According to reports, 48-year-old Sarah Hartsfield, a former Army sergeant residing in Chamber County, Texas, has been charged with murder after reportedly poisoning her fifth spouse with insulin five years after she tragically shot her then-fiancé,  allegedly in self-defense.

In February, Hartsfield reportedly gave her 46-year-old diabetic husband Joseph Hartsfield a hefty dose of insulin before waiting four to six hours to decide to dial 911 for assistance. According to representatives of the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, the victim’s glucose monitor had been blaring an alert for some time before his wife decided to check on him and dial 911 for expert assistance. Hartsfield was taken into custody and lodged in the Chambers County Jail following the incident. The Harris County medical examiner would decide in March that the consequences of insulin’s poisonous effects were to blame for the death of her fifth spouse.

Investigators have chosen to reopen their investigation into the death of the woman’s ex-fiancé David Bragg, whom she was suspected of shooting and killing back in 2018. This decision was made as a result of the woman’s detention. She claimed self-defense at the time, and the police agreed, therefore she won the murder case. Four further marriages later, Hartsfield is claimed to have left behind a “pattern of spousal abuse and threats against her former partners.” Outside of her incidents with her fifth husband, who is deceased, and her ex-fiancé, who is deceased, back on March 11, 1996, Hartsfield, who was in her 20s and known by another name of Sarah Donahue, was arrested for allegedly assaulting her second husband, Michael Traxler, at their home in Rio Bonito.

It is reported that she allegedly scraped and bruised Traxler, resulting in him receiving a citation and her being arrested. After sitting in jail for a week, the assault charges against the woman were dismissed, with prosecutors listing the reason as “other.”  – Steve Sijenyi