Ronald O'Bryan Owed Over $100,000 When He Took Out Life Insurance on His Kids. Then Poisoned His Son with Halloween Candy By Christopher Rudolph 19

Ronald Clark O’Bryan had other priorities in mind when he killed his son, Timothy, on Halloween.

As his family prepared for the fall holiday, the optician came to terms with his financial situation. O’Bryan and his wife, Daynene, were raising their two young children near Houston, but they weren’t stable. Despite having a job and being an active member in their community, O’Bryan had racked up over $100,000 in debt.

Daynene later stated that O’Bryan had mentioned taking life insurance out on their kids, and she objected to the idea, according to The New York Times. “I tried to discourage him,” she said. “But he said it was the thing to do. We didn’t have that much money.”

After Timothy’s death, she learned that her husband had gone through with his plan behind her back. On October 31, 1974, the couple’s only son was found convulsing in his bed after eating a Pixy Stix. Earlier that evening, he had gone trick-or-treating with his dad, who had given him the candy on behalf of a neighbor — or so he said.

In reality, O’Bryan had concocted a plan to help his finances, which involved $31,000 worth of life insurance from his children.

Here’s everything to know about Ronald O’Bryan, known as the Candy Man killer, including what happened to him.

Who was the Candy Man Killer?

O’Bryan, later known as the Candy Man Killer, was a church deacon and an optician who lived with his wife, Daynene, and their two children — son Timothy, 8, and daughter Elizabeth, 5 — in Deer Park, Texas, a suburb of Houston.

According to the New York Daily News, O’Bryan had held 21 jobs in 10 years and was over $100,000 in debt. He was reportedly about to lose his job after he was allegedly caught stealing. O’Bryan was also in the throes of relinquishing possession of his house and car.

In the months leading up to Halloween in 1974, he took out multiple life insurance policies for each of his kids. As the candy-centered holiday approached, O’Bryan devised a plan to put poison in a few Pixy Stix and give them to his son and daughter.

Why did Ronald O’Bryan give out poisoned Halloween candy?

O’Bryan added potassium cyanide to the Pixy Stix tubes of powdered sugar.

According to local news station KPRC (via the Texas Archive of the Moving Image), O’Bryan and a family friend, Jim Bates, took their children out for trick-or-treating on Oct. 31. One of the houses they went by was dark, and they took it as a sign that no one was home.

The kids continued on, but shortly after, O’Bryan claimed that a person had come to the door with Pixy Stix. Unbeknownst to the group, he had tampered with the 21-inch tubes, putting the poison in the top two inches and then stapling them back shut, per Vice.

O’Bryan handed the candy to his two kids and three of their friends. Later, after O’Bryan and his kids returned home, Timothy was allowed to eat one piece of candy, and he chose the Pixy Stix. His father helped him dislodge the sugar stuck in the straw. After tasting it, Timothy said the candy tasted bitter, so O’Bryan grabbed a glass of Kool-Aid to help wash the taste out of his mouth.

“Thirty seconds after I left Tim’s room, I heard him cry to me, ‘Daddy, Daddy, my stomach hurts,’ ” O’Bryan said, the United Press International reported (via The New York Times). “He was in the bathroom, convulsing, vomiting and gasping, and then suddenly he went limp.”

Timothy was dead less than an hour later.

“He beat the wall and asked questions out loud why an 8‐year‐old boy had to die,” O’Bryan’s wife Daynene later recalled, per The New York Times. “I did not see any tears.”

Who did Ronald O’Bryan kill?

O’Bryan killed his son, Timothy. The other four children who took the poisoned Pixy Stix didn’t have a chance to open them before the police confiscated the candy.

The staples O’Bryan used to seal the Pixy Stix ended up saving one of the kids’ lives, as former Harris County prosecutor Mike Hinton told Vice.

“That’s what saved another boy’s life that night,” he said. “They found him in bed with the sweet in his hand, but he wasn’t strong enough to undo the staples.”

According to prosecutors at O’Bryan’s trial, he planned to collect the life insurance money after killing his son and daughter. Per The Austin American-Statesman, O’Bryan called the insurance company the morning after his son’s death, asking about collecting on the policy.

Was Ronald O’Bryan found guilty?

The authorities had become suspicious of O’Bryan, and when they learned of his call to insurers about the life insurance policy payout, they arrived at his house with a search warrant.

According to Vice, during their search, they found a pair of scissors with “plastic residue attached,” similar to that of the poisoned candy. Harold Nassif, a detective working on the case, discovered a suspicious piece of paper.

“It had all of his bills written out next to the numbers on an adding machine tape,” he recalled, per ABC13 Houston. “It came to almost the exact amount of what he stood to collect.”

O’Bryan was arrested and charged with capital murder, but he maintained his innocence throughout his trial. He stood by his claim that his son was poisoned by “an anonymous monster,” per The Austin American-Statesman.

Police couldn’t identify where O’Bryan bought the cyanide, and even though O’Bryan said he was innocent of the crime, prosecutors claimed that he was motivated by the life insurance policies he took out on his children.

“His whole life has been a lie,” prosecutor Vic Driscoll, per UPI. “He has used his church. He has used his friends. He has used his community and his family. And, worst of all, he has used his son – not as Abraham did – he sacrificed his son on the altar of greed.”

On June 3, 1975, O’Bryan was found guilty. The jury deliberated for only 46 minutes before reaching its verdict, according to Vice.

What happened to the Candy Man Killer?

After he was convicted of murder, O’Bryan was sentenced to death.

Following three stays of execution, he was killed by lethal injection on March 31, 1984, at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, according to the Associated Press (via The New York Times).

As he lay on a stretcher strapped in, O’Bryan spoke candidly to those in attendance.

”We as human beings do make mistakes and errors,” he said. ”This execution is one of those wrongs. But it doesn’t mean the whole system of justice is wrong. Therefore, I forgive all — I do mean all — those who have been involved in my death.”

As for the rest of O’Bryan’s family, Daynene said that she had no sympathy for him. “He made his bed, and now he is having to lie in it. I have no pity for him,” she told The Houston Chronicle.