A woman was sentenced to just under 22 years in prison for sending letters containing a homemade poison to then-President Donald Trump in ...
A woman was sentenced to just under 22 years in prison for sending letters containing a homemade poison to then-President Donald Trump in 2020.
Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier is a 55-year-old dual citizen of Canada and France and was handed a prison sentence of 262 months and a lifetime of supervised release for threatening letters she sent to Trump at the White House. She also sent eight letters to state-level Texas law enforcement officials.
According to the CDC, ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. Ricin can be made from the waste material left over from processing the beans.
After she mailed the poison letters, Ferrier drove to the Peace Bridge Border Crossing between Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. She was stopped by Border Patrol officers on September 20, 2020, with a loaded firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and other weapons, the Department of Justice said.
NBC News reported that Ferrier told the border guards that she was wanted by the FBI, according to court filings. Her other weapons reportedly included two knives, a stun gun, pepper spray, a truncheon (baton), and a "false identification document."
She has remained in custody since that day, according to TimCast.
Ferrier pleaded guilty in January 2023 and admitted in plea agreements that she made ricin at her residence in Quebec, Canada.
It is believed that the suspect chose the eight law enforcement officials because she thought that they were connected to a previous incident when she was detained in Texas for about 10 weeks in 2019.
In reference to Trump, the Department of Justice said Ferrier stated on social media that someone should “please shoot [T]rump in the face.”
Her letters to the former president contained threatening language and instructed Trump to “[g]ive up and remove [his] application for this election.” All the letters were mailed from Canada.
Ferrier allegedly told the judge before sentencing that she is an "activist," not a terrorist.
"The ricin I made didn’t have a harmful concentration. It was just a strong warning. I did not target innocent people. It was never my attention to harm innocent people, and in fact I did not harm anyone," she said.
Ferrier added that her "only regret" was that Trump didn't listen to her and ran for president.
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