Paul Curry gets life in prison for wife's poisoning death in San Clemente
The former San Onofre power plant employee slowly poisoned his wife over the course of a year before injecting her with a fatal dose of nicotine in 1994.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/curry-642152-paul-linda.html
Friends and family members never doubted who killed their beloved Linda Curry, but it would take more than two decades for that person to face justice.
A former San Onofre power plant employee was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday for killing his wife in 1994 so he could collect on the insurance money.
Paul Curry slowly poisoned Linda Curry, 50, over the course of a year before he finally slipped her a powerful sedative and injected her with a fatal dose of nicotine in their San Clemente home on June 9, 1994.
In the courtroom of Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue, Paul Curry, now 57, showed no emotion as the judge handed down the life sentence. His shackles rattled as he was led out of the courtroom.
In her witness impact statement, Linda Curry’s niece, Rickianne Rycraft, said the family never liked Paul Curry and always knew he was the killer. Rycraft described the pain of watching her aunt grow weak from poisoning.
“We know that Linda was slowly poisoned,” she said. “He tortured her.”
A jury in September convicted Paul Curry of first-degree murder with the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder by poisoning. The judge last month rejected a motion that Paul Curry was denied his right to due process because of the delayed prosecution.
Police had suspected him from the beginning, but prosecutors didn’t believe they had enough evidence to file charges. The case was relaunched in 2007 and investigators discovered new evidence that revealed a shorter time frame for the nicotine injection.
Sixteen years after his wife’s death, Paul Curry was arrested in 2010 and charged with murder and insurance fraud. At the time of his arrest he was living with his family in Salina, Kan., where he worked as chief county building inspector.
In the trial, Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh painted Paul Curry as a cold-blooded killer who viewed his wife as nothing more than a paycheck.
The day after his wife’s funeral, he started applying for life insurance payouts and eventually collected more than $547,000 in insurance and other benefits. He later bought himself a new Cadillac.
Deputy Public Defender Lisa Kopelman argued that Linda Curry had struggled with chronic health issues for years before she married, and little direct evidence points to her husband as a killer.
To explain the high level of nicotine in her system, Kopelman argued that Linda Curry may have used a nicotine enema as a holistic treatment for her many ailments.
Paul and Linda Curry met in 1989 while both were working at the San Onofre nuclear plant. When they married in 1992, he was 35 and she was 48. They were married for 21 months.
Even before her death, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department was questioning the Currys. During a 1993 hospitalization, an unexplained dose of lidocaine was found in an IV bag, suggesting someone had tampered with it.
Linda Curry told detectives that her husband was a likely suspect, according to court documents.
“Well the only person I can think of to have a motive to do it would be Paul, and the only motive I can think of is money,” she said.
Contact the writer:
kpuente@ocregister.com