HOUSTON — On a rainy Halloween night 50 years ago, an 8-year-old boy in the Houston area was poisoned. His killer turned out to be the man one would have least expected.
Ronald Clark O'Bryan took his son and daughter and a few of their friends trick-or-treating through a neighborhood in Pasadena on October 31, 1974.
Fifty years later, not a whole lot has changed. But what is different, is what happens when kids get home.
"We check our kids' candy," Pasadena resident Charles Lee said. "That's just what you do."
Lee, his wife and their three kids have lived at a home in Pasadena for only a couple of years. They never knew their house was associated with one of Texas's most notorious crimes until now.
"I do remember him getting the Pixie Stick from a house," Lee said. "Because that's why they'd check our candy."
The home where the Lee family lives today is the same home where O'Bryan told police his children were given giant Pixie Stix while trick-or-treating. He said the boy started convulsing and then died after they got home.
The medical examiner later determined O'Bryan's son had been poisoned with cyanide. Police were able to narrow down the source of the poison to the Pixie Stix, and luckily, none of the other kids had eaten theirs.
Detectives soon determined that O'Bryan's story about where they got the candy didn't make sense. The man who lived at that Pasadena home back then had an airtight alibi on Halloween night.
Homicide detectives learned O'Bryan was deep in debt and he had recently opened life insurance policies for both of his children.
O'Bryan was arrested and nicknamed the "Candy Man" by authorities and reporters.
He was later convicted of murdering his son Timothy and sentenced to death.
"That's a pretty cruel person," Lee told us. "Pretty heartless."
The crime will be forever unimaginable for dads like Charles Lee, who will be carefully checking their kids trick-or-treat bags on Halloween night.
The Candy Man, who was executed 40 years ago, left a stain on October 31 that endures; Halloween was never the same again.
O'Bryan continued to say he was innocent until the end.
Demonstrators who showed up for his execution chanted "trick-or-treat" outside of the prison in Huntsville when he was put to death.
Editor's note: Houston serial killer Dean Corll was also dubbed the "Candyman" because he, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks sometimes used candy to lure their young victims. The three kidnapped, tortured and killed dozens of young males from 1970 to 1973. For two days, they led shocked investigators to one gravesite after another, 28 bodies in all.