Canadian woman, nicknamed 'Black Widow,' charged

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — A Canadian woman nicknamed the "Black Widow" for her ability to persuade grieving widowers to marry her is accused of trying to kill her husband.

The husband of 77-year-old Melissa Ann Weeks fell ill at a bed and breakfast in Nova Scotia last weekend.

Weeks was convicted of manslaughter in 1992 in the death of a previous husband whom she drugged and ran over twice with a car. In 2000 she married an 83-year-old Bradenton man.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that soon after, the man's health deteriorated and she reportedly took more than $400,000 from his bank account.

She also was sentenced in 2005 to five years in a Florida prison for theft from another man she lived with in a different part of the state.