Poisoned Candy? The Real Story Behind the Urban Legend

We have all heard the ominous tales and warning urging parents to check their children’s Halloween candy. Urban legend holds that people of ill intent will put poison into candy in order to hand it out to unsuspecting children.

Of course, growing up we never really believed such tales. But none the less, my mother checked all my candy before I was allowed to eat it.

I had often heard that such tales were pure fantasy; that no one had ever done such a thing in real life. However, it appears this is one urban legend that is inspired by reality.

Chron.com reports:

Of all the urban legends about poison-laced Halloween candy, one is true.

And 41 years later, the true story of Houston’s “Candyman” murder still feels very real for residents who remember the shocking crime.

On Halloween night 1974, Ronald O’Bryan, a father from suburban Deer Park who had volunteered to take his son and friends trick-or-treating in nearby Pasadena, fatally poisoned his 8-year-old son Timothy with a Pixy Stix laced with cyanide.

At trial, it was found that O’Bryan had opened the Stix, added the cyanide and stapled it back shut.

Four other friends were also given the poisoned Stix, which O’Bryan claimed had been given to the boys while trick-or-treating at a darkened home.

None of the other boys ingested the candy, though one was found asleep that night with the candy in his hand; he had been unable to remove O’Bryan’s staple.

Prosecutors said O’Bryan pushed his son into eating the candy before going to bed Halloween night. After complaining of the bitter taste, the boy went to bed, but moments later he began vomiting.

By the time he was taken to a nearby hospital, Timothy had died.

Apparently, O’Bryan had taken out a $40,000 life insurance policy on his two boys just days before the incident.

So while this story has some shocking and terrifying details for parents of trick or treaters, this was no plot to poison the public. Instead it was one awful man’s plot to murder his son for money– if some other children died, too, then the story would have been more believable.

O’Bryan was convicted in less than hour. His fellow inmates called him “The Candyman,” however in Houston he is known as the man who killed Halloween.