The Night Halloween Died: How The Candy Man Poisoned Us All

HOUSTON, TX — When I was a kid, Halloween was probably my favorite time of year, with Christmas being a very close second.

I still remember the days when mom looked for the cheap polyester costumes that came with the cheesy mask, stacked in flimsy cardboard boxes at the TG&Y or hung along the aisle at the JC Penney store.

My brother and I loved Halloween because it was the start of cooler weather and spelled the end of a year and the start of the holiday season.

We loved the candy, the fun of getting dressed up and the feeling of the fall October air as the season began its annual change from the suffocating summer heat.

It was magical back then.

But that was then, before everything changed.

In the summer of 1973, my family moved from San Antonio to Pasadena, which spelled an end to the things I knew.

It was scary and exciting at the same time, and I thought it would be neat to meet new friends, and do new things in a new place, not to mention we would be living with my cousin for a few weeks until we found a place of our own.

It would be fun, I thought.

But Houston was big, and it was scary, and it would get scarier for this little boy.

One of the first news stories that glued itself into my childhood memories involved the names Elmer Wayne Henley, Dean Corll and David Brooks.

Henley and Brooks, who were hardly men themselves, were arrested as part of a ring that had lured nearly 30 young teenage boys to Corll’s home over a three-year span.

After Brooks and Henley lured their victims, Corll would rape, torture and murder them.

The thought of such things terrified me to the point I had nightmares.

And even after Henley and Brooks were arrested, and Corrl was killed, I dreamed terrible dreams.

But it would get worse, and in the coming year of 1974, an unspeakable horror would cast a pall on children all over Houston when Halloween came to pass.

I still remember that year vividly.

I’d dressed as a hobo with dirty worn jeans, an old coat, a beat up cowboy hat, and I had mom paint the necessary beard and fake dirt on my face.

I carried a pillow case for candy and was really proud of myself for coming up with the costume.

My brother and I went out with my dad on that cold, dark and misty night, and came back with loads of candy. And for just one night, nothing was as scary as it had been before.

But hours later, that changed.

Not far from my Pasadena home, Ronald Clark O’Bryan was murdering his 8-year-old son, Timothy, and planned to kill his daughter to get his hands on a $60,000 life insurance policy.

O’Bryan, who was an optometrist, was in debt and apparently had no qualms about killing his children, as well as a few others to cover his tracks.

O’Bryan, who was later dubbed “The Candy Man,” handed cyanide-laced pixie sticks to his two children and three of the neighbor’s kids, and never blinked an eye.

A few hours later, O’Bryan placed a frantic call to paramedics that something was wrong with his son, Timothy.

He’d become violently ill after eating Halloween candy.

A short time later, Timothy O’Bryan, who was a kid just like me, was dead.

I remember hearing about it the next day at school, and our principal, who had longer hair and always wore Hush Puppies and corduroy pants, stood in the hallway as we all sat against the wall. He told us we couldn’t bring Halloween candy into the school because a little boy had died from eating poisoned candy.

I was terrified.

Who would kill an 8-year-old boy? Why would someone poison a random kid like this?

It could have been me, or my friend Todd, or my little brother.

Why?

Days later, police arrested his father after the other pixie sticks had been collected, tested, and also found to be poisoned.

The father of the other kids told police that he saw O’Bryan handing the pixie sticks to the children himself.

In one night and with a single action, O’Bryan killed his only son, and destroyed Halloween for me and thousands of other kids in the Houston area.

Things would never be the same again.

The harbinger of fall and the holiday season was, and still is, tainted by evil bestowed by “The Candy Man” on an innocent 8-year-old boy.

O’Bryan hadn’t just murdered his son, he’d stolen the innocence of a time when you could still trust a neighbor.

Now, we’d always wonder.

"The Candy Man," who would die himself 10 years later by lethal injection, forced us to make checks of our children’s Halloween candy, if we took them trick or treating at all. And he fed the evil of faceless and nameless others who considered it “fun” in some twisted way to hurt or kill other innocent children on this night of nights.

For years, the playful grin of Timothy O’Bryan would play across the local new stations as a horrifying reminder of the innocent life stolen by The Candy Man.

But I didn’t really need a reminder of that day.

Much like those who were there when President John Kennedy was shot, I know where I was, and I know how that single event shook me to my little-boy soul.

It’s been 44 years since I wore that hobo outfit and knocked on doors that Halloween night.

I never wore another costume, and never went trick or treating again after that, though I did take my own children when they were little.

Each time I did help my own daughters dress up for that night, I would wonder about Timothy O’Bryan and what he would be doing if he were here.

He’d be 53 about now, and he’d probably be a dad and a grandpa just like me.

But he’s not, and he never will be.

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Bryan Kirk is a staff writer and editor for Patch in Houston. You can email him at bryan.kirk@patch.com.