i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 1 首先列一下所有有嫌疑的人，几十几百也无所谓。
然后测一下这些人的静止状态下的心跳。
心跳最慢的那几个人就是最可能的凶手。
然后在这个小范围再仔细从其他方面找线索和证据。 | i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 2 Sunday, January 5, 1997 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
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With The Iced Tea Came A Painful Death -- Wife Accused Of Poisoning Her
Husband - Even In Hospital
By Rich Henson
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - In the last weeks of his life, Robert Curley lay in a
hospital bed, tethered by leather straps, writhing in agony from an
affliction that defied diagnosis.
When tests finally revealed he had 900 times the lethal dose of thallium
coursing through his body and swelling his brain, it was too late. Curley,
32, was already comatose and hooked to a respirator.
His wife, Joann, who was at her husband's side through most of his suffering
, agreed with doctors to give him his peace by removing him from life
support.
Investigators discovered that the cooler of iced tea he carried to work each
day was contaminated with thallium, a heavy metal commonly used in rat
poison. Over the past five years, they have pursued a number of theories to
explain the poisoning, including that it was accidental or the work of a
disgruntled coworker.
Last month, authorities arrested Joann Curley, 33, and charged her with
first-degree murder in her husband's death. In a 36-page affidavit,
investigators paint a portrait of Joann Curley as a cunning and heartless
killer who poisoned her husband over a period of months. She allegedly
delivered the last and largest dose as her husband was already dying in the
hospital. Her motive, prosecutors contend, was $300,000 in life insurance
from Curley's death and sole control of a more than $1 million settlement in
the traffic death of her first husband.
"We steadfastly maintain her innocence," said Frank Nocito, Joann Curley's
attorney who filed court documents stating that Joann Curley passed a
polygraph examination administered by the state police.
Acknowledging that the case against Curley is largely circumstantial,
District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said he believed a conviction
would be "difficult, difficult, difficult." The case, it seems, literally
hangs by a hair.
The couple seemed very close, friends recalled.
"It's shocking," said Robert Maurer, who lives next door. "They were a happy
, married couple. They hung out together. It just doesn't sound like her,
not at all."
Joann Curley's first marriage ended tragically in 1988, when her husband was
killed in an accident with a tractor-trailer, leaving Joann and their
daughter, Angela, then 4, to start life anew.
Joann met Robert Curley in December 1988 and married him 18 months later.
Friends have said the Curleys had hoped to win a sizable settlement from a
lawsuit Joann filed over her first husband's death. They said Robert Curley
wanted to use the money for a family trip to Hawaii, to start his own
electrical-contracting business, and to build a home.
Robert Curley's brother, David, told police that Joann Curley was "adamantly
opposed" to Robert's plans.
Robert Curley first showed signs of illness in August 1991, when he suffered
severe burning pains in his hands and feet. After four days in the Wilkes-
Barre General Hospital, he was diagnosed with Guillian-Barre syndrome, a
neurological disorder, and released.
Despite his wife's objections, Robert Curley was readmitted to Wilkes-Barre
General in early September 1991, and spent 10 days there before being
transferred to Hershey Medical Center. From his symptoms, doctors at Hershey
suspected thallium poisoning.
On Sept. 25, two days before Robert Curley died, Joann Curley won a
settlement of more than $1 million in the wrongful death case of her first
husband.
In seeking the source of the lethal dose of thallium in Curley's body,
investigators began with a chemical laboratory at Wilkes University, where
Robert had worked on a construction project earlier that year. The lab
contained five bottles of thallium.
Investigators from the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration
inventoried the chemicals at the lab and determined none was missing. OSHA
also tested 13 of Robert Curley's coworkers and concluded none suffered from
thallium poisoning.
Investigators eventually found that the one-quart cooler Robert took to work
each day had traces of thallium in it. In December 1991, police declared
the death a homicide.
The investigation bogged down for almost three years.
In August 1994, police exhumed Curley's body for a second autopsy, which was
performed by two forensic experts, Michael Baden and Fredrick Reiders. Both
have testified in the O.J. Simpson trials and have worked in numerous other
high-profile cases.
Specifically, Baden and Reiders had an interest in Robert Curley's shaggy
hair.
"Hair is, for many things, a time line," said Reiders, the director of
National Medical Services Inc. in Willow Grove and a former Philadelphia
assistant medical examiner. "It is a repository of what circulated in the
body. If you take an aspirin, what will grow out of your head will be a
strand of hair on which a tiny portion will have a little aspirin."
Since hair grows at an approximate rate of one-third to a half-inch per
month, Reiders said, scientists can start at the hair's root, and work
backward in time.
Using highly sophisticated equipment, the tests pinpointed at least seven
separate occasions during the last 11 months of his life that Robert Curley
ingested thallium.
The largest dose, police say, was taken while he was in his hospital bed at
the Hershey Medical Center.
Police say Joann Curley was the only person with "constant and frequent
access to the victim and to the food and drink consumed by the victim."
Olszewski declined to comment on any psychological profile prosecutors may
have developed on Joann Curley or even on how she acquired the thallium. But
their case suggests that Robert Curley discovered he was being poisoned in
the days before he died.
A registered nurse at the Hershey Medical Center told police that Robert
Curley grabbed her by the arm the day before he went into the coma and said,
"Please help me. My wife is trying to kill me. She is not as she seems."
Copyright (c) 1997 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved. | i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 3 Forensic Toxicology
BY Katherine Ramsland
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Heavy Metal
Robert Curley, 32, began to grow ill in August 1991, entering the hospital
in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for what would become a series of stays
before he finally died in September. His doctors went through several
diagnoses for his puzzling symptoms, which included burning skin, numbness,
weakness, repeated vomiting and rapid hair loss. Just before he died, he
became more agitated and aggressive, so he was transferred to a hospital
that could perform tests for heavy metal exposure. Sure enough, he had
elevated levels of thallium in his system.
First discovered and named in England in 1861, this carcinogenic substance
had been applied in limited doses for ringworm, sexually transmitted
diseases and gout. It was also used in rat poison but was eventually banned
in 1984.
Mortal Evidence
Mortal Evidence
A search of his worksite at Wilkes University turned up five bottles of
thallium salts in a stockroom for the chemistry lab, but none of his co-
workers had experienced any symptoms from inadvertent thallium exposure.
The levels measured in Curley at autopsy were so high it was determined that
he'd been deliberately poisoned, and his death was ruled a homicide via
severe hypoxic encephalopathy, secondary to thallium poisoning. In other
words, as Cyril Wecht describes it in Mortal Evidence, his brain had swelled
so much it had pushed down into the spinal cord.
Investigators searched the Curley home, where Joann, his wife of 13 months,
lived with her daughter from a previous marriage. They found several
thermoses that tested positive for thallium, which Mrs. Curley said her
husband used to take iced tea to work. In addition, tests done on Joann and
her daughter showed elevated levels of thallium, but not in such toxic
proportions.
With no leads on suspects, however, the case went cold. Curley's widow,
Joann, sued the university for wrongful death. She had recently collected
over one million dollars from a car accident involving her first husband,
and she had gained $297,000 in life insurance from Robert's demise. She
looked suspicious to the police, but they had no way to prove that she had
killed her husband.
Dr. Frederic Rieders
Dr. Frederic Rieders
Authorities approached Dr. Frederic Rieders of National Medical Services, a
private toxicology lab in Willow Grove with extensive testing abilities, to
do a more thorough analysis of the tissues. Rieders requested more samples,
so Joann agreed to have her husband exhumed. Hair shafts were removed from
various parts of Curley's body, along with toenails, fingernails, and skin
samples.
Dr. Reiders conducted a segmental analysis on the hair shafts to devise a
timeline of thallium exposure and ingestion. The hair strands from Curley'
s head were sufficiently long to plot approximately 329 days of his life
prior to his death. Thallium levels were recorded in the hair shafts at
different times using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. That means
Rieders used a chemical to break down each segment of hair into individual
atoms and then excited them to the point where they absorbed energy. Every
substance has an individual, measurable absorption rate, and through this
method, the quantity of the substance can be determined.
The results were surprising. While investigators had figured August 1991
as the initial exposure period, concentrations of thallium were measured
over the course of nine months, with spikes and drops that suggested a
systematic ingestion long before Curley had begun his job at the university.
Clearly, that was not where he had first received his exposure to thallium
. There was also a massive spike just a few days before his death that
suggested intentional poisoning. Hair from other parts of his body, as well
as readings from his toe- and fingernails, supported this data.
This timeline was compared to events in Curley's life, which indicated that
when he was away from home or in the hospital, his thallium levels dropped—
except for the few days prior to his death. At that time, his family had
brought in some food and his wife was alone with him.
The pressure was now on Joann Curley, and in 1997 in a plea deal she
confessed to having murdered her husband with rat poison in order to enrich
herself on his life insurance payment. In the deal, she received a
sentence of 10-20 years in prison.
While metal-based poisons received the most attention during the early years
of forensic toxicology, once they became detectable, they tended to lose
their appeal as a means for murder. The plant-based toxins drew the
attention of killers. | i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 4 Woman who poisoned, killed husband denied parole
By Elizabeth Skrapits (Staff Writer)
Published: February 28, 2011
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Curley
Joann Curley won't be released from prison in time to mark the 20th
anniversary this September of one of the Wyoming Valley's most infamous
crimes: her husband Robert Curley's murder.
Susan Hooper, Robert Curley's sister, couldn't have been happier when she
got word from the state parole board verbally on Friday, then in writing on
Saturday.
"We're very pleased," she said. "We're elated that the parole board made the
right decision."
Hooper said the family gathered more than 5,000 signatures on a petition and
hundreds of letters asking for Joann Curley's parole to be denied for
another year.
"It was a community effort to voice our opinion to the parole board," Hooper
said.
Joann Curley, now 47, is in the minimum-security State Correctional
Institution at Cambridge Springs in Crawford County for third-degree murder.
If she serves the maximum of her 10- to 20-year sentence, she won't be
released until Dec. 12, 2016.
"This whole case has been awful. Awful, awful. It has been hell," Hooper
said. "It was one of the most cruel cases you could think of. To torture him
. People wouldn't even do that to a dog. And to do that to a human being &#
226;€¦"
Robert Curley, a native of the Miners Mills section of Wilkes-Barre, worked
as an electrician. He and Joann were married Aug. 11, 1990.
Joann Curley poisoned her husband with thallium, a toxic metallic element
used in the manufacture of electronic components and specialized glass.
Until 1972, thallium could be found in rat poisons. The Curleys had only
been married about two months before it started finding its way into the
thermoses of tea Robert took to work.
In August 1991, Robert Curley began to feel ill. By September, he required
hospitalization.
Hooper visited her brother every day at the Hershey Medical Center.
"Nobody can imagine the pain he went through," she recalled.
After visiting hours on Sept. 22, 1991, Robert Curley, 32, went into cardiac
arrest and lapsed into a coma. He died Sept. 27, 1991. The autopsy showed
death resulted from thallium poisoning.
At first, investigators focused on thallium from a laboratory that was part
of a remodeling job Robert Curley had been overseeing at Wilkes University.
But after a second post-mortem in April 1994 revealed the poisoning was
systematic and started before Robert began work at Wilkes, suspicion turned
closer to home. Joann Curley was arrested Dec. 12, 1996 for the murder of
her husband.
The plan to sue Wilkes was dropped. Joann Curley confessed to spiking her
husband's iced tea with thallium and reached a plea bargain in July 1997.
Her motive? About $300,000 in insurance money.
The Curley case, infamous in the Wyoming Valley, has received its share of
notoriety nationwide. The story has run in dozens of newspapers and on news
shows, including "Hard Copy." It has also been featured in several books,
including "Mortal Evidence" by forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who
testified at Joann Curley's trial.
e*******[email protected] | i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 5 Curley murder inspires parole hearing bill
By Bob Kalinowski (Staff Writer)
Published: April 10, 2013
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Photo: N/A, License: N/A, Created: 2013:04:09 13:14:52
Susan Hooper holds a picture and memorial of her brother Robert Curley, who
was slowly poisoned to death by his wife Joann Curley in 1991. A bill
unanimously passed by the state Senate on Tuesday would give Hooper the
chance to meet the parole board and ask them to keep Joann Curley in jail.
Whenever her brother's killer applies for parole, Susan Hooper resorts to a
mass letter-writing campaign to keep Joann Curley jailed.
Next time, she's hoping for a face-to-face meeting with the parole board to
plead her case. A bill unanimously passed by the state Senate on Tuesday
would give her that chance.
Hooper, whose brother Robert Curley was slowly poisoned to death by his wife
Joann Curley in 1991, had lobbied for the change in parole hearings for
years and is credited as the inspiration for the legislation.
Senate Bill 508 would allow crime victims and their families to speak
directly to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole when an inmate is
being considered for parole. Currently, an inmate up for parole is allowed
to meet with parole board members, but victims and their families are
limited to written or recorded comments.
Joann Curley's crime - systematically poisoning her husband, Robert Curley,
to death - is one that still haunts the family and is one that should keep
her jailed until the maximum date of her sentence is served on Dec. 12, 2016
, Hooper said. The parole board should see the family's grief and listen
directly to their pleas, she said.
"Reading something is totally different than talking face-to-face. Bobby is
not here to tell the story of what happened to him. I want to tell his story
face-to-face to the parole board members," Hooper said. "To hear right from
victims and see how it changed their lives, they'll understand better."
Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, the bill's chief sponsor, credited
Hooper for pushing for the legislation and making it a reality. Hooper has
long worked with the state's Office of the Victim Advocate to fight for
victims' rights.
"She is a very determined woman who pushed for this. This legislation
certainly justifies her efforts and honors the memory of her brother," Baker
said in a phone call shortly after Tuesday's 50-0 vote on the Senate floor.
"Credit really does go to Susan who has been leading this effort for years."
Baker said the bill, which still needs the approval of Gov. Tom Corbett,
ends a flaw in the system that denied victims and their families a chance to
make their case directly to the people who will decide an inmate's fate.
"Putting words on paper doesn't always make the same emotional impact as
face-to-face communication," Baker said. "The decision to grant parole is a
serious determination, and should be made with the fullest understanding of
the implications. This bill helps accomplish that goal."
Hooper is hoping she'll one day get her chance to speak to the parole board
about her brother's death, one of the most infamous murders in Luzerne
County history.
Joann Curley systematically poisoned her husband Robert Curley, 32, by
slipping thallium - a colorless, odorless and tasteless poison - in his
drinks during their 13-month marriage while they lived in the Miners Mills
section of Wilkes-Barre. Following a five-year investigation, Joann Curley
was arrested and charged with homicide. After pleading guilty to third-
degree murder in 1996, she was sentenced to a 10- to 20-year prison term.
Joann Curley, now 49, has applied for parole five times but has been denied
each time.
b*********[email protected]
570-821-2055, @cvbobkal | i*****s
发帖数: 4596 | 6 OLD POISON JAR WAS CURLEY'S WEAPON
A WIFE'S CHANCE DISCOVERY OF THE
ARTIFACT FROM A FORMER STORE SPARKED
A MURDER PLOT THAT TOOK YEARS TO
UNRAVEL, A STATE TROOPER SAYS
By BONNIE ADAMS; Times Leader Staff Writer
Saturday, July 19, 1997 Page: 1A
WILKES-BARRE -- It began with a jar of rat poison from Joann Curley's
grandmother.
When Curley discovered the poison, she decided to use it to kill Robert
Curley for his money, state police Trooper Rob McBride said Friday, one day
after Curley admitted murdering her husband.
"The idea crystallized instantly upon finding the poison," said McBride,
who joined the investigation in 1994 after helping with a first-degree
murder conviction of a nurse who poisoned her husband.
Curley's case was a "classic pattern" of poisoning, McBride said,
starting slowly several months after their marriage and ending with Joann
Curley "going for the gold."
Curley had discovered the gallon glass jar of rat poison in the basement
of the double-block home adjoining the couple's residence at 33 Cleveland
St.
"She didn't know it was thallium," the investigator said. "She knew it
was rat poison."
Miners Mills residents had long gone to Joann Curley's grandmother,
Helen Steligo, for rat poison, he said. Steligo had operated a small store
and pool hall.
"Her grandmother had a basement full of this stuff in the '40s and '50s,
" McBride said. Steligo lived near the couple and managed the double-block
at 33-35 Cleveland St. that once belonged to Joann Curley's parents, he said.
"There was one jar left that the grandmother had given to the tenant,"
McBride said. The jar was in the basement at 35 Cleveland St., the half of
the double-block vacant since 1990.
Curley, who pleaded guilty Thursday in Luzerne County Court to third-
degree murder, had no idea what dosage of rat poison to use in her husband's
iced tea.
"She didn't measure it, she just poured it," McBride said.
Robert Curley "died an excruciating death," McBride said, a death that
followed a typical three-phase pattern of poisoning.
That means Joann Curley initially gave him a small dose to see if he
would detect the poison in his iced tea. McBride said the level of thallium
in rat poison can affect any taste it might have, but the potency of the rat
poison she used is not known. The powder readily dissolves in liquid and is
colorless and odorless.
Curley next increased the amount for mild effects. Then came the final
stage of higher doses, McBride said. "Eventually you get into the phase when
you're going for the gold, so to speak."
A "hot spot" of thallium was found in Robert Curley's intestines that
had been removed during a second autopsy then examined in January, Luzerne
County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said Thursday. Robert
Curley ingested that thallium five days before his death at Hershey Medical
Center.
McBride said Joann Curley dissolved the rat poison in a drink in a
disposable cup.
Not until her husband was diagnosed at Hershey with thallium poisoning
did Joann Curley realize rat poison contained the heavy metal, McBride said.
Curley had insisted her thallium levels be tested within a week after
her husband died on Sept. 27, 1991, according to the affidavit.
Test results revealed Joann Curley's thallium levels were 10 times above
normal, McBride said. Her levels were not toxic and her ingestion wasn't
intentional, McBride said.
"She drank from the wrong tea," he said. So had her then-4-year-old
daughter, Angela, who had a low-level exposure, according to the affidavit.
Investigators never recovered the jar of poison and do not know how much
it contained. McBride said Curley disposed of it in an outdoor trash
receptacle.
The lack of the jar of poison would have caused problems for the
prosecution if Curley's case had gone to trial, said McBride, who estimated
the prosecution had a slightly more than 50 percent chance of finding Curley
guilty.
He and other investigators three years ago began with a large pool of
possible suspects of those who had known and had contact with Robert Curley.
"Eventually we whittled it down from a very large number to 26," McBride
said. "We got down to one person we couldn't eliminate. Her."
One theory investigators considered was that his murder was a conspiracy
, but that idea was dismissed.
"She struck you as an individual that is so confident and calculated
that she would not confide in anybody," he said. "There was never a hint
that anybody else knew what was going on."
McBride was at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility on Tuesday when
investigators interviewed Curley.
He described that interview as "an unusual opportunity, probably a once-
in-a-lifetime opportunity to have all your questions answered."
During the years, investigators interviewed those who knew Robert and
Joann as early as high school, including Robert Curley's previous
girlfriends. "He was looking to get married," McBride said. For that reason,
he wanted women to know that he was financially responsible and had life
insurance.
"They knew up front what he was worth," McBride said.
It was the money that spurred Joann Curley to begin poisoning her
husband just months into their marriage.
"The only motive we could see in this whole thing was money," McBride
said. "Apparently the money did mean something to her."
Joann Curley received $296,981 in insurance and union benefits after
Robert's death.
"Everybody you talked to, everybody, loved Bobby Curley," McBride said.
The investigation revealed no signs that he had physically or verbally
abused his wife.
But of those who knew Joann Curley, he said, "There was no middle ground
." People either loved or hated her.
McBride said Joann Curley had "two faces" and "a great deal of control
of her emotions." He called her a "good actress."
A mutual female friend introduced Robert and Joann in October or
November of 1988, the same year Joann's first husband, John Chopack, died in
a car accident.
McBride said he is not sure what Robert and Joann Curley might have had
in common.
"He was kinda country and she was kinda rock 'n' roll," McBride said. "I
would suspect that they were two strong individuals."
McBride helped convict Judy Ann Showers, a Northumberland County nurse
who poisoned her sedated husband in 1992 by force-feeding him one dose of
liquid morphine.
McBride was assigned to the Curley case in April, 1994.
"It was a long, long three years," said the 22-year state police veteran
. "My main motivation in this whole thing was his mother. She was in such
pain and anguish over not knowing why someone would kill her son."
Six years after her son's death, Mary Curley, 75, finally got answers.
"I just wanted to help her out," McBride said. "She treated me like one
of her own children."
Read more: http://archives.timesleader.com/1997/1997_13/1997_07_19_OLD_POISON_JAR_WAS_CURLEY_S_WEAPON_A_WIFE_S_CHANCE_DISCOVERY_OF_.html#ixzz2S1bEtYwO |
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