Daijiworld Media Network – Kozhikode  (SB) 

Kozhikode, Oct 14: With each passing day, new information has been pouring in from the information collected by the police from Koodathayi killer and it has become tough to assimilate the real character of Jollyamma alias Jolly from the umpteen stories that have been making the rounds. The probing team will also try to unearth the source of rumours that are getting circulated in connection with this controversial multiple murder case. 

Now this case has been transformed into an international sensation and major investigating agencies are considering this as a perfect case for putting to test their investigative skills. After closely monitoring the investigation of Kerala police and based on the lifestyle of Jolly, majority of the investigating agencies have come to a conclusion that the greed for wealth, power, status and compulsion to exhibit luxurious lifestyle in front he the people drove Jolly to become a serial killer. 

Jolly grew up in the Vazhavara village, around seven kilometers away from Kattapana in Kerala’s hilly, rain-drenched Idduki district. From outside, it was a simple, hardworking, middle-class farming family. Jolly did her B Com and her wayward lifestyle began right from her college days. Relatives say that after Jolly got married, her desire for an affluent lifestyle grew stronger. Her father would often complain that she would easily spend money to live lavishly, and was always happy blowing up money. However, nothing in her behaviour made people around to suspect that all might not be well with Jolly. 

Desire for money came at a young age to Jolly. A neighbor recalled how on two occasions Jolly was apprehended by her father for stealing. The first time it was money from home, and the second, a gold bangle from a classmate during her under-graduate studies in MES College, Nedumkanda. He beat Jolly black and blue, breaking her arm in the process. 

Even before marriage, Jolly told Roy's parents that she was an M Ed degree holder, which was a blatant lie. After the marriage, what she had seen at the Ponnamattam house in Koodathayi might have given her an inferiority complex. People held her in-laws Tom Thomas and Annamma in high esteem as both were teachers and all their family members were well educated. This could have given Jolly, who is from an agrarian background in Kattappana, an inferiority complex. 

Jolly’s brother Nobby revealed that she was profligate, who kept pestering her family for money. According to Nobby, his family had been giving money to meet expenses of Jolly and her children after her husband’s death. At the same time, it also came to his knowledge that Tom Thomas, father-in-law of Jolly, had deposited Rs 18 lac in her account after the sale of a private land. Jolly used this money for money laundering, along with Mathew, the relative who was also murdered by Jolly later. 

She also fooled the family members and neighborhood by making them believe that she happened to be a NIT professor. By this, she managed to earn dignity and honor from family members and society. 

Meanwhile, Annamma Thomas, Jolly’s mother-in-law, ran the family and took the decisions on expenses. With her around, the highly ambitious Jolly was pushed to a corner. At the time of primary investigation Jolly herself revealed this and she accepted that to grab the authority and power of the family, she killed Annamma Thomas. 

Jolly’s husband Roy used to get drunk as he incurred a huge loss in his business. This put a break on Jolly’s lavish lifestyle. Her sore relationship with Roy might have attracted Jolly towards an introvert Shaju, a high school teacher, who is said to be a bookworm. The easygoing Shaju was someone who Jolly might have thought would prove easy to handle. To become the wife of Shaju, she might have killed Roy, Shaju's wife Sily and daughter Alphine. It is also learnt that she planned to kill Shaju also in order to get government appointment in the form of recruitment on compassionate ground. She also had close connection with Johnson, who is a BSNL employee. Many times she had made pleasure trips to Coimbatore with Johnson. Also revealed was her real estate deals and she used to do it on her own, even when she was the wife of Roy Thomas. 

The first in the family to die in 2002 was Jolly's mother-in-law Annamma, a retired teacher. She was followed by Jolly's father-in-law, Tom Thomas, in 2008. In 2011, their son and Jolly's husband, Roy Thomas, also died to be followed by the death of Roy's maternal uncle Mathew, who died in 2014. 

The two-year-old child of Sily, a relative by marriage, died the following year, while Sily passed away in 2016.