Halloween is not really a scary time of year; it is more a time to be able to play dress up and become someone else for a few hours and allowing your imagination to run wild. Beneath the fun and the candy and the decorating however, there have always been a couple of urban legends that go along with the holiday that are scarier than any ghost or goblin.
One of those has to be the idea that children have gotten poisoned Halloween treats while Trick or Treating, as it plays on our deepest fears…
Has a child ever died from poisoned Halloween candy?
Yes, but the tale behind it is not quite what you would expect and it happened right here in Texas.
Ronald Clark O’Bryan was a optician from Texas who had a wife and two children, a eight year old son named Timothy and a five year old daughter named Elizabeth. O’Bryan was also a deacon at his church. On Halloween Night in 1974, O’Bryan took his son Timothy and daughter Elizabeth Trick or Treating in Pasadena, Texas, along with a neighbor and his two children.
Eventually the group reached a house where no one would answer the door. Ronald O’Bryan stayed behind at this residence while the rest of the group moved on. O’Bryan rejoined the group a short time later, returning with five large straws of the powdered candy known as ‘Pixy-Stixs,’ which O’Bryan claimed were from the house that did not immediately answer when the group was together at the house. O’Bryan gave two of the Pixy Stixs to each of his children and two to each of his neighbor’s children as well. The fifth Pixy Stix was given to a ten year old boy O’Bryan knew from his church.
Before bed Timothy ate some of his Halloween candy including one of the five Pixy Stix. Timothy complained about the taste of the candy to his father, drinking Kool-Aid to wash the powder down. Timothy also had to be helped getting the powdered candy out of it’s straw wrapper. Almost immediately after consuming the candy, he complained of stomach pains and began to convulse and vomit.
Timothy O’Bryan died in an ambulance on Halloween Night about an hour later. Later tests would reveal that the five Pixy Stix were poisoned with potassium cyanide. The ends of the straw wrappers of each piece of candy had been cut off and the last two inches of the candy powder was replaced with poison and stapled shut.
Although none of the children in possession of the other four pieces of candy consumed them, the local area was swept by panic and many parents turned in or disposed of their children’s Halloween candy as a precaution.
Later O’Bryan would recall that the tainted Pixy Stix came from the house the group had stopped at where no one had answered the door. O’Bryan claimed a ‘hairy’ arm reached out from behind the front door of the house without turning the porch lights on and handed him the five pieces of candy.
Police soon dismissed this version of events because the man who owned the home in question worked as an air traffic controller and was not home on Halloween Night until around eleven p.m., and nearly two-hundred co-workers could verify him being there all of Halloween night.
It was also discovered that Ronald O’Bryan was deep in debt and was in danger of being unemployed. Records also showed that O’Bryan had a taken out various life insurance polices on both his children totaling to around sixty-thousand dollars between January and October of 1974.
O’Bryan had inquired about claiming these policies shortly before Halloween and was found guilty on one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder sentenced to death and executed in March of 1984 by lethal injection.
Although there has been a couple other instances of Halloween candy tampering with substances such as laxatives and the like, the only true case of Halloween candy being poisoned occurred right here in your backyard…and that is scarier than anything that will come to your door this Halloween.
