NY grand jury indicts upstate woman on manslaughter charge in poisoning of boyfriend

Grand jury indicts NY woman in antifreeze death

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — A woman accused of killing her boyfriend by lacing a jug of margarita cocktails with antifreeze at their apartment in western New York was indicted Wednesday on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Cynthia Galens, 51, was charged with second-degree murder in January, three months after Air Force veteran Thomas Stack died from complications of ethylene glycol poisoning. But a grand jury Wednesday opted for a first-degree manslaughter charge, which carries a sentencing range of five years to 25 years in prison.

The defense entered a plea of not guilty on Galens’ behalf at her arraignment in Ontario County Court. Freed two weeks ago on $100,000 cash bail, she declined to comment as she left the courthouse.

The grand jury decided a manslaughter count “was the most appropriate one in this case,” District Attorney R. Michael Tantillo told reporters. “I’m not going to speculate on their rationale.”

State police say Galens told them Stack, 48, was emotionally and physically abusive and she decided one night in October to exact revenge by pouring a shot glass of the toxic automotive chemical into a margarita mix. He died four days later. Galens insisted she intended to make him sick, not kill him.

The couple lived on and off at her home in Farmington, a bedroom community 25 miles southeast of Rochester. Galens worked for 30 years at a Veterans Affairs hospital in nearby Canandaigua and met Stack there while he was being treated for alcohol abuse in 2007.

The friendship cost Galens her clerical assistant job last year when the hospital discovered she was dating a patient.

Stack, originally from Syracuse, N.Y., became a senior airman while stationed at California’s Travis Air Force Base from 1982 to 1986. In 2008, he served three months in jail for threatening to kill Galens’ former husband and their 16-year-old daughter. A year ago, he was jailed for six days for allegedly shoving Galens against a microwave.

Based on his history of alcoholism, bipolar disorder and depression, state police deemed his death an accident or possibly a suicide. But during a trip to Clearwater, Fla., in early January, authorities say Galens told a friend what she had done — and her friend went to the police.

“The police investigation was essentially closed at the time she began discussing the events that are the basis of this indictment,” the prosecutor said.