The Original Candyman: Ronald O'Brien

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable.

0:50 Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey y'all, kJ you're back for another episode of Unspeakable and it's the week of Halloween. Are y'all excited? I'm excited. My kids are excited, and we'd like to go do our trick or treating. Woo and uh hey, if you're watching me podcast on Patreon, you might be wondering why there's not as much light as usual. Mama's rocking a headache today. I'm not gonna lie, so hey, the Dark Edition is what you're getting to David, thank you so much for joining in. Before I get started, I've got some shout outs, and this one was rough for me. I Jimothy can attest to this that I spent a lot of time trying to say y'all's names right, but miss Dana in Michigan gave me a run for my money.

1:35 All right, Dana, here we go. I'm giving my shout out to Dana Cognettesney, Cognettesney. Did I get it right? Dana? I hope I did. I tried really hard. I even looked it up and I listened to an example, So I hope I have you right. But if not, hey girl, how are you doing? Thank you so much for joining and I'm so thrilled to have you, as well as Cassie Land and Monument Colorado. Hey, Cassie, how are things over there? My aunt and uncle moved to Colorado, have a beautiful home with the nice big, you know, mountains and things in the back and the snowfalling and it's just absolutely beautiful. So hello all the way over there. And then I've got Christine Trewinsky from Billings, Montana. Hey, Christine, Wow, Montana.

2:22 That's set a first I don't remember, but I don't feel like I've said Montana a lot. How are you doing? Christine? Thank you times a million for joining my team here. And then I've got Shannon Mitchell in Dresden, Ohio, all the way, y'all, all over the country. It's so neat for me to say hey to y'all all the way over there. I hope that you are having the best week, Shannon, and tell everybody in Ohio that I said hello. And then I don't have a last name here, it just says Mandy. So the Mandy in Denim Springs, Louisiana. Right here where I'm at, Hey, Mandy, where you at, I'll beach at the Walmart. Come say hey. Thank you for joining again, y'all. I could not do this without you. I'm so excited in the next few months to be wrapping up my teaching job and doing this full time and giving you so much more content. And you people, the names I read out, y'all, are the reason I'm able to do this, and so thank you, thank you, Thank you. Now, last but not least, from Cedar Lake, Indiana, I've got miss Katie Hergan Rother Hi, Katie high High, Hi.

3:21 I hope you're doing so well this week. And I've got a really good episode for y'all today. Now, like I said this one, it's the week of Halloween. We've had us a little chill in the air down here. I don't know if it was considered a chill elsewhere, but to us, it's a little chill. And all the kids, young and old alike. When you're driving around town and you're looking about, everyone is just excitedly buying their costumes or getting ready for all the candy. The kids are ready to just stuff their faces with all of the chocolate. And when you're thinking about Halloween, you realize that there's no evil in the minds of. Kids, just fun. Right, dress up, be somebody that you're not, and maybe you get a scare or two, but it's all about the fun and the joy, and then ultimately there's treats that we're going to get at the end of the day.

4:10 And the excitement of being someone or something you know that you're not normally, that's always fun to kind of get to play pretend for a while. It's when an adult takes on the role of not being who you think they are where things start to become dark and devious and evil, as you may know, is very real. And this case that I'm getting into is one that actually affects us. All everyone that's listening right Now, the story I'm going to tell you is the literal reason why we all check our children's candy when we return home from trick or treating. It's this one. Treats are awesome, but tricks those can be deadly. So this story is going to take place in Deer Park, which is a sub suburb of Houston, so we're going to be in Texas, and this was the home of Ronald O'Brien, his wife Denen, and their two children. They had a son named Timothy and a daughter named Elizabeth, And while certainly nowhere near the realm of being a rich family, they did do their best to try to be a happy family. And they struggled financially, big financial struggles, but they always did the best with what they had, and regardless of their financial struggles, Ronald wanted his kids to have a happy Halloween.

5:34 So sure, you know, Halloween had not been one of his favorite you know, holidays in the past, But when this case took place, he really was needing to pick me up. The family was wanting to pick me up, and this was going to be fun. So he went down excitedly to the store and he bought costumes for both of his two kids, and this. Was about two weeks before Halloween. Ronald was literally giddy as well whenever he brought him home and they were talking about the big day to come, and oh my god, the kids were getting real costumes. They were gonna look so awesome, and they couldn't wait to be running from house to house just grabbing up all the candy and just being so excited in the fun of the night. And then the following week, Ronald spoke to his buddy. His buddies' names was Jimmy Bates, and they talked about what all they were gonna be doing as families for the trick or treat festivities. So in that discussion they decided, well, wait, why don't we all just get together and it'd be a lot of fun if we get you get together and we share dinner, and then Halloween night will let all the kids go trick or treating together. That would be a whole lot of fun. So sure, that's what we're gonna do. Afterwards, they were gonna take all the kids and the families would unite and then as a big, big group, we'll go walking together and then the kids can socialize and have a bunch of fun screaming and hollering, but the adults have somebody to talk to while they're walking the neighborhood.

6:59 It's a plan, right, sounds great. Finally, all the big day came and Ronald was excited. They woke up that morning, he went to work as usual, though he had to go to work. Kids have to go to school. And where was he working? I wanted to tell you that. So he was working as an optician at Texas State Optical. So he was an eye care specialist and his job was basically to help the customers pick out their eyeglasses or their contact lenses, and then he helped with some other vision correctional devices as well in the. Scope of what he did. So after work, he ran home, he gathered Denean and the kids and then they set off for the Bates House for the fun of the night to come. And when they got there, Jimmy and his family already had dinner ready, so it was like they were like, we got a hurry, right, so we don't miss the time that we start doing all our trick or treating. So they all greeted one another and then they promptly sat down and they enjoyed dinner together, had a great time.

7:51 Dinner went well, and then the kids were getting super restless. Can we go trick or treating? Can we go tricker treating? So they got ready in their costumes, and then they hit the neighborhood. It was on and they were in the process of getting ready right before they were going to exit the door, when the weather suddenly took a turn for the worst, and before they could hit the road, it started pouring rain outside. So the kids got super bummed. And hey, if you've been around kids or you've been a good hell at Halloween and the plans get washed out, there is no bigger suck than that you want to go do these things. But luckily for the kids, the rain actually started letting up, and eventually it led up enough that they said, look, we're still going to go trick or treating. It got delayed, but we are going.

8:38 Let's do this, yes, And so the plans of course had to be shortened because of that rain. And then also in that little delay that there was, one of the Baits children decided that he didn't want to go trick or treating either, so that kid stayed home. I don't want to go out in the rain. No problem, you're missing out though, because we're going to have the fun. So the dad's kind of made a plan that they would take the kids trick or treating, but only on one or two streets, and those streets specifically were Citation Street and Donne Rail Street. And the group that set out together included mister Bates, one of his children, Ronald with his two children, Timothy and Elizabeth, and they had a system set up of how they were gonna go up to the houses. So mister Bates would stay on the sidewalk, and Ronald agreed that he would walk up to the doors of the homes with the kids every time they turned to go up the sidewalk. So the kids made their way to the home of Courtney and Carolyn Melvin after they had started trick or treating. They just happened upon this house of Courtney and Carolyn Meldon, and the kids ran up and they knocked on the door, and they were giddy and they were waiting for someone to come to the door. Nobody came, so they waited a bit, they knocked again, but eventually they realized no one's gonna come to the door. Nobody must be home, and so they tore off the yard into the neck house to go knock on their door.

10:02 So mister Bates was. Watching the kids run across the yard and then go up to the next door, and that's when he realized that Ronald wasn't with them. So a few moments. Later, he kind of looked back at the previous house and he saw that the stoop of that home was dark, and it was kind of dark in the area around the home where the kids had cut through to run to the next house, and so he was looking for Ronald, and then Ronald popped out from where the dark was and he came really excitedly from that dark area of the house and he was kind of had his hands in the air and he was like, yeah, he was all excited. He's like, guys, look, look, look, and he's holding up these giant pixie sticks, the big time ones, and he was so excited because these were not the little bitty, cheap ones. These were those big ones with the tons of sugar in them, and he was waving them back and forth in the air, and he goes the.

10:55 Rich neighbors were giving out expensive trees. Look at these kids. And so we was like, awesome, Dad. They were so excited, what a win to get these big old treats, and so the kids wanted them, and so Ronald handed them out to the kids, and then the kids realized these are kind of big. We don't want to hold these while were running, so he said, here, hand them back to me. I'll hold them and y'all can keep trick or treating. And so he held them for the rest of the after of the evening when they were going up and down the two streets, until the kids got done trick or treating and they made it back to the Baits' home. So once they got back, Ronald again handed those back out to the kids, and even the Baits' kids got the other ones that were given to him, even though they had not one of them had not gone trick or treating, that kids still got one too. There were plenty of them, so as the kids looked through their loot all excitedly showing off their treats to everybody, the trick or treating night wasn't actually quite over yet, and so other kids from the neighborhood continued to knock on the Baits's door looking for candy and trick or treating back at the house where the kids had returned to. So Ronald answered the door, you know, periodically with other adults. But Ronald answered the door periodically and a child that was there mentioned in the trick or treating discussion.

12:08 He goes, oh, I go to your church. We go to church together, and so, feeling a special connection with that child, Ronald surprised that kid and said, you know what I'm gonna give you. I've got one of these left, and he gave him one of the giant pixie sticks. The kid was like, yes, right, squealed with excitement, waving it in the air, and Ronald was tickled too to see the smile of the kid's face. Pay it forward. We don't need all this candy, we have plenty, and so the kid grabbed it, ran down the street excited. Ronald shuts the door. Good time. So the hours kind of wind down and finally the day was over. So tired full of junk, you know, the kids are Ronald and the family said they're goodbye to each other. They thanked the Bates family for the dinner, and then they gave their hugs goodbye, and they head off to go back to the house. Well Denien, the mother decided that she wanted to go stop by a friend of hers house on the way home. So Ronald said, no big deal. I'll bring the kids home, I'll get them settled in, I'll get them bathed while you go visit and have some fun with your friends. And she said, I won't be gone all night, I'll be back in a little bit. I just want to go swing by and say hey. So he did exactly what he said.

13:12 He drove the kids home, he got him all ready for bed, and then they did what they all do every child, Daddy, please, can we have just a few more candy, Just a little bit more candy before we go to bed? Can we just have a little bit please? And he said, okay, fine, but just a little bit, y'all. We got to get to bed. We're not gonna sit here and make ourselves sick on candy. So the kids started to pick out the little bit of candy that they were going to eat for the night, and eight year old Timothy wanted to eat some of his giant pixie stick. So he got the pixie stick. He opens it and he took one bite of the powder and the sugar was you know, it was good, but it seemed to be stuck in the pixie stick and he was having a really really hard time getting the rest of the powder out. So he handed it to his daddy and said, daddy, can you help me. Ronald said, sure, no problem, and so he took the big straw, the big plastic straw of the pixie stick, put it between his hands and he rubbed it back and forth together to try to break up the powder for his son.

14:10 So he handed it back to Timothy. Timothy took a second big gulp of the powder and immediately was repulsed by the way that it tastes. He made a face and was really sad because he's like, oh, no, it's not good. It tastes horrible. The super super bad taste was so strong too, that he couldn't get the taste out of his mouth. He was like, this is terrible. So Ronald was kind of confused by it, and he looks at it and he said, well, come here. Tim takes him into the kitchen, pours him a big cup of kool aid and says, here, wash your mouth out, drink you some of this. So Ronald handed it to him, and Tim did exactly what he was told. He drank the juice, washed his mouth out, and then he ran back to his bag of candy bummed out, but he ran back to his bag to go find him something else to start eating. Within just a minute, maybe two minutes since he took that bite, Tim started feeling really bad, really really bad, so bad that he stood up and he ran straight to the bathroom and he started vomiting, seriously vomiting too, not just like I've a tommyeg like really really puking. So worried about him, Ronald goes into the bathroom and he's checking on him, Son, are you okay, what's going on? Are you feeling all right? And as the minutes passed, Tim got exponentially worse.

15:33 It was quick, super quick. He got really really sick. He became so sick within a minute or two after that that he couldn't even stand up to walk by himself. So Ronald grabbed him by the waist and kind of turned him to kind of help him walk. And as soon as Tim started walking, boom, he flat out collapsed on the floor. Soon as he hit the floor, he started having very serious seizures. Convulsions that could not be controlled and were big time problem. And it wasn't like this was shake it off time. Tim was in bad, bad shape. So Ronald ran to the phone. He dialed nine one one and he said, I need an ambulance.

16:15 I need it now. My kid is having seizures. So the ambulance arrived shortly thereafter, just minutes, and the EMTs began asking Ronald what happened, what was he doing before this started happening, So Ronald tried to start explaining it, but then he himself just became sick, so he excused himself, ran to the bathroom presumptively vomited. They didn't follow him in there, and then he returned back and again started trying to explain what was happening or what his son was doing before he got sick. But again Ronald got sick, doubled over, ran back to the bathroom, was sick again. So the ambulance workers followed him the second time and said, look, man, do you need our help. We can help you too, and he waved them off and said, no, I don't any help.

17:01 I'll be fine. So around this time, Timothy is now being loaded into the ambulance, which then rushed lights and sirens straight to the hospital. When it got there, doctors immediately jumped on to assist the little boy. They began checking his vitals, running tests, and attempting to figure out what had caused this horrific onset of symptoms in such a short amount of time, But their efforts would be completely in vain because eight year old Timothy would be dead within that hour from beginning to end, in an hour, tim was gone. How could this be? It just doesn't even make sense.

17:42 A happy, healthy eight year old boy who was running and excitedly tricker treating door to door, screaming and laughing and have the time of his life just two hours ago, and now he lay dead and he was stored in a hospital freezer. How could this have happened? What could possibly explain this turn of events? Because it made no sense to anyone that was involved. So police recalled due to the strange circumstances, and they had questions as well because they had to figure this one out. So they spoke to Ronald, who threw complete shock, explained, look, we went trigger treating, we came home. He ate this giant pixie stick or he started to eat it. It didn't taste good. He washed it down with some juice, and then he was sick, having the seizures. And now he's gone, I mean, just complete and utter shock. So where did the pixie stick come from? Well, Ronald said it came from the Baits home or the Baits neighborhood. Excuse me, the Baits neighborhood where they had been trigger or treating earlier.

18:47 Other than that, he needed some time. He couldn't be answering all these questions. He needed some time. All I know is he got the candy wall trick or treating, and he was just overwhelmed having to explain it. He was in shock and he was grieving, But so was his poor wife, who had just run to a friend's house and wasn't there for a lot of what took place. Also, their young daughter, Elizabeth, was completely just stricken with grief. Where did my brother go? And how is my brother? What do you mean he's dead? We were just trick or treating what was supposed to be a day of fun and excitement. Now would forever mark this holiday with nothing but sadness and grief. And what was this family going to do without tim So everyone who knew the O'Brien family was also completely in shock as well as the information spread and as the news spread that Timothy died, and so everyone's asking the.

19:45 Same question, what happened? What do you mean you know? Did he get hit by a car? What happened? No, none of that. Nobody had answers. And during the days following Timothy's death, the family attempted to do their best to answer everyone's questions of what happened, but the truth be told, they were at a complete loss. They had suspected maybe what he ate made him sick, but they didn't have any answers. So police had to keep asking questions though, to try to get to the bottom of what had happened. And specifically, they had found out now that the test results had come back as to what was in Timothy's system the night he died, and it was shocking because Timothy's stomach contents had been sampled at the hospital and the results of the blood test that was taken showed that it was cyanide in this young boy system. Cyanide what in the world. Specifically, he had four or point four milligrams in his system and for reference, because I looked it up, a fatal dose would have been point two, so I mean he had like double the amount that it would have taken to kill the young boy. So police now wanted answers, and it seemed that pixie stick was the common theme in the situation surrounding Tim's death. So Ronald, as he's being questioned over the days, started giving conflicting accounts of where

21:18 exactly the pixie stick came from. But under the circumstances and the fact that they were trick or treating, it was like he was getting confused exactly maybe which house it came from. But eventually he was able to literally go and point out to the police, this is the house right here. This is the house where I got the pixie sticks from, and it was on Donrail Street. And he was also able to give a description of the actual person who handed him those pixie sticks. And the description that Ronald gave did in fact match within reason Courtney Melvin, who the homeowner. So it's like, Aha, we got us a little trail here that we can follow.

22:06 So in the moment that this is all kind of taking place, Courtney Melvin happened to be standing in a crowd of people in the neighborhood, and so whenever Ronald saw him, he was quoted as being and this is a direct quote, almost positive end quote, that that is the man who handed. Me those pixie sticks. So police jumped on this lead and they decided, we want to have a word with you. We want to talk to you, mister Melvin, and we want to talk specifically to you about the candy that you were hanging out on Halloween. Maybe it could have been that the candy was somehow contaminated unbeknownst to them.

22:50 Before they bought it, you know, at the store. But cyanide, how Cyanide's not something that's readily available in little cyanide packets at the store, So this had to be way more detailed than just something that simple, regardless of what it might have been. They spoke to Courtney Melvin and they asked him about the events of Halloween, and they wanted him to be very specific and don't leave anything out. And Courtney Melvin was perplexed by this, and he said, what do you mean the candy that I handed out on Halloween night? They said, we want to know exactly what happened, and he said, okay, well I can sum it up for you. I left for work at one point thirty in the afternoon and I didn't get home until ten forty five pm. I didn't hand out any candy on Halloween. So police are like, yeah, right, you know, so wondering if they could prove his alibi.

23:47 They said, all right, well we're going to go to your work and follow up on this, and he was very confident and said go for it, please do please go follow up. So how was he so confident in this, Well, the truth is because it's the truth. When they followed up his work, one hundred percent said yep, he was here. He worked an evening ship shift and it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt he was here. So back to Ronald. Then, mister Ronald, he was certain that he saw Courtney Melvin there. But there's no way that is not true. It can't be true. Well, maybe the timing was off that Ronald gave. So they spoke to miss Melvin and she says, well, wait a minute, we did hand out candy. I handed out candy that night, but I ran out of candy at six forty five and then I never answered the door. After that, because I didn't have anything to give the kids, but I handed out candy, not my husband. He wasn't here, he was at work, So it was kind of curious. Okay, well, what kind of candy did you give out? She starts listing the candy that she gave, and she listed everything under the sun, but she never ever mentioned pixie sticks, and she certainly did not have giant pixie sticks, the expensive ones. Even so, even if that were the case that she did hand out the candy, there were no trick or treaters out and about going door to door

25:18 at ten forty five pm, which was the time that Melvin came home, so there's no way Ronald could have seen Courtney Melvin at the house. So either way, it wasn't driving what was being said. So police then went to every home on the route that the two families took that night when they were trick or treating to follow up and say what candy did you hand out? What candy did you hand out? And not only did the Melvins not hand out giant pixie sticks, but neither did any of the homes that night, as in none of them, not one house handed out giant pixie sticks.

26:00 So now beg the question was Ronald making this up? And why would he make that up? So the police said, you know, maybe we need to take a closer look into the O'Brien family, specifically Ronald, because he was the one that pointed out somebody and said that man handed me Pixi sticks. And what they found about him seemed to be overall normal. He was an everyday guy. He was a positive person within the community. He was a deacon at the Second Baptist Church. He was a choir member as well, and he loved participating in church and all of the joy that that brought to him. And he was also a man that had a work history. He had worked in a couple of trades, everything from insurance sales to working for a chemical company.

26:46 But now he was. Working, like I told you before, as that optician at Texas State Optical. But nothing about Ronald's home life, or his work life, or his church life seemed to scream a red flag. So police decided that they needed to look a little further into his life, and during their look into Ronald's employment, police found that his take home salary was a whopping one hundred and fifty dollars a week, and this kind of backed up the fact that they were struggling financially because there wasn't a lot of money going into this household. And this hunch was also confirmed whenever they found out that he had just recently sold their home and had reaped a six thousand dollars proceed from it. Well, that six thousand dollars didn't really amount to much at all, because even though they got that money, they quickly spent it to fulfill pass filled past due bills and to cover other like credit cards and stuff like that. It didn't even cover everything that he owed, so they were still in debt even after making six thousand dollars off the sale of their home. So to say that they were doing horrible with their personal finances, I mean that's to say the least. Okay, they were doing pretty bad. So by October of nineteen seventy four, his takeom salary was being spent before it was even earned, so it went to, you know, between rent and bills due and then feeding the family, they were flat out broke.

28:20 He also owed nearly two thousand dollars on a delinquent loan that he had previously taken out, and then another eight hundred dollars in taxes and accruing fees that he owed to the government. So he knew his financial situation was dire, and he seemed to live in a constant state of being strapped with no extra income to offset these mounting bills. And one bill that he always knew he. Had coming was his one hundred and forty nine dollars a month car payment. Well, considering he had no money remaining, he was eight months behind on paying his car note. So the financing company at this point was not amused and had recently sent him a demand letter and they said either you pay now or were coming to repossess the car.

29:08 Things had become dire. For Ronald and his family as far as finances went, so much so that he had even become vocal to anyone who would listen at his job that he needed money, even recently borrowing one hundred dollars from a coworker just to make ends meet for the month, and he eventually decided to take out a loan, as if that was going to help, you know somehow. I mean, he's virtually behind in every financial aspect of his life. So now he wanted to go take out another loan. That doesn't make any sense to me. Nonetheless, he applied with the Medical and Dental Service Bureau for a loan in the amount of one thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars, and when they came back with the response, all it was was a frickin' hell, no, dude, you have no money, and they just sent back a denial letter because you're not doing too well here. So all in our now he realizes, I'm going bankrupt. But being poor doesn't make you a killer, and being poor doesn't explain where cyanide came from either. And while they didn't know where the cyanide came from and it hadn't yet been confirmed, it wouldn't take them long to.

30:19 Figure it out. So Timothy's autopsy did confirm that his cause of death was cyanide poisoning. For a perspective, cyanide can refer to any chemical that contains a carbon nitrogen bond, and it's actually more common than you think naturally though, So for example, I did go to healthline dot com to get these answers. I'm not making this up or anything, but it's found in many safe to eat plant foods, including things like almonds, lima beans, soy, and spinach. And you can also find cyanide in medications, and some of them you might have even heard of before, like Selexa and if you remember tagament.

30:59 But the difference here is that those are what are called nitrils, and they're not as toxic to the body because they don't easily release that carbon nitrogen ion, which then would act as a poison to the body. Syinide's even a byproduct of metabolism in the human body. It's even exhaled in low amounts every time that we breathe. This case, this wasn't the case though, in what was going on with Timothy. Those are all naturally occurring in like I said, small amounts and aren't toxic to the body. In the way that we usually consume those. This was twice the lethal dose of cyanide in this voice system, and this had to be an unnatural source that was ingested at the rate in which he was made sick and ultimately dead within an hour. The symptoms if you're curious of potassium cyanide, the poisoning initially would start out getting a really red complain because the tissues in the face and in the skin are not able to use the oxygen in the blood. So once little Tim's face would begun would have begun turning really, really red.

32:11 He was actually already starting to die and he didn't know it. Within minutes of ingesting this poison, he would have felt really, really sick, and then he would have become weaker by the second just week week, week week, and then his little body would have started heaving vomit to try to expel that poison that was overtaking his organs, and then after that a massive migraine in his head would have ensued. So whenever he was saying Ronald was saying that the little boy didn't feel good, you're hearing it play out what was happening to him. Hypoxia begins, which meant Timothy would have become confused.

32:52 He would have started having difficulty breathing. At that point, his heart rate would have sped up, and he would have begun to cough in this desperate grasp for air. He wouldn't have been getting enough oxygen. He would have been struggling to breathe. He would have started sweating profusely, then wheezing at best, and the pain and the sickness would have become overwhelming, and that's whenever he would have collapsed and started having those seizures. And I would argue only by the mercy of nature itself, that he would eventually lose consciousness before his organs gave out and then he had brain death. So while it doesn't sound like it was a long period before he was dead, this child suffered greatly until he lost consciousness.

33:45 And there is no doubt that this was done to this baby on purpose. Someone did this to this child, and just like me and you listening to this right now, police wanted answers, and they wanted him now. This is not acceptable and there has to be an explanation for what's going on. So police had been at the O'Brien home after Timothy died, and while there they had recovered those pixie sticks that Ronald kept mentioning, because that was what Timothy had last eaten before he became violently ill. Interestingly, potassium cyanide looks like sugar if you look at it, and it would have blended really well into the sugar of the pixie stick if it were put in there.

34:32 So the sticks were taken and they were sent to a lab for testing. Before even testing its contents. It was noticed though by the technician that one end of the pixie sticks were heat sealed like from the factory, but on all of the other pixie sticks the other end was simply sealed with a staple. So curious if this was the standard sealing method of the candy, because remember this is the nineteen seve seventies. The production company of the candy was contacted police wanted to know, hey, how do you normally sealed this candy and the company said, one hundred percent of the time. When we send this to production and it sent out to the businesses, both ends of the pixie sticks are heat sealed. We never used staple. We never would use a staple. It would spill out.

35:22 I mean, think about it. So this is again more proof that this candy had been messed with at some point, and the stick that Tim had eaten out of was missing the first four inches of candy. It was tested by the lab and interestingly enough, it came back negative for cyanide. So the other remaining candy sticks were also tested and guess what, they all were found to have lethal doses in the first two inches of the candy in them. Tim's, of course, was already gone because he had eaten it. So using our brains and deductive reasoning here we can see that potentially all of the O'Brien children should be dead, both of them, if not the mother if she would have eaten it, or the father if he would have eaten it.

36:19 But Timothy was, unfortunately the only one that chose the pixie stick. So how Tim died was now known contaminated candy laced with cyanide, But how it got there was wanting. We want to answer that, but not only how, but more importantly why would someone do this? Well? Another interesting fact about Tim's death was that the very next day he hadn't been dead twenty four hours. Ronald went to go to the funeral home to plan Timothy's funeral. That's not not normal. But during that conversation, Ronald was told by the funeral director to make sure he knew that.

37:03 First of all, is there insurance on your son? And Ronald said, yes, we have life insurance on him. And he said, well, listen, the way that this works is that you have to have an original death certificate for the life policy. On your child. Don't make any photo copies and mail that in. Make sure you send the original one in. And that's when Ronald said, oh, okay, I need to order not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six six death certificate copies. Six. So it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa?

37:45 Wait? What what is going on here? And is what's going on? What it seems like, why would you need six copies? Did you have six policies on your son? So this had police attention and looking into why he would need so many of these copies. Here are some facts that police found. In January of nineteen seventy four, Ronald joined the what was called the New Outlooks Club at the Pasadena State Bank. So by joining that bank, there was the club they offered, and if you were a part of that club, you would qualify for a small life insurance policy, which the only way that you earned that policy was that you had to make X amount of withdrawals. They were just like a couple of dollars each but X amount of withdraws a couple of times each month. And that was kind of their gimmick, you know, like to make sure you're using the account and all of that. You sign up join this club, make sure you make three or four, you know, withdrawals a month, and then you get to be qualified and you get to get life insurance. So Ronald had had every member of his family sign that signal your card at the bank, so that everyone in his family or everyone that signed would have gotten ten thousand dollars in coverage.

39:10 When his wife found out about this and what was going on, she thought it was absolutely ridiculous and she raised hell. She was like, dude, we're broker than broke. We can't even afford to pay attention. Dude, Like we are that poor, and this is wasting precious dollars that we need to live, Like we have to buy groceries for our kids. Why are we buying life insurance policies for our children? Their kids? Plus, I mean they're so young. It just seems unnecessary and we're so strapped. It's not something we need to be doing. She thought it was stupid. So he was the leader of the house though, so whatever, they just they signed the card. But she still was adamant, this is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of in my life. It was also discovered by police that the end of September, Ronald went and spoke to a life insurance agent about covering his family. This was in addition to the bank and the agent, the guy who was literally in sales to make money by selling life insurance, said dude, I don't think this is necessary on all your children. But Ronald ignored his advice and he took out twenty thousand dollars policies on each of his children.

40:30 So when the police asked the wife about this, she had no idea what they were talking about. She's like, wait, what, there's policies on my children outside of the bank. Yep. Something that was also interesting to police was that Ronald never took coverage out on himself, you know, the parent, the older one, the one more likely to die. Only as kids. So, running on the theory that he may have been involved in his son's death for financial gain, police wanted to figure out, now, okay, well where did the cyanide come from? Though, because this is kind of maybe he's a weirdo. Maybe he just got all the life insurance policies because he got nervous and you know, about some things that had happened in his life. It was soon after realized that a few months earlier in August, remember Timothy dies at Halloween in October. In August, Ronald asked his manager at work to order cyanide. But there is a legitimate purpose for this. It's used in cleaning glass frames, eyeglass frames. But this caught the manager's attention because cyanide was used in the optical business. But that was a practice that had been outdated, so it seemed like an odd request. And I did some further research on this because I wanted to understand it. I'm sure you might want to know. And I found that cyanide actually is still used today in jewelry cleaning, so it's not that far off the rails. And basically they take the cyanide

42:03 and they do what's called bombing, and the process makes there's a chemical reaction they do and the process removes the top layer of gold and it leaves a clean, pure layer underneath. So it makes old jewelry look new, and it's just like a nice way of updating and making your jewelry look nice, but for eyeglasses, not so much. Even in the seventies, this was an outdated practice. Specifically just for your knowledge too. It was outdated by twenty years, so no wonder. The manager was like, wait, what, why do you want cyanide. The manager was so weirded out by it that he declined and said, no, but I'm not ordering that. But three weeks later Ronald asked him again, dude, I need the sinanide. I got to I got to work on these glasses for a customer. And this time the manager said, look, dude, if you want that, you're gonna have to go up the chain to someone with more with a more senior position, and make let them make that decision to order it. But I'm not ordering it.

42:55 I don't think that that's something we need to do. In talking with people that Ronald was free with about his behaviors and his activities. In the last few months leading up to Timothy's death, it was discovered that Ronald had called another friend of his by the name of Bobby Terry. This would be important because Bobby Terry was not only a friend of Ronald's, but he was a former coworker. Where he was a former co worker might be of interest to you. He was a former coworker at Arco Chemical Company, So in speaking to Bobby Terry, he says that Ronald called him just on one of their regular conversations, and Ronald had told him about the fact that he was enrolled at San Jacento College and was in the middle of taking a chemistry course there.

43:43 And Ronald was kind of unimpressed with his instructor there because he was convinced that his instructor had no idea what he was talking about, and that he had no idea how many forms of cyanide there actually were, because remember, he knew about the sinide that you used to clean eye gold glasses. So the two of them talked about the many varieties of syinide and basically how would you get those? Where would they come from? Terry told Ronald, Yeah, well that Matheson Scientific Company was known to carry it. If the instructor's interested in getting some for the course, he could go down there and get it. So the discussion continued, and Ronald was just curious, I wonder how much of that would be fatal. You know, they're going to be using it in a classroom. I wonder how much of that would be fatal in a human, you know, And so they kind of discussed that conversation over another question, and I know it was kind of strange, but Ronald was just curious if they'd be able to detect sinide in a dead body, you know, normal conversations that we all have. Other employees at Ronald's current workplace also confirmed that he had discussed the use of cyanide with them and how it may be fatal. So I don't know about you, but I believe that where there's smoke, there's fire.

45:05 And I'm not trying to call us firemen, but maybe we may have just located it. So police kind of start snooping around to see if they may have located that cyanide, and it's exactly what the police would find. Matter of fact, they found that Ronald went to a chemical outlet in Houston. It was called Curtin Matheson Scientific and the salesperson there his name was David Jackson, and he remembered Ronald because he was the one who had assisted him when. He came in. When they were talking and doing, you know, the purchase or attempted purchase. He was very specific when he was talking to the salesman that he didn't need a lot of it. So what is the smallest amount that he could purchase, and so David advised him that, oh, yeah, you can get in small amounts. We have a five pound bucket that you can.

45:58 Buy it in. And Ronald's offed at that five pounds. I don't need five pounds of it. So David said, oh, well, if you need less, you know, you don't need a bunch. He said, well, there's other places that you can locate and get small amounts of cyanide. And so they went through that list of where you can find them, and so Ronald said, hey, man, I really appreciate it, thank you so much, and he left without buying any Well, wouldn't you know. On October twenty third, just two days before Young Timothy died, Ronald went to the medical branch Credit Union and he discussed with them his upcoming expected financial changes in the near future, which included a large sum of cash. He was expecting before the end of the year, you know, probably between October thirty first and December thirty first, I'm guessing that's what he's talking about.

46:51 And he was so confident, so confident that he would be coming into a lump sum of money that he even signed paperwork with the bank to add his late payments to his note that he would pay in January of nineteen seventy five. Okay, so he really felt like he was going to get this money. So when questioned about this, the police were like wanting to know what Deneen thought about it. Deneen was asked, what is this lumps up of money, this lump sum of money that y'are going to be expecting by January? And she again is deer in the headlights. We're not expecting any money. We're flat ass broke. We don't have any money and we don't have any coming in. That's crazy.

47:33 Then almost immediately after Timothy's death, Jimmy Bates, remember his friend. He told police that Ronald had called him about possibly purchasing a home, but he made Jimmy promise that he would not mention anything about this home purchase to his wife Denen. What is going on that Ronald would be making all these moves in life and Deneen not be aware of it. They were so broke that they couldn't even afford their rent. But now he's gonna somehow purchase a house. How well, I'm glad you, asked because Ronald was also extremely happy to talk about his plans to spend Timothy's life insurance money, and he liked to explain that with his friend. So this was shocking to Jimmy, who thought of his own kids in that moment, and he's thinking to himself, I would be devastated right now if my child was dead and he's sitting here talking about how he's gonna spend the life insurance money and the way that he was excited about it, and Ronald's grand plans for the money. It just really caught his friend Jimmy off guard, and it kind of was off putting to Jimmy. And it became very clear in that moment that although Ronald appeared grief stricken in public, in private, he didn't show any signs of distress. It was almost just it's like business as usual. And then Ronald said

49:03 something to Jimmy that sealed the deal in his mind. He said that while they were talking, you know, I just don't see how the police could pin Timothy's death on anybody. Listen, that statement wouldn't come out of my mouth if I had gotten candy that I believed killed my child during Halloween I'd kick down every damn door on the two streets. I would be skull dragging people for answers. And I mean that, but hashtag don't listen to me, because, like hashtag, that's bad advice. I'm just saying, hypothetically, be careful what you hand out, because this mama would go, I'm gonna find out who did this to my baby, and you damn right, someone's gonna pay for it. I'm not gonna be talking to my friends about well. I just don't see how anybody could be held responsible. That's asinine to say that. Another person came forward, a customer at the eyeglass company where Ronald work. He came forward and said, you know, the day of Halloween, before trick or treating would have happened, but the day of Halloween, the customer had gotten there, and he had gotten there about the same time Ronald was moving from his car into the business, and he recalled seeing Ronald in the parking lot and he was carrying a stapler and a bag of stuff that he couldn't the customer couldn't tell what was in it, but he definitely saw the stapler.

50:26 And then when the customer got inside and was having his eyeglasses serviced. He and Ronald were having some back and forth discussion and guess what they were talking about. Ronald brought up cyanide again, and they were talking about what would be lethal doses of cyanide. What are the chances, what are the chances of that happening. In a follow up search of Ronald's home, police discovered a pair of scissors and a knife, which they collected for forensic testing. When I say forensic testing at least, I mean was available in the Times in the nineteen seventies, and under examination, it was found that the scissor blades had a lavender plastic substance on them. You know pixie sticks, the big plastic ones. You know they have the stripes on them.

51:14 Can't you see where I'm where I'm going here? The knife blade also had that plastic on it as well, and also had these crystal particles that were water soluble and contained sugar, i e. Pixie stick dust. So it kind of makes sense to me he probably cut those open then used the knife to he poured some out, use the knife to go back in the hole right with a real skinny blade to kind of put it back in and then. Put more sugar on top. That's what I envision it being. And as sick as it is to think about it, it was coming very clear to police as well. Ronald had carefully crafted a plan to kill his children for the life insurance money. He had purchased life insurance on his children, but not himself. He talked to everyone he knew about acquiring cyanide and how much it would take to kill a person. In the months leading up to his baby boy's death, he purchased the candy and the cyanide.

52:24 He carefully cut the packaging of the candy open with his scissors at the house where nobody could see him. He poured the cyanide in and then he topped it off with sugar, and then he stapled it. Remember he had to bring the supplies back to work. He then went and bought costumes, remember that whole thing, right before Halloween, to excite the kids, and then he brought him out for a night of fun, planning to kill his children the entire time. All of his kids, remember, every pixie stick had that sign in it. Only poor Timothy had eaten his giant pixie stick, even though the other kids had them, and they were laced with cyanide, awaiting to kill them. They just didn't open.

53:13 The pixie sticks. How could a father come home and hug his kids, trick or treat with them, and smile in their faces, knowing the entire time that he was planning to kill them. That is a level of calculated evil that I don't understand, and I pray to God anyone listening doesn't either. Ronald was ultimately arrested and he stood trial, and I want you to know he did testify on his own behalf, but it didn't help, and he was sentenced to death for the murder of his own son. And by the way, are you curious what his son's death was worth to him in total, because I don't know if you were doing any math earlier. Thirty one thousand dollars twenty one thousand dollars for his baby boy's life, his flesh and blood. Now, of course, it's never that easy when we tell these stories, because do you know that that son of a bitch would go on to win three stays of execution three three times his life was spared, and one had him scheduled to die on none other than Halloween.

54:23 In nineteen eighty two. That would have been just poetic justice. This would have been exactly eight years to the day that tim died. But again he won another stay of execution. Eventually, though, the odds were against him and he would be executed at the age of thirty nine at twelve forty eight am on March thirty first, nineteen eighty four. So good rittance to that piece of shit. But I do hope that you, however, go on to have some fun this Halloween. I hope you and joy the kiddos, and that y'all have fun going door to door and the kids come in to your door shout and trick or treat. I hope that all of us parents are gonna hug our babies tight. I hope that we're going to soak up their childhood and we're going to enjoy this dress up and this fun. And I hope that we'll all do it in the name of little Timothy, and we'll remember that he was real. Little Timmy set out for a night of dinner with friends and some treats, but he ultimately got tricked, y'all by the very man that he looked up to and he loved the most he was served a deadly poison in hopes of financial gain. It does not get any sicker than that. But I want y'all to know that Ronald got himself.

55:44 A little treat too. And it was right there in execution cafe, where there aren't any menus, because all they serve there is what you deserve.