Husband Held in School Trustee’s Death : Mystery: Richard Overton is indicted in the death of his wife, Jan, a school official who investigators say died of poisoning.

A part-time college professor was arrested Tuesday after the Orange County Grand Jury indicted him for murder in the 1988 cyanide poisoning death of his wife, prominent South County school official Jan Overton.

Richard K. Overton, 63, of Dana Point turned himself in to Orange County sheriff’s deputies shortly after 8 p.m.--only a few hours after the grand jury returned a sealed indictment in the case, Overton’s attorney Robert D. Chatterton confirmed.

“We’re disappointed that after such a long investigation that they finally decided that charges should be brought,” Chatterton said. “But, at least we’ll begin now to get prepared for trial.”

A year ago, after it was clear that Overton had become a possible suspect in his wife’s death, he told The Times that any suggestion that he had killed her was “so wild and preposterous” that he would not discuss it.

“We’ve been trying for 2 1/2 years to resume and rebuild our lives,” Overton said then. “I’m not going to revive any more of that pain by commenting on anything.”

Overton surrendered at the Orange County sheriff’s substation in Laguna Niguel, where homicide detectives arrested him. He was expected to be booked into the main jail late Tuesday night. Bail had not yet been set.

Jan Overton, 46, vice president of the Capistrano Unified School District, died unexpectedly at their home on Jan. 24, 1988, as she prepared to leave for a family outing. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she was dead on arrival at San Clemente General Hospital.

She was the mother of six children and stepchildren and a former president of the Orange County School Boards Assn. She had been a member of the Capistrano school board for 12 years.

For several months, the cause of her death was undetermined. But in Feburary, 1989, the coroner’s office revealed publicly for the first time that cyanide poisoning contributed to her death. A police investigation immediately focused on her husband. Apparently one delay in taking the case to the grand jury was that investigators wanted to make sure that no other medications or treatments Jan Overton might have taken for a skin problem could have contained cyanide.

In 1989, law enforcement officials seized more than a hundred computer disks from Overton’s home during a court-approved search.

Overton has been a business consultant and part-time professor in recent years, specializing in mathematics and computers. He hired Chatterton to represent him two years ago when he learned that he was a target of police suspicions.

In papers filed in 1988, when he unsuccessfully ran for his wife’s school board seat, he stated: “I have served major corporations, helping them increase their productivity through the human-oriented use of computers.”

He finished near the bottom among seven candidates for her seat.

He also is the author of a book on mathematical theory.

Overton’s first wife, Dorothy Boyer, filed for divorce against him in 1968, claiming “extreme cruelty and grievous mental and physical suffering.”

They had four children, and Overton had a child by a second wife. Richard and Jan Overton, his third wife, had one child, a son, Eric, now an adult, who has been living at the family home.

Jan Overton ran her own successful computer company out of her home at the time of her death.

Friends and co-workers described Jan Overton as a caring and personable woman and a hard worker.

“She was a very warm and wonderful lady . . . and we relied on her a lot for her expertise,” school board president Paul Haseman said.

Haseman also expressed surprise at Tuesday’s indictment.

“Everybody on the board was very sad” about Overton’s death, he said. “But we didn’t have any inclination that anything was wrong. . . . We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Al and Kit Eaton, who had been neighbors of the Overtons for almost 20 years when Jan Overton died, said they were “absolutely shocked” Tuesday.

“That’s what is so astounding, because we knew them as a fine and happy couple,” Kit Eaton said. “What we observed was a loving relationship.”

Richard Overton was very supportive of his wife’s ambition, Al Eaton said. “He’s a fine, fine man and he was very proud of her,” he added.

Several other friends, however, said that she and her husband had marital problems.

A neighbor who requested anonymity said that Jan Overton “came up here and was telling me she was thinking of getting a divorce.”

Annette B. Gude, a trustee, said she knew that authorities “had been investigating, but thought that because it has taken so long, that charges would never be filed.” The circumstances of Jan Overton’s death had always baffled her, Gude said, but the possibility of Richard Overton’s involvement was also “shocking.”

“I could not believe it could be something like suicide,” Gude said. “But it was hard for me to believe that Richard was involved. At the time, I thought it was probably accidental.”