Silly.
Silly gets up from the bed when she hears the front door ring.
She looks over at the calendar hanging on the wall.
It had been two years since her baby Alphine, had died in a freak choking accident at her son's party.
Two years of just her feeling like a zombie, just shuffling around, moving around people, trying to smile so that other people feel comfortable around you, and trying to regain some sort of control over life.
Silly was trying to get pregnant again.
She thought, maybe if I have another girl, maybe Alphine would live inside of her, you know?
She would live on.
But even that wasn't working out.
She had been on holistic medicines to keep up her chances, but her body was weak.
She had been hospitalized a few times since her daughter's death, which initially she thought it was stress or perhaps depression, but she presented the same symptoms as her baby girl difficulty swallowing stomach burning headache, nausea.
It's like baby Alphine was trying to tell her something from the grave.
Or maybe she was upset with her mom for letting this happen.
Regardless, Silly gets up, walks to the door.
Her friend was supposed to come over that day and try to cheer her up.
She was really the only support system that Silly had.
It doesn't get rid of any of the pain, but it does help her feel not so alone.
She turns the lock to the front door, opens it wide, and smiles softly.
Hey, Jolly.
It was a small gathering.
Some people would argue it's a family gathering, but that's besides the point.
Jolly's there moving through the crowd, smiling and nodding.
I mean even after everything that she's been through.
Her first husband Roy, dead mysteriously, and now she's a single mom of two.
It sucks.
Even after all that tragedy, though, Jolly is still able to try and be Jolly.
She's bright and she's got the ability to talk to anybody and hold a gripping conversation.
But today she seems distracted.
If you were in a conversation with her, she would keep looking away.
And then her eyes would follow someone from across the room while you're talking to her.
And she, uh-huh, yeah.
No, I've never been there before.
She slides up to her relative.
I want to marry someone like him.
What?
Look at him.
He's so peaceful, calm.
She's motioning her head towards Shaju Zacharias.
Jolly's relative is a little bit shocked.
I mean confused really, because everyone at the gathering knew that Shaju was married and had two children of his own.
But not only that, Shaju is technically, technically Jolly's cousin.
But that's a technicality, right?
He's not really her blood cousin.
And technically, she's done it before when she married her first husband, Roy.
Roy was Jolly's cousin by marriage.
They got married.
Roy died mysteriously.
Shaju is Roy's cousin.
And now Jolly wants to marry her deceased husband's cousin.
But since her deceased husband was her distant cousin, she married her cousin, then met her cousin's cousin.
Roy Thomas was the firstborn son of the Thomas family.
The Thomas parents.
I mean they had been going down a mental checklist of all the potential wives for Roy that they recently saw.
They never got around to playing matchmaker just quite yet, but they knew that the clock is ticking.
He's got to get married soon.
They know that.
They just didn't know that Roy would walk into the pink house with a woman standing next to him ready to introduce her.
Hi, mom and dad.
I'd like you to meet my fiancee.
Roy's parents are staring at him like he sprouted a second head.
Son, that is your cousin.
The first time Jolly and Roy met was at a family function as well, but they didn't know that they were cousins at that point.
So again, technically, they're not blood cousins.
They're cousins by marriage through Uncle Manny.
Uncle Manny is Roy's blood uncle, his mom's brother.
Uncle Manny is also Jolly's uncle because he married Jolly's aunt.
I mean, does that happen usually, you think?
I think it's not encouraged for sure.
I'm sure it does happen and I'm sure it can be love.
And technically it's not.
I don't know.
Genetically, does that?
I don't think so.
I think it just makes it a little bit confusing.
I don't think it's bad.
I wouldn't necessarily cast judgment.
It's just a little.
I think it'd be interesting to adjust for the whole family.
So for this case, it was like, huh, did you know she married technically her cousin?
Yeah, and then would marry her cousin's cousin.
So there's a lot going on.
So Uncle Manny and Roy, blood relations.
Uncle Manny and Jolly, family relations through marriage.
Both Jolly and Roy were invited to Uncle Manny's housewarming, where they walked in and there were just likely coconuts everywhere.
Coconuts are one of the more popular housewarming gifts in India.
It's supposed to bring good luck and positive energy into the home.
They're hovering over a table of coconuts, staring into each other's eyes, and it's love at first sight.
They try to fight it because, you know, they're cousins.
But after countless late night secret phone calls and these little love letters that they would write to each other's houses, there was no denying it.
They were going to get married and live happily ever after, not as cousins, but as husband and wife.
Roy's parents stared at Roy and Jolly who are now sitting on their living room couch.
Tom Thomas is like no.
What do you mean?
No.
No.
Yeah, I mean, no.
Tom Thomas, Roy's dad, did not like this even a little bit.
Anne, the mom, on the other hand, she's quiet the whole time.
She's thinking.
Anne's a teacher, which side note.
Obviously, being a teacher anywhere is a big deal, and you're literally guiding the future generations.
But in India, it's a bit more of a prestigious job than the U.S.
It's a lot harder of a position to get and teachers are often referred to as gurus of India.
So while teachers in the US are appreciated, they might not be as respected as teachers in India.
So keep that in mind.
Now, Tom was also in the education field.
He was an officer for the state's education department for the local town.
Everyone comes to this couple for advice.
That's why they have an open door policy.
But in the pink house, when it's just them, Tom turns to Anne.
She's the matriarch of the family.
And Tom would wait for Anne's word.
I like her.
Every trick question that Anne had set up for Jolly to trip on, she passed.
What do your parents do for work again?
Oh, they're humble farmers, but they're well-respected in our town for their unwavering dedication to the harvest and, of course, their hard work.
What about school?
I was the first in my family to attend college.
I graduated with a Master's of Commerce.
That's basically a master's degree in business.
It is very, very impressive.
A higher degree than Roy, their own son.
Anne could see herself having intellectually stimulating conversations with Jolly.
I mean both of them are headstrong independent women who have a vision of their own that's separate from men.
And they could be the guiding future for all the other girls in their small town to freaking, go after what they want with such aggression that men will step out of the way for you.
Anne could see them... getting along really well.
She smiled at Jolly.
Meanwhile, Jolly smiled back and she looked around at the spacious living room, the servants preparing tea for them in the kitchen, ushering it over, placing it in front of Jolly to drink.
The minute that she's done and that empty teacup lands on the coffee table, it's whisked back away into the kitchen.
Not a single dirty teacup lingering on the coffee table or any surface of this house.
She smiles back at Anne because she could see herself living here with all the staff tending to her every need.
She felt right at home already.
Unfortunately, there is only room for one head of the house.
If there were guidelines like a rule book on being the best daughter-in-law, Jolly could have written it.
The rules are technically endless, but if you had to nail at least four of the crucial ones, you'd be set.
One, be the family therapist.
Listen to everyone's problems and offer not the best advice.
Offer the advice that they want to hear.
Jolly was even winning Tom over with this role.
He's coming around and seeing her as a confidant, an asset to the Thomas family, an asset to the Pink House.
Two, never be disagreeable, but always get your way.
The art of gentle manipulation and persuasion.
Mom, mother-in-law, you have such a classic, timeless sense of style.
I mean, this floral arrangement is incredible.
But I did see a similar one at Valerie's party the other day and I was thinking maybe we could add some more modern touches to really showcase how you always set the trends for everyone in the town.
You lead and the town follows.
Three, learn to cook an unforgettable dish.
Mother, I'm telling you, you have not lived until you've tried my mutton soup.
I've got a secret blend of spices that will warm you from the inside out.
I mean, it's positively to die for.
And four, be resourceful and solve problems before they arise.
Oh, and probably the most important rule like it's so important it doesn't even need a spot on the list is secure your place in the family and be the one to carry on the family name.
Jolly Joseph was pregnant with the Thomas's very first grandbaby.
Ann is smiling down at her newborn grandbaby, a grandson.
She looks up at Jolly with just so much pride in her eyes.
You did so good.
You handled that birth perfectly.
I am so proud of you.
Jolly gives her mother-in-law a weak smile back.
I mean, she had done it.
She had really done it.
She couldn't have asked for anything more.
I mean, it was just right.
The timing, too.
It was perfect.
Anne had been nagging her to get a job recently.
Put that master's degree to use.
But Jolly has no such desire to work.
I mean, if she was going to work, why did she move into the pink house and marry jobless Roy?
That doesn't make sense.
So now, with the delivery of the Thomas's first grandson, Jolly would have all the rights, all the power in the pink house.
The mother of the first grandbaby would not have to work.
She would have the luxury to kick her feet up on the coffee table lounge around and have the staff care for her and her baby and whatever she wants on the whim.
Jolly is watching Anne fawn over her baby.
This is perfect, Jolly.
I'm absolutely in love with this baby.
Now you can get a job and let me retire to watch your child forever.
What?
The plan has backfired.
Jolly would stall.
She doesn't want to go to work.
So instead, she went and got a teaching certificate in another town.
That took about a year.
Then when she got back, she started with the excuses.
Well, the baby is so small.
Who's going to take care of him?
Anne would sit there listening to the compiled list of reasons that Jolly would prepare for her.
You know, on why she can't work.
It likely went something along the lines of I know you mean well, but I think right now the priority is the baby.
You know, critical for bonding.
And you know what they say.
I need to be there for the feeding and the moments.
And can you imagine?
Research shows how important it is for babies to have a strong attachment to their mothers.
And I don't want to miss out on that.
My body needs time to heal, you know, and then the sleepless night.
Childcare is very pricey.
Not many teaching jobs in this area, you know.
So I think, you know what I think, right?
When Jolly was done, she looked up and she would see Anne smiling at her.
She hasn't said a single word in this conversation. do you mother what do you we got a job interview for you shit and pulled some strings to get jolly an interview for a teaching position at the local school it honestly would have been like hot knife through butter easy but jolly comes back from the interview tail tucked between her legs i'm not sure why they rejected me on the spot and in tom thomas they're confused why would they do that jolly is perfect for the job if anything she's overqualified Oh my God, because she's a new mom.
They're discriminating.
They think that her son is gonna hold her back in life.
And you know what?
We're gonna prove them wrong.
Jolly just nodded, but she knew that's not why she wasn't hired.
She didn't get the job because she never showed up for the interview.
How do you apply for a teaching position when you don't even have a teaching certificate?
Jolly also knew that if she said no once more to her mother-in-law she would be considered disagreeable, difficult to be around and that would go against the rules of being a good daughter-in-law.
What are the main four ones again?
One, be the family therapist.
Two, never be disagreeable, but always get your way.
Three, learn to cook an unforgettable dish.
And four, be resourceful and solve problems before they arise.
Jolly was creative.
It was a skill that had served her really well her whole life, and it was going to again right now.
Jolly was just starting to get frustrated because she just couldn't get the dosages right.
Yeah, and it was frustrating her.
Anne just wasn't dying.
She had to give it to her.
Anne was holding on.
The first time Jolly tried to kill Anne, it wasn't enough at all.
Anne just complained about indigestion, closed the door to her room and she was good after a good night's rest.
The second time Jolly upped the dosage and when Anne started convulsing rushed to the hospital.
Jolly's thinking second time's the charm, but one hospital visit, some ancient holistic medicine.
Later, Anne gets right back to nagging Jolly's ear off about going back to work.
So maybe it's not the amount.
Maybe it's the drug.
Up until now, Jolly had been using whatever she could get her hands on just around the house, around the neighborhood.
So it's time to change it up.
Time to test out a new drug.
She needed something stronger.
Dog kill.
Jolly remembered her dad used it on a childhood pet of theirs once.
He didn't like how the dog was such a nuisance to the visitors, so he killed it.
But obviously it's deadly, which makes it not the easiest thing to obtain.
And Jolly would have to travel to a completely different town.
Use a fake name, make an excuse, ask for a prescription for dog kill.
Beg for a prescription for dog kill.
The dog in town has rabies.
It's going to hurt a small child eventually.
Unless Then Jolly would travel to another town, to a separate pharmacy, to pick up the prescription.
Now, if that's not resourceful, I don't know what is.
She even tested on her other precious pet.
And she loved that dog.
She really did.
I mean she took no joy in seeing the dog withering away in pain for four hours.
First two hours the dog started barking like crazy and running around in circles in a frenzy.
Its eyes were blown out and wild.
Within the next two hours it was collapsed on the ground with its limbs wrought out in these uncontrollable jerky movements growing more and more violent by the second.
She did not enjoy that, Probably.
But at least she knew that it worked.
Jolly had been the definition of the perfect daughter-in-law.
One, be the family therapist.
Two, never be disagreeable, but always get your way.
And be resourceful and solve problems before they arise.
And wait, there's one that she's missing.
Rule number three, learn to cook an unforgettable dish.
Her specialty, mutton soup.
The key to her dish was the perfect blend of spices, turmeric, coriander, masala, and pepper.
Most recipes would suggest serving the soup hot with rice or bread, but Jolly would be serving it with an extra ingredient, specially for Anne.
Dog kill.
It would be an unforgettable dish.
Jolly's routine every day was meticulous.
The alarm would go off.
She would swing her legs off the bed.
They would hit the floor with a thud.
The morning routine was simple.
Brush teeth, wash face, get ready, make sure the kids have breakfast drive to work.
Going over lesson plans.
Jolly's a professor at NIT, which is the top engineering school in all of India.
She got a new job.
Wait, she did have a job?
She gets a new job.
Okay.
Yeah, it's like the best engineering school in India.
And she's a professor there.
The questions she's getting for her lesson plans.
I mean, they're intense.
These are not just like random he he ha ha college students.
They're the top minds from all over India.
And she's teaching them.
If she thought about it too hard, she would have a panic attack.
So she would push it to the back of her mind.
Get to school, start her lessons, take a quick working lunch break, get back in her car, drive 20 minutes back home.
While on the phone with students, faculty members parents, she would almost always walk in through the front doors of the pink house.
Did you take the book from my desk?
No no, it's fine if it's from the right stack.
Just remember to bring it back after you reviewed the lessons.
Okay okay yes, i'll see you tomorrow in class.
She hangs up Jolly's kids.
They never felt like she gave them any attention really.
I mean, she's always just going over lesson plans on the phone with her boss, grading papers.
She would sit there with a stack of papers, a bright red pen.
And when one of the kids would try and play with her, get some of her attention, she would put the red pen down, pick up her child, walk into a room.
Here you go.
Play with your dad.
Then Jolly would start her second shift.
She would take off the school name tag from around her neck, throw on a cardigan over her work outfit, settle down on the cushy chair in the study and she would start going through the family finances, making sure that everything was balancing at the end.
In her favor, that is.
A new shift that she took on after Anne died.
Then when she was done with that night shift, she would start her third shift.
She would change into her night clothes.
She starts making dinner, curry for Roy.
The kids had their phases of different foods that they ate.
And of course, mashed tapioca every single evening for her father-in-law.
I mean, it's hard.
It's hard as a mom of two to take on all these different shifts.
She felt like she was being spread really thin, but she did it for the family.
And all that's to say is she just doesn't have a lot of extra time.
And she definitely doesn't have any time for all of the neighborhood gossip.
Did you hear?
Jolly's trying to be Anne 2.0.
Trying to replace her.
It's just weird.
She started dressing like Anne, but better.
I mean, it's clear that she spends a lot of money on clothes.
And how much money do you think the professors at NIT even get paid?
You think it's from the Thomas's family funds that she's using?
Well, you know how she's been gaining more influence in the family?
Look, I don't know.
I'm just saying she's looking like Anne.
She's acting like Anne.
I mean, Thomas single could be influenced by a nice young woman in the house.
It might be the smart thing to do.
Ew, no, that's clearly very, very false and fake and just gross.
She is having an affair, but it's not with her father-in-law.
She's sleeping with her cousin.
Jolly was allegedly having an affair with roy's cousin, not shaju, that would be crazy.
Shaju's married, he's got children, but a cousin named matthew, roy's closest relative.
They call him roy's philosopher because he always gives roy such good advice.
So she's sleeping with another cousin.
Matthew is laying in his cousin Roy's bed with his cousin Roy's wife, Jolly.
She rolls over in bed, brings up the blanket with one hand to cover herself and just props her head up with the other.
Don't you guys use cyanide to clean gold?
Matthew turns to look at his cousin's wife while he grabs his shirt.
I mean, yeah, why?
Jolly kicks her feet up behind her.
It's just so annoying.
It's inconvenient.
I just wish I had some way to get rid of them quickly, you know, and easily.
The rats.
There's just a few rats in the house that I need to get rid of.
Matthew looks at her kind of strangely.
Cyanide is not a super common method used to kill rats.
It's a little overkill in his opinion, but he shrugs if it gets the job done, right?
I guess I suppose.
But getting the cyanide for Jolly wasn't going to be a walk in the park.
It's regulated.
You can't just pick it up at the store.
Not to mention it's not that cheap.
He would have to go directly to his boss Praji, the owner of the local jewelry store that Matthew works at.
I mean, Praji has a permit to get cyanide because you can use it to separate gold.
But Matthew knew that Praji was someone that likes a good deal.
So he thought of everything that Praji would want in a deal.
Two bottles of cyanide in exchange for two bottles of liquor, $60, and a night with Jolly.
Wow.
The use of shrooms is illegal in most countries, including the United States and India.
But at any rate, the mushrooms that Jolly had were not magical.
They were just regular old mushroom powder in these plastic capsules.
Mushroom supplements.
They're anti-inflammatory antioxidant, stress relieving, helps to improve energy levels and boost immunity.
And it's all natural.
But also, so is cyanide, is it not?
Okay, maybe not.
But you can find it naturally in very minimal doses in apple seeds and cherry pits.
And so it's justifiable.
You say cyanide is in the apple?
Apple pits, yeah.
You'd have to eat like 300 apples though to get cyanide poisoning.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And right now Jolly is hovering over the kitchen counter emptying out one of the capsules into the trash.
She packs in some white powder instead.
Jolly is undeniably Thomas's new favorite family member.
He had originally been the most against Jolly's marriage to his firstborn son, Roy.
But now that Jolly had moved in and his wife had died, he'd really come to lean on Jolly a lot.
She really stepped up to the plate, filled that caregiver role gap that Anne had left behind.
She made sure that he took his medicine, ate well, spent time outdoors.
Some neighbors thought it was so sweet.
They even said that Tom treated her more like his daughter by blood rather than daughter by marriage.
But Jolly thought their relationship was a little bit different.
Jolly knew that she had Tom in the palm of her hand.
If she wanted him to transfer all the money from those sales into her account, he would do it.
And he would throw in most of his life savings as well.
If she wanted him to change his will so that it would favor her and her husband Roy, he would do it.
Jolly loved it.
He was like her little puppet.
And now Jolly just needed her puppet to dance for her one last time.
The morning of March 26, 2008, 6 p.m.
It's an hour before prayer and it's also time for Tom to take his daily mushroom capsule.
Jolly walks into Tom's study.
Tom is hunched over the papers on his desk.
He's been so busy helping a few teachers from the nearby schools figure out their taxes.
Tom, your pills.
Tom looks up from his work and his eyes just find Jolly's face.
He beams and he brings his arms up outstretched dramatically.
What would I do without you, Jolly?
Jolly hands him the capsules with water, smiling back at him.
No, it was more what she could do without him.
Tom obediently swallows the capsule and returns to work.
But immediately, he starts feeling a little dizzy.
He tries to take a big, deep breath to steady himself, but the dizziness only intensifies.
He clutches the desk in front of him.
His heart starts racing.
He's anxious.
He's like, Jolly, Jolly?
Jolly is by his side.
She's unnervingly calm.
Yes, Tom?
Suddenly, there's a sharp pain that's just tearing through his chest.
He falls over on his chair, doubling over.
And Jolly's just watching as her father-in-law is vomiting all over the floor, all over her feet.
He begins to convulse uncontrollably, as if his limbs are being jerked around like strings, like he's a puppet.
And then his body goes still.
He would be pronounced dead at the hospital.
Leela, the daughter, would later question Jolly.
Why did it take so long for him to be taken to the hospital?
I just don't get it.
Jolly shrugged.
I couldn't find the car keys, so it took some time.
Tom's cause of death was ruled a heart attack.
Just like his wife Anne, six years prior, their son Roy Jolly's husband would follow three years later by self-exit.
The Pink House is starting to gain a reputation.
Three sudden deaths in a family within nine years, all under suspicious circumstances, but somehow all explained away.
It's almost as if the priest's words were coming true.
If you don't put up a wall around the well, three people will die.
Poor Jolly.
Her beloved family members taken out one after the other.
Maybe she should have listened to the omens.
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Does your left palm itch?
If it does, you should watch your spending.
Go find your wallet, hold it tight.
Or when's the last time you cut your nails at night?
Be careful, because they say every time you clip your nails, you're cutting your chances of joining your loved ones in the happy afterlife.
Or have you recently seen a black butterfly?
I mean, no big deal or anything, but that just basically means that your impending death is near.
These are all the bad omens that some people believe in.
Even if you don't subscribe to these beliefs, you have to admit they're kind of in the back of your mind once you know them.
No?
Tonight.
So if you decide to cut your nails while watching this video, you might second guess for a split second.
Wait, should I just wait till morning?
Maybe while you cut your nails at night, the whole house is quiet and you feel like every little click you hear creak downstairs.
Maybe, maybe not.
Lila is not a superstitious person and today is not a superstitious day.
Lila is smiling so many times that her entire face feels so sore.
It's a happy day.
She's staring at her new sister-in-law in her beautiful wedding gown.
I mean, the sight alone is confirmation.
Superstitions are incorrect and not at all an indicator of anything.
Lila tries to be in the moment.
Her older brother Roy, is finally getting married, and it's the love marriage, not an arranged marriage, which nothing's wrong with that.
It's actually the norm, but it's kind of intriguing.
It's exciting for the Thomas family.
Lila being the sister of the groom should be the one of the happiest.
She's finally going to get a sister in the pink house.
The boys are no longer going to outnumber her and her mom.
She's going to have an ally.
But every two seconds, when Leela tries to enjoy the celebrations, she would have this intrusive thought pop up in her mind.
Bad.
Bad.
Bad omen.
She tries to shake it out of her head.
I mean, there's no such thing as bad omens.
There's just love and happy marriages.
But as she looks out the window of the church, there's this nagging feeling.
One might call it intuition, but it's like this pulling in her stomach.
She stares out at the gray window.
Rain.
Rain is bad.
On a normal day, rain is merely an inconvenience.
Every little raindrop that falls is filled with misery, and when it falls and hits the newlywed couple, it gets absorbed into their wedding vows, into their wedding gowns, their suits, even their skin.
The newlywed couple are now taking in all that pain, anger, sorrow, regret of the angry spirits.
They're just raining down on them, jealous of happiness.
That's what they say about Rain on wedding days.
Leela tries to shake the feeling because this is just goofy.
Roy, her brother, is happy.
Jolly is the best sister-in-law that she could have asked for.
She's incredibly humble, kind, educated, beautiful.
She is the dream girl for Roy.
But even after the wedding, even after the death of Ann Thomas Leela's mom, the death of Tom Thomas Leela's dad, the death of Roy Thomas Leela's brother, Jolly's wife, even after all of that, even after Jolly tried to legally fight Leela and her other surviving brother Arnav, for the ownership of the Thomas family lands and the pink house, even after all that, Leela just tries to see Jolly for who she is.
Family.
Her Jolly sister-in-law.
Some people are just very, very unlucky.
Neighbors whispered that death stuck to Jolly Joseph like a wet t-shirt.
That's what they said.
Three deaths in the pink house?
If you sat there filling in some sort of timeline.
I mean it all starts after Jolly Joseph moves in.
She just might be bad luck.
After she moves in, Anne Thomas dies.
Then Tom Thomas dies.
Then her husband, Roy Thomas, dies, leaving her a single mom of two.
I mean, she must have done something horrendous in a past life, because the stars are just not working in her favor.
Uncle Manny did not agree with the baseless rumors.
Uncle Manny is Roy's blood uncle, but he's also Jolly's uncle by marriage.
And he's also a very reasonable and understanding man.
He knew that his niece, Jolly, is trying her best with the really shitty cards that she's dealt.
When Anne died, she stepped up to the plate.
She took care of the family finances.
She worked twice as hard to manage all their investments.
When Tom died, the father-in-law, she was devastated.
And her husband, Roy, never wanted to get a job.
But she loved that man.
I mean, that's crazy.
Uncle Manny would defend Jolly to anybody.
Well, at least that was before Uncle Manny remembered Tom's funeral.
So after Tom died the second death in the Thomas family at his funeral everybody's dressed in black, not a single smile in the crowd.
And if you were there, thick in the middle of your own grief, maybe you don't notice the strange thing.
But Uncle Manny did.
He noticed it.
Jolly is standing there grieving her father-in-law, wiping the tears from her eyes.
And in the corner of Uncle Manny's eyes, he spots Matthew just staring at Jolly.
Why would Jolly's husband's cousin be staring at her like that?
I mean, there was just something there in the look that he's giving her.
And then later they're talking.
But like their closeness, the way that their bodies turn at the same time to greet another relative, the way that their bodies seem so naturally in sync, that's not normal for people, unless they know each other intimately.
It was weird.
Usually you're very awkward and clunky with new people.
Uncle Manny is just sitting there wondering, why is this bothering him so much?
I mean, technically, they're family members.
Matthew is Roy's cousin.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because Uncle Manny remembered.
Tom had told him a while back that he suspected Jolly of sleeping with Roy's cousin, Matthew.
Uncle Manny didn't really take it too seriously because Tom's getting older.
Maybe he's paranoid.
I mean, that can't be true.
How ridiculous would that be to sleep with your cousin?
But after Roy's death, after her husband's death, Uncle Manny is starting to get a vibe and he doesn't like it.
He had a lot of suspicions about Jolly and he wanted to do something about it.
He starts talking about it.
He starts talking, calling relatives to tell them his thoughts.
February 24th, 2014, Uncle Manny would be found dead.
There was a lunch sitting cold on his dining table, a special curry made by Jolly.
It was not touched.
Because curry isn't the only dish that cyanide can be mixed into.
In Uncle Manny's liquor cabinet was a half-finished bottle of whiskey.
Cyanide.
So she did put Saina in both?
Just the whiskey.
Not the curry?
No.
Huh.
Because she thought maybe the last one there was curry.
I don't want to do it again.
Oh, wow.
But there was a curry.
There was a curry.
Made by her.
Sitting on the dining table.
That's crazy.
Wow.
There are a number of rules that chefs have to follow in the kitchen.
One interesting one usually that's only found in high pressure Michelin starred kitchens is the no talking rule, which means exactly what it sounds like.
During service, kitchen staff must work in complete silence, communicating only through nods, gestures and brief eye contact.
The purpose of this rule is to maintain absolute focus and minimize distractions, and ensure that every dish is executed flawlessly, which sounds really unhinged.
But then again, this is just at some fancy restaurants, right?
The basics, everybody knows that.
Wash your hands before and after touching anything.
Keep your nails trimmed and clean.
Make sure you don't have any open cuts.
Jolly knew these rules well.
She's a great cook.
But to be honest, Jolly followed these rules more when she was out of the kitchen.
These rules were essential in preventing accidental cyanide poisoning through skin contact.
Because Jolly handled cyanide regularly.
She would have to stick to these rules like they were a life code.
She was trying to be safe about killing.
And she had allegedly succeeded six times.
Anne, Tom, Roy, Uncle Manny, baby Alphine, and now Silly's murder was the most risky.
It happened in the waiting room of a dentist office with patients all around.
Even Silly's own son was there.
Here, take one of these.
It's a mushroom capsule.
It'll help with the headache.
Silly had gratefully taken the mushroom capsule from Jolly and gulped it down with some water.
Minutes later, she began convulsing, struggling to breathe, and she would die just like that, just like the others.
The son is screaming and crying all the way to the hospital.
I mean, his mom, just two years after his sister died, his mom dies.
Jolly's holding her breath though, because she could have sworn.
She saw Silly's son looking at her when she offered his mom the pills.
Thank God the doctors thought it was epilepsy.
But now's not the time to think about that, okay?
It's a special day.
Jolly and Shaju are getting married.
Exactly one year after Silly's death, February 2017.
After their intimate wedding, Shaju and his son would move into the pink house.
They would slam the gates closed and seclude themselves from the world.
I mean at this point the whispers.
They're not even whispers, they're straight up screams about the house.
The family death, the curse and the new marriage of the two cousins, Jolly and Shaju.
I mean, most people do not agree with this marriage.
Even Silly's parents were disgusted that their son-in-law could just move on so quickly.
But also with Jolly, it's just strange.
The neighbors were whispering about the two cousins as well, so they just shut themselves into the pink house and started this new life together.
But old habits die hard.
Shaju rolls over in bed one night, rubs his eyes and he sees Jolly whispering and smiling while holding a phone up to her ear.
It was odd.
He tried to ask Jolly about it, but she would just shrug it off.
He demanded to see her phone, but she absolutely refused.
I mean, it's pretty obvious.
Shaji thinks that Jolly is cheating.
And she probably is, right?
Because the past is hard to let go of.
It's comfortable.
It's an old sweater that you just can't get rid of.
But leela thomas, she's not letting go of the past either.
Her brother's widow is now moving on and marrying their cousin.
It's weird.
Everything about this is odd.
The thomas family, i mean it, was perfectly fine until she came into their lives.
That's when the death started.
Sure, you could call it unlucky, but what if it's not?
Leela knows what she saw at silly's funeral.
Silly is Shaju's wife.
The weird energy, like all of that.
Silly's family and friends had come over to her house for Silly's wake, if you will.
And Jolly is there, ushering people in, putting coasters on the table as if this is her house, as if she's the lady of the house, the wife.
Jolly's managing everything, the food, the flower arrangements, getting Silly ready for the funeral.
I mean, it's odd.
You would think that Shaju and Jolly are a couple and Silly was Jolly's sister or something.
What?
When Jolly wasn't busy micromanaging every aspect of the funeral, she would just burst into tears, uncontrollably crying, and then done.
She'd go back to funeral arrangements and then go back to crying.
A lot of people were also whispering, why does she seem the saddest?
Like, it's weird.
I get it.
It's her friend, but it's just point blank bizarre, lila said.
I stood there looking at all of this and i still remember how disturbed i felt.
I wasn't even concentrating on the dead body, i was just.
I was looking at jolly moving around, bringing things from the other room, doing all the things, and i just saw her face for a strange moment and i just felt weird.
I mean, i felt like she actually had this happiness.
I mean somewhere it reflected on jolly's face at the funeral, like i felt it.
I just stood there and a spark struck my mind and i connected Silly.
Had died.
For what?
For Shaju to be single?
For Jo- No.
Did Silly die because of Jolly?
The thought disturbed me instantly and immensely, and I wondered if perhaps the baby was also a hindrance.
Baby Alphine, who was sick.
Even if Silly alone dies and Jolly remarries Shaju, she would be obligated to care for their sick child, which would undoubtedly hold Jolly's life back.
I knew something wasn't right.
But that, I mean, that just can't be possible, right?
Leela starts connecting the dots, all the deaths.
The only person that wins every single time is Jolly.
It just doesn't make any sense.
With Anne, she became the matriarch, the head of the investments.
Tom's death, she had an inheritance.
Roy's death, she got Roy's inheritance.
Baby Alphine, maybe she doesn't want to take care of a baby because she wants to marry Shaju.
And then Shaju's wife?
What?
Leela's eyes went big and she lifts her head to stare at Jolly at the funeral.
Who she sees, Jolly is walking straight up to Silly's coffin, right next to Shaju.
They both lean down and kiss Silly on each side of her cheek.
The both of them.
At the same time, a final goodbye.
The funeral goers started looking from side to side, eyes wide.
What the hell was that about?
That was a shocking gesture.
Celia just passed, but it looks like these two, they look like a couple.
I mean, they look like a couple that have been together for a while.
What does that mean?
So they're not hiding it at this point.
And everybody knows, they know they're just putting it out.
Lila thought it meant her whole life had been a lie.
She had to do something about it.
She goes home after the funeral, calls her other brother Arnav.
I'm going to ask for a copy of Roy's postmortem.
She discovered in the autopsy that he had undigested curry in his stomach, but that doesn't align with what Jolly said remember.
Yeah.
Leela and Arnav Roy's siblings, Jolly's brother and sister-in-law.
They went to the police and demanded an exhumation of six people.
They believed that Jolly had killed six people in their family.
And none of this is going to be easy.
The deaths happened in the span of 14 years between the first and the last murder.
It would...
It would be difficult to even exhume some of the bodies, and even if they had been poisoned with cyanide cyanide is more of a here than gone type of thing.
It doesn't linger in the body for very long.
Cyanide metabolizes in the body very quickly and once that happens, it becomes very hard to detect.
Additionally, the longer a body has been buried in the ground, the more likely that the cyanide has actually seeped out of their bodies and into the surrounding soil.
Experts on this case said, it's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.
Trying to find cyanide in a decomposed body, that's difficult.
So with those odds and the added element of exhuming a body in Christianity, the town actually was really upset at the siblings for requesting such a thing.
They were like, you're going to put your whole family's souls through that for what?
The tiniest sliver of a chance that you might find something?
Which, yes.
Oh, sorry.
So they had this feeling 16 years later?
Yeah, 14 years later.
14 years later.
So they weren't thinking about poisoning before.
I think Anne and Thomas.
They were elderly and because they had gone to, So Anne had gone to the hospital multiple times.
Nobody knew that it was her being poisoned.
They thought that she was having a natural decline in her health.
Same with Tom, Thomas, the father.
Roy, Thomas, everybody did believe it was a self-exit.
When it comes to Uncle Manny, I think that maybe Leela did not connect all of them together.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't think that generally you would imagine that you have a serial killer in the family.
Yeah yeah, and it was.
It would this.
It was a spanning of six years, three years, nine years for three victims.
So you know, it's not back to back where she's so suspicious, it's just, it's weird.
And the neighbors are like you're not even gonna find anything because look at jolly.
She's jolly.
Besides the two siblings, they've got something to gain from all of this.
Jolly has the pink house.
She's got tom's money.
They're gonna frame her for the murders and take back what is theirs.
At least that's what some of the people were saying.
They stopped saying it when cyanide was found in Silly, Shaju's wife's body.
October 5th, 2019, Jolly Joseph would be arrested in the Pink House.
Early hours of the morning in front of her two sons, Remo and Reynolds.
She was 47 when she was arrested.
She was 33 when she committed her very first murder.
And that is the story of Jolly Joseph.
Or at least that's what the prosecutors, the media and the general public believe has happened more or less.
But that doesn't mean that it's 100% true.
That's just what I would consider the overwhelming majority of people and what they believe.
The trial is still ongoing.
And here's the interesting part.
A lot of the information that we have is from Jolly herself.
She confessed.
But in India, a confession cannot be admissible in the court of law.
In the US, that would solidify her guilt 10 times over to the prison and back, but not in India.
Jolly has taken back everything that she's confessed to.
He literally sees violence against women and he's like that one.
That's the guy that I want to protect.
He said why should anyone become a criminal lawyer if you're not going to represent all aspects of life for a criminal, including murder?
And if one is not prepared to represent these aspects, it's better for one to opt for family court law.
Perhaps everybody has the legal right to defend their case.
Anyway, he was hired to represent her in the trial, which she has pled not guilty.
The attorney has stated that she confessed under duress.
The police found a bottle of cyanide wrapped in cloth that was placed in the kitchen utensil drawer in that kitchen, but Jolly argued that they planted it.
She said, if I did kill everyone, why would I keep the bottle of cyanide?
The attorney has stated, with much respect to the honorable court and with respect to the prosecution, as a defense lawyer after so many years, even saying that they found this substance in the house is beyond my imagination.
To prove the allegations against Jolly, prosecution itself fabricated the potassium cyanide, the bottle that contained it, the place where it was hidden.
I believe all of these things were framed for the purpose of this case.
The attorney also stated that the police were playing dirty by encouraging a trial by media.
They said, police are collectively leaking information to media and they are spinning stories after stories, and I'm sure most of these charges will not stand before the court of law.
But while her attorney is so busy at work, Jolly is confessing to a lot of people.
Her brother stated that she confessed to him.
He and his father, they're like, we don't know her anymore.
She has been completely disowned.
She confesses to her son, the police, in front of alleged witnesses.
It's stated that she confessed to her alleged other boyfriend, the man who just goes by the name Johnson.
Jolly did claim innocence on baby Alphine's murder, though.
She said that the baby had nothing to do with her.
She reacted, what would I get from killing a small child?
The child is a minor.
She will not be an obstacle to my marriage or anything like that.
She confessed to her son, so she's confessing to a lot of people.
Jolly's eldest son, who participated in the Netflix documentary, only refers to his mom as either Jolly by name, or that woman.
He said it was unbelievable for me to think that she has committed so many murders, because I had seen such things only in movies, never in real life.
When I reached home, I found out that my house was empty except my brother, and then she came home.
When the woman called Jolly returned home, I observed that she looked very tired panic-stricken, and her inner mind was full of fear.
I said that I need to speak with Jolly alone, and then I went into a room with her.
After entering the room, I asked her, what's going on?
I told her the news channels are all pointing their fingers in your direction.
I mean, have there been mistakes on your part?
Did you do it?
Did you kill people?
I'm asking you strongly, are you involved in these murders?
He said that Jolly cried and replied in a panicked voice that she did not do anything wrong and she was not involved at all.
I said, I want to know the truth.
Tell me what happened.
You've definitely done something and you have to tell me everything.
She finally admitted that she committed the murders.
Well, she said that she committed some mistakes.
He said, so I asked her again, did you commit these murders?
Tell me everything.
Remo states that his mom admitted everything.
She admitted to all six murders.
And he states, I was completely shocked.
I didn't know what to do.
Until that day, we believed that the deaths of our close family members were natural.
I had doubts until the very end.
I can never see that person as my mother again.
Also, I don't know if this part is kind of anticlimactic coming down from that, because she just confessed to killing everybody.
But she also does confess to not having a job.
She went to the NIT job as a professor for 12 years.
She did not have a job.
We don't know what kind of paper she's grading.
I don't know if she went to the library and printed out random papers and then started grading them in her free time.
What's crazy is that her kid said that she was always working.
She's not even doing fun stuff.
It's not like she comes home from work to just lay on the bed.
She's literally reading papers and grading papers.
Fake papers.
Fake papers.
We have no idea what she did every day for 12 years straight.
They tried to ask Jolly and she said that she went to this beauty spa.
But when they asked the beauty spa people they're like I mean, we've seen her, but she hasn't been coming here every day for the past 12 years.
Like she's just a normal customer.
She could have just stopped.
She could have just say, okay, I stopped working.
Yeah.
She didn't for 12 years because it's a prestigious position.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I mean, it's just unhinged.
Netflix released a documentary called Curry and Cyanide, which is yeah, i mean, a lot of people did say it was a wild name, when they didn't know that curry was actually involved.
Yeah, that was the first controversy, um matthew, what do you mean?
They didn't, they just thought it was an indian case.
So they called it korean cyanide and people were very just thought the name was so unhinged and wild.
But she actually did put cyanide in curry, it seems.
Allegedly Now Matthew, the cousin, tried to get the Netflix documentary banned.
He filed for an intervention from the trial courts.
He claimed that the documentary went over fake information, but his request was ultimately banned.
So the Netflix doc is live.
But even with the documentary, the trial underway, I mean, there's still a lot of unanswered questions.
Like where did Jolly go for the year that she was getting her teaching certificate if she didn't actually get her teaching certificate?
Where did she go every day while she was at work at NIT for 12 years?
We know that she borrowed money from Shaju's dad while she pretended to work, because you know it's pretty hard to hide the fact that you don't have an income coming in.
But how was she always in debt?
She killed so many people for the purpose of money and she's still in debt.
Like what is her game plan?
What's her motive?
So she's killing for money or we're saying we don't know.
We don't know.
That's what people think that she's doing because that's the only motive that makes sense.
It's like either killing for money, killing for convenience, or killing to just make sure you don't get caught.
Mm hmm.
If she really did this all for money.
She's working harder at killing and getting away with it than she would have just working a regular job.
She's working 20 times harder.
Yeah.
And there's now a question of how many others were involved.
There are a lot of questions about Shaju, the new husband, and his involvement in the death of his wife and child.
Because I guess netizens were wondering how he didn't see these red flags.
And just the timing of everything.
It felt like they were already together by the point that his wife died.
Did he see them as holding him back in life as well?
I don't know about all of that, but netizens do state it's weird that the doctors they recommended for both his daughter and his wife to get an autopsy done.
They're both like, this is not this is not natural, like something weird happened.
But he would say, no, it's OK.
Like, I'm going to reject because it's just not something we do in the family.
He also stated that he really only remarried Jolly because it sounded like it'd be a smart choice for him and his son.
Because, you know, she's family.
So they'd just be a big family.
I guess the idea being that Shaju was a single dad with a son, Jolly's a single mom with two sons.
They're already family, so now they can blend into a family.
I don't know.
It's just intriguing.
Some people think that Shaju was actually the next victim because his parents did have some money.
So maybe it would have been a Roy situation where she kills Shaju.
The police do not think that Shaju is involved at all, but a lot of netizens remain suspicious, to say the least.
Shaju did file for divorce after she was arrested.
They did arrest also three accomplices.
Cousin Matthew, the one that Jolly was sleeping with that obtained the cyanide.
Praji, the owner of the jewelry store that Matthew purchased the cyanide from, allegedly.
Both parties are denying any involvement.
And then Manoj Kumar...
Apparently, he's a former politician from the area.
He opened up his own real estate brokerage that Jolly invested a lot of her money into, and he was arrested for helping Jolly get a fake notary for Tom's will, because she forged a portion of Tom's will.
I guess the unanswered question is, how much did they really know?
How involved were they?
And the biggest question is, what if she's not actually guilty?
There are some people that believe Jolly is innocent, that she was set up.
They say that it doesn't make sense for Jolly to have committed these crimes, and the police just want an easier target.
They argue that Anne and Tom Thomas were already pretty ill at the time of their alleged murders.
So perhaps they died from natural causes.
They state that there really was no reason for Jolly to kill a two year old who did nothing.
One netizen raises a few questions and they write, look at this objectively.
We never hear Jolly speak.
The only conversations we've heard are from other people saying that this is what she said.
I'd really want to see how she is as a person.
The end conversation with her and Leela is just chilling.
It sounds like Leela is admitting to the guilt.
Six victims.
Do you really think that Jolly killed all of them?
A large part of this theory, at least from what I've seen, hinges on the last meeting between Leela Roy's sister and Jolly.
Leela went to go visit Jolly in prison.
And honestly, the only reason she went is because she had just adopted Jolly's two sons as her own.
And she wanted Jolly to stop calling them.
Jolly would call them and send them into spirals of distress because she would say things like you wait and watch.
I'm going to get out of here.
You come and you show me the proof that I did.
Let's see how they punish me.
Leela said that when Jolly walked out, it was very startling.
This is the woman that had been living in the pink house with servants tending to her.
And now, now she's just sitting there.
She looked, she looked indifferent though.
She didn't look embarrassed or remorseful.
She just sat there.
Jolly stayed quiet and they both stared at each other.
Leela broke the silence.
How do you feel about what you've done? just happened.
It just happened.
You purposely killed six people.
You didn't even spare a little child and you said that just happened?
It's because I have a criminal mind.
I can hide things.
In the Bible, it says that no matter how many sins you commit, God will forgive us.
He will forgive me as well.
Leela looked at her and said, yes, God may forgive.
May he forgive everyone.
Some people took that as an admission of guilt from Leela.
Like she was rubbing it in Jolly's face that she had done it.
She had gotten away with it and God would forgive her.
And that is where we are with Jolly Joseph's case.
Yeah.
So we're waiting on the sentencing.
And the trial.
And I mean, we don't know.
I guess without the trial.
It's confusing because technically you're presumed innocent until guilty, right?
Perhaps her confession to the police was coerced, but she does confess to a lot of people.
So I don't know.
It's just very confusing.
I would say that the general public does believe that she's guilty.
But again, that's just an opinion.
We don't know until the trial is over.
What are your thoughts, though?
Do you feel like this is a serial killer?
Do you feel like maybe she's been framed?
Do you feel like this is just so odd?
What are your thoughts?
Let me know.
Please stay safe.
And I will see you guys on Sunday for the next episode.
Bye.
