Ex-San Clemente Resident Poisoned Wife for Life Insurance Money, Prosector Says

Originally posted at 1:51 p.m. Sept. 9, 2014. Edited with new details.

By PAUL ANDERSON
City News Service

Greed motivated a nuclear engineer at the San Onofre nuclear power plant to slowly poison his wife to death with nicotine in 1993- 94, a prosecutor told an Orange County Superior Court jury today.

“We’re here today because of a complete and utter disregard for the value of human (life),” Assistant District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh said in his opening statement in the trial of Paul Marshal Curry.

“The evidence is going to show the man at the end of counsel’s table was greedy and wanted money, and for that he killed his wife.”

Curry, 57, was a suspect at the time his 50-year-old wife, Linda, died of nicotine poisoning on June 9, 1994, but investigators did not have enough evidence so he was not prosecuted.

After developing new evidence, Curry was charged in November 2010 with killing his wife to collect life insurance and other benefits that totaled $547,695, Baytieh alleged.

The claims included a Rolex watch from his wife that he gave to the victim’s sister, Baytieh said. For that watch and some other jewelry, Curry received $9,108.23 after he falsely reported the items stolen, Baytieh alleged.

When confronted about the false insurance claim, Curry initially lied to investigators, saying it was his watch, not his wife’s that was stolen, but he recanted when detectives told him the watch in question was registered with the victim, Baytieh said.

Despite the windfall, Curry told investigators in November 2010 that he was “financially devastated” by his wife’s death, Baytieh said.

Curry was supervising Salina, Kansas’ building services division at the time of his arrest.

He met his late wife in 1989 at the nuclear power plant in northern San Diego County, where they both worked, Baytieh said.

He moved in with her in San Clemente, and “she was in good health” when they wed in September 1992, Baytieh said.

A few months after their marriage, she started to become sick and had to be hospitalized, as puzzled doctors tried in vain to diagnose what ailed her, Baytieh said.

Linda Curry was trusting and tried to see the best in everyone, but she started to grow suspicious of her husband and changed some of her insurance policies to benefit her sister without him knowing, Baytieh said.

Just before midnight on June 9, 1994, Linda Curry was so ill that paramedics were called, but she died shortly after arrival at a hospital, Baytieh said.

A day after the funeral on June 15, 1994, Paul Curry started calling insurance companies to file claims, Baytieh said. When he realized some of the policies had been changed, he began challenging them, Baytieh said.

The couple did not smoke and smoking was discouraged at their workplace, Paul Curry told investigators when he was questioned in the 1990s, according to Baytieh.

“You’re going to hear about how easy it is -- not just for a chemist (like the defendant) -- to get nicotine” and poison someone with it, Baytieh said.

The defendant filed for bankruptcy right about the time he met Linda Curry, Baytieh said.

“For him, she was a paycheck,” Baytieh said. “After he declares bankruptcy and dates her, she becomes a paycheck.”

Curry unsuccessfully argued in an appeal of the case against him that the prosecution’s investigator could not properly testify at the preliminary hearing to the findings of experts who concluded that his wife was poisoned to death.

Curry’s attorney, Lisa Kopelman of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said the couple “fell in love” when they met in 1989 and dated for two years and lived together for a year before marrying. They enjoyed entertaining friends at their San Clemente home and appeared to live an “idyllic life” together, Kopelman said.

The victim, however, had “health issues,” which she mostly kept to herself, Kopelman said.

Linda Curry suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety, depression and stomach pain that physicians struggled to diagnose, Kopelman said.

Some of her friends did not like the defendant and they would “put thoughts in her head,” that prompted suspicions, Kopelman said.

So desperate to find cures for her ailments, the victim would go to Mexico and bring back various medications, Kopelman said.

Nicotine is not just a poison, but has been used to help treat irritable bowel syndrome, Kopelman said.

On the night the victim died, Paul Curry was roused by a loud noise a pet cat made and when he checked on his wife and saw she was unresponsive he dialed 911, Kopelman said.

After his wife died, the defendant appeared to be “appropriately devastated,” Kopelman said.

--City News Service

PHOTO Paul Curry. Courtesy the Orange County District Attorney’s office.