Man filmed lacing sister's milk with laxatives over dispute about inheritance
Stealing each other’s clothes, lobbing a TV remote at their head, unplugging your Xbox on the final round of a game – those of us with brothers or sisters have had our fair share of sibling fights.
Some more brutal than others. But this one really takes the p**s. Or should we say the sh*ts?
Sharon McCabe, 63, had a whole other sibling nightmare when her brother Robert McCabe, 69, began an attempt to force her out of their family home.
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The pair were two of 10 siblings who were all brought up by their mum Sarah.
When Sarah had a stroke, Sharon moved back to their Greater Manchester home to look after her until her death in November 2009.
She moved in with brothers Dennis, Desmond and Robert.
Dennis was in charge of the mortgage payments, but when he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, he announced his intention to leave the house to Sharon’s middle son, Gary.
Robert wasn’t happy with this and, after Dennis died in December 2018, he became hostile towards Sharon and her sons.
Sharon said: “I paid all the bills in the house and so he’d crank up the heating, to maximum, to make sure my bills were high. He was very petty."
Alongside this tension with her big brother, Sharon’s health hadn’t been great since moving back.
She was ‘in and out of hospital’, had been diagnosed with gall stones and heart trouble, has pancreatitis, but then things got worse.
In April 2020, after a week in bed with severe stomach pains, Sharon went for a stroll and bought a carton of milk.
She says: “I used the milk to make porridge. A couple of days later, I smelled it and was instantly alarmed. It smelled very chemically, there was something not right.
“I called my son who came round and put a new lock on my bedroom door. We both suspected Robert had been tampering with the milk.”
They rigged up a secret camera while Sharon would make her porridge in the kitchen with the milk from the fridge, before going upstairs and making it again with a ‘secret fridge’ in her room.
Pretty soon, they caught Robert tipping powder in her milk, which he admitted to the police.
Turns out, the older brother was putting laxatives in there.
Sharon said: “Even though I’d suspected him, I was so shocked to catch him in the act."
Earlier this month, the pretty intense sibling squabble was taken to court.
The brother pleaded guilty to maliciously administering a noxious thing to annoy, injure or aggrieve, under the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861.
He was made the subject of an 18-month community order; and ordered to complete 80 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity requirements.
Judge Maurice Greene said the crime was 'the sort of sibling rivalry a man of your age shouldn't be involved in'.
He added: "What you did was inexcusable, juvenile behaviour, and it was not on another juvenile - you knew your sister had health problems."
Jess Battison