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[Music] a brilliant young architect mysteriously died just before she testified in a
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criminal trial her diary contains stories of sex betrayal and intrigue investigators needed to know if the
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stories were true [Music] university park texas just outside of dallas is better known as the bubble
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it's a place of privilege and prestige and a dress many would like to have but
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few can afford it's kind of the beverly hills of dallas that's the way the park city sits
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nancy dillard lyon lived most of her life in texas she was a harvard trained architect and
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the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected dallas family nancy met her husband richard while at
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harvard they married and soon had two children they had great energy uh great friendliness
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when we moved in they they gave gifts of ice cream and they baked cookies and bring them over to us and my husband who
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i've said is rarely hyperbolic about anything used to say she was the nicest
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person in the world nancy quickly became the youngest partner in the history of trammell crow
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a large real estate development firm but success came at a price i think she always had as many women did
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at that time a conflict between the amount of hours that she wanted to work to develop her career and
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time spending with her children nancy was also experiencing some physical ailments
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and on a january night in 1991 her symptoms included vomiting and severe stomach pain
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her husband richard took her to the hospital emergency room doctors were initially baffled
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she was seen by multiple consultants infectious disease a gastroenterologist pulmonologist nephrologist
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and because of her multi-organ failure and still inside in spite of all the resuscitation measures
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she was done recovering nancy's condition deteriorated but she provided doctors with the potential clue
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she said she first got sick several months earlier after drinking some wine from a bottle left on her doorstep
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she thought it was a gift from a neighbor but then it was just a you know a housewarming gift so to speak from a
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neighborhood and she drank that wine and became violently ill later that day she
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had nausea vomiting and abdominal pain but that had been months earlier and didn't explain her illness now
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even though i suspected uh something foul play but really can't you couldn't pinpoint
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anything doctors sent nancy's urine samples for testing but her condition began to deteriorate
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her organs failed and she was put on life support it was clear that she was not going to
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recover it was clear it was really beyond nobody could really understand it six days later
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nancy dillard lyon was dead i didn't quite understand what it was that had killed her so there was a great
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deal of sadness uh for for what was lost but doctors were suspicious and they weren't the only ones
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i was married to a nurse she uh taking care of nancy dillard in the trauma center she said she looked like
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she'd been poisoned to me [Music] when the daughter of a wealthy dallas family nancy dillard lyon died under
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mysterious circumstances her doctors made two telephone calls one was to the medical examiner to suggest a thorough
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autopsy and i told him listen i have a patient here and i suspect a foul play the other was to police you know they
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thought the death was suspicious and it needed to be investigated and it was suspicious and it was
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investigated they were absolutely correct investigators learned that nancy was about to testify at the embezzlement
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trial of her former boss from trammell crow nancy told friends she was uncomfortable at the thought of
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testifying against her former colleague part of that may have resulted from a threatening letter she received
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stay out of the bagwell case or you and your family will face the wrath of god it was a i guess kind of a failed threat
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no one ever knew where it came from at nancy's autopsy the pathologist found
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no signs of disease in her internal organs but toxicology test revealed some surprising results
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nancy lyon had been poisoned with arsenic well all the specimens showed significant amounts and levels of
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arsenic and what that shows is that the poison was absorbed through the gi tract
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then it was distributed through the blood patients often don't know they're
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poisoned since the symptoms are so common you know people don't think about a
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poisoning immediately they think it's just some natural thing and when you have nausea and vomiting that certainly
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is a common symptom most of the poisonings that you see nowadays are of a much more
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sophisticated variety that are harder to detect initially or even after doing tests so
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arsenic was a surprise the manner of death was ruled a homicide but questions remained
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investigators discovered a receipt among nancy's papers a receipt for arsenic
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nancy's husband richard said she bought the poison to kill a colony of fire ants
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in their yard fire ants can be a really big problem and a bad problem especially with individuals who have
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really small children fire ants can get all over you and almost cover parts of your body before they even
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start biting and stinging and friends also revealed nancy had been depressed over the past
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year she discovered her husband was having an affair and the couple briefly separated richard
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had you know met another woman and she felt he was going through a midlife crisis
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so she said at first her take was hey i'm going to stay patient i'm going to get some counseling because
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she was just devastated really i wouldn't discount a woman making herself ill or
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even taking something to make herself ill to get the attention of her husband yet medical experts were skeptical that
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nancy committed suicide i don't believe that for a minute i mean you've got someone who's dying a very
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i would consider hideous death certainly capable at any time of voicing that she had taken the poison
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because the symptoms are you know both painful and you certainly are deteriorating with
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this absolutely ludicrous i mean she had two children she loved very dearly as a
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mother she was young she had everything to live for though you know it is absolutely
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ludicrous to believe that somebody would poison themselves with arsenic also among nancy's papers was a diary and it
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contained a blockbuster revelation she accused her older brother bill of sexual abuse when they were younger
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nancy said she feared her brother and questioned his ability to control himself sex
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sick sex the notation read with me my girls nancy's brother angrily denied the
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allegation but couldn't explain why she had written this in her diary her family strongly suspected richard
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was the killer since they knew he was having an affair with another woman i did not
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poison my wife nancy dillard lyon nor did i have anything to do with her tragic death
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so there was no shortage of suspects who sent the wine to nancy's home who sent the threatening letter
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why did nancy accuse her brother of sexual abuse and would he kill to keep her quiet
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and was nancy planning to divorce her husband in the event that this case becomes
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a murder charge this will be an honest to goodness perry mason style who done it
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investigators had plenty of suspects but little evidence in the poisoning death of nancy lyon
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the only thing they knew was that nancy didn't kill herself no way you would do it
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it's too painful it's too drawn out it's it's a horrible way to die
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and you're very aware and very conscious up until the very end of it there's no way you would kill yourself
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that way when a person ingests arsenic the poison attaches itself to the hair follicles
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as the hair grows the poison residue remains on the hair shaft and becomes a permanent record
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so scientists cut nancy's hair into seven millimeter pieces each piece corresponded to a two-week
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period each piece was placed in a separate vial and then exposed to radiation in a
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nuclear reactor the sample can be analyzed as is in most cases just simply weighed into a radiation bile
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most other methods require dissolution of the sample when scientists examined the hair with
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gamma-ray spectrophotometry they discovered a startling piece of information nancy had ingested small doses of
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arsenic every week starting four months before her death the dose of arsenic increased four weeks
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before her death the highest amount of arsenic was in nancy's system two weeks before her death
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her levels were anywhere from four to 100 times what normal levels were so it was a very significant level and it was
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lethal the forensic test showed the poisoning started when nancy's husband richard
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moved back home after the separation but richard wasn't the only person in nancy's life who had both motive and
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access nancy's handwritten diary alleged her brother bill had sexually abused her as
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a child investigators wanted to know whether this was a possible motive to see if these entries were written by
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nancy investigators sent the diary to a forensic document examiner hartford kittle handwriting examination is based
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upon two distinct facts no two people write exactly alike within the writing of a single
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individual there's normal variation it's this normal variation that we associate or we don't associate with the
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question writing surprisingly nancy and richard's handwriting looked strikingly similar
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friends said this was intentional while in college nancy had written some of richard's research papers and she
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mimicked his writing the similarities in these two writers was significant but they weren't able to
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completely make their handwriting look the same because they had two different minds that were
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picturing things a little differently but they tried to make them look the same kettle first looked at known handwriting
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samples from both nancy and richard despite their similarities there were differences
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she used her ampersands quite extensively through her writing so every fifth sixth line will have an a
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percent on it in her known handwriting whereas richard always used the a-n-d for the verbage and
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kettle also noticed that nancy and richard made their capital eyes differently richard just used one downstroke like a
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one whereas nancy used a down stroke like the one and then across at the top and the bottom she was willing to take
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a lot more time in executing them than richard was their lower case f's were different as
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well richard used a clockwise motion coming down from the top of the f down to the bottom he'd
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swing off in a clockwise motion to finish off the lower loop of the f whereas nancy always came down and went
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counterclockwise to finish off the f kittle concluded richard wrote the diary entries about
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nancy's brother bill absolutely certain that he had written that 100 certain
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yes prosecutors now believed richard lyon had forged nancy's diary to cover up the murder
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he never crossed his mind he was going to be caught he thought he had it aced and he
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certainly didn't think he'd be his own handwriting no one granted him the power of god to
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take her life she was slowly poisoned to death play one of the most hideous things that you can do to someone this
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wasn't done in a moment of passion or or anger of picking up a weapon that was handy to
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him this was done with slow premeditation and over a period of time and it's a hideous hideous way to murder
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somebody richard lyon insisted he had nothing to do with the poisoning death of his wife
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nancy as proof he offered a receipt for arsenic that he said nancy had signed prosecutors asked forensic experts
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whether this was in fact nancy's signature i wasn't able to reach a conclusion as to authorship
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but the owner of the company listed on the receipt told prosecutors all they needed to know
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did you sell her these chemicals no i didn't is this a receipt do you sell chemicals no i don't is this your
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receipt from your your business no it's a forgery it's not mine investigators also discovered that
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arsenic was not shipped to the lion's home but to a post office box richard opened
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there was no reason in the world to have a post office box set up at preston uh center for him to to get this arsenal
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if everything is completely legitimate why aren't you having it delivered at
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home or will you work that's because it's nefarious reasons of having it delivered to a post office box
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in the hospital before she died nancy lyon told her doctor about a suspicious incident that occurred
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several months earlier she said well one time when they were separated they had gone to the movies together
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and richard had gone and got her a drink and when he brought it to her and she drank some of it and she said it tasted
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awful and she looked in there there was a white powder on the top of the drink nancy said she became violently ill
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later that night and she told her doctor something else my husband he's been giving me these
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capsules for the last several months and he said nancy go take these these are like
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vitamins and these are good for you police confiscated every pill in the lion's home and sent them for forensic
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testing two pills tested positive for barium carbonate a toxic chemical used in the
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production of glass despite her suspicions nancy never directly accused richard of poisoning
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her you know nobody wants to believe that they've married to somebody that they
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can can murder i mean because then what do you ask what are you saying about yourself
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and it's kind of outside the realm of most people's i mean reality that someone would
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poison you and i don't think she wanted to believe it and and i think that she was embarrassed
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or ashamed to say anything about it prosecutors believe the motive was money and the desire to live with his
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girlfriend he didn't want her but he wanted the family affiliations and the alliances i think
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that it was partly money and it was partly just the position that he wanted and he
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couldn't have either one with just a divorce prosecutors believe richard first tried to kill nancy by
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putting barium carbonate in her vitamin pills and may have put it in nancy's soda at
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the movies when that didn't work he used arsenic forensic testing showed nancy started
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ingesting arsenic in september around the time she and richard reconciled the fatal dose was administered two days
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before nancy was admitted to the hospital where she died to hide his involvement richard created
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the fake invoice for the arsenic and forensic analysis proved that it was richard who wrote the sex-related
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entries in nancy's diary implicating her brother as a possible suspect i think he was calculating
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he thought of himself as a ladies man i think he was a cold-blooded killer and he did it
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in the most conspicuous way possible slowly ingesting arsenic to his wife when he went on trial for murder
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richard lyon pled not guilty but the forensic handwriting analysis the timeline of the poisonings captured
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in nancy's hair and the discovery of poison in vitamin pills found in the home
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were difficult to deflect richard's girlfriend even testified claiming richard lied by telling her
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that nancy had a rare and fatal blood disease any time that you catch a defendant or
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any witness in a lie and that was a pretty big one and i don't think a coincidence that she was going to die
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from a fatal blood disease i think that those things immediately begin to color their
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their view of him and he was a liar he would lie it took a jury less than three hours to
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convict richard lyon of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison i worked lots of cases
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like this and the question was always why not just a divorce you know they may be intelligent but they're criminally
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stupid and for a good reason and thank god they are because we we couldn't catch them it was hard for
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me to believe that he had actually killed his wife and it had just finally broken down based on the shape
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of an f and an l and an r and just scratchings on on a piece of paper [Music] [Music]
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[Music] you