COLUMBIANA COUNTY Woman charged in plot to kill spouse took her own life, prosecutor says

The woman plotted against her husband to get insurance money and real estate, the prosecutor says.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
EAST LIVERPOOL -- A city woman charged last month in a plot to kill her estranged husband and her husband's girlfriend apparently committed suicide, Columbiana County Prosecutor Robert Herron said.
Evelyn Monroe, 63, of 1714 Park Ave., East Liverpool, died Saturday at East Liverpool City Hospital. She had been admitted there several days before her death.
Herron said today that he has learned from the coroner's office that the woman's death resulted from her overdosing on an over-the-counter pain medicine. It was either Tylenol or something similar to it, Herron said.
"She took a large quanity of it," Herron said. But he was uncertain of the exact amount or when she took the medication.
The coroner's office has yet to officially rule on the cause of death, but Herron said it appears to be a suicide.
No suicide note has been found, he said.
Arrest
Monroe was arrested in May by East Liverpool police, who charged her in East Liverpool Municipal Court with entering into a conspiracy to kill her husband, a first-degree felony.
She later was secretly indicted by a county grand jury on the charge.
When county deputy sheriffs went to her home Thursday to arrest her on the indictment, they learned she had been hospitalized.
According to the secret indictment and Herron, Monroe approached an East Liverpool man May 10 and offered to pay him to kill her husband, Roy, of Lisbon.
The man Monroe tried to enlist as a co-conspirator rented a home from Monroe and her husband. The couple jointly owned residential rental properties in the East Liverpool area, Herron said.
The man told a friend about the offer and they contacted police, who arranged for Monroe to meet with an undercover police officer.
Monroe later met with the renter and the police officer, offering them money to kill her husband and his girlfriend, who is from Lisbon, authorities allege. A price of $500 was negotiated, and Monroe provided the renter and the cop with a $250 down payment, a photograph of her husband and instructions to make it look like an accident.
Herron said Monroe wanted her husband dead so she could collect on a $100,000 insurance policy and become sole owner of the couple's rental properties.
Monroe's death closes the case, Herron said.