Man accused of poisoning wife with nicotine, collecting $400,000

A former nuclear power plant engineer accused of poisoning his wife with nicotine more than two decades ago was driven by greed and a “complete and utter disregard for human life,” a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

Paul M. Curry, 57, could face life in prison if he is convicted of murdering his wife, Linda Curry, who had also worked at the San Onofre nuclear power station.

She was 50 years old when she died mysteriously in June 1994 at the couple’s San Clemente home. They had been married just 21 months.

In his opening statement to an Orange County jury Tuesday, prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh described the defendant as a “very, very, very smart man,” adding: “People referred to him as a genius.”

In July 1993 and again in December 1993, Linda Curry became ill and had to be hospitalized, but doctors were unable to determine the source of her illness, the prosecutor said.

She became suspicious of her husband and removed him as the beneficiary on a life insurance policy, naming her sister in his place, the prosecutor said. Yet she did not leave him.

In an interview with police after one of those hospitalizations, Paul Curry described his wife as having a trusting nature.

“She has the ability to sugarcoat everybody’s intentions, and nobody has any bad intentions as far as she’s concerned,” Curry said, in a recording played for jurors. “She sees the good in everybody.”

It was a nature that her husband exploited, the prosecutor said.

The prosecutor said Curry had been alone with his wife for hours before he called 911 around midnight on June 9, 1994 to report that he had found her in bed not breathing. Paramedics were unable to revive her.

“She was always, to him, a paycheck from Day One,” the prosecutor said.

Prosecutors said that Curry managed to collect $400,000 on her life insurance policies.

Curry was remarried and living in Salina, Kan., when Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested him 2010 in connection with the death, the prosecutor said.

At the time of his wife’s death, Curry told The Times that his wife was a nonsmoker and that he was puzzled by the conclusion that she’d died as a result of nicotine poisoning.

“I’m not convinced that this diagnosis is any different from the long list of others that we got before she died,” he said at the time. “They were all wrong.”

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