Trial nears end for man in wife’s 1994 nicotine death

In the mid-1990s, Paul Curry worked as an engineer at the San Onofre nuclear power plant and was, by many accounts, a deeply intelligent man who appeared to have a loving relationship with his wife.

Now, 20 years after Linda Curry mysteriously died, Paul Curry sits in an Orange County courtroom, on trial for murder.

Prosecutors say the man some called a genius sedated his wife and gave her a lethal injection of nicotine behind the ear, then collected about half a million dollars in life insurance and other benefits.

“He thought he was smarter than everybody else,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Ebrahim Baytieh told jurors Thursday during closing arguments. “And it worked for him. It worked for him for 16 years.”

Curry was a suspect early on, but the case went cold until investigators began looking into it again several years ago. The former San Clemente resident was arrested while living in Kansas in 2010 and has pleaded not guilty to murder charges. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Curry’s defense attorney, Orange County Deputy Public Defender Lisa Kopelman, said the case is full of holes and based on “conjecture, innuendo and suspicion.”

“Make no mistake about it. Mr. Curry, this man right here, is an innocent man,” Kopelman told the jury Thursday.

Baytieh told jurors that Paul Curry had a dark pattern that started even before his marriage to Linda.

A former wife, Leslie Curry, testified that she fell mysteriously ill while they were married. During her illness, Paul Curry suggested they both apply for life insurance, but she was rejected. He left her shortly after, Baytieh said.

Kopelman countered that Leslie Curry didn’t have documentation proving her testimony. “This is pure baloney,” she said. “This did not happen.”

During Paul Curry’s 21-month marriage to Linda Curry, she too fell ill twice and had to be hospitalized. At the time, investigators questioned the couple because it appeared that someone had tampered with Linda Curry’s IV bag at the hospital.

In a recording of a police interview played for jurors, Linda Curry casts suspicion on her husband when investigators ask whether anyone would have reason to hurt her:

“The only person I could think of that would have a motive to do it would be Paul. And the only motive I can think of is money. But I don’t really even want to think that or believe that.”

Linda Curry went back and forth between wondering whether her husband might try to harm her and refusing to believe he was capable of it, Baytieh said.

But there was only one thing Paul Curry cared about when it came to his wife, Baytieh told the jury.

“It was all about money when it came to Linda, all for this defendant,” Baytieh said. Paul Curry, now 57, sat in a gray suit listening to the arguments.

Kopelman said the prosecution’s case was based on a two-sided argument that says Curry is at once a genius who brilliantly planned his wife’s killing and got away with it for years and a bumbling criminal who tried multiple times unsuccessfully to kill not one, but two wives.

“They want it both ways,” she said.

She described Linda and Paul Curry as “two peas in a pod” who both loved nice things but had difficulty with money. Those who knew them saw them as a loving, doting couple, she said.

Kopelman told the jury that Linda Curry suffered for years from gastrointestinal problems and may have accidentally killed herself by trying to use a nicotine enema as a homeopathic remedy for irritable bowel syndrome.

“Sometimes life just kind of deals us a bad hand and we take some bad steps, we make some mistakes,” she said.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com