Jury: Former Nuclear Engineer Guilty of Poisoning Wife to Death

Originally posted at 3:46 p.m. Sept. 30, 2014. Edited with new details.

By PAUL ANDERSON
City News Service

An Orange County jury has convicted Paul Marshal Curry of first- degree murder in the June 1994 poisoning death of his wife in San Clemente.

Jurors deliberated about a day before convicting Paul Marshal Curry, who was called a “vicious, cold-blooded murderer” driven by greed and an “insatiable appetite for money” to kill his 50-year-old wife, Linda, by nicotine poisoning.

Curry, 57, bowed his head slightly and touched his brow as the clerk read the verdicts. Jurors found true special circumstance allegations of killing for financial gain and murder by poisoning, and also convicted him of insurance fraud.

Curry met his wife -- he was 13 years her junior -- in 1989 while both were working at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego County. After her June 9, 1994, death, Curry collected $547,695 in life insurance and other benefits, Assistant District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh said.

“He thought we forgot and for 16 years he thought he got away with it,” Baytieh told reporters outside the courtroon. “This is the beginning of the last chapter where he’s held accountable.”

Bruce Brandt, who dated and lived with the victim from 1972-82, said he has been carrying around a photo of the two of them together and looking at it now and again.

“It’s been 20 years, but justice finally came today,” Brandt said.

Brandt said he spoke with the victim a few weeks before she died, and she told him she suspected the defendant was trying to poison her with sauces he was cooking up for her.

“She was afraid of him and her home,” Brandt said, adding he told her that she could stay with him and his wife.

The victim wasn’t the only one who had suspicions about the defendant. He was a suspect in his wife’s death from the start, but investigators did not arrest him until after he was questioned in November 2010, when he was working as a building inspector in Salina, Kansas.

Curry’s attorney, Lisa Kopelman of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said she was “disappointed” in the verdict. She argued during the trial that the prosecution’s case was weak.

“Make no mistake about it. Mr. Curry, this man right here, is an innocent man,” she said in her opening statement. “This case is all about conjecture, innuendo and suspicions, and that is not what guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is.”

Kopelman told jurors that Linda Curry suffered from a variety of maladies such as chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety, depression and stomach pain and suggested that nicotine has been used to treat irritable bowel syndrome.

But Baytieh said the victim herself pointed to her husband as the likely culprit during one of her multiple trips to hospitals to determine what was ailing her.

“Well, the only person I could think of that would do it would be Paul, and the only motive I can think of is money,” Linda Curry told investigators, according to Baytieh.

She told investigators her husband was acting “sneaky” and that the two had not had sex since they were married, the prosecutor said.

During one hospital stay, the victim nearly died and there was evidence that her IV bag had been tampered with, Baytieh said, but the defendant was emailing their friends that she was receiving good medical care.

“Give me a break. Your wife almost died and there was tampering? You demand answers,” Baytieh said.

The prosecutor also pointed to the testimony of Curry’s wife prior to his marriage to Linda.

“She started getting sick, they can’t tell what’s wrong, she can barely get out of bed and then he says, ‘Hey, honey, let’s get some life insurance policies,”’ Baytieh said. “He gets accepted, she gets rejected and shortly after that he leaves her, and quickly after that she’s fine. That’s his M.O., his plan, his scheme. She got lucky because she got rejected.”

Baytieh told reporters that he thought the most important piece of evidence involved the defendant’s false claim to an insurance company that his wife’s Rolex was stolen after she died.

“That Rolex was very, very telling,” Baytieh told reporters. “What innocent, grieving husband is filing a false claim for a Rolex within 10 days of his wife’s death?”

There was no “smoking gun” in terms of evidence in the case, but all of the facts added up to guilt, Baytieh said.

For example, there was expert testimony during the trial that the victim had injection marks on the temple and behind the ears, according to Baytieh. She had a high level of Ambien in her system, a sleeping aid that was not prescribed to her, the prosecutor said.

“He had to make sure she was completely sedated before he injected the nicotine,” which in high doses induces vomiting, Baytieh said.

Curry will return to court Oct. 31 when Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue rules on a motion to throw out the case due to delayed prosecution. Kopelman said she has not decided whether to seek a new trial.

Curry’s sentencing date will be set later. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

PHOTO Courtesy the Orange County Sheriff’s Department