Trial Nears for Man Accused of Poisoning Wife : Crime: A bizarre and mysterious tale behind the death of schools Trustee Janet Overton goes before a jury this week.

Janet L. Overton’s death four years ago was a shock to relatives and friends and a mystery to coroner’s investigators who couldn’t understand why the prominent South County educator had suddenly collapsed while preparing for a family outing.

The cause of her death was still unknown six months later when an odd telephone call came into the Orange County coroner’s office.

“Did you check for poison?” asked the woman caller. “Because you know what, (her husband) poisoned me once before.”

Although Janet Overton’s body had long since been cremated, forensic experts re-examined frozen blood and tissue samples they had saved and determined that the 46-year-old Dana Point woman had been poisoned with a lethal dose of cyanide.

What followed was one of longest and most unusual homicide investigations in Orange County. It was an investigation that uncovered a tale of infidelity, bigamy and mysterious illnesses and resulted in a murder indictment by the Orange County Grand Jury against the victim’s husband, Richard K. Overton.

On Wednesday, the 63-year-old part-time college professor and computer and mathematical whiz will stand trial in his wife’s murder on Jan. 24, 1988--a crime he says he didn’t commit.

“He is certainly a clever and diabolical defendant,” said the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans, who declined further comment.

Richard Overton is an enigmatic man. Although he has declined to be interviewed, a sketchy profile has emerged through court documents and interviews with family friends.

He is a man who some say exudes an intellectual but aloof air. He speaks Russian and Spanish and is highly knowledgeable in computers. A check of his employment records shows that he worked for a local defense contractor and held a national security clearance at one point. In recent years, he lectured at Cal State Long Beach and USC.

According to court documents, Overton had a pattern of troubling relationships with women.

His first wife, Dorothy Boyer, has declined to be interviewed about Overton, but it was she who helped launch the homicide investigation by telephoning coroner’s investigators with allegations that he had tried to kill her with poison a decade earlier, court documents show.

Their marriage ended after 17 years in 1969, when Boyer discovered that Overton, with whom she had reared four children, was simultaneously married to another woman.

Caroline Draper, Overton’s other wife at the time, also bore a child with him. Their marriage was annulled after Draper learned about Boyer. In a strange unrelated twist, Draper was sentenced to prison for the attempted murder of the man she married after Overton.

In an interview from prison, Draper said that Overton, whom she knew as Richard Halderman, “has always been a devious, manipulative person. I have no doubts of what he has done.”

She also said that Overton could be a vindictive man.

Boyer alleges in court documents that she started developing unusual rashes and skin irritations after their divorce. When the rashes did not go away, she began to suspect that her ex-husband, angry over their divorce, was sneaking into her home and poisoning her food and drink.

Boyer’s complaint was documented in 1973 by an investigator with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The department’s crime lab analyzed samples of Boyer’s food and drink and discovered that her milk had been tainted with selenium, an element necessary for humans in trace amounts but potentially lethal when mixed in certain compounds. Boyer’s shampoo was also contaminated by an unidentified foreign substance, according to court documents.

According to Clifford Miller, the sheriff’s investigator who handled Boyer’s case, a trap was set for Overton to see if he was breaking into his ex-wife’s home. When Overton’s fingerprints were found on a coffee can in Boyer’s house, Miller confronted him.

Miller testified at Overton’s grand jury hearing last October that Overton confessed to being hostile toward Boyer, entering her residence and spiking her milk and shampoo with Drano and prescription medicine.

Overton was never prosecuted, Miller testified, because Boyer did not want to pursue the case. He added that Overton said he would not do it anymore and agreed to see a psychologist.

The day after divorcing Boyer in 1969, Overton married his third wife: Janet Overton.

This marriage, too, had problems, court documents show.

According to some of the couple’s acquaintances, Janet Overton grew unhappy. Richard Overton appeared to resent her position in the community as a popular trustee for the Capistrano Unified School District.

Prosecutors allege that Janet Overton had at least one extramarital affair, and even her husband admitted in an interview with investigators that his wife had cheated on him, according to court documents.

At the grand jury hearing, prosecutor Evans pointed to Janet Overton’s infidelity as a cause of extreme anger in her husband. His anger turned to hatred and later became the motive for the crime, Evans contended. Computer and written diaries kept by Overton prove that point, Evans told the grand jury.

According to some entries in the diaries, which were seized by homicide investigators, Overton kept track of his wife’s activities, recording her suspected lovers and taking inventory of what he called his wife’s “seduction gear,” such as condoms, lingerie and other sexual aides.

“This is a diary of hate and loathing,” Evans told the grand jury. “You read his diary; he suspects the town of Dana Point” of having affairs with his wife.

The entries will probably be used in the trial to counter Overton’s statements to investigators that he shared a loving, “normal life” with his wife, according to court documents.

Another apparent contradiction that Evans is expected to bring out in the trial are Overton’s statements to sheriff’s investigators that he had no access to cyanide and didn’t know how to get it.

Melvin L. Hubbard, a friend and business associate of Overton’s, testified before the grand jury that he and Overton were partners in a mining business that used cyanide in a process to extract precious metals, and that Overton not only knew about it, but had access to it.

Evans told the grand jury that when Overton’s interview with sheriff’s investigators is compared to the facts of the case, “Mr. Overton has tied himself in a terrible, terrible knot.”

One of the most chilling pieces of evidence that Evans will attempt to link to Overton is a bizarre illness his wife experienced several years before her death. Janet Overton was troubled by unexplained and painful rashes, sores and lesions. Her ailments, Evans has maintained, were eerily similar to the ones that Boyer had complained about in the early 1970s.

The medical problems suffered by the two women were more than just strange coincidences, Evans has contended.

Coroner’s investigators said that Janet Overton’s condition was “consistent” with selenium poisoning. However, only a normal level of the toxin was found in her body at the time of death, they said.

For months, attorney Robert D. Chatterton has worked on Overton’s defense, devoting most of his practice to the case.

He has declined to comment on the case other than to say his client is innocent. However, two key elements in his defense strategy have emerged during pretrial hearings and in defense motions.

Chatterton will question Boyer’s credibility. Court records show that after she called coroner’s investigators with her tip, she attempted to sue Overton for $100,000 in back child and spousal support payments. In court documents, she claimed that she never sought the money before because she feared Overton might harm her.

The judge hearing the lawsuit discounted Boyer’s claim of fear, noting that she and Overton frequently socialized with each other even after the divorce and seemed amicable. They apparently had gone to dinners, lunches and family birthday celebrations together. In the end, the judge awarded her about $10,000 in child support that was undisputed.

But perhaps the most damaging tactic Chatterton is planning for the prosecution will deal with the cause of Janet Overton’s death. Various experts for the defense have examined the body samples and their analysis sharply contradicts the prosecution’s theory, Chatterton has said in court.

One of Chatterton’s experts has determined that the cyanide found in Janet Overton’s body was actually a “cyanogen”--not the potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide that one would use for mining, according to court documents.

Cyanogens are cyanide compounds commonly found in such things as apple seeds, peach pits, bamboo shoots or Laetrile, a substance derived from apricot pits and once advocated by people who believed it cured or prevented cancer.

In the wake of Overton’s arrest last October, his children have declined to comment about their father’s situation. Some of the Overtons’ friends have said they were surprised by the murder charge and would leave any judgment about his guilt or innocence to a jury.

“He needs his day in court,” said Carole Bailey, a friend of Janet Overton’s, after Richard Overton’s arrest. “And Jan needs hers. And she’s going to have it.”

In the meantime, Overton, who has since married for a fourth time, remains free on $200,000 bail.