Two separate cases, hundreds of miles apart and more than a half decade apart, appeared to have nothing in common until authorities revealed that they believe the crimes at the heart of them were committed by the same woman.
Kore Bommelli Adams, 63, was found guilty on June 27 of two counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide in Dane County, Wisconsin. Prosecutors claim Adams spread ricin, a poison, around her neighbours’ home in the spring of 2014 while they were on vacation.
Assistant Dane County District Attorney Jack Schneider claimed she wanted them to die.
“No one puts ricin in someone’s bed, sock drawer, or office unless they intend to kill them. You’re not trying to make them sick by consuming a small amount; there’s no conceivable reason to put ricin in someone’s home other than to kill them,” Schneider told Madison-based ABC affiliate WKOW.
A separate case in Oklahoma drew Wisconsin investigators’ attention to Adams.
On April 17, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic dominated the news, Adams reported that her flatmate, Talina Galloway, was missing. According to the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma, Adams informed authorities that Galloway had stated that she had the coronavirus and was going to “her favourite lake to be alone.”
The suspect also reportedly informed authorities that Galloway had been tested for COVID-19 and was ordered to quarantine. However, Wagoner County investigators discovered that Galloway “was never screened at any hospital for COVID-19 and there was no contact with her doctor.”
Galloway’s body was discovered in a forest near Mena, Arkansas, approximately 150 miles away, in January 2021.
Polk County Sheriff’s Office deputies in the state were tipped off about a freezer in the woods, and when they went to investigate, “discovered what appeared to be dismembered human remains inside the freezer,” the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office reported in August of that year.
As it turned out, the same witness who discovered the freezer contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in June 2020 and reported that a truck’s activity in the forest was “suspicious” and that there was a “foul odour coming from the trailer, and that there was a foul-smelling thick liquid pooled in the floor of the trailer.”
The body was later identified as Galloway.
In August 2021, the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office reported that Adams “exhibited suspicious behaviour, gave inconsistent statements, and was later proven to be deceptive in her reporting of the circumstances surrounding Galloway’s disappearance.”
“Timelines were examined, investigated, and verified,” the Oklahoma law enforcement agency explained. “Investigators soon realised that Kore Bommeli knew much more than she was sharing with investigators.”
She eventually became a person of interest in the case.
Bommelii then stopped communicating with investigators and “refused to cooperate,” according to the sheriff’s office.
They searched for her and discovered she was in Dane County, Wisconsin. Deputies arrested her and charged her with first-degree murder and desecration of a human corpse in Oklahoma.
It’s unclear how the Oklahoma case led investigators back to the Dane County, Wisconsin, case, or what Adams’ motivations were. Though Adams was convicted of attempted murder in Wisconsin, she was scheduled to be transported back to Wagoner County, Oklahoma, to face the same charges.
In January 2021, Wagoner County District Attorney Jack Thorp stated that the case of Galloway’s death was one of the worst he had seen.
“Talina Galloway died a brutal death, where her killer had no regard for her life in any way,” Thorp told a press conference at the time, according to Memphis-based Fox affiliate WHBQ. “While all murders are abhorrent and detestable, the grisly manner in which Galloway was dismembered and disposed of makes this case one of the worst I have seen in my career.”
