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Background: The Morgan County Courthouse in Decatur, Ala. (Google Maps). Inset: Brian Mann (Morgan County Sheriff’s Office).
A man from Alabama faced accusations of attempting to poison his estranged wife with lead and reportedly claimed that she wasn’t the only person being poisoned.
Brian Mann, 36, faced an attempted murder charge after authorities alleged he poisoned his wife with lead remnants from a construction project. The couple was in the process of divorcing in September 2022 when the woman was hospitalized for nearly two months. Court documents obtained by local CBS affiliate WHNT indicate that Hartselle Police Department became aware of her condition and launched an investigation to determine the cause of her unresponsiveness.
Investigators eventually believed that Mann “intentionally caus[ed] her to unwittingly ingest particles of lead.”
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Court documents reveal that investigators were instructed to search for lead sources in the couple’s residence. Mann reportedly cooperated by allowing a home search and providing the vitamins and prescription medications his wife had been using. However, they found no evidence of lead in the home. A follow-up search was also unsuccessful.
Investigators reportedly asked Mann if he or the couple’s children had been tested for lead poisoning. Mann reportedly told them he was “still trying” to find a place to be tested, according to the documents.
Police were eventually contacted by a nurse practitioner at Decatur General Hospital, who told them, according to the affidavit obtained by the Hartselle Enquirer, that Mann had told her that he “did an X-ray on himself and observed a substance in his gut, which he believed to be lead.” When she told him that they needed to do another scan to determine whether the possible poisoning had just occurred or had been ongoing, Mann reportedly became “visibly nervous” and apparently indicated that he wanted to leave.
The follow-up scan was performed on Mann, and the nurse practitioner told Hartselle Police Captain Alan McDearmond that she indeed found “a substance in his colon that didn’t appear to have been there for long.” According to the affidavit, McDearmond gained access to Mann’s medical records for the scan and came to the conclusion that he “intentionally ingested lead to provide the impression he was also being poisoned.”
That fateful doctor’s appointment was soon followed by a tip, according to court documents. WHNT reported that someone reached out to the police when he heard about Mann’s wife possibly having lead poisoning. Court documents stated that the tipster reportedly told police that he had been part of a construction project in 2021 for which he installed lead in the walls of the X-ray room at Mann’s workplace — and that he left the unused lead with Mann.
Mann was arrested on Sept. 2, 2022, and charged with the attempted murder of his estranged wife.
According to reporting by the Hartselle Enquirer, Mann’s defense team have questioned the validity of the evidence collected that allegedly incriminated their client, stating in a motion that the “procedure to extract the alleged lead from [Mann’s wife’s] urine was done in the back parking lot of the Hartselle Police Department using a five-gallon bucket and a strainer” and could not be admissible in court.
Mann’s lawyers claimed in the motion that the alleged evidence was mishandled, improperly labeled and packaged, and lacked a chain of custody.
After several delays, Mann — who posted $500,000 bond following his arrest and has been wearing an ankle monitor since his release — goes on trial at the Morgan County Courthouse. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge of attempted murder.
