Linda Curry | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[dramatic music] [gun fires] - When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time
to find the truth, to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer and to make sure that justice is served.
[suspenseful music] But what happens when the truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd and I've spent my entire career
as a forensic pathologist performing nearly 23,000 autopsies. [suspenseful music]
I've learned that the dead don't hide the truth and they never lie. Through me, you'll be hearing directly
from the victim. With the aid of a state-of-the-art laboratory, using groundbreaking technology.
I'll be investigating a series of intriguing crimes. Where from the victim's bodies
are revealed to you the truth behind these murders. [camera flashes] On the 10th of June, 1994,
Linda Curry was found dead at a home in San Clemente, California, but doctors didn't know why she died.
It would be 20 years before the truth was finally discovered. [suspenseful music]
[phone rings] - [Dr. Richard] Emergency services received an urgent call from a home in the Californian beach resort
of San Clemente. [suspenseful music] [upbeat music] - They got 911 call that a person was down.
- [Dr. Richard] 50-year-old Linda Curry was struggling to breathe. Paramedics raced to the scene.
[ambulance sirening] - They arrived at the house and they found Linda in the master bedroom on the bed
with vomit on the bed with her. She had no heartbeat, no breathing. [dramatic upbeat music]
- [Dr. Richard] Linda was rushed to a nearby hospital. [clock ticking] - At about one in the morning, Linda passed away.
[suspenseful music] - [Dr. Richard] Mysteriously just months before her death, Linda reported to police
that someone could be trying to kill her. [upbeat dramatic music] - [Linda] The only motive I can think of is money
and I don't want really even believe that or think that. I think that's so hard for me to think things like that.
[upbeat music] - [Dr. Richard] Linda Curry's troubles began in the summer of 1993.
She was struck down by an unexplained illness. - For a year prior to her death, she was sick or had symptomology
of diarrhea, vomiting, nauseousness. - [Dr. Richard] Linda's friend, Merry Seabold,
was often at her side. - She was in and out of a couple hospitals, her stomach was bothering her.
I saw her in between two hospital visits and she was noticeably shaky. Just her hands would just shake
like she had Parkinson's disease or something. - Linda would had gone to every doctor,
she was going to a gastrointestinal. She had tests done, she had scopes done, she had blood tests done.
The doctors didn't know the root cause of it, they could never determine it. - [Dr. Richard] For those who knew Linda,
her sickness seemed out of place. - Linda was a relatively healthy person, ate a lot of food and never gained any weight.
She was active, she was peppy, always doing something and seemed to always have energy.
- She was impeccably dressed at all times, she was like a fashion model. She had a perfect house
and the perfect person to have as a friend. Merry said that they were like long lost sisters
from the very beginning when they first met. - Linda and I were both Southern California Edison employees.
She was in the bookkeeping department and I was in the customer service telephone center.
And we met in the break room because we both ate like crazy people when we were young.
And we would always cook big pizzas in the oven and have them for break, and make all the other girls jealous.
And that was really our first connection was over food and pizzas in the microwave oven.
Anyone that knew Linda would say that she was the nicest, most fun person in the world.
She always had a smile on her face, she would do anything for anybody. She would give you the shirt off her back.
She just didn't talk badly about people and just was an all around good person. Just a good person.
- Everyone loved, "I've loved Linda." [playful music] - [Dr. Richard] In 1989, Linda was working
at the nearby San Onofre Nuclear Power Station. - Linda met Paul Curry at San Onofre
where she had transferred to. I think it was kind of attraction right from the very beginning
because Paul is very charming young man and he was a nuclear physicist there at San Onofre,
and that was impressive alone. Their friendship started and then ultimately they started dating.
- People that he worked for, described him as extremely intelligent. Linda herself that was one thing
that she said she was attracted to Paul for, that he was very smart. - Paul won about $64,000 on the program "Jeopardy",
which is a TV program that obviously talks about a lot of things, history and movies,
and everything. And you have to be very smart to win that kind of money, and she was impressed that way.
She liked smart people because really all of her boyfriends prior to that were very intelligent.
[upbeat lively music] - [Dr. Richard] Soon the couple got married in Las Vegas. Linda was 48 and Paul was 35.
- My husband and I met him a a couple times, actually went to their house and when we walked in,
he was actually seated at the piano. [piano music] And he just went right for it
and he played like he just was Liberace. [piano music] It was, again, impressive.
He had these things he could do that just blew you away, and that was one of his gifts.
He had, you know, maybe not the best looks in my book, but he could be charming, and funny, and bright,
and all those things were things that attracted Linda. [upbeat music] - Not long after Linda married Paul Curry,
she started having very serious abdominal problems that often landed her in hospital.
Now the causes of diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain are very difficult to diagnose.
And in Linda's case, the doctors couldn't work out what was wrong with her. Linda worked at a nuclear power plant
where she could have been exposed to radiation. So one possibility they considered
was that she might be suffering from radiation sickness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea
are all symptoms of radiation sickness. And that's because the radiation damages
the delicate lining of the intestines. But all the tests came back negative, leaving doctors still baffled
as to what was making Linda so sick. There was something troubling her friends too.
- It was about three or four months into their marriage and Linda called me one day
and she says, "You know, Paul wants me to have a million dollar life insurance policy taken out."
Lynn, I said, "You're going to have a million dollar life insurance policy taken out
on him as well?" And she said, "Well, you know what Paul says is since I'm several years older than him,
it really isn't necessary since he's a younger person, so we're just going to take the policy out on me."
I said, words I can't even say, "Are you kidding me? That's crazy, Linda, that's crazy."
[suspenseful music] - He felt that because her house in San Clemente was so expensive that he needed a safety net
in case something were to happen. Why did she have such a large life insurance policy
when she didn't really have any debt except for her mortgage? - It was always Paul says, Paul says.
That was the first time a red flag went up for me. - [Dr. Richard] But there were yet more to come.
- Linda called me one day and said, "Hey Merr, I got something to talk to you about.
I got a call from Paul's ex-wife and she wanted to know where the check was." And when Linda inquired what check, she said,
"Well, the the child support check." He had adopted her two children and was paying child support on an ongoing basis
of which Linda knew nothing about. [suspenseful music] - [Dr. Richard] To add to that,
questions still surrounded Linda's unexplained illness. - I just knew something was going on in that house.
[dramatic music] [upbeat music] - 50-year-old Linda Curry had been very ill with vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea.
Linda's friends suspected her husband, Paul, was somehow behind it. His high living had put the couple in serious debt
and he'd tried to take out a million dollar life insurance policy in her name. Linda had also discovered
that Paul had hidden payments to stepchildren. She didn't know he had. To make amends, Paul took his wife on a cruise.
[suspenseful music] While they were on the cruise, there was an outbreak of antivirus
and many people, including Paul and Linda, were ill. The symptoms were nausea, vomiting and diarrhea,
just what Linda had had before. Now most people got over it in a day or two, and indeed Paul recovered quickly.
But Linda ended up in hospital for several weeks, gravely ill, and then her symptoms simply disappeared,
leaving doctors once again, none the wiser. [upbeat music] But months later, Linda's sickness returned.
- I went to see her at her home in San Clemente, and I remember her hands shook like a 90-year-old woman.
I said, Linda, "What's wrong with your hands?" And she goes, "I don't know, I just kind of I am shaky lately."
- [Dr. Richard] Linda revealed more to her friend. - She said, "I just want you to know
that if anything happens to me, I'm not going to be committing suicide, just know that
and you may wanna look into it if anything happens to me." And, again, another red flag.
[dramatic music] [ambulance sirening] - [Dr. Richard] But Linda's symptoms took a turn
for the worse, she was rushed into the Good Samaritan Hospital in San Clemente. - I had talked to Linda on the telephone when she was
in, admitted to the San Clemente hospital, and she sounded not like Linda. So I told my husband, he says,
"Honey, we have to go see her." And we went into the hospital and it would kind of take him back
because as we went in, we saw Paul right there in the lobby, and of course said, "Hi, Paul, how you doing?"
"Oh, I'm okay, I wish Linda was feeling better." And I said, "Are we able to see her?"
And he goes, "Ah, I think you can." When I walked in and I saw Linda in that bed,
she was laying back, her eyes were closed. She had no color in her face and it looked like death warmed over,
and it was just hard to even get her to speak or whatever. I think she knew we were there, I'm not sure.
Hardly said anything. And as we left, it was such a emotional thing. I said, "Paul, do you mind if we just crash at your house?"
[suspenseful music] And so we ended up spending the night, I went into their spare bedroom
and as I walk in on the dresser, bunch of papers, all laying out folders and stuff,
and that they looked official. And so as I looked at them and I saw a couple other various life insurance policies
and I thought everything here is related to death and money. And I thought, what's he doing with all this stuff out?
She's in the hospital, she didn't pull it out of her file. You know, I just had this feeling.
I just feel like Linda Curry's gonna die because I feel like her husband's trying to kill her.
[inspiring music] - The nurse at Samaritan Hospital, heard an IV alarm go off and went to Linda's room
and found that the IV bag, that liquid appeared to be cloudy and the bag appeared to be puffy or expanded.
- An IV bag or intravenous sac like this is essential for giving a sick patient the salts
and fluids they need whilst in hospital, they can also be used to supply medication.
The question was, had Linda been given something potentially life-threatening? - The nurse immediately stopped that IV
and took that IV bag off, put a different or new IV bag on, and she called her superiors and made a report.
After she removed the bag, Linda became septic. - [Dr. Richard] Linda's heart rate soared
and her blood pressure plummeted. The nurses phoned Paul advising him to come to the hospital immediately,
[phone rings] but there was no response. - She went into septic shock and went to the intensive care unit,
nearly died of septic shock at that time. [ambulance sirening] - Paul didn't visit his wife until the following morning,
Linda pulled through, but there were questions about the intravenous sac giving her fluids.
- Ivy tampering at Samaritan Hospital in San Clemente was reported to the police.
The investigator interviewed the nurse who did, found the IV bag tampered with and interviewed Linda.
- [Dr. Richard] Detectives were taken aback at what they heard next. - [Dr. Richard] Tests revealed the bag contained
a drug Linda hadn't even been prescribed. In large doses this anesthetic lidocaine
could cause seizures and prove fatal, but nobody knew who had administered it. The police investigation continued.
Linda was eventually discharged, but months later, her sickness and vomiting returned.
[dramatic music] - After the IV bag incident at Samaritan Hospital, Linda and Paul both decided that she would go
to a different hospital be, so that there would be no problems. So anytime she went to the hospital,
she went to Mission Hospital Mission Viejo. In New Years Eve, she was sick again.
The nurse was walking down the hallway, Paul passed her and told the nurse she's okay,
and he left the hospital. The nurse then went into Linda's room and she thought the IV looked suspicious.
The port on the IV bag at Mission Hospital was actually broken. She found an injection market in one of the ports
and she knew that there was no, nothing ordered for her, so there shouldn't be an injection mark in there.
So she felt it was suspicious, stopped the IV, put a new IV bag up and made a report.
- After the second time that Linda was in the hospital and the IV bags were tampered with,
I truly felt that something was happening to her in her own home that she was unaware of.
[suspenseful music] - At Samaritan Hospital, Paul's the only person in the room.
Mission Hospital, 15 miles up the road. No similar staff, no similar visitors, Paul's the only one.
So we have two different hospitals, two different nurses and the only common denominator is Paul.
- [Dr. Richard] Paul was interviewed by detectives about both incidents. Although they had their suspicions,
there was not enough evidence to charge him. - After Linda was out of the hospital,
I actually had a conversation with her that was honest and truthful and I said that I really thought, Linda,
that Paul was trying to kill her. There were just too many red flags that I saw and that she saw that I couldn't account for.
And, you know, she's still kind of just wanting to think the best, but probably knowing
there's something going on and he's the person that's making it go on. - [Dr. Richard] Linda's friends hatched a plan.
- I said, "Linda, we'd like to put our money together for you even though we know she's got money,
but we'll make it even better and we will rent a place for you in Orange County near Sanofi so that you can go in
and out to work and not worry about anything and get out of the house." She said, "Okay, Merr, I'll do it."
[upbeat music] And I was so happy she's gonna do it. And the next day, the very next day,
she called me and said, "Paul's too good of a husband, I can't do it." [upbeat music]
- Linda Curry had been struck down by a mystery illness. After two separate attempts to tamper
with Linda's intravenous line in two different hospitals, police opened an investigation.
Linda's friends suspected her husband Paul was trying to poison her. - I did pretty much caught off communications
with Linda after the second experience in the hospital. I, it was just too painful to deal
and talk to her all the time because I knew it was happening and I couldn't do anything about it.
[suspenseful music] I got an email from Paul at work and it just said, "Merry, I'm really worried about Linda.
She's working overtime, 12-hour days, she's wobbly. She doesn't look fit for duty,
I'm really worried about her." And I was in my office and two of my office mates were there.
And I said, "You know, ladies, I have to tell something, somebody this, I just feel like Linda Curry's gonna die
because I feel like her husband's trying to kill her. I just feel like something's gonna happen to her."
- [Dr. Richard] That same night, it was Paul Curry who called paramedics saying his wife was unconscious.
[phone rings] - [Responder] 911, what is your emergency? [ambulance sirening] - [Dr. Richard] Once again, Linda was rushed to hospital.
- My husband and I are at a conference the very next day and he, and I'm in the room waiting
to go to the next session, and he comes in and says, "Merry, Linda Curry died." And that's when I found out.
- Linda passed away at the hospital of undetermined causes. So she had an autopsy at the Orange County Coroner's Office,
and the autopsy was inconclusive because they couldn't find a cause of death and it became pending.
[dramatic music] - But Linda's autopsy did reveal something intriguing. Hidden from view behind the right ear was a small mark.
There was a suspicion that this was the puncture wound from a needle. Could it be that Linda had been injected
with a substance that induced a fatal reaction? To add to this, Paul had started receiving initial life insurance payouts
of more than $300,000. Detectives went to Paul's home to interview him about his wife's death.
- [Dr. Richard] But Paul seemed more evasive when asked how much he'd benefited from Linda's death.
- [Dr. Richard] As the police investigation continued, Paul hastily prepared Linda's funeral.
- I really will remember that funeral, it was really something. There was a lot of people there
and I can remember standing outside in kind of a open area and Paul was inside in the funeral home,
and he was just standing there all by himself. Nobody around him. And it was so strange
because I think by now there was enough rumor out there because people had heard about the IV bags
and the word spreads. And then Paul sat in the front row and I remember he used to say, "Linda is his angel."
And I gave the eulogy and I had an angel that I bought and I wanted to continue to be friends with him
because I wanted to make sure he got caught for what he did, because I knew he killed her.
And I gave the angel to him in this eulogy, and so that he would think that I still didn't have any suspicions for him,
which I totally did. [suspenseful music] Paul's acting like the remorseful husband,
it was just a drama. It was an unbelievable drama in the worst sense, nobody consoling him
because I think everybody thought he probably murdered her, even though there was no proof.
[suspenseful music] [dramatic music] - But soon Linda's body revealed the truth behind the rumor.
Test results on her blood uncovered something untoward. Toxicology showed that Linda had in fact died
from nicotine poisoning. Nicotine is a powerful stimulant of many of the nerves of the body.
High doses, it's very toxic. It affects the heart, it affects the muscles of respiration leading to paralysis
and cardiovascular collapse. The toxicology tests showed that Linda had an extra ordinary high concentration
of nicotine in her bloodstream, 1,120 nanograms per mil. That's far, far more than you'd ever find,
even in the very heaviest of smokers, and here's an interesting fact. Linda didn't smoke,
so how did all that nicotine get into her body? Faced with the realization that she'd been poisoned,
police launched a murder investigation. Leading nicotine expert, Professor Neal Benowitz was enlisted on the case.
- I was contacted in the early 1990s by district attorney by time, who said we have a murder case
where there is a question about nicotine poisoning. He contacted me because I had published a lot of research
on the human pharmacology of nicotine, and my laboratory did assays of nicotine and its breakdown products.
So he first contacted me saying, "Can your laboratory confirm tests that other laboratories have done,
showing there was high levels of nicotine?" So in 1994, we got 10 blood samples and urine samples from him,
and they wanted us to confirm the levels of nicotine. And then we also measure its breakdown product cotinine,
which turned out to be an important aspect of the analysis of the case. - [Dr. Richard] After weeks of testing,
Professor Benowitz his lab confirmed the investigator's suspicions. - So we found important information in Linda Curry,
both in her blood and her urine. So the first thing we found, in the blood, there was a phenomenally high level
of nicotine in the blood, 50 times to a 100 times higher than no seen in a smoker.
She was not a smoker. The second observation, which was critical, is that the level of cotinine, which is a breakdown product,
was similar to that of a smoker. Normally, cotinine levels are 10 times higher than nicotine in a smoker,
but it takes time to convert nicotine to cotinine. So the fact that our nicotine level was phenomenally high
and our cotinine level was not meant, that was not much time to metabolize nicotine.
So she must have got the nicotine and then died shortly after getting the nicotine.
[suspenseful music] - [Dr. Richard] And there was more evidence from Linda's body that she'd been poisoned.
Fluid was found in her lungs, that's usual when people die but Linda had vomited
and aspirated, which is a common effect of nicotine poisoning and very uncommon in non-smokers.
This suggested foul play. And the autopsy also revealed a cocktail of other drugs to explain Linda's mystery illnesses
in the lead up to her death. - And, again, her autopsy levels of cadmium, which is a metal, was found 10 times higher
than what you expect with industrial exposure. She was in the hospital, she had a metallic taste
and then suddenly lost consciousness, and she had no known exposure to cadmium. So right there, there were questions
about something bad was going on. [dramatic music] - [Dr. Richard] In the meantime,
Paul had received the first payouts from Linda's life insurance and bought himself a brand new Cadillac.
But the authorities still didn't have enough evidence to file charges. They needed hard proof that it was Paul
who was behind the poisoning. - You know, it was strange when Linda passed away that nobody really had an answer why?
I know that people were looking into it, but there was just the un, it was just an unresolved reason.
- The initial investigator had this case, felt that it was a very suspicious death,
but he kind of got stuck on some red herrings in the case, like the cadmium, like other stuff.
And because he got stuck with the red herrings, he never made any progress in the case.
- [Dr. Richard] Paul Curry slipped off to start a new life in Nevada, and Linda's murder investigation was put on hold.
[dramatic music] Sergeant Yvonne Shull of the Orange County Sheriff's Department
would reopen the case. - I was a detective at the time. I was working in the cold case unit,
and my sergeant at the time brought the case to me and asked me to look at it. He told me that a detective
who had retired had the case in his garage for several years, and he brought it back
to the sheriff's department as an unsolved. So I went upstairs with the case number
and pulled every forensic report that was done. So I pulled all of those and took them downstairs to read them.
- [Dr. Richard] Yvonne had the toxicology results reviewed to see what more Linda's corpse could reveal
about her killing. In the meantime, something else drew the investigator's attention.
- My decision was to listen to all of the tapes and try and make a decision on, could we work the case, yes or no?
[upbeat music] While I was listening to the interview, the investigator asked Linda,
"If somebody was trying to kill you, who would it be?" - And at that time I thought,
wow, she's talking to us from the grave. She's telling us Paul did this and it was for money,
so let's look further into the case. [upbeat music] - Eight years after Linda Curry'S 1994 murder,
the Orange County Sheriff's Department reopened their investigation. Linda's autopsy revealed she'd been poisoned
by a fatal dose of nicotine. The prime suspect was her husband Paul, but the cold case unit had to prove,
he was behind Linda's demise. - We had no scene but because it's a homicide, because of the unsolved homicide,
all of the toxicology samples are kept. And so I could request further toxicology be done
on samples from the autopsy. - There was another twist in this tail. Further tests showed a toxic level of Ambien in her system,
a drug used to treat insomnia. [suspenseful music] - I was concerned at the time
that she was maybe overdosed on Ambien, which I could never find a prescription for Linda for Ambien.
- [Dr. Richard] So was Ambien the true cause of Linda's death? - So I was kind of concerned about
that when I was first started working the case. What I found out is later when I talked
with the toxicologist is her level was high for Ambien, but it, the Ambien did not kill her.
- [Dr. Richard] With Ambien ruled out, investigators turned back to nicotine as the agent of Linda's poisoning.
- I had never heard of nicotine poisoning before, I never knew so many types of nicotine existed.
When I met the expert on nicotine, Dr. Neal Benowitz in San Francisco, he educated me on nicotine.
- You could purchase it from a commercial source because nicotine is used as a chemical research,
it's used in different smoking cessation products. So it's conceivable someone could buy in.
The easiest way actually, is just to make a tea with tobacco leaves. - [Dr. Richard] To pinpoint the method of Linda's murder,
Professor Benowitz reanalyzed the samples from her body. - One of the things that he did for me
is he ran a test on the blood serum to find out was it tobacco nicotine, was it pharmaceutical nicotine,
or was it pesticide nicotine? Because I felt I needed to determine that in order to say,
where'd he get it from to kill her? Well, what we found out is the nicotine was accrued extraction from tobacco.
- So you boiled tobacco leaves, nicotine is water soluble, goes into the tea, you then concentrate it, boil it down,
and you can get a very concentrated nicotine liquid. And her husband, Paul Curry, was nuclear physicist
and he was thought to be a genius. And I think this is thought to be a genius idea
of how to get nicotine and kill someone without being detected. [water boiling] - A coworker of Paul's told me that Paul used to brag
that he knew how to kill someone without the police ever knowing. He could grow flowers of different colors
by adding different things into the soil. So I think that Paul was very smart. He's smart enough to do it.
[suspenseful music] - If Paul Curry concocted a crude form of liquid nicotine, how did he poison his wife with it?
Perhaps the answer could light in the strange puncture mark, found behind her ear
at the autopsy. In this area of the skull, there are only small blood vessels and the solid bone of the base of the skull.
But even entering these small blood vessels behind the air, a drug could be administered
that would make its way quickly into Linda's bloodstream. So could it be that Linda had been injected with nicotine?
- Nicotine is a very potent poison. So if you smoke a cigarette, you take in about one milligram.
If you have a milliliter, which is a pretty small volume, that's a 1000 milligrams.
So you can easily just take portion of a teaspoon and inject it and give them a massive overdose to kill them.
So it's very easy to kill someone with liquid nicotine. - [Dr. Richard] Now, police could explain the presence
of Ambien in Linda's body. - Paul Curry had given his wife this drug to sedate her
so that he could administer the fatal dose of nicotine. But detectives needed more evidence
to prove Linda's husband was a potential killer. So Yvonne tracked down women from Curry's previous relationships.
His ex-wife, Leslie, whom he met working as a pianist on a cruise ship, revealed something sinister.
- Leslie told me that prior to Paul leaving for about a year that she was sick, and that she felt that she had Lyme's disease.
However, when she described her symptoms to me, it was not as symptoms of Lyme disease.
She had described her symptoms as nauseousness, diarrhea, vomiting. Well, those are symptoms consistent with poisoning.
- She was getting ill and somehow they separated and after separating, all of a sudden she was fine.
So I think he was trying with her originally, it didn't work, with Linda, he got a bingo.
[upbeat music] - Paul wanted Leslie to get life insurance and she applied for life insurance,
but she was denied the life insurance. But I spoke with a underwriter, what he told me was that the most common reason
for people to be denied life insurance is because they test positive for nicotine
in their blood test and have written that they are a non-smoker. Well, Leslie told me that she's a non-smoker
and that she answered "no" to the nicotine question. - [Dr. Richard] Now, police suspected Curry's previous wife
was a victim of nicotine poisoning. Detectives delved deeper into his past. - When I started looking into Paul's background,
I found that his background was all fake. He said he had college degree from Columbia University,
but that was incorrect. It was a mail order degree from Columbia University of Louisiana.
- [Dr. Richard] Curry's claim of being a qualified nuclear physicist was a complete fraud.
[ambulance sirening] And his account of the night Linda died didn't stack up either.
[upbeat music] - I interviewed the paramedic who responded to the scene on the night that she died.
When I spoke with the paramedic, he told me that he felt that Paul was aloof. - [Paul] She wouldn't wake up,
I didn't know exactly what to do, but I grabbed her cordless phone and I called 911 and I started CPR.
- He says that he started CPR according to the paramedic, CPR was not being done when he arrived.
- [Dr. Richard] After building her case against Curry over seven years, Yvonne tracked him down
to his new home in Salina, Kansas. She brought him into the local sheriff's office
for questioning. [suspenseful music] - When I interviewed Paul, he's very cocky and very condescending
when he first comes in, he's sitting straight up in his chair as the interview goes on
and as I confront him about Linda's death, you can see his body language change.
Do you have a physics degree? - No. - No? Did you ever tell anybody you had a physics degree?
- I've told people that in my past. - Yes, how come? - Self inflation, bragging.
- [Dr. Richard] Now, Curry himself had admitted he was a fraud. - I know that you got a substantial amount
of money from life insurance. It just seems to me that your financial benefit on Linda's death...
- [Dr. Richard] Yvonne questioned him about the evening Linda died. - And what I found out from Paul
is that she came home from work, they were the only people in the house. Nobody broke into the house,
there was nobody living in the house except them. - In the end, Paul Curry sealed his own fate.
When interviewed by the police, he was adamant he had been alone with Linda in the six hours before her death.
The dose of nicotine she had received would've killed her within half an hour. And so by his own admission,
he was the only person who could possibly have poisoned her. [suspenseful music]
- Then I pull out my badge and tell him, you're under arrest for the murder of Linda Curry.
Stand up and turn around. And I put handcuffs on him. - When I found out that Paul Curry had been arrested,
best day of my life, and it made me think I wasn't crazy. All my feelings and all the red flags, they were right.
They were right and he was the murder. - [Dr. Richard] Paul Curry was charged with the murder of his wife, Linda.
[dramatic music] He finally faced justice in a three week trial at Orange County Superior Court.
- He was found guilty of murder, murder for financial gain and insurance fraud, and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole
in California State Prison. - When I heard what the jury came back with and they were all like smiling at me, almost,
I was elated. He's an evil person. He doesn't deserve to see life out of prison because he would do it again
and he'll find some victim like, Linda, that's easy prey. - This is one of those cases
that could very easily have been a cold case forever. The guy was a pianist on a cruise ship,
he was a nuclear physicist, he was a chameleon. You don't know what he gonna do next,
but he's smart enough to carry it off. - He's gotta stay in prison the rest of his life, he has to.
- For almost 20 years, Linda Curry laid dead while her husband spent her money and carried on with his own life.
The evidence in Linda's body would eventually catch him out. There was the toxicology report,
showing how he sedated her with one drug, the injection mark behind her ear, where a fatal dose
of another drug 'nicotine' was administered. And the only person who could have done
that was Paul Curry for money. But when the truth hidden in her body was revealed,
he could no longer escape justice and the jury had no doubt that he had killed her.
[dramatic upbeat music]

Dr Richard Shepherd investigates the murder of Linda Curry in San Clemente, California. Her case went cold for 20 years, before it was exposed that her husband poisoned her with nicotine.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

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Brief Summary

Linda Curry's death was ruled a murder by nicotine poisoning, implicating her husband Paul Curry in a financial motive.

Key points

The Mysterious Illness. Linda Curry suffers from unexplained health issues leading to her death.
A Warning from Linda. Linda expresses her fears about her safety to her friend.
The Shocking Cause of Death. Linda's autopsy reveals she died from nicotine poisoning despite not being a smoker.
Murder Investigation Launched. Police launched a murder investigation into Linda Curry's death, suspecting foul play.
Nicotine Poisoning Confirmed. Professor Benowitz confirmed high levels of nicotine in Linda's blood, pointing to poisoning.
Paul Curry Arrested. Paul Curry was arrested for the murder of his wife, Linda, after years of investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.

Dr. Richard Shepherd on forensic pathologists' work

0:32WatchFeb 10, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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