The 81-year-old woman known as the Internet black widow won’t be going back to jail in Nova Scotia.
Melissa Ann Shepard was released from prison in March after serving just under three years for spiking her newlywed husband Fred Week’s coffee with tranquillizers in 2012.
As part of her sentence, she was forbidden from using the Internet.
However in April, she was charged with violating her court release conditions by allegedly using a computer at the Halifax Central Library.
On Thursday, prosecutors withdrew the charge after determining they had no chance of getting a conviction.
She still must follow 21 peace bond conditions, including a ban on her using the Internet.
She must also report weekly to police and keep authorities informed of potential relationships with men, with whom she has a long criminal history.
Convicted of manslaughter in 1991, she served two years of a six-year prison term after killing her husband, Gordon Stewart, on a deserted road near Halifax by running him over twice with a car.
Shortly after her release from prison, she met Robert Friedrich at a Christian retreat in Florida.
A year after they married in Nova Scotia in 2000, Friedrich’s began suffering mysterious fainting spells and slurred speech and was in and out of hospitals.
In 2005, Shepard was sentenced to five years in prison on charges stemming from a relationship with another Florida man she met online.
She pleaded guilty to seven charges, including three counts of grand theft from a person 65 years or older, two counts of forgery and two counts of using a forged document.
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