True Crime Campfire - Blind Love: The Murder of Linda Curry

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

I always loved the old “Twilight Zone” series. In most of the stories, ordinary people would wake up one morning and find themselves in a world that had changed in some crucial, baffling way. Everybody else would be in on the change, going around like nothing had happened, and the hero would have to figure out how to navigate this scary new reality. It’s fun to watch, when it’s fiction. But what if you woke up one morning and realized you were living your own version of that story? That all the trappings of your comfortable life were as flimsy as a sheet of painted canvas, hiding a nightmare underneath? What if the person you loved and trusted most had been in on the joke all along…and the joke is on you? Join us for the story of Paul Curry, a Mensa member and two-time Jeopardy champ whose charms were only skin deep.Sources:https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/timeline-investigating-the-death-of-linda-curry/11/https://www.grunge.com/493987/the-truth-about-the-jeopardy-winner-who-murdered-his-wife/https://www.leagle.com/decision/incaco20170629061CBS's "48 Hours," episode "To Catch a Genius"CNBC's "American Greed," episode "Recipe for Murder"Investigation Discovery's "Charmed to Death," episode "A Life in Jeopardy"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. I always loved the old Twilight Zone series. In most of the stories, ordinary people would wake up one morning and find themselves in a world that had changed in some crucial, baffling way. Everybody else would be in on the change,

going around like nothing had happened, and the hero would have to figure out how to navigate this scary new reality. It's fun to watch when it's fiction. But what if you woke up one morning and realized you were living your own version of that story? That all the trappings of your comfortable life were as flimsy as a sheet of painted canvas, hiding a nightmare underneath.

What if the person you loved and trusted most had been in on the joke all along, and the joke was on you. Today, we'll tell you about a love story gone horribly wrong, and a murder everybody saw coming, but couldn't figure out how to stop. Happy Valentine's Day! This is Blind Love, the murder of Linda Curry. So, campers, for this one, we're in beautiful San Clemente, California, 1989. Linda Kincaid was living a life most of us only get to dream about.

First of all, she was California girl gorgeous. She looked like what you'd get if a mad scientist spliced Merrill Streep's DNA with Helen Hunts to create some spectacular, blonde, leggy, hybrid clone. She knew how to dress, too, always perfectly coordinated from shoes to jewelry. But more importantly, Linda was smart and successful. She'd started as an administrator at California Edison, the energy company, but she'd quickly moved up the ranks to manager, and now she was making stacks of money. Her house was so beautiful that one of her friends described it as the kind of place where a

princess would live. This chick had her ducks in a row. There was just one area of her life where Linda hadn't had much luck. Romance. Despite being a total romantic, Linda hadn't had much success with men. By 1989, she'd been divorced twice, and she'd had a few long-term, relationships that just didn't work out. One guy had already been married and divorced and just didn't want to get married again.

Another thought she was terrific, kind and loving and a ton of fun to travel with, but the way she spent money drove him nuts, and he finally just realized they wanted really different lifestyles. One boyfriend broke up with her because he thought she was too nice. He said, I've never seen you frown. Now, that's got to be one of the weirdest reasons I've ever heard for dumping somebody right there. You're too kind and considerate and happy.

I can't take it anymore. Frowning, I guess, was important to this guy, right? Like, be sadder. I'm a fickled dater, and I can say that I have never dumped someone for that dumb of a reason. Maybe if they wore socks with sandals or liked cats the musical a little too much, sure, but not for smiling. But Linda was an eternal optimist when it came to Lamour. She wasn't about to give up. and one day Linda showed up to work at California Ed to find a handsome new co-worker there. His name was Paul Curry. Oh my goodness, campers, Paul Curry. What a specimen. Paul was a nuclear engineer at the Sanonofre Nuclear Power Plant,

hired as a consultant to teach the staff about safety issues. And the buzz around California Ed was that the guy was a legit genius and a bit of a Renaissance man. He was in Mensa. He could cook, he had musical talent, and he said, seemed to know a little something about everything. Plus, the guy had been on Jeopardy a few months earlier, twice, went over 24K. How freaking cool was that? What is pretty freaking cool for 800, Alex?

I see what you did there. Linda was mooney about him from pretty much day one, and the feeling definitely seemed to be mutual, despite the fact that there was a bit of an age difference between them. Paul was 32, Linda was 45. That's about the same as between you and me. But it didn't seem to bother either one of them. Linda was drop-dead gorgeous, obviously, and they were both healthy and full of life, so it didn't feel like a big deal.

Before long, Linda and Paul were baby-talking each other and giving each other cutie-pie nicknames, and we tried like hell to find out what the nicknames were, but we couldn't get any specifics. So, I don't know, you have to use your imagination. What do you think? Pooker Dumplin? Barren Snuggles von Huggington and Countess Cuddle Buns. I don't know. I like that one.

Anyway, Linda began to think that maybe she... she'd broken her streak of disappointing relationships and found the man she'd be happy with for the rest of her life. As for Linda's friends, they were happy for her, and they definitely did find Paul impressive. It would be hard not to, what was his menza and his gourmet cooking and his jeopardy wins and all. One of the first times Linda's friend Mary met Paul was at a dinner party at his house, and she was completely blown away when he just casually sat down at a beautiful piano and started to play songs by request. He could play just like Elton John, Mary said. It was amazing. But there were things that ate

at Linda's friends. Red flags, or pink ones at least. To some people, Paul was a little too caught up in his identity as the Jeopardy-Wenin' Ments 11 genius. It seemed important to him to make sure people knew he was the smartest guy in the room. If you were wrong about something, he made sure to correct you. Like, not in a rude way. He'd be friendly about it, but he never let anything pass. Paul. Dude. Do you want to be right or do you want to make friends?

He wants to be right. Always, every time. Absolutely. And he was prone to interrupting people and talking over them, as if they weren't even there. Sometimes you got the feeling he wasn't listening to you when you talked. He was just waiting for his turn. And sometimes he'd get tired of waiting and just butt right in. Mary told 48 hours, he thought highly of himself.

There was no doubt about it. He liked to take over the conversation and sort of talk over Linda. And she'd sit back and allow it because, again, she liked showing off his intelligence. But even if Paul's ego didn't bother Linda, it gave Mary a little bit of a bad feeling. One, she tried to tamp down since she could see how much her bestie loved him. And Mary thought Linda deserved to be loved and pampered. Yeah, she told investigation discovery that Linda had always had a little bit of a hole in her heart when it came to being the center of somebody's universe.

Growing up, her sister Pat was kind of the star of the family, budding Olympic figure skater, always getting written up in the papers and posing with big trophies and stuff like that, and it left Linda feeling kind of like second best. She felt like her mom favored Pat over her. Right, and whether that was real or just her perception, it left a permanent mark. Now, here was a guy who made Linda feel special in a way nobody else ever had. Her friends wanted that for her. But Linda's niece, Ricky, had a bad feeling, too.

And according to her, most of Linda's family shared it. Paul seemed distant with him. It didn't seem important to him to get to know them at all. Like, if you loved somebody, wouldn't you want to connect with the other people they love? It just didn't feel right. Yeah. And they noticed something else, too. Despite all the pet names and baby talk, there didn't seem to be any real passion in Linda and Paul's relationship.

Linda confided in a few of her friends that they hardly ever had sex. Now, sex doesn't have to be a big part of every relationship, but Linda did want it to be part of hers. She didn't understand why Paul wasn't more interested, and it struck Linda's friends as odd, too, that this would be going on right from the start, even during the honeymoon fair. Yeah, that is weird. But Paul really did seem to make up for it. He showered Linda with all kinds of little romantic gestures. He'd run her a bath, cook for her, go top up or drink.

Linda said he went out of his way to show her he cared about her. He did stuff no guy had ever done for her before. Stuff none of her friend's husbands or boyfriends did for them. Some of them were legit jealous. They'd tell her, I wish I had a man like that. Yeah, according to Linda's friend Mary, they were one of those coverings. couples who make everybody like, ah, come on, lovey-dove to the point where he's kind of want to barf. And Linda's friends felt like, you know, after two failed marriages, a broken

engagement and a string of disappointing boyfriends, maybe it just wasn't really about red-hot passion for her anymore. She was so proud of Paul's intellect. Maybe for her it was more about getting to be with somebody she perceived as brilliant and special. And if there were some things that tugged at the back of Linda's mind, like the fact that Paul never seemed to have much money of his own, despite his good job, she put those things aside. He loved her, she thought.

He must. Otherwise, why would he dote on her so much? Linda's friends told themselves the same thing. His personality might not have been everybody's cup of tea, but how many men will run you a bath after a long day at work? At the end of the day, if Linda was happy, they were happy for her. And in September of 1992, after a little less than three years together, Linda and Paul got married. In Vegas, no less.

As soon after the ink dried on the brand new marriage certificate, Linda got a nasty shock. Together, her and Paul's yearly income was over 140K, which is a lot for the early 90s. But she felt like she had less money now than she had when she was single. And it was weird. Paul hadn't brought anything into the marriage. he barely had two nickels to rub together and no property or anything like that. And about a month into the marriage, Linda found out why. He'd been married before.

Not once, but twice. And he had kids with one of his exes. And he didn't even come clean to her on his own. Like she found out by accident. Okay. One night when Paul was out somewhere, Linda just answered the phone and there was the voice of a young woman on the other end. Like, I was just looking for Paul. I just need to know where my check is for last month.

month. And Linda's confused. She's like, check. Well, what check do you mean? My child support. Good gravy. Can you imagine finding out your brand new hubs neglected to tell you about two entire ass ex-wives and a set of kids. God help us. Oh, I just, I can't even wrap my head around that. Like, I'm single. I don't know much. But I feel like if your partner has sired half a basketball team worth of humans, it should probably come up before the nuptials, like by the fifth date, by the fifth date at least, right? That's a, yeah, that's a third date conversation, for sure. Once he realized Linda knew his dirty little secret, Paul quickly went into damage control mode.

He booked a three-day cruise for the two of them, a Mayacolpa slash honeymoon trip, to show her how sorry he was for keeping such a big secret from her. Uh-huh. It was fun, they later told Paul's friend Steve. At first, but then they both came down with a horrendous flu or something. It was so bad that Paul thought it might have been the haunt of virus, which had been all over the news around that time. Paul had what he described as the worst two nights of his life and then felt better.

But Linda didn't feel better. She was violently sick, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, sweating, awful abdominal pain. She was sick for a while and her doctor couldn't really figure out why. But fortunately, she rebounded after a week or two, and for a little while, life went back to normal. Paul went back to doting on her. In fact, it seemed like Linda's health scare had brought him closer together. He cooked her five-star quality meals. He turned their backyard into a little garden of Eden with his top-tier landscaping skills.

And everybody mentions this, in all the sources we found on this case, always in exactly these words, he started experimenting with, quote, exotic salad dressings. Always bringing Linda new ones to try. Now, I just wouldn't think you could get that exotic salad dressing, but that's what everybody says. So what's an exotic salad dressing, KT? He's like you put a little bit of dillweed in the ranch. He is a dill weed. He is a dill weed.

So anyway, for a little while, life was all fancy salads and bubble baths again. And then one afternoon, just a few months into the marriage, Linda called up her friend Mary and said, I just need to get your take on something. Paul's starting to get really intense about wanting to put his name on everything, like everything, credit cards, retirement, and he wants to take out a million-dollar life insurance policy on me. So Mary's like, oh, well, okay, that's not so weird. You're married, right?

I assume you'd get a policy on him too, right, with you as beneficiary. But Linda said, no. That's the thing. He says because I'm so much older than he is, it doesn't really make sense for me to have a policy on him, just for him to have one on me. And Mary later told 48 hours, he comes into this marriage with practically nothing, and now he wants a life insurance policy on her for a million dollars? Red flag. She said to Linda, are you crazy? No, don't do that. That's just bizarre. Although ostensibly she was still happy with Paul at this point, Linda had to have to have. sent something was wrong here. Why else would she have asked for Mary's opinion? Real smooth, by the way, telling her she couldn't have a policy on you, Paul, my man. Right. Way to project.

Oh, shit. No, we can't do that. If she takes out a policy on me, obviously that means she's going to murder me. Yeah, that's not going to raise any eyebrows at all, right? God's sake, dude, pay the 50 bucks a month and get her a policy on you too. It's like these people want to get caught. I swear to got. And this dick wagon's supposed to be in Mensa. Yeah, you know, I don't think Mensa was sending us their best people in 1992. It's like every time we cover a case where we find out the dude was in Mensa, there's like a 99% chance he's going to turn out to be dumber in a can of biscuit dough. It just never, never fails. They truly operate like low rent Batman villains. Campers, if you are a member of Mensa and you've never tried to kill any of them.

That's an important part of this. Please write in. We want to talk to you about meeting, like what meetings are like. So Linda took her friend's advice. She never did get the new million dollar policy Paul wanted, but it didn't really matter. She already had several other policies, plus a generous retirement package from work. Altogether, these benefits added up to almost a million dollars, and Paul knew he was her beneficiary on most of them. Linda still wasn't feeling great, but she wanted to get back to her life.

She'd always had a wide net of friends, and Paul was Mr. Social Butterfly, too, even though his big ego erupt some people the wrong way. So once she was feeling up to it, Linda and Paul threw a big dinner party and invited all their friends and a bunch of their colleagues from the nuclear plant. Paul got a little into his cups that night, and at one point, like you do, the friends started talking about murder. Not like me and Whitney talk about murder, but like committing it. And we talk about committing it. What do you talk about?

You're right. I'm trying to pretend like you're all innocent on the podcast. I know. I'm acting a little high and mighty here. I apologize to Paul Curry. But anyway, they were talking about murder. Who knows why. Maybe there was one in the papers that week or something.

And Paul jumped in with his two cents. as he always did. Of course. Grinning from ear to ear, I'm assuming smugly, he said he could get away with murder easily if he wanted to. Oh yeah. In fact, he said he could go out to the garage right now, choose any one of an array of sneaky little chemicals that the doctors weren't likely to check for, slip it into his victim's drink, and bada bang, bada boom. And nobody'd ever know it was him. Well, no, they will. You brain dead piece of hell. head cheese. Now they will.

Again, campers. Mensa. Mensa. Yes, Paul. It's always good to let your friends and co-workers know the ins and outs of your murder plots well in advance, so nobody will miss the significance when someone near and dear to you drops dead. You know, at this point, I feel like Mensa really needs a PR team to reassure everybody that they're not all poisoners.

Right? This is like the third, at least the third one. we've had. I wonder if that's a section on the test to get in. Like, to commit a senseless active depravity on someone you know, would you choose A, arsenic, B, cyanide, or C, go to therapy about your God complex, you absolute broken shovel of a person? That sounds like a trick question. No one's gotten it right in Mensa to this day. That's the one that stumps them every time. Sadly for Linda, this relatively calm period in her life and marriage wouldn't last long. On New Year's Eve of 1993, she got sick again. Really sick.

It started with an odd metallic paste in her mouth, she later told her niece Ricky, and then horrendous vomiting and diarrhea, just like before, only much worse. It's like one of those nightmares where you think you wake up, you think you're safe. And then you realize you're still in the terrible dream. Desperate for help, she checked herself into the hospital. And she stayed there for three weeks. Mary went to visit her after she'd been there for a week or so. And Paul met her in the lobby, looking all grim-faced and said,

you need to prepare yourself for what you're going to see in there. Yikes, right? And when she walked into Linda's room, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her beautiful friend looked like she was hovering on the edge of death. She was pale and emaciated and hollow-eyed, like somebody at the end stages of a terminal illness. It hit Mary like a semi-truck. And she realized for the first time, my friend might not make it through this. Despite weeks of testing, the doctors couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening with Linda.

It wasn't hauntavirus. It wasn't radiation poisoning, which was what I was. of the first theories, given that she worked in a nuclear power plant that had been dealing with some safety concerns in recent years. It wasn't anything they could pinpoint. So they did what doctors so often do in these situations, bless their hearts. They started wondering if maybe it was all in her head. Hmm. Phrases like Munchausen syndrome started getting thrown around. Could Linda be making herself sick for attention, maybe? Or could she be reacting to some kind of terrible internal conflict, some kind of severe emotional stress?

Yes, Doc, if you can't figure it out, then the silly cow must be making it up. Get bent. Straight up, just trying to diagnose hysteria in the year of our Lord 1994. Mm-hmm. Linda's friend Mary was just heart sick over the whole thing. She and her husband didn't want to leave Linda's side. They were hesitant even to go home in case she took a bad turn. So Mary asked Paul if they could stay at his and Linda's place while she was in the hospital,

just to be close by. Paul said, sure, and Mary and her hubs moved in for the duration. That first night crashing at Linda and Paul's, Mary got an unpleasant shock. On her way to the guest room, she spotted a huge pile of papers strewn all over a desk, and she was curious, so she went in to take a peek, and when she understood what she was looking at, she froze. Documents. Linda's 401k retirement plan, her life insurance policies. Every piece of paper on the desk had something to do with Linda's death. Who would get her money when she died? Mary felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach.

Suddenly, she felt like she could see what was happening here with perfect clarity. This man Linda loved was trying to kill her. Linda's friend Bruce had a similar thought when he visited Linda in the hospital. For some reason, Linda kept talking about Paul's funny little sauces and salad dressings, the weird meals he'd been making for her. It just didn't sit right. in Bruce's ear. Was she suspicious of Paul? She didn't say so, but by the time he left the hospital, Bruce sure as hell was. Oh, and by the way, guess how Linda's family found out she was

hospitalized? One Paul, he didn't bother to call him. One of the doctors called Linda's sister to ask some questions about their family medical history, and if he hadn't, they might not have even known she was there. Linda's time in the hospital was very up and down. She'd get better for a while, then she'd crash again, the excruciating pain and nausea would come back, and then one evening, one of Linda's nurses went in to check on her and noticed something that immediately raised her hackles. Linda's IV bag was leaking fluid onto the floor, and the fluid inside the bag was cloudy. The nurse had never seen an IV bag look like that in all her years of practice, and it set her inner alarms clanging. She unhooked the bag and replaced it with a new one,

but she also took it a step further. She called her supervisor, and they decided to send the bag to the lab for testing. When the test came back, there was no doubt. The bag had been contaminated with lydocane. A lydicane is a medication they used to treat various types of pain or to numb you up for certain surgical procedures. It was not supposed to be in Linda's IV bag. And the test showed one other disturbing thing, a needle mark.

Someone seemed to have injected the lydicane into the bag, and whoever it was did a pretty clumsy job of it. it, which is why the thing was dripping all over the floor. Mensa. Mensa! So the hospital called the police and reported what they'd found. Of course, there wasn't a whole lot of mystery in the minds of the hospital staff or the cops about who spiked Linda's IV.

The only person with consistent access who'd been there almost the whole time Linda had was Paul Curry. So everybody was deeply suspic. So much so that the hospital made sure Linda was never left to live. alone with him after this, which I'm sure our boy just loved. Like, they were subtle about it, but I'm sure he couldn't help but notice. I mean, he was in Mensa after all. But Linda refused to believe that her husband would do anything to hurt her, much less poison her IV.

Unfortunately, despite the seemingly crystal clear situation, investigators couldn't prove anything. Nobody had actually seen Paul Curry inject Linda's IV, and technically it could have been anybody, from one of the nurses to somebody at the IV factory. They didn't know for sure. The doctors had run a shit ton of tests, including talk screens. But here's the thing about a talk screen. Unless you know what you're looking for, you can't always find poison. If the poisoner is using something they don't usually test for, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

So for the moment, Paul Curry was infuriatingly untouchable. So a pair of detectives went to the hospital to talk to Linda. They recorded the conversation. You can listen to parts of it online. Linda admitted that the only person who would have the motive or opportunity to poison her would be your husband, Paul. But she said she couldn't imagine Paul would do anything to hurt her. He was so sweet and kind. Yeah, she said he seems like a very good husband, which feels like a really odd language to me.

That little qualifier seems really jumps out at me. Yeah, this case is like that. I get the feeling she knew what was happening almost from, day one, but she just buried it as deeply as she could and kept on going. The investigators did note that she mentioned how little money Paul had when they first married. He came into the marriage with no credit, no property. And almost as if her subconscious was trying to tell her something, Linda also brought up her benefits in how much they had grown in the time she'd been with Paul. Her life insurance was up to $600,000. Her employee

benefits, almost 300,000. If she passed, Paul would net close to a million dollars. Motive, opportunity, suspicion. Needless to say, Paul denied having anything to do with the IV back, and before long, Linda got better under her doctor's care, and soon they sent her back home again, still unsure of exactly what caused the illness in the first place. They had their suspicions, and I think Paul realized that by now, but they couldn't be sure. Linda was glad to be home again with Paul, but a seed had been planted in her mind, and she no longer felt entirely comfortable about her charming new husband, so she called in some reinforcements.

One of her and Paul's co-workers and friends, Frankie Thurber, was looking for a place to live at the time, so Linda asked her to move in while she was apartment hunting and spy on Paul. I'm not sure he loves me, she said. Just watch him. Tell me what you think. I need an outside opinion. Relationship, advice time, campers. The day you decide you need to bring in a spy, it's probably time to shut it down. Yeah.

Frankie was delighted, though. She later said, I always wanted to be an FBI agent, so I was totally up for it. Bless her heart. I don't think the FBI is going to be knocking on Frankie's door anytime soon, though. Mm-mm. After days of watching Paul, quote, like a hawk. Frankie's takeaway was that the guy was head over heels for his wife.

She looked at all the little things he did to take care of Linda, the cooking, the gardening, the candlelit baths, and she said, Linda, I just don't see it. He dotes over you. He can't do enough for you. I don't know why you'd be questioning that. She wished she had a husband like him, she said.

Charm, campers, is a verb. Never, ever, forget it. Now, please don't misunderstand. We're not placing any blame whatsoever on Frankie or on Linda or on anybody else on God's earth other than Paul, fuckface Curry. Okay, put the blame where it belongs. But this is a cautionary tale, y'all, one of many we've seen on True Crime Campfire. It's so important to sit with that little voice, even when it's telling us really, really uncomfortable stuff. As Linda struggled with her feelings about Paul, veering back,

Back and forth between doubt and confidence, the police were still trying to figure out who had spiked her IV. They spoke to Linda again, and once again recorded the conversation. He's always thoughtful, she said. I mean, he's a nice person or appears to be a nice person. Wow. Like, again, that phrasing just hits like a truck, doesn't it? You can see that conflict just roiling around inside this poor woman's head. Her little voice is just jumping up and down in the back of her mind just screaming at her to listen.

But remember, this is somebody who, according to the people who knew her well, had a deep, deep need to be loved and cared for, maybe even a lot deeper than most people have. I think the idea that this man would come into her life, treat her like a princess for years, day in and day out, and the whole time just be planning this evil, sinister thing was just way too scary for her to accept. Not just because she loved him, but also because, I mean, can you imagine having to confront the idea that you could mean so little to somebody that he would. be willing to trade you for cash. Like lie to your face every day, sleep next to you at night, run you a bubble bat, stroke your hair. I just think a lot of us would work real, real hard to avoid having to face that. That's a great point.

I think it's easy to scoff and Monday morning quarterback for Linda here. But it's also important to remember that she'd been divorced twice at this point. She'd been in several long-term relationships that hadn't worked out. for one reason or another, and she was a romantic. Linda deserved love. Linda deserved someone who would cook her meals and draw her baths. Linda did nothing wrong. And neither would anyone else in her shoes.

Paul Curry is a predator. Seeming nice and being nice are two very different things, and it's important to remember that. Yeah, absolutely. And when she was talking with the detective, she did say, he isn't always honest with me and he's a little sneaky. But she quickly followed it up by saying, but he's been very loving and caring and gentle and attentives. I mean, you can see that conflict always there. Meanwhile, some of Linda's friends and family, like her best bud Mary and her ex-slash-good friend Bill, had no such inner conflict.

They knew good and well what was going on, and they begged her to leave Paul. Bill finally convinced her to change the beneficiary on at least the larger of her life insurance policies. She switched it over to her sister Pat, but she didn't tell Paul, which is so frustrating. I was just like watching the characters run up the stairs in a horror movie or just like, no. But again, I think it shows how conflicted she was. Yeah, I think this shows that the idea of betraying Paul, even as she thought he might be betraying her, was just repugnant to her. Yeah, because what if she's wrong, right? And then she's blown up this relationship

That's like the best relationship she's ever had Right So anyway, life went on for a while Linda feeling better Though still not back to normal I don't think she ever got back to normal During the whole time She'd been married to Paul

At this point for like a little over a year And she'd been sick almost that entire time On some level, like some degree of sick And then in December She got really sick again This time Paul took her to a different hospital Oh, I wonder why, right? Different doctors

different nurses. Once again, her illness dragged on for weeks. At one point, she even had a small stroke. Doctors were desperate to find out what was wrong, but all the tests came back inconclusive. And during this day, once again, a nurse came in to check on Linda and found the IV bag cloudy. Once again, the police questioned Linda and Paul, and this time Linda seemed more receptive to the idea that Paul might be behind all this. She confided in them that they were having money troubles. She'd let him take control of the finances when they first got married, and at first she was relieved to do it. She'd always been bad with money. She didn't like having to keep track of it, but it was becoming clear to her that Paul was mismanaging their money, spending a lot

more than he was telling her. She admitted she hadn't really wanted to get married in the first place. She was happy to just keep dating, but Paul had pressed for the wedding. And then just a month or two later, he'd started pressing about the life insurance. One of the detectives, Asked her, do you still love him? Yeah, she said. I love him very much. The detective said, do you believe he loves you? Linda thought about it a moment.

I want to believe he does. He certainly is convincing. Again, her word choice speaks volumes here. She's starting to acknowledge that Paul's charm is only skin deep. For Paul's part, he insisted there was no financial motive. for him to kill Linda. She was worth a lot more to him alive, he said. She had a lot of good years ahead of her to work. She made good money. Oh, so no, I love her. I would never hurt her. Please help me find out what's wrong with my wife. Just she's a good little earner. When Linda got out of the

hospital this time, Mary came to visit. She noticed that Linda's hands wouldn't stop shaking. Linda kept brushing it off. No, no, I'm getting a lot better. But later that day, Linda took Mary into her bedroom, and as they talked, Linda started taking things out of the closet and tossing them onto the bed. You should have this dress, she'd say, or this bag would match those suede shoes of yours. Here, you can have it. It was so strange, Mary said later. It almost felt like a goodbye. It was all too much for Mary. She sat Linda down and totted up all the red flags. The insurance policy, his insistence on putting everything they had in his name, the illness the iv bag, so clearly tampered with, and Paul the only one who could have done it?

Hands shaking, Linda dropped her head. You're right, she said. There's something going on. I have to get out of here. She also told Mary that if she ended up in the hospital again, she didn't want to be left alone with Paul. But the next day, it all went to shit. Mary told 48 hours, it was like the door slammed on me. and she said, no, Mary, no, I can't, I can't leave Paul. In fact, she was recommitting herself to him. She'd bought him a brand new wedding ring to commemorate it. Oh, God.

Mary had known and loved Linda for decades now. Linda was her best friend. She loved her like a sister and her heart was breaking for her. If Linda was going to stay with this man, look the other way while he methodically poisoned her, Then Mary decided she couldn't stick around and watch her do it. It was just too awful to watch her friend be murdered in slow motion. So she told Linda, look, I love you.

I'll always love you. But if you're going to stay in this marriage, I have to take a step back. She'd still be there if Linda needed her, she said. She just couldn't be in day-to-day contact anymore. I think she was hoping maybe it'd shock Linda into action. Linda refused to leave Paul, but she wasn't easy in her mind about him. She stopped eating the meals he made for her, started surviving mostly on pre-packaged food she could open herself, chips, granola bars, sodas, stuff like that. Wow.

Not long after that conversation with Mary, she visited her old friend Bruce. I think there's a chance that Paul might be hurting me, she told him. But that was crazy, right? I mean, he was so kind to her. She was just letting her fears run away with her, right? Just begging someone to lie to her. Bruce said, no, you're not crazy and you need to listen to your gut. You begged her, please don't go home, Linda.

You can stay with me if you need to. But as we've seen so many people do, in so many similar cases, Linda talked herself out of her fear. By the end of the conversation, she was still refusing to believe that her loving, solicitous husband could be doing something so premeditated and awful and cruel. It just wasn't who he was. And that was the last time Bruce ever saw Linda. To this day, he blames himself for not coming up with the magic words to make her see the truth.

Soon after this, on June 9, 1994, Mary got an email from Paul Curry. It was bizarre for him to email her at all. This was the first time he'd ever done it. And the message made Mary's blood run call. Subject line, a favor, please. He said he knew Mary hadn't spoken to Linda a while, but he really needed her help to talk some sense into her. She was working way too hard, he said.

Twelve-plus-hour days, weekend meetings, and she was getting wobbly, stumbling around and mumbling, incomprehensible stuff in her sleep. And the night before, he said, she told him she wanted to be laid to rest by her mom and dad in Newport, asked him to promise he'd do that. And that was the last straw. He said,

Please, help me convince her not to work so hard. I think there's something really wrong. As Mary finished reading that email, sitting at her desk at work, she turned to her co-workers. Something's going to happen to Linda Curry, she said. Later that night, paramedics responded to a call at the Curry house. Paul said he'd come into the bedroom and found Linda unconscious in bed. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Cause of death? Unknown. For the people who loved Linda, it was the end of a long, agonizing road. They all blamed themselves for not doing enough. The only one who didn't seem to be blaming himself was Paul. He insisted the casket be closed at her funeral, despite her family's protests, but Linda's sister Pat did manage to get a private viewing before the service, and when she opened the casket, she was stunned.

Linda's hair was messy, she barely had any makeup on, and her outfit didn't match. Paul hadn't even bothered to choose something pretty for her to wear to her grave. His beautiful wife, who was always so proud of her beauty and was always impeccably dressed, it made Pat sick to her stomach. But in Mary's words, Paul put on an Academy Award-winning performance at the funeral, weeping and leaning on people as though he couldn't stand up on his own. But Pat, after seeing his sister's body, knew better. If he loved her so much, he'd have shown an ounce of care for her body.

he'd have known how important that would be to her. Of course, the investigators immediately turned their attention to Paul, but they couldn't prove anything. All they had was circumstantial evidence, the cloudy IV bags, the suspicions of Linda's doctors and family and friends. They didn't even have a definitive cause of death yet. And Paul's attitude seemed to be, I don't care if you think I did it, try and prove it.

You can't. As always, Paul thought he was the smartest guy in the room. There is a little crumb of satisfaction at this point in this story, story, though. Paul didn't waste any time, of course, submitting his claims on Linda's estate, and when he got in touch with the life insurance company, he got a short, sharp shock. Guess what, asshole? You're not the beneficiary. She changed it on your ass. He was so upset. He called Mary, and he was so enraged he could barely talk like he was stuttering he was so upset. But it's not like he got nothing. Linda had changed the beneficiary on the largest of her

life insurance policies, but Paul still got her house and half a million dollars. prick. Ech. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, an expert forensic pathologist named Dr. Joseph Halka was trying to figure out how Linda died. He was a bulldog, determined not to give up. And after a lot of testing and a lot of sleepless nights pondering all Linda's symptoms, he hit upon a hunch that paid off.

Nicotine. Now, that's not a poison we see every day, but it can be very effective if you know how to use it. You get high enough levels into the blood, and it's just catastrophic. And Linda had four times the level the toxicologist had ever seen in a human body. She also had 10 times the therapeutic dose of ambient in her system. So the pathologist officially called it. Linda died by poisoning. Manner of death, homicide.

And the investigator set out to try and find out as much as they could about nicotine poisoning. Unfortunately, though, in the mid-90s, with Joe Camel's face peering out at us from billboards and magazine ads, there wasn't a ton of research out there on nicotine poisoning. Meaning, there wasn't enough hard evidence to convince a jury of anything yet. The case went cold, much to Linda's family's dismay. Her niece, Ricky, kept calling the lead investigator so much that he finally just told her, look, we know Paul killed her. We just can't prove it yet. He wasn't headed for prison anytime soon, but things did start to go pear-shaped for Paul

not long after Linda's death. See, his bosses at the nuclear power plant made a little discovery about his credentials, namely that he didn't have any. Our boy had lied his ass off to get that job. He wasn't a trained nuclear engineer. Dude hadn't even graduated from college. Con men got a con, am I right? Wow. So the power plant fired him, obviously. But that was okay with Paul.

He'd gotten everything he needed out of that place anyway. So he decided to take off for greener pastures. Or probably a lot less green, actually. Specifically, Salina, Kansas, which happens to me where I went to school. At the same time, he was living there. So, holy shit. Hashtag fun fact. If you've ever lived in Salina, it probably won't surprise you to learn that the city immediately hired Paul as a building inspector.

Again, no qualifications whatsoever. But he was a good talker and Salina, Kansas fell for it. And as far as we know, he did a decent job. No buildings collapsed. So take that as you will. And he said about making a new life in Kansas. Met a woman, got married, have a son. It seems he was supremely confident that he'd gotten away with murder.

What he didn't know was that a woman named Sergeant Yvonne Schull had caught Linda's cold case. And Yvonne Scholl was determined, determined to nail him. We love Y'all, everybody was like, yeah, you're never going to prove this case. And she was like, hold my beer. Seriously. Yvonne, if you were listening to this, I will buy you a beer. Just come to me, we'll buy you beer. Come on.

For four years, she methodically built a case, finding out everything she could about Linda and Paul. She listened to the tapes of Linda's interviews, and Paul's too. She spoke to everybody she could speak to. One creepy detail she uncovered was this. A couple years before he met Linda, Paul had married a woman named Leslie. And shortly after they married, Leslie had started having the same kinds of symptoms as Linda did years later. But when Paul found out Linda couldn't get life insurance because of a pre-existing condition, he dropped her like a hot brick, literally a week later. And Leslie never had

those symptoms again. Creepy. All this was damning. The missing piece of the puzzle was, just as it had always been, any definitive info about how the nicotine was introduced into Linda's body. At the time she died, the science just wasn't there to determine with any degree of certainty, like how did it get in there, what kind was it? So enter a guy named Dr. Neil Benowitz, a world-renowned expert on nicotine. Dr. Benowitz had worked on Linda's case back in 94, and it had always stuck with him. So when Yvonne Scholl and prosecutor Abraham Betai brought it to him again in 2009, he was eager to help. And it just so happened that the science surrounding nicotine poisoning had grown by leaps and bounds in the past 15 years, enough to identify exactly what kind of

nicotine had been used to poison Linda and how it was introduced into her body. It was a crude extraction, Dr. Benowitz explained, probably made from soaking cigars or cigarettes in alcohol. When you evaporate the alcohol, you're left with a potent powder. One cigar or pack of cigarettes would be enough to kill someone. Dang. Dang. Yvonne kept thinking about those exotic salad dressings Paul was always making for Linda and the fact that every single night he ran her a bubble bath stay in there and soak honey he'd tell her

hmm Yvonne and prosecutor Betai theorized that Paul had tried to poison Linda little by little to mimic the effects of a natural illness but the problem was she was surviving long enough each time to get to the hospital and get fixed and when he tried to tamper with her IV bag to hurry things along in the hospital, the nurses caught it. So he had to implement Plan B, as evidenced by a small needlemark the medical examiner found behind Linda's ear during the autopsy.

That plus the hefty dose of Ambien in her system. Their theory was that on the night of the murder, Paul had dosed her with Ambien to put her to sleep, then he injected her with that fatal dose of nicotine in a place where he hoped the needle stick wouldn't be seen. That amount of nicotine would have caused death in less than half an hour. The injection mark in Prosecutor Betai's opinion was a smoking gun. Even by Paul Curry's own account, he was the only person home with Linda at the time. And Sergeant Yvonne Scholl got him to confirm it again when she flew to Salina, Kansas to interview him. That interview is just delightful cameras.

Yvonne is this kind of quiet, unassuming person, but she went after Paul Curry like a spider monkey. on steroids. A calm, unassuming spider monkey on steroids. First, she pretended she was there to confront him for lying about his credentials to get the job as like city building inspector. So she made him she made him admit he didn't

really have a degree in physics. And she made him admit that he lied about it to impress people which is hilarious, obviously. And then she slowly transitioned into questions about his late wife, Linda. And you can just see it like slowly start to dawn on

him that, oh shit, I'm in trouble. Just like a hug from the universe, campers. It's delightful. I just love watching a smug little shit bag like him squirm, you know? It's just, ah. Once she got him to admit, once again, that he was the only person home with Linda at the time of her death. Ms. Queen of the Day Yvonne told him who she was and where she was from and that he was not free to leave. She was arresting him for the murder of Linda Curry.

Ooh, wee, what a grab us. Y'all should have seen his face. If we can find video, we will post it. Oh, yeah. It's so good. Oh, and side note, in the interrogation room, Mr. Mensa forgot that everything is recorded in a police station and called his wife. He was like, oh, I'm in trouble. I'm in big trouble.

I got to tell you, it looks bad. They could put me away to prison. They're serious about this. Yeah, I love these little weasels who just blatantly murder their wives and the Nact-all-shocked Pikachu-face when they get caught for it. Like, bro, they always knew you did it. You know they always knew you did it. You had to know they weren't going to let it go.

But he just thought he was fine. He thought he was home free. It's not like a game of Capture the Flag where you're safe after you get to home base, y'all. There's no statute of limitations on murder. No. It took a few years for prosecutor Baytai, who is, by the way, very, very handsome. Very handsome. So handsome.

It took him a few years to bring Paul to trial, but in 2014, it was on. Paul pleaded not guilty, of course, and y'all better buckle the fuck up for the defense's theory. Their argument was that Linda had poisoned herself with a nicotine enema. She had stomach problems, they said. This was just a desperate attempt to heal herself. Yeah, you know, it makes perfect sense, because I know the first thing I reach for anytime I've got the gurgles is a pack of smokes and a rubber hose, right? Oh, sure. Sure, seems reasonable.

She spent weeks at a time in two different hospitals and never thought to mention that she'd been shooting nicotine water up her bum. Fucking dumbasses. Look, as someone with actual mystery stomach issues, I promise, promise, I will never try a nicotine enema to heal myself. or any kind of enema, really, unless things get desperate over here. Good to know. Yeah, I love that this was the best thing the defense could come up with. Poor bastards. I'm picturing them pacing the floor all night, trying to come up with something.

They're all sitting around a conference table, eating Chinese food, and drawn ideas on a whiteboard. Except their client was the only other person with her at all the time. She got sick, and he was cooking her meals. and he tampered with her IV bags at two separate hospitals and was guiltier than hot buttered sin, and everybody knew it. So their whiteboard is just blank with, um, maybe she did it in big letters. It's the next best thing to just, maybe he's innocent, though. Like, maybe he just didn't do it, though. Have you thought about that?

Did you consider that, jurors? This defense pissed handsome prosecutor, Baytie off no wind. he called it the enema defense, which is the only thing I've ever seen weirder than the Twinkie defense, I think, or affluenza. Fortunately, unlike the Twinkie defense, this one didn't work. Our boy was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He got 20 years of freedom he didn't deserve while the investigators waited on the science to catch up with their suspicions.

Finally, he was where he belonged. One of the creepiest things about this case to me is that the first time Linda showed these symptoms was on that cruise. You know, the, I'm sorry I lied about being misconduct. married before and having kids, crews? Because if you remember, Paul got sick on that cruise too, which means in all likelihood he poisoned himself a little bit too, hoping it would make him a little bit sick but kill her. And when that didn't work, he set out to poison her slowly.

Primed the pump by telling all her friends how hard she was working, burning herself out with her 12 plus hour a day schedule, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, when all the while he was feeding her poison. Little by little. Shakespeare wrote in a midsummer night stream, Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. Therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. This case is a scary example of how love can make us look the other way,

even when the ugly truth is staring us bare in the face. It's a cautionary tale, campers just in time for Valentine's Day. One to make the single folks glad they're single, the folks in happy relationships grateful for their partners, and the ones in unhappy ones, well, life's too short. No, isn't it? So that was a wild one, right campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week.

But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Mallory, Taylor, Shannon, Athena, Darcy, Peter, Tiffany, and Dana. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early sometimes more plus an extra episode a month and once you hit the five dollar in up categories you get even more cool stuff a free sticker at five dollars a rad enamel pin while supplies last at ten virtual events with katie and me we're right smack in the middle of one right now where i'm reading this really cool scary book to everybody once a week it's awesome and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you so if you can come join us

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