Curry & Cyanide – When and where to watch true crime docu about Kerala's serial killer Jolly Joseph

In 2019, a 47-year-old mother of two from a small town in Kerala’s Kozhikode, became the most talked about woman in the state. Jolly Joseph was the prime suspect in a series of ‘murders’ that occurred in her family in a span of 14 years, all of which were deemed natural or accidental at the time. The infamous Koodathayi Cyanide Killings at the hands of Jolly Joseph is now making its way to OTT. Netflix, which has some of the best true-crime documentaries in its repertoire, will bring the story of Jolly Joseph, who is currently charged with murder, conspiracy and forgery, and still under trial, to the platform. Called Curry & Cyanide – The Jolly Joseph Case, the true-crime documentary by Christo Tomy investigates the six deaths and the woman at the centre of it and will be available to stream from December 22.

Jolly Joseph married Roy Thomas in 1997, but the first death in the family was five years later, when the latter’s mother Annamma passed away in unexplained circumstances. Since Annamma had pre-existing health issues, her death was thought to be of natural causes, after all. Six years later, in 2008, Roy’s father Tom Thomas died, frothing at the mouth, but was ruled a heart attack. At the time of his death, a revised will appeared, naming Jolly the sole beneficiary. In 2011, Roy died, and this time his uncle insisted on an autopsy, which revealed that the former had consumed cyanide. The police investigation, though, inferred that it was suicide and three years later, the uncle who cried foul also died. Shortly after, the two-year-old daughter of Roy’s cousin Shaju Sakhariyas, died after allegedly choking on food, followed by the latter’s wife, two years later. And then came the biggest twist of all. Jolly married Shaju in 2017.

By this time, Roy’s brother Rojo had begun smelling something fishy, especially after all the ancestral property went to Jolly. His RTI application for Roy’s postmortem report yielded results that were inconsistent with Jolly’s version of events, which then kicked off an investigation into all the deaths in the family. Following her arrest in 2019, Jolly allegedly confessed to having used cyanide to kill all six, but in the course of the ongoing trial, her counsel has contended that her confession was under duress.