'Knew much more than she was sharing': Woman who killed roommate and dismembered her body also tried to kill neighbors with ricin, authorities say

Background: Kore Bommeli Adams appearing in court in Dane County, Wisconsin (Wagoner County Sheriff”s Office) Inset: Kore Bommeli Adams (Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office)

Two separate cases set hundreds of miles and more than a half decade apart appeared to have nothing in common – until authorities announced they believe the crimes at the center of them were perpetrated by the same woman.

Kore Bommelli Adams, 63, was convicted on June 27 of two counts of attempted first degree intentional homicide in Dane County, Wisconsin. Prosecutors said Adams spread ricin – a poison – around her neighbors home in the spring of 2014 while they were on vacation.

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Assistant Dane County District Attorney Jack Schneider asserted that she wanted them to die.

“No one is putting ricin in someone’s bed, in their sock drawer, in their office – if you’re not trying to kill them. You’re not trying to have them consume a tiny amount just to get sick; there’s no conceivable reason to put ricin in someone’s house other than to cause their death,” Schneider said, according to Madison-based ABC affiliate WKOW.

It was a separate case in Oklahoma that drew Wisconsin investigators’ attention to Adams.

On April 17, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic captured the nation’s attention, Adams reported that her roommate, Talina Galloway, was missing. Adams told law enforcement that Galloway had said she had the coronavirus and was going to “her favorite lake to be alone,” according to the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office in the Sooner State.

The suspect also reportedly told authorities Galloway had been tested for COVID-19 and been told to quarantine. Wagoner County investigators, however, searched around and learned Galloway “was never screened at any hospital for COVID-19 and there was no contact with her doctor.”

Galloway’s body was found in January 2021 about 150 miles away in a forest around Mena, Arkansas.

Polk County Sheriff’s Office deputies in the state were tipped about a freezer in the woods, and, going to investigate, “discovered what appeared to be dismembered human remains inside the freezer,” the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office reported in August of that year.

As it turned out, the same witness who found the freezer had contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in June 2020 and reported that a truck’s activity in the forest was “suspicious” and there was a “foul odor coming from the trailer, and that there was a foul-smelling thick liquid pooled in the floor of the trailer.”

The body was later confirmed to be Galloway.

The Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office reported in August 2021 that, throughout its investigation into Galloway’s disappearance and death, Adams “exhibited suspicious behavior, gave inconsistent statements, and later was proven to be deceptive in her reporting of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance.”

“Timelines were examined, investigated, and verified,” the Oklahoma law enforcement agency added. “Investigators soon realized that Kore Bommeli knew much more than she was sharing with investigators.”

She then became a person of interest in the case.

Bommelii subsequently broke off communications with investigators and “refused to cooperate,” the sheriff’s office said.

They searched for her and found that she was in the area of Dane County, Wisconsin. Deputies there arrested her and charged her with first-degree murder and desecration of a human corpse in the Oklahoma case.

It is unclear how exactly the Oklahoma case linked investigators back to the Dane County, Wisconsin, one, nor is it clear what motives Adams may have had. Though Adams was convicted of the Wisconsin attempted murder charges, she was scheduled to be transported back to Wagoner County, Oklahoma, to face the charges there, too.