Left to right: Marsha Allen (Obituary), Ashley Nicole Jones (Jackson County Sheriff”s Office), Harold Allen (Obituary).
An Indiana woman will be spending the next several decades behind bars for trying to kill her stepfather with an ancient and toxic poison.
In August of this year, Ashley Nicole Jones, 32, pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder, according to court documents recently obtained by Law&Crime.
The defendant was subsequently sentenced to a total of 50 years behind bars — 25 years on each count — by Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Richard William Poynter. Jones also received nearly three years of credit for time spent in pretrial detention and good behavior.
In exchange for the defendant’s guilty pleas, prosecutors dismissed one count of murder, one count of the Hoosier State’s felony murder equivalent, and one additional count of attempted murder.
The victim in the case died all the same. And the efforts to get the man dead took quite awhile, as Law&Crime previously reported.
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Harold “Peanut” Allen’s obituary says he “passed away suddenly” at 52 on Dec. 20, 2022, in Freetown – a tiny, census-designated place located roughly 70 miles due south of Indianapolis.
But it was actually the active ingredient in antifreeze that killed him.
In October 2023, Jones confessed “to ordering ethylene glycol off the Internet,” according to the sheriff’s office. But, the defendant insisted, her mother “had placed the ethylene glycol in Harold’s drink.”
Ethylene glycol is a clear and unscented liquid. It is often found in antifreeze and can be fatal if ingested in large quantities.
Also in October 2023, Marsha Allen, 52, passed away in her home – a death prosecutors ultimately chalked up to a suicide carried out in order to avoid being charged for her husband’s murder.
The man’s fatal poisoning occurred over several months the prior fall.
The plan was cooked up and executed meticulously, if haltingly, by his since-deceased wife and her daughter, according to investigatory records and court documents obtained by Law&Crime.
On Sept. 14, 2022, Jones ordered pong pong seeds from eBay.
When planted, the seeds grow into a tree that is visually similar to the equally toxic oleander. When ingested by humans, pong pong seeds can cause any number of complications — often including death.
The seeds contain the poison cerberin — and the othalanga fruit containing those seeds was used for hundreds of years in the anti-sorcery social rite known as “tangena” on Madagascar, according to a widely-cited and influential Harvard research paper. In this version of a so-called “trial by ordeal,” an offending or accused person would eat the seeds — and if they died, they were deemed a sorcerer or some other kind of criminal. If they lived, they were found innocent.
Jones and Marsha Allen received the pong pong seeds in the mail in October 2022, ground them up in a coffee grinder, and then put them in a batch of brownies on Nov. 26, 2022.
“It should be noted that Marsha (Allen) sends (Jones) a photo message of what appears to be Harold (Allen) on November 26th. In the photo, there is a half-eaten brownie on a paper plate sitting on Harold’s stomach,” one court document reads. “Harold became sick after eating the brownie and ended up in the emergency room the next day.”
As Harold Allen slowly recuperated in and out of a hospital bed, the killers complained about the poison’s effectiveness.
“I am irritated and can’t sleep peacefully,” Marsha Allen texted Jones on Nov. 28, 2022. “I need this to be over … I wish it would reach its climax and be done lol.”
To which the woman’s daughter replied: “Agreed.”
On Nov. 30, 2022, Harold Allen returned to the emergency room but doctors chalked up his symptoms to inflammation in his intestines.
Undaunted by the man’s recovery, the pair turned to a plant with an even more storied pedigree of bringing oblivion to those who ingest it. This time, Ashley Jones used Etsy to purchase hemlock — famously chosen by the philosopher Socrates to effectuate his death sentence for corrupting the youth of ancient Athens.
Technically, Marsha Allen and Jones purchased water hemlock — a version of the plant native to North America — while Socrates would have used the version native to Greece known as poison hemlock. Both versions of the plant are highly toxic and, if ingested, can cause death in exceedingly small amounts.
But Harold Allen did not die of hemlock poisoning.
On Dec. 8, 2022, the women received the second poison. Then, three times over four days, they went to work — putting hemlock in a bowl of chili on Dec. 9, 2022; in a glass of soda on Dec. 10, 2022; and in a margarita on Dec. 12, 2022.
Rasputin-like, the victim simply refused to die.
On Dec. 13, 2022, the ethylene glycol was ordered.
Several days later, Harold Allen was finally dead.
Still the murderous plot might have gone uncovered but for an entirely different crime that eventually led investigators to take a second, belated look at Harold Allen’s death.
The month before Marsha Allen took her own life, the self-made widow suffered a break-in and burglary at her home.
Two men, Steven Andrew White, 29, and Nathaniel Kane Napier, 28, were arrested for the burglary. But White and Napier allegedly did not act alone — or even plan the crime. Rather, the pair “committed the burglary at the direction of and with the assistance of Marsha’s daughter Ashley Jones,” Jackson County Sheriff Rick Meyer said.
The mother told police she suspected her daughter from the start because the alleged burglars had the combination to a gun safe. Jones was the only other person who knew that code.
But White also had a story for police: He told an investigator that not only had Jones put him and his companion up to the burglary, she said her mother had previously poisoned Harold Allen to death.
Marsha Allen denied the allegations and turned her cellphone over to law enforcement — providing investigators with telltale evidence of the conspiracy to kill her husband.
“On the cell phone, officers found text messages between Marsha and Ashley in which they discussed murdering Marsha’s husband, Harold Allen, by poisoning Harold in December of 2022,” Meyer said.
