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Background: The Morgan County Courthouse in Decatur, Ala. (Google Maps). Inset: Brian Mann (Morgan County Sheriff’s Office).
An Alabama man who was accused of allegedly trying to poison his estranged wife with lead reportedly tried to claim that she was not the only one being poisoned.
Brian Mann, 36, was charged with attempted murder after authorities said that he allegedly poisoned his wife with lead that was reportedly left over from a construction project. The now former couple were in the midst of a divorce in September 2022 when the woman was hospitalized for approximately two months. According to court documents obtained by local CBS affiliate WHNT, the Hartselle Police Department were alerted to her condition and began an investigation into what could have caused her to become unresponsive.
Investigators eventually believed that Mann “intentionally caus[ed] her to unwittingly ingest particles of lead.”
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According to court documents, investigators were told to find sources of lead in the couple’s home. Mann reportedly cooperated with a search of the home, providing investigators the vitamins and prescription medications his wife was taking at the time. However, they left the home finding no evidence of a source of lead. A second search of the home also yielded nothing.
Investigators reportedly asked Mann if he or the couple’s children had been tested for lead poisoning. Mann reportedly told them he was “still trying” to find a place to be tested, according to the documents.
Police were eventually contacted by a nurse practitioner at Decatur General Hospital, who told them, according to the affidavit obtained by the Hartselle Enquirer, that Mann had told her that he “did an X-ray on himself and observed a substance in his gut, which he believed to be lead.” When she told him that they needed to do another scan to determine whether the possible poisoning had just occurred or had been ongoing, Mann reportedly became “visibly nervous” and apparently indicated that he wanted to leave.
The follow-up scan was performed on Mann, and the nurse practitioner told Hartselle Police Captain Alan McDearmond that she indeed found “a substance in his colon that didn’t appear to have been there for long.” According to the affidavit, McDearmond gained access to Mann’s medical records for the scan and came to the conclusion that he “intentionally ingested lead to provide the impression he was also being poisoned.”
That fateful doctor’s appointment was soon followed by a tip, according to court documents. WHNT reported that someone reached out to the police when he heard about Mann’s wife possibly having lead poisoning. Court documents stated that the tipster reportedly told police that he had been part of a construction project in 2021 for which he installed lead in the walls of the X-ray room at Mann’s workplace — and that he left the unused lead with Mann.
Mann was arrested on Sept. 2, 2022, and charged with the attempted murder of his estranged wife.
According to reporting by the Hartselle Enquirer, Mann’s defense team have questioned the validity of the evidence collected that allegedly incriminated their client, stating in a motion that the “procedure to extract the alleged lead from [Mann’s wife’s] urine was done in the back parking lot of the Hartselle Police Department using a five-gallon bucket and a strainer” and could not be admissible in court.
Mann’s lawyers claimed in the motion that the alleged evidence was mishandled, improperly labeled and packaged, and lacked a chain of custody.
After several delays, Mann — who posted $500,000 bond following his arrest and has been wearing an ankle monitor since his release — goes on trial at the Morgan County Courthouse. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder.
