Last Thursday, a judge in Washington, DC, gave a Canadian woman almost 22 years in jail for sending a letter carrying poisonous ricin to then-President Donald Trump at the White House.
According to reports regarding the letters to President Trump and Texas law enforcement, 56-year-old Pascale Ferrier admitted to breaking the law on the use of biological weapons in 2019.
Defense counsel Eugene Ohm said that Ferrier, a French immigrant who had gotten a master’s degree in engineering and maintained two children on her own, was “inordinately” clever and had no past criminal record.
But in September 2020, the prosecution said Ferrier produced the ricin at her residence in Quebec, Canada, and mailed it to Trump along with a letter calling him names and threatening to use a firearm if the poison didn’t kill him.
A postal processing facility stopped the letter.
Authorities say they apprehended Ferrier as she attempted to cross into the US/Canada border in Buffalo, New York while carrying a knife, firearm, and hundreds of rounds of ammo.
According to reports, when Ferrier did not leave a park after it closed, police in Texas arrested her and took her to prison, where they discovered eight identical letters addressed to law enforcement officers.
Letters to Texas authorities connected with prisons where Ferrier spent 2019 were also uncovered. Even while the letters didn’t harm anybody, they nonetheless caused anxiety and tension, according to Alamdar Hamdani, the United States attorney for the southern district of Texas.
In the two separate criminal prosecutions brought in Washington and Texas, Ferrier pled guilty to breaking bans on biological weapons.
The plea deal between Ferrier and prosecutors called for a sentence of 262 months in prison, with the possibility of expulsion and lifetime supervised release. It was handed down by U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich.
Ferrier has dual citizenship, having once been a citizen of France before moving to Canada.
