Poisoning Death Trial Underway

Jury selection in the trial of the woman accused of using anti-freeze nine years ago to poison her husband, a Cobb County policeman, began Monday with the possibility that the proceeding could be moved out of the county.

Lynn Tuer, 35, of Cumming was in court in connection with the 1995 death of her husband, Officer Maurice Glenn Tuer.

According to a published report in the Atlanta Joual-Constitution, the trial will begin with arguments over motions filed by Tuer's lawyers, including one to prohibit references to "antifreeze." Also, Tuer's lawyers have filed a motion to move the case out of Cobb, citing pretrial publicity.

Cobb Superior Court Judge James G. Bodiford will rule on the motions. Jimmy Berry, an attoey for Tuer, said the trial has been tained by prepublicity.

"I've run into an awful lot of people who've had a lot of questions and have asked me about it," Berry said. "It's interesting (because) a lot of people say 'I thought that case was already tried and completed.'

"I think people have some very strong feelings" about the case, he said.

Prosecutors will try to prove that Tuer, who used to work as a 911 dispatcher, poisened her husband by adding antifreeze to his diet. The substance contains ethylene glycol.

Randy Thompson, a Forsyth County firefighter and father of Lynn Tuer's two children, died six years later after showing similar symptoms.

Initially, medical examiners ruled both men's deaths natural due to irregular heartbeats. But when authorities leaed both men were romantically linked to Tuer, they began looking at the deaths as homicides, exhumed one of the bodies and concluded both were poisoned, the newspaper reported.

Vic Reynolds, a lawyer for Tuer, told the AJC that the case is challenging because he and his partner, Jimmy Berry, must not only defend Tuer in her husband's death, but also in Thompson's -- for which she has not been charged.

The court has allowed prosecutors to introduce evidence of Thompson's death.