Alleged Affair Called Motive in Overton Killing

Richard K. Overton, a former college professor accused of poisoning his wife with a lethal dose of cyanide, acted out of revenge for her extramarital affair and possibly to gain access to her $100,000 inheritance, homicide investigators allege.

The allegations come from newly unsealed court documents, which for the first time explain a possible motive in the fatal poisoning of Janet Overton, a prominent South County educator.

They also describe how her husband once led a dual life, marrying one woman under an assumed name while remaining married to another, and how Janet Overton’s death was eerily similar to the alleged poisoning of Richard Overton’s first wife.

“I know that Richard Overton suspected that his wife, Janet, was having an affair, which I believe is sufficient motive for murder,” Orange County sheriff’s homicide investigator Timothy P. Carney said in a 1989 search warrant affidavit made public this week.

Carney, who declined to comment Tuesday, also stated in his affidavit that Overton was possibly after an inheritance that his wife had received and may have kept in a joint bank account with her son, Eric.

However, Overton’s attorney, Robert D. Chatterton, on Tuesday dismissed those allegations as baseless, and he strongly rejected the claim that his client was after financial gain.

“My client had no motive to kill his wife for money,” he said.

Janet Overton, a trustee in the Capistrano Unified School District, died unexpectedly on Jan. 24, 1988, as she prepared to go whale-watching with her son. She was 43.

Last week, her 63-year-old husband pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder. He remains free on $250,000 bail.

Investigators said in court documents that the Overtons’ relationship began to falter in the early 1980s. A man, identified in the court documents only as a “confidential informant,” told investigators that he had had an extramarital affair with Janet Overton from 1981 to 1987. He said she had told him that she had not been intimate with her husband for three years.

The informant said Richard Overton may have found out about the affair and tried to humiliate his wife by anonymously distributing flyers during a school district function that said she was having an affair with another school official.

Janet Overton, the informant said, told him that she had found what appeared to be a master copy of the flyer in a locked file cabinet of Richard Overton’s.

The informant said he later broke off the relationship, partly because of some chronic rashes, sores and lesions that Janet Overton began suffering.

Investigators said in court documents that her symptoms might have been related to selenium poisoning. They also said the selenium may have been administered to her through food, clothes and even cosmetics.

A forensic pathologist told investigators that selenium ingestion could induce nausea, vomiting and skin rashes.

But it was cyanide--possibly administered in her morning cup of coffee--that ultimately killed Janet Overton, the coroner’s office ruled in December, 1989, nearly a year after her death.

Investigators contend in the documents that Richard Overton had access to cyanide from the home of Mel Hubbard, a family friend in Capistrano Beach who used the chemical for his business of mining precious metals. Overton had keys to Hubbard’s house, investigators said.

In April, 1989, investigators searched Hubbard’s home and his storage shed in Shasta County and found several cans of commercial sodium cyanide, according to court documents. Hubbard is not a suspect in the case.

Investigators conducted another search in October, 1990, in a bid to find Janet Overton’s bank records.

According to Carney’s affidavit, the investigator was told by Janet Overton’s sister that in 1987 “Janet had received an inheritance from her mother’s estate of $100,000 and that Janet had placed the funds in a joint account with her son, Eric” at a South County savings and loan.

The sister told Carney that Janet Overton had “intentionally denied Richard access to the funds,” the investigator said in his affidavit.

Carney said he believed that Janet Overton’s inheritance had been placed into the San Juan Capistrano branch of Assured Thrift & Loan and that “Richard may have diverted these funds after Janet’s death. . . .”

“Eric also told me,” Carney wrote in his affidavit, “that after his mother’s death (in January 1988), Richard had him sign some documents, which Eric did not read, but believes were banking documents.”

Carney said Eric told him that the joint account’s balance, as of 1989 or 1990, stood at $3,500.

Homicide investigators said Richard Overton became a suspect in July, 1988, nearly seven months after his wife’s death. Investigators were tipped off by Overton’s first wife, Dorothy Overton Boyer, who alleged that he had tried to poison her after their divorce.

According to court documents, Boyer sued for divorce in 1968 after finding out that he had been married to another woman for about two years while he was still married to her.

That second marriage, which produced a daughter, ended in an annulment. The day after the divorce with Boyer was final, Richard Overton married Janet Lynn Crum, his third wife, Boyer told Carney.

But Boyer’s troubles with her former husband did not end with the divorce, according to court documents. Several years after the divorce, Boyer told investigators, she began to suspect that her former husband was sneaking into her house and poisoning her food because he was “upset and angry with her that she would divorce him.”

In the summer of 1970, Boyer said, she occasionally became ill and noticed an odd smell from things she ate and drank. She also had swelling and redness on the bottom of her feet for no apparent reason.

Boyer suspected that Richard Overton was responsible for the strange illnesses and went to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to complain. The case was then assigned to Detective Cliff Miller who, with Boyer’s assistance, set a trap for Overton.

Carney said Miller, now retired from the Sheriff’s Department, determined, through fingerprints, that Overton had entered Boyer’s house and spiked her food and beverages.

When confronted with the evidence, “Richard Overton admitted to having hostile feelings towards Dorothy and to unlawfully entering her residence on occasions,” Carney quoted Miller as saying. “He (Richard Overton) admitted to placing Drano into her milk and also in her shampoo.”

Overton, however, was not charged with a crime, Carney said. Instead, he was referred to county mental health services “for consultation,” the documents said.

Investigators analyzed the contaminated items at Boyer’s house and determined that the foreign substance was selenium, not Drano.