On January 11, 1980, she was indicted "in absentia" for her husband's murder. Subsequently, investigators found that both her mother and her mother-in-law, Carrie Hilley, had significant, but not fatal, traces of arsenic in their systems when they died. The remains of Sonya Marcelle Gibson, an eleven-year old friend of Carol Hilley's who had died of indeterminate causes in 1974, were also exhumed and examined, but were found to contain only a "normal" amount of arsenic. Gibson was one of the many neighborhood children who had fallen ill after drinking beverages that they had been given during visits to the Hilley household. Two police officers who had been dispatched to look into a disturbance that Hilley had called 911 about also reported coming down with nausea and stomach cramps after drinking coffee that Hilley had offered them.