Man Charged With Poisoning Wife With Nicotine For Insurance

Some people may not know that nicotine poisoning can lead to death (this author didn’t); but apparently Paul Marshal Curry did. He is currently on trial for allegedly using it to poison his wife back in 1994.

According to the Orange County Register, an Orange County judge ruled that there is sufficient evidence to try the 55-year-old building inspector from Kansas for the 1994 nicotine-poisoning death of his wife in San Clemente for $400,000 in life insurance benefits.

Curry will be arraigned in the Central Justice Center on November 22^nd where  his trial, which could take place next year, will be held if he pleads “not guilty.”

On November 8^th, Superior Court Judge Scott Steiner ruled, after a two-day preliminary hearing, that Curry should stand trial on charges that he murdered his wife, Linda L. Curry, with a fatal dose of nicotine back in 1994. He will also stand trial for the special circumstances of murder for financial gain and murder by poisoning.

According to prosecutors, Curry is also charged with insurance fraud because he reported his deceased wife’s Rolex watch as stolen, when he had actually just given it to her sister after the funeral.

Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh argued during the preliminary hearing that no one else could have injected Linda Curry, 50, on June 9, 1994 with the fatal dose of nicotine other than Paul Curry, her husband of two years.

Baytieh noted that Curry would later collect $400,000 in life insurance benefits from his wife’s policy. And according to news accounts, Linda was a non-smoker.

Curry was arrested back in 2010 in Salina, KS, where he oversaw a city’s building inspections after the case was re-opened by investigators from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office. Curry is currently being held without bail pending trial.

If convicted, Curry faces a life term in prison without the possibility of parole.