Overton’s First Wife Says She Was Poisoned

Richard K. Overton, a part-time college professor who pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he killed his wife with cyanide, tried to poison a previous wife more than 20 years ago, the woman alleged in court documents.

“Beginning with the summer of 1970, and continuing over a period of several years, my ex-husband secretly poisoned my food, including my beverages,” Overton’s first wife, Dorothy Overton Boyer, said in a four-page declaration on file in Orange County Superior Court.

In a written response to the court, however, Overton denied Boyer’s allegations. No charges were ever brought against him in that case.

“I . . . deny that I ever ‘poisoned’ her. . . . Her complaints never were substantiated and nothing further was pursued by the authorities,” he said in his declaration to the court filed April 27, 1989.

Boyer’s declaration was filed in October, 1988, four months before pathologists publicly revealed that Jan Overton, Overton’s third wife, died of cyanide poisoning.

Boyer said she was filing her declaration in an effort to get Overton to pay back alimony and child support she claimed was owed her and their four children. In the court papers, she alleges that her ex-husband surreptitiously entered her house after their divorce in 1969 and spiked her food and beverages with poison.

“This poisoning not only made me violently ill but also friends who would eat with us, and our children,” she said.

Boyer, who also alleged that Overton tried to kill her by placing poison in her shoes, went to police with her complaints.

According to her declaration, a Sheriff’s Department investigator, C. R. Miller, looked into the allegations and later confronted Overton. Boyer said her ex-husband then confessed to trying to poison her, according to her declaration.

The Sheriff’s Department on Thursday could not confirm whether an investigation had occurred.

However, a source close to the witnesses in the case did confirm that there had been an extensive Sheriff’s Department investigation of Boyer’s charges.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Miller set a trap to catch Overton tampering with food in Boyer’s home.

According to the source, a coffee can was specially coated and left in a marked position on a shelf. Later, it was determined that the can had been moved and one of Overton’s fingerprints was found on it, but no trace of poison was found.

Overton subsequently admitted that he had been poisoning his wife in small doses with a variety of household substances, but not with the intention of killing her, the source said. No charges were brought against him because of a lack of physical evidence. Overton, however, agreed to psychological counseling, the source said.

According to court documents, Boyer was seeking more than 10 years of alimony and child support, totaling $100,000, which she claimed had not been paid to her since the divorce became final in 1969.

She said she waited so long to file for the money because “I have been, and still am, very fearful for my life from overt and covert acts previously committed upon me by my ex-husband. . . . It has only been through a substantial amount of courage on my part, the urging of my friends and the advice of my attorney that I have decided to go forward and collect the money, which he has failed to pay.”

The judge in the case awarded her about $11,000, and would not permit police testimony regarding the allegations of poisoning, court sources said.

In his declaration in response to Boyer’s charges, Overton said he was aware of his ex-wife’s poisoning claim in 1973, but “there was, by then, a certain amount of acrimony in our relationship, since I was frequently complaining to her that she was neglecting” the couple’s two young daughters in her custody.

“I would receive calls from the children to come to the house because they were ill and alone. On occasion, I did enter (Boyer’s) residence when she was not at home to attend to the children, and I commented to (her) that I wished she would suffer the same stomach pains that the children were complaining of, so that she would be more sympathetic to their plight. . . .

“(She) never expressed any fear of me at this time, and we saw each other frequently because of the children.”

Although Boyer contended “extreme cruelty and grievous mental and physical suffering” in her divorce papers filed in 1968, several acquaintances of the couple said that they seemed to have an amiable relationship afterward.

“Over the years, I have seen Dorothy and Richard together in restaurants occasionally, and I have always been impressed that theirs seemed to be such a friendly divorce. There was no sign of animosity,” Elaine Hubbard, a family friend, said in a court declaration in the divorce file.

Both Boyer and Miller, the sheriff’s investigator, were listed as witnesses before the grand jury that indicted Overton earlier this week for Jan Overton’s murder. Boyer declined to comment on her grand jury testimony and Miller could not be reached for comment.

Overton was released Thursday evening from Orange County Jail after posting bail of $250,000. Of that amount, $130,000 was in the form of a cashier’s check and $120,000 was collateral on the Dana Point home he shared with Jan Overton, his attorney, Robert D. Chatterton, said.

Overton, 63, who has since remarried for a fourth time, pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, as well as to the special circumstance of poisoning. If convicted, he could be eligible for the death penalty.

A date for the trial will be set Oct. 11, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans told Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan that he thought it would take the prosecution about three weeks to present its case.

Chatterton said he could not estimate how long it would take to present the defense’s case. He said that, because of the time lag between Jan Overton’s death and the indictment, gathering the necessary evidence is going to be difficult.

“I’m hopeful that the information I need to gather is still going to be accessible,” he said without elaborating.

After the coroner determined that cyanide poisoning contributed to Jan Overton’s death in February, 1989, police focused their investigation on her husband.

The investigation has lasted more than 2 1/2 years. Part of the delay in taking the case to the grand jury, apparently, was investigators’ attempts to make sure that any medication Jan Overton was taking for a skin problem did not contain cyanide.

During the course of the investigation, Richard Overton’s home was searched by police and more than 100 computer disks were seized. Overton has been a business consultant and a part-time math and computer professor at Saddleback College.

Also searched was the home of Melvin Hubbard, a Capistrano Beach mining engineer, said to use cyanide in his work. Hubbard was also listed as a grand jury witness.