'Flipped out': Insulin-injecting Crozet woman pleads guilty

Two days before her 34th birthday, Theresa Lynn Brady, the mother of two young children and wife of an Albemarle Fire and Rescue captain, entered a guilty plea for attempted murder January 15 in Albemarle Circuit Court.

Brady was arrested August 21 in her upscale Foxchase subdivision home off U.S. 250 in Crozet, where neighbors described the couple as keeping to themselves.

In court, Commonwealth's Attorney Denise Lunsford said that although she had more than enough evidence to convict Brady, the victim– James A. Brady– did not want "a domestic situation played out in public" because of the couple's young children and because he was not harmed in the attempt on his life.

The plea agreement for second-degree attempted murder recommends a cap of four years in prison, said Lunsford. 

Judge Cheryl Higgins told the petite, soft-spoken Theresa Brady she would have to make restitution to James Brady for more than $15,000 he'd deposited into her account.

The husband, in navy blazer and tie, and wife, in a red prison jumpsuit and shackles, did not appear to make eye contact.

According to a search warrant affidavit, James Brady had been violently ill and vomiting uncontrollably for six days when he was awakened around 2am August 21 from a prick in his abdomen, and found his wife examining him with a flashlight.

She allegedly told Brady she was checking the firmness of his abdomen and accidentally scraped it with her fingernail.

"She was lying in an awkward position in bed," said Lunsford. After the suspicious husband found two syringes that fell from her shorts, the wife said she was trying to give him medication to make him feel better.

Instead, James Brady felt worse, and when he tried to dial 911 around 3:30am, Theresa Brady allegedly kept hanging up the phone.

"She said she flipped out and wanted her husband to go away," Lunsford said Brady told police. "She said she didn't care if he went away or died."

After her arrest, Brady, a nurse, admitted to police she attempted to give her husband a dose of insulin, which is used to treat Type 1 diabetes– even though her husband does not have diabetes. A high dose of insulin can be fatal for a non-diabetic.

Brady worked at Martha Jefferson Hospital and said she had taken the insulin from there, Lunsford told the judge.

The defendant also told police she felt she'd been a victim of abuse from her husband, said Lunsford.

Theresa Brady has been held without bond in Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail since August.

She'll be sentenced June 4, and her attorney, Bonnie Lepold, requested a two-and-a-half hour hearing.