Overton’s Diaries Tell of a Detestable Marriage : Court: Man accused of poisoning his wife was consumed by jealousy, prosecutors contend at retrial.

Prosecutors painted the picture of a hellish marriage marked by years of infidelity and mutual hatred when a retrial began here Monday in the strange and long-delayed murder case against Richard K. Overton.

Reading passages from the Dana Point computer consultant’s diaries, prosecutors portrayed the defendant--charged with fatally poisoning his schoolteacher wife in 1988--as a man who felt constantly rebuffed by his mate and consumed with jealousy over her suspected love affairs.

“It took a lot of hate to kill his wife and the evidence will show there was a lot to go around,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans told jurors during opening statements in Superior Court.

Overton is accused of using cyanide to poison Janet L. Overton, a teacher and elected trustee of the Capistrano Unified School District who collapsed in the driveway on her way to a whale-watching trip.

Richard Overton was later charged with murder but his case ended in mistrial in 1992 after his former defense attorney suffered a severe depression and could not work on the case.

The 66-year-old mathematician and computer expert with a doctorate in psychology pleaded not guilty to the Jan. 24, 1988, incident.

Describing Overton as an obsessive man filled with disgust for his 46-year-old wife, Evans said the defendant knew about the effects of cyanide and how to get it easily. Overton was part owner of a mining operation and had a key to his business partner’s home, where cyanide used to mine gold was stored.

Seeking to show a pattern of poisoning, Evans said Overton had spiked a previous wife’s coffee and milk with prescription drugs in the early 1970s and was giving Janet Overton non-lethal doses of a chemical called selenium for years before her death.

In both cases, Evans said, the women periodically suffered nearly identical symptoms: nausea, discolored and peeling feet and lesions.

Investigators trying to find the cause of Overton’s death were stumped for six months until the previous wife, Dorothy Boyers, called to tell them that she had been poisoned years earlier. Coroner’s officials then re-examined tissue samples and determined Overton had died of cyanide poisoning.

Much of the prosecution’s presentation Monday centered on Richard Overton’s writings. His diary, which chronicled what Overton labeled a “love-hate” relationship over 19 years, went into such detail that it even tracked the effects of marital strife on his bowel movements, Evans said.

Evans read diary entries--some coded in Spanish and Russian--that made repeated allusions to Janet Overton’s suspected affairs, at one point listing 17 suspected affairs.

One of the men listed, a Capistrano school official, testified in the first trial that he and Janet Overton had an affair in the 1980s for several years.

In the diaries, Overton meticulously logged his wife’s whereabouts and made repeated mention of her “seduction gear” of condoms, underwear and a vibrator, Evans said. Overton also described her refusal near the end to have sex with him or let him touch her.

“You’ll see two faces: one he holds out to his friends and the world, and the other his private thoughts . . . his dark thoughts,” Evans said.

The prosecutor said Janet Overton and son Eric were heading on a whale-watching outing when she fell sick in the driveway. Richard Overton helped her inside and called paramedics, but canceled the call when she asked him to. He took her to the bathroom, where she threw up and became sicker, Evans said. By the time paramedics were called again, Evans said, Janet Overton was dead.

Evans said Richard Overton initially told a nurse that his wife was found lifeless in her bed.

Opening defense statements are expected Tuesday.