# 35: The Candyman Killer

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 15 Aug 2023, 13 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880289/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851559-44100-2-057ddafd1acb5baf.mp3

Today's episode is on the candyman aka the man who killed Halloween Trigger Warning: abduction, rape, torture Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:38] Today's video is on the Candyman, also known as the man
[0:42] that killed Halloween. I know there's a bunch of
[0:44] different criminals, especially serial killers nicknamed the
[0:47] candyman. This one is not serial killer.
[0:49] This is a one off murder case. And it does get quite confusing
[0:52] because so many of you guys recommend that I cover the
[0:54] Candyman, but there's literally about 50 criminals nicknamed the
[0:58] Candyman. So I'm looking at them all I'm
[1:01] going to get through them all hopefully.
[1:03] But today we're going to be talking about the man that
[1:04] killed Halloween, also known as the Candyman.
[1:07] But quickly before we get into this video, I just want to give
[1:10] my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[1:13] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[1:15] This is all just information that I have found on the
[1:17] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[1:19] S The O'Brien family lived in Deer Park in Texas.
[1:23] It consisted of father Ronald, mother Diane, and the children
[1:26] were 8 year old Timothy and five year old Elizabeth.
[1:29] On Halloween of 1974, Ronald and the neighbor decided that they
[1:33] were going to take their kids out trick or treating together
[1:36] as a group. So the kids dressed up and they
[1:38] went out trick or treating, treating and everything went
[1:40] well for the first few houses. When they ended up at 1:00 where
[1:43] the occupant didn't answer the door and the kids got impatient,
[1:46] realizing that they weren't going to get any sweets from
[1:48] this house. And so they ran ahead to the
[1:50] next one and the neighbor followed them all.
[1:53] Ronald O'Brien stayed back at this house.
[1:55] A couple of minutes later, Ronald rejoined the group,
[1:58] saying that the person at the house did eventually answer the
[2:00] door. And he gave him 5 sherbet sticks
[2:02] for the kids. So he gave one to each of the
[2:04] three kids, his own son, his own daughter, the neighbor's child.
[2:08] And he also gave another one to the neighbor for his other child
[2:11] who was younger and waiting at home.
[2:12] And then he gave the last of the five sherbet sticks to a random
[2:15] boy walking past that he recognized from church.
[2:18] So the group carried on trick or treating, although they were out
[2:21] for much longer after that. They only did streets because it
[2:23] was actually raining quite bad. So they finished up trick or
[2:26] treating. They went home and then 8 year
[2:28] old Timothy decided that he wanted some of his Halloween
[2:31] sweets that he just collected and so he chose the sherbet
[2:34] stick that his dad got from that house.
[2:36] But this sherbet stick was quite hard to open.
[2:38] It had a staple over the top of it and so Timothy gave it to his
[2:42] dad Ronald, who opened it for him and then gave him it back so
[2:45] we could eat it. Timothy only had like a small
[2:47] mouthful of this sherbet and then complained that it was
[2:50] bitter. He said it really didn't taste
[2:51] nice and so he left the rest of it.
[2:53] So Ronald, his dad made him some cool lid so that he could wash
[2:56] this taste out of his mouth. But then Timothy started
[2:59] complaining of really painful stomach ache.
[3:01] Within minutes of eating the sherbet, Timothy ran to the
[3:04] bathroom, began projectile vomiting and convulsing on the
[3:07] floor. So Ronald ran in and held
[3:09] Timothy as he was vomiting and claimed that his son went limp
[3:13] in his arms. So an ambulance was called
[3:15] because this was clearly an emergency.
[3:17] However, on his way to the hospital, Timothy O'Brien passed
[3:20] away less than half an hour after eating this week.
[3:23] So quickly news spread about the neighborhood that there was one
[3:26] house giving out poison sweets to children and everyone was
[3:29] suspicious of all of their neighbors.
[3:31] Many of the parents in the neighborhood were confiscating
[3:34] their children's sweets, fearing that maybe they'd been to this
[3:37] house that was giving out poison sweets.
[3:39] Police were given thousands and thousands of sweets to either
[3:42] test or destroy out of fears that they might be poisoned.
[3:45] So police began questioning Timothy's family, specifically
[3:48] his dad who was out trick or treating with his son that
[3:51] night, and they found that the poison suite was actually the
[3:54] sherbet and so an alert was put out in the neighborhood.
[3:57] Ronald told police how this house had given him 5 sherbet
[4:00] sticks and luckily none of the other four children had eaten
[4:03] them yet so they were confiscated as well.
[4:05] Obviously it was easy to get the first 3 sherbet sticks back, one
[4:08] of them was Ronald's other child and both of the other two were
[4:11] the neighbors children so it was easy to get those.
[4:14] However, that 5th sherbet stick Ronald gave to a random boy on
[4:17] the street that he recognized from church, so it was going to
[4:20] be harder to locate that one. Police eventually the next
[4:23] morning got in contact with the fifth boy's parents and they
[4:26] frantically began searching through his trick or treat bag,
[4:29] trying to find a sherbet stick. But they couldn't find this
[4:32] sherbet stick anywhere. They were panicking, they were
[4:34] frantic, and so they ran up to their son's room, fearing that
[4:37] maybe it might be too late. And there in his bed was this
[4:40] boy, asleep with the uneaten sherbet stick in his hand.
[4:44] He said he was going to eat it before he had his nap.
[4:47] However, the staple on the top was just too hard for him to
[4:50] open and so he didn't bother eating it, luckily.
[4:52] So the police studied these sherbet sticks and found that
[4:55] the first two inches of sherbet had been poured out and replaced
[4:59] with cyanide powder. And the amount of cyanide in
[5:02] these sticks was enough to kill between 3:00 and 4:00, fully
[5:05] grown adults. And these were given to children
[5:08] under the age of 10. So obviously police questioned
[5:11] Ronald O'Brien about like which house he got it from, what the
[5:14] person at the house looked like, but he couldn't remember the
[5:17] house that he got it from. Which police found a bit odd
[5:20] because like I said, they only went to like 2 houses trick or
[5:23] treating because it was raining. So he'd probably only been to
[5:26] like 40 or 50 houses. So police just went out and
[5:29] questioned every single house that the group went to that
[5:32] night trick or treating, yet none of them said they were
[5:34] giving out sherbet sticks. Eventually, Ronald did remember
[5:37] the house that gave him the sherbet sticks.
[5:39] However, he said that the person that answered the door just kind
[5:42] of cracked open the door a little bit, didn't even turn on
[5:45] a light inside and just put his hand out with the sherbet sticks
[5:48] in his hand. So Ronald didn't see who gave
[5:51] him them. The owner of this house was a
[5:53] man named Courtney Melvin, who was an air traffic controller
[5:56] who claimed that he was at work until 11:00 PM that night.
[6:00] So police went and questioned almost 200 people that Courtney
[6:03] Melvin worked with at the airport, and every single one of
[6:06] them said that he was in that night.
[6:09] So now that Courtney Melvin was ruled out as a suspect, police
[6:12] began to wonder why Ronald had said that he got the sweets from
[6:15] that house when he obviously didn't.
[6:17] So they began looking into Ronald O'Brien, Timothy's own
[6:20] father. Police quickly realized that
[6:22] Ronald O'Brien was in $100,000 of debt and he jumped around
[6:27] from job to job like every couple of months.
[6:30] He never had like a stable career.
[6:32] Money was always a problem for Ronald.
[6:34] At the time of Timothy's death, Ronald was also being suspected
[6:38] of theft at his workplace as an optician, and he was very close
[6:41] to being fired from that job as well.
[6:43] His car was about to be repossessed.
[6:45] He'd taken out several different bank loans, which the family
[6:48] home was actually foreclosed on, meaning that he was probably
[6:52] going to lose the family home as well.
[6:54] So the police dug a little bit further and found that Ronald
[6:57] O'Brien had actually taken out life insurance policies on both
[7:00] of his children just a couple of months earlier in January.
[7:03] He originally took out $10,000 plans on each of his children.
[7:08] And then just a month before Timothy's death, he upped it by
[7:11] a further 20,000 per child. And then in the days before
[7:14] Halloween, in the days before Timothy's murder, he took out a
[7:18] further 20,000 per child, making their total life insurance
[7:22] policies when rounded up around 60,000 per child.
[7:27] Which is a ridiculously high life insurance policy for a 5
[7:30] year old and an 8 year old, especially when you're having
[7:33] money problems as it is. So police went and spoke to
[7:35] Diane, Ronald's wife, the children's mother, who said she
[7:38] actually had no idea that the children had any life insurance
[7:42] policies, never mind $60,000 ones.
[7:45] And when police got in contact with the life insurance
[7:48] companies, they told them that Ronald O'Brien had actually
[7:51] contacted them on the 1st of November, the morning after his
[7:55] son died, inquiring about how he could get the money from his
[7:58] life insurance policy. So obviously, especially in the
[8:01] beginning, this case was all over the news.
[8:04] A child had been murdered via Halloween Suites.
[8:07] Someone had poisoned Halloween sweets with the intention of
[8:10] killing a child. And when they heard about this
[8:12] news, a local chemical supply store decided to get in contact
[8:16] with police because they believed that Ronald O'Brien had
[8:19] actually tried to buy cyanide from their shop due to its
[8:22] lethality. The chemical supply store will
[8:24] only sell cyanide in very, very small amounts unless you have
[8:27] some kind of license or whatever.
[8:29] Because it is so dangerous, they don't want to just give large
[8:32] amounts of it to anyone, obviously.
[8:34] And this man that came into their store that they believed
[8:36] was Ronald O'Brien asked for a huge amount, way more than they
[8:40] could give him. And when they said no, he left
[8:43] without buying anything. So police quickly theorized that
[8:46] Ronald O'Brien had tried to poison both of his children,
[8:49] tried to kill both of his children in an attempt to get
[8:52] their life insurance money and get himself out of debt.
[8:55] And they believed that he probably gave the other list
[8:57] sweets to other kids just to kind of cover his own tracks so
[9:00] that it wasn't just his kids being targeted.
[9:03] If it seemed to be multiple children that died from these
[9:06] list sweets, then it was obvious that it was probably a house
[9:09] giving out these sweets. So police accused and questioned
[9:12] Ronald O'Brien in the following days, Yet he maintained his
[9:15] innocence. He did not kill his children,
[9:17] but police didn't believe him and so they arrested him on
[9:20] November 5th. He was charged with one count of
[9:22] capital murder and four counts of attempted murder, making him
[9:26] eligible for the death penalty. Ronald pled not guilty to all 5
[9:30] charges, yet the prosecution had a ton of evidence against him.
[9:34] Ronald's friend, who also happened to be a chemist test
[9:37] was called up to testify and he said that a year before this
[9:41] Ronald had questioned him about cyanide all summer.
[9:44] He was asking him where he could get cyanide, what the lethal
[9:47] dose was, how it killed people, and eventually this friend who
[9:50] was a chemist just kind of cut him off because he was getting
[9:53] very strange. The salesman in that chemical
[9:56] supply store testified to say that it was in fact Ronald
[9:59] O'Brien that came into his shop just a week before Timothy's
[10:02] murder trying to buy cyanide. Ronald's friends and Co workers
[10:06] all testified say that Ronald had a weird interest in cyanide.
[10:10] He always seemed to be talking about cyanide, particularly in
[10:13] the couple of months before Timothy murder.
[10:16] Ronalds brother-in-law and sister-in-law both testified
[10:19] that at Timothy funeral at his eight-year old sons funeral,
[10:23] Ronald would not show up about how much money he was going to
[10:26] get from this life insurance policy.
[10:28] Instead of grieving over his recently deceased 8 year old
[10:31] son, he was telling everyone what he was going to spend the
[10:33] life insurance money on, including a trip away.
[10:37] On June 3rd, 1975, the jury took just 45 minutes to decide that
[10:41] Ronald O'Brien was guilty of capital murder and four counts
[10:45] of attempted murder. They then took a further 70
[10:48] minutes to decide that Ronald O'Brien should be sentenced to
[10:51] death. After he was found guilty, his
[10:53] wife Diane divorced him and years later she eventually found
[10:57] another man. She remarried and this man
[10:59] adopted her daughter Elizabeth, and they kind of rebuilt their
[11:02] family as much as they could without Timothy.
[11:04] Ronald spent ten years in prison before his execution.
[11:07] The whole time he was being relentlessly attacked and
[11:10] harassed by other roommates for being a child killer.
[11:13] So Ronald O'Brien's initial execution date was set for
[11:16] August 8th, 1986, years after the murder.
[11:20] However, his attorney got it postponed.
[11:22] So when new date was set for two years later on May 25th, 1982,
[11:27] but once again his attorney got it postponed for unknown
[11:30] reasons. So 1/3 date was set for the 8th
[11:33] anniversary of the murder Halloween of 1982.
[11:37] And this time the judge said that he would drive Ronald
[11:40] O'Brien to the death chamber himself if it meant that he
[11:43] finally got his execution. But once again, the Supreme
[11:46] Court delayed Ronald O'Brien's execution date, giving him
[11:50] chance to appeal his death penalty.
[11:52] And Ronald's appeal was was unsuccessful and so 1/4
[11:55] execution date was set for March 31st of 1984.
[11:59] And once again Ronald's attorney tried to postpone this date but
[12:02] this time by saying that the lethal injection was too cruel
[12:06] of a punishment. But this time finally judges
[12:09] rejected the attorney's request to postpone the execution.
[12:12] And Ronald O'Brien was killed by lethal injection.
[12:15] In his final statement, Ronald O'Brien professed his innocence
[12:18] and said that he felt that the death penalty was wrong.
[12:21] And during the execution of a crowd of 300 people gathered
[12:25] outside, all cheering, some of them even shouting trick or
[12:28] treat, some of them throwing sweets in the air.
[12:31] And yeah, that completes this case.
[12:36] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[12:39] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[12:41] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[12:44] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[12:48] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[12:56] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[12:59] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[13:02] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[13:05] See you next time.

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