Ronald Clark O'Bryan (Candyman)

The O’Bryan family lived in deer park in Texas, consisted of father Ronald, mother Diane and their children where Timothy (8 years old) and Elizabeth (5 years old). On Halloween of 1974, Ronald and their neighbour decided that they were going to take their kids out trick-or-treating together. Everything went well for the first few houses when they ended up at one where the occupant didn’t answer the door and the kids got impatient because they realised that they went going to get any sweets from this house so they ran ahead to the next house and their neighbour followed them where as Ronald O’Bryan stayed back at this house. A couple of minutes later Ronald re-joined the group saying that the person at the house did answer the door, and gave him five sherbet sticks for the kids. He gave one to each of the three kids, his son and daughter including the neighbours child and he also gave anther his neighbour for his other child who was younger and was waiting at home, then he gave the last of the five of the sherbet sticks to a random boy walking past that he recognised from church.

So the group carried on trick-or-treating, when they finished up trick-or-treating they went home and then Timothy decided that he wanted some of his Halloween sweets and he chose the sherbet sticks that his dad got from that house, but it was quite hard to open as it had a staple over the top of it so Timothy gave it to his dad Ronald to open it for him. Timothy only had a small mouthful of the sherbet and then complained that it was bitter and that it didn’t taste nice, so he left the rest of it. Ronald his dad made him some Kool-Aid so he could wash the taste out of his mouth but then he started complaining of a really painful stomachache, within minutes of eating the sherbet stick Timothy ran to the bathroom and began projectile vomiting and convulsing on the floor. Ronald ran in and helped Timothy ah he was vomiting and claimed that his son went limp in his arms an ambulance was called however Timothy O’Bryan passed away on the way to hospital less than half an hour after eating the sweet.

Quickly news spread that there was one house giving out poisoned sweets to children, many of the neighbours was confiscating their children sweets fearing that many then they had been to this house that was giving out poison’s sweets. Police were given thousands of sweets to either test or destroy out of fears that it might be poisoned. The police then began questing Timothy’s family specifically his dad who was out trick-or-treating with his son that night and they found that the poisoned sweet was the sherbet so an alert was put out in the neighbourhood, Ronald told police how this house had given him five sherbet sticks and luckily none of the other four kids had taken the sherbet sticks so they were confiscated as well, it was easy for police to get the first three sherbet sticks back as one of them was Ronald other child and both of the other two were the neighbours children, however the fifth sherbet stick that Ronald gave to the random boy in the street that he recognised from church so it was going to be harder to locate that child, police eventually the next morning got in contact with the fifths boy’s parents and they frantically started searching his trick-or-treat bag trying to find the sherbet stick but they couldn’t find it anywhere they were panicking they were frantic and so they ran up to their sons room fearing that he had taken the it. The boy was found asleep in his bed with the uneaten sherbet stick in his hand, the boy said that he was going to eat it before he had his nap but the staple on it was just too hard to open and so he didn't bother eating it.

So police studied these sherbet sticks and found that the first two inches of sherbet had been poured out and replaced with cyanide powder and the amount of cyanide was enough to kill three and four fully grown adults. The police questioned Ronald about which house he had gotten the sherbet sticks from, what the person at house looked like but he couldn't remember the house that he had gotten the sweets from, which police found a bit odd because they only went to a few houses as it was raining so the police went out and questioned every house but none of them said that they were giving out sherbet sticks.

Eventually Ronald did remember the house that gave him the sherbet sticks, he said that the person that gave him the sherbet sticks only cracked open the door a little bit, didn't turn on the light inside and just put his hand out with the sherbet sticks in his hand so Ronald didn't see who gave them him. The owner of this house was a man named Courtney Melvin who was an air traffic controller who claimed that he was at work until 11pm that night, so police questioned almost 200 people that Courtney Melvin worked with at the airport and every single one of them said that he was in that night, so now that Courtney Melvin was ruled out as a suspect police began to wonder why Ronald had said that he had got the sweets from this house when he obviously didn't so they began questioning Ronald O'Bryan. police quickly realised that he was in a $100,000 of debt and that he jumped around from job to job like every couple of months, he never had a stable career money was always a problem for Ronald at the time of Timothy’s death Ronald was also being suspected of theft at is work place as an optician and was very close to being fired from that job as well, his car was about to be repossessed he'd taken out several bank loans which the family home was foreclosed on meaning he was probably going to lose the family home as well. Police dug a little bit further and found that Ronald O'Bryan had actually taken out life insurance policies on both of his children just a couple of months earlier, in January he originally took out $10,000 plans of each of his children and then just a month before Timothy's death he opted further by 20,000 per child and then in the days before Halloween he took out a further 20,000 per child making their total life insurance policies when rounded up to be about $60,000 per child.

So police went and talked to Diane Ronald’s wife who said she had no idea that the children had any life insurance policies, and when police got in contact with the life insurance companies they told them that Ronald O'Bryan had actually contacted them on the 1st of November the morning after his son died inquiring about how he could get the money from the life insurance policies.

A local chemical supply store got in contact with the police because they believed that Ronald O'Bryan had tried to buy cyanide from their shop, due to its lethality the chemical supply store will only sell cyanide in very small amounts unless you have a licence. And the man that entered the store that they believed to be Ronald O'Bryan and asked for a huge amount of cyanide. Police quickly theorised that Ronald had tried to poison both of his children so he could get their life insurance money. And they believed that he gave out the other poisoned sweets to try and cover his tracks so that it wasn't just his kids that was being targeted. Police accused and questioned Ronald, but he maintained his innocence claiming he did not kill his son Timothy but the police did not believe and arrested him on November 5th, he was charge with one count of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder making him eligible for the death penalty.

Ronald pled not guilty for all five charges, his friend that also happened to be a chemist was called up to testify and he said that a year before this Ronald had questioned him about cyanide all summer, asking him where he could get cyanide, what the lethal dose was, how it killed people.

The salesman in the chemical supply store also testified to say that it was in fact Ronald O'Bryan that came into his shop just weeks before Timothy's murder trying to buy cyanide. Ronald's friends are co-workers all testified to say that he had a weird interest in cyanide he always seemed to be talking about it, particularly in the couple of months before Timothy's murder. His brother in law and sister in law both testified that at Timothy's funeral, Ronald would not shut up about how much money he is going to get from his life insurance policy. Instead of graving over recently deceased 8-year-old son he was telling everyone what he was going it spend the money on, including a trip away.

On June 3rd, 1975 the jury took just 45 minutes to decide that Ronald O'Bryan was guilty of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder, they then took a further 70 minutes to decide that Ronald O'Bryan should be sentenced to death. After he was found guilty his wife Diane divorced Ronald and years later, she found someone else and re-married and he adopted her daughter Elizabeth.

Ronald spent 10 years in prison before his exaction, the whole time he was being attacked and harassed by other inmates for being a child killer. His exaction date was set for August 8th, 1980 six years after the murder, however his attorney got it postponed so a new date was set for two years later on May 25th, 1982 but once again his attorney got is postponed for unknown reasons. So now a third date was set for the eighth anniversary of Timothy’s murder, Halloween 1982 and this time the judge said that he would drive Ronald O'Bryan to the death chamber himself if it meant that he finally got his execution, but once again the supreme court delayed his execution date giving him time to appeal his death penalty, Ronald’s appeal was unsuccessful and so a fourth execution date was set for March 31st 1984 and once again Ronald's attorney tried to postponed this day but by saying that the lethal injection was to cruel of a punishment, this time finally the judges rejected the attorney's request to postponed the execution and Ronald O'Bryan was killed by lethal injection.

In his final statement Ronald protested that his innocence and said that he felt that the death penalty was wrong, and during the execution a crowed of 300 people gathered outside all cheering, some of them even shouting trick-or-treat, and some of them throwing sweets in the air.