Melody Johnson: Arizona woman caught adding bleach to airman husband's coffee on hidden camera pleads guilty

PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA: An Arizona woman, was caught adding bleach to her husband Roby Johnson's coffee while he was serving in the US Air Force on hidden camera. 

On Monday, April 8, Melody Felicano Johnson, 40, pled guilty to two charges of contaminating food or drink with poison or other dangerous material.

Melody Johnson and her husband were going through divorce

The prosecution is only asking for two years in prison, however, Johnson could receive a sentence of up to four years. She may spend up to three years on probation following her release from jail.

Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, Johnson confirmed she accepted the plea agreement that dropped the attempted murder charge while responding to the judge's questions. Johnson will be sentenced by a judge on May 10.

According to Tucson, Arizona, police, Johnson had been contaminating her husband Roby's coffee since he was posted in Germany in March 2023, Law&Crime reported.

The couple was divorcing at the time, and he is an airman in the United States Air Force. Johnson's husband bought pool chemical testing strips after his coffee started to taste bad for two to three weeks.

The water in the coffee pot tested positive for high levels of chlorine, even though the water from the faucet was normal.

She attempted to poison her husband by putting bleach in his coffee maker, as captured on hidden camera footage that was shot by the intended victim.

In one self-recorded video, Roby can be heard saying, "Boom," following a positive test result for chlorinated water.

Officers claimed that he installed a covert camera in his house, which caught defendant Johnson adding something to his coffee maker.

“He stated she knew that he would prep his coffee pot to be ready at night so that in the morning he just needed to turn it on to make his coffee,” the court documents read.

“At that time he stopped drinking the coffee but continued to pretend to drink it as he did not want to make a report of this while in Germany,” the document further stated.

After the Air Force transferred him on July 1 to the David Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, this alleged pattern persisted. He gave the police video evidence, and when the first footage was insufficiently clear, he bought more cameras.

Melody Johnson caught carrying bleach from laundry room to coffee maker

According to the police, Johnson's husband covertly videotaped his wife carrying bleach from the laundry room to the coffee maker and adding the chemical inside.

In a tiny room, Johnson can be seen filling a tiny bottle with what looks to be a bleach bottle.

In a matter of seconds, she made her way to the kitchen and poured the contents of the smaller bottle into the coffee maker, according to the time-stamped and perspective-shifted footage.

The husband can be seen in several videos testing the coffee pot water and even contrasting it with tap water. He frequently mentioned the smell and the machine's soapy water in the video.

“You can smell it from here. You can smell it,” he said in one video. “Look at that,” he added, showing the results of the test. “Totally changed. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.”

He demonstrated a close-up of the bubbly interior of the coffee maker's water chamber in this and other videos. Web records indicate that Johnson is still being held at the Pima County Jail.