(L.A.) Jose Rodriguez, 41, Killed by Wife

Case Number: 2000-06447

Los Angeles County is reporting the death of a 41-year-old male of Latin American ethnicity that occurred at a residence.

The coroner’s office has identified the man as Jose Rodriguez.

Manner of Death: Homicide

Cause of Death: Ethylene Glycol and Oleander Poisoning

RIP JOSE FRANCISCO RODRIGUEZ (February 17, 1959 – September 9, 2000)

Known as Frank Rodriguez, the decedent was a special education teacher who was murdered by his wife Angelina Rodriguez (born May 31, 1968). He was her fourth husband.

The couple met while they were employed at a camp in San Luis Obispo, California. They married in April 2000.

Within months of the wedding, Rodriguez took out a $250,000 (2018 value of $366,000) life insurance policy on Frank and allegedly began plotting to kill him. She was suspected of poisoning Frank’s tea with oleander leaves, loosening the gas cap on their clothes dryer, and finally adding antifreeze to his Gatorade drink.

His death was initially ruled undetermined, but the lack of a cause of death meant that Rodriguez could not get a death certificate in order to claim Frank’s life insurance. She pushed for more testing, and these results showed that he intentionally had been poisoned. Angelina Rodriguez was arrested for murder in Paso Robles, California, in February 2001.

In October 2003, Angelina Rodriguez was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, murder for financial gain, and attempt to dissuade a witness. She was not convicted of the charge of soliciting murder. The following month, the jury rendered a sentence of death.

Angelina Rodriguez was sentenced to death by lethal injection on January 12, 2004. In her sentencing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders stated that she killed her husband in an “exceptionally cruel and callous” way and that her guilt had been proved to be “an absolute certainty…In the past 20 years, I have never seen a colder heart.” Despite her conviction and death sentence, Rodriguez argued her innocence and maintained that her husband’s death was a suicide by antifreeze poisoning.

Angelina Rodriguez is incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California, where she is on death row awaiting execution.

The murder of Frank Rodriguez has been profiled on several television shows, including North Mission Road on truTV, Deadly Women and Happily Never After on Investigation Discovery, Snapped on the Oxygen Network, and It Takes a Killer on Escape TV. The crime was featured on an episode of NBC’s Dateline, titled “The Devil in Disguise.”

Published in February 2016, the book A Taste for Murder, written by Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot, covers the details of the crimes committed by Rodriguez.