Fraud case recalls 'rose petal' murder

The Progress has a short item Thursday, September 3 about a woman who allegedly stole a credit card and then–- in a doltish moment–- used her Kroger savings card to extract a little extra value from the illicit purchases. If this kind of criminal stupidity sounds familiar, it should, as this is the same unraveling central to the notorious year 2000 "rose-petal murder" aka "the American Beauty murder." In that case, a drug-addled, affair-conducting toxicologist named Kristin Rossum poisoned her husband–- and then sprinkled rose petals around the scene to make his death appear a suicide. The mostly circumstantial case got a huge boost from the fact that Rossum used her Vons supermarket card to save a few pennies the morning of the murder when she purchased cold medicine, soup, and–- d'oh–- a single rose.

The Hook was unable to reach Kroger fraud suspect and Quest Court resident Fannie Ophelia Henson, 46, or a lawyer for her to learn her response to the felony charge of credit card theft.

(Local note: During the nine months her father was president of Hampden-Sydney College, 15-year-old future killer Rossum lived on the school's buccolic  campus near Farmville.)