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A cat’s stray hair was used to trace packages intended to be mailed to President Obama containing explosives. Julia Ann Poff, 48, has pled guilty to charges including transportation of explosives with the intent to end a life.
Ironically, the thin, white cat fur found under the address label is what led authorities to connect her to the crime.
Poff has pled guilty to several charges, including mailing a bomb to President Obama. She also mailed improvised explosive devices to Texas Governor Greg Abbot. Confusingly, she claims she did this because she was angry that her ex-husband wasn’t paying child support. While Abbot opened the package, luckily the bomb didn’t go off.
Later, she mailed a similar device to Carolyn Colvin, then-commissioner of the Social Security Administration, because she was denied disability benefits for the third time. Similarly, this bomb thankfully didn’t make it to its victim. However, this was not for a lack of trying on Poff’s part.
Interestingly, after the package meant for Obama was intercepted by the FBI and determined to be a dangerous explosive, the cat hair was discovered under the address label. After some testing, the hair was determined to be a match for one taken from the Poff family’s cat. However, this wasn’t the only thing connecting Julia Poff to the crime.
One of her daughters testified that a cell phone found inside one of the mailed explosive devices was hers. She had last seen it in the garage before her mother, presumably, used it as part of one of the homemade improvised explosive devices.
During her sentencing, Poff changed course on her statements several times. “My problem is that I have a huge heart and I’m too trusting of people,” she claimed, stating that she and her husband help many people and that one of them could have sent the bombs from their home.
“We had nothing to do with this. We did not do this,” she claimed, attempting to shift the blame off of herself. However, after speaking with her lawyer, she changed her tune and stated, “I’m sorry to the people I’ve hurt.”
She faces ten years in prison and some hefty fines, as well as three years of probation.
