i just think about what it would have been like if she was still here. i miss her. when bobby curley was brought to the hospital hallucinating and in extreme pain, doctors could not find the cause. at first, they diagnosed a neurological problem, but his condition deteriorated. something he was given in the hospital wasn't curing him. it was killing him. 32-year-old bobby curley was a young man with a ready smile, many good friends, and a loving family. >> my brother, bobby, he was a fun-loving guy. he really was. he cared for his family very

much, myself and his mom, and my other brother, dave. he was an all around great guy. >> bobby was a perfect brother, a great brother. we fished together a lot. we'd go to canada twice a year fishing and we'd have a ball up there. >> in august of 1990, bobby married joann chopak, a young widow with a 4-year-old daughter. bobby and joann has been dating for about a year following the death of joann's first husband in an automobile accident. >> i gave them my blessings. i said it was time for him to get married and have a life of his own. >> they had a beautiful wedding. bob really wanted to meet a nice girl and start a family and just enjoy life. and he said he really loved her, and i was very happy for bob. >> the couple moved into joann's home on a quiet street in wilkes-barre, pennsylvania.

bobby worked for the morgan corporation as an electrician. and in may of 1991, he and his crew started work on a major renovation project in a local chemistry lab. >> we were told that everything would be cleared out of the labs, there would be nothing in there. we went in the lab and there would be bottles of chemicals here, stuff spilled. it was kind of, you know, i thought, hazardous. >> three months into the project bobby became ill. his brother noticed something was wrong when they met in a local bar one day after work. >> after one beer, he was ready to leave. i asked him why, and he said he just didn't feel right. his feet were burning for some reason and his feet hurt and he had a hard time walking. and i didn't know what was the problem. >> bobby also complained of numbness in his hands and pain in his feet. when he went to the local hospital, doctors diagnosed his

illness as guillain-barre syndrome, a rare condition that causes numbness and weakness of the extremities. although it can be serious, most patients recover. bobby's condition gradually improved and he was released from the hospital. but the pain returned, this time even worse than before. he was also vomiting. >> he couldn't even stand up, and he had to go to the bathroom. i remember my sister and i had to literally carry him to the bathroom. >> once we got him into the bathroom, he looked at me and he said, sue, please call the ambulance. he knew he was that sick. >> this time curley was taken to a regional medical center about 100 miles away. when he got there, he was hallucinating and had to be restrained. >> i thought maybe at one point that he would get better, but he never did. he got worse and worse. he couldn't sit. he couldn't lay. everything was bothering him.

>> although curley's blood tests were all normal, dr. donovan had a hunch, and if he was correct, bobby curly was dying. p make sel tomorrows a reality for over 19 million people. [ susan ] my promotion allowed me to start investing for my retirement. transamerica made it easy. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. transamerica. transform tomorrow. transamerica. who cares how tight it can if turn, if it can't turn heads? who cares how capable it is, if it's incapable of creating a reaction? any suv can move something. but can it move you? introducing the first-ever lexus nx turbo and hybrid. once you go beyond utility, there's no going back.

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when bobby curley was examined by doctors in the regional medical center, his blood tests were all normal. but his doctors noticed something that had previously been overlooked. bobby curley was losing his hair. >> he had had weakness and numbness in the extremities, and he particularly had had burning and pain on the soles of his feet, which is a classical description of arsenic and thallium poisoning. that coupled with the hair loss almost makes the diagnosis. >> a special urine test confirmed dr. donovan's suspicion. curley was suffering from thallium poisoning. thallium is a rare and highly toxic poison which doesn't show up in routine lab tests. before it was banned in the united states in the early '70s, thallium was commonly used in rat poison. it can take months to build up in the body before causing symptoms. unfortunately, there is no known

antidote for thallium poisoning. >> well, my first thought was, could i save this patient? unfortunately, by the time i was involved in this case and the diagnosis was being established, there was very little that could be done. >> and i remember him pointing to all his diplomas and everything else, his certificates on his walls and saying, all these can't do anything for your brother. he said, there is just nothing that we can do. your brother is going to die. >> on september 26th, bobby curley lapsed into a coma. when there were no longer any signs of brain activity, he was taken off life support. >> we said our good-byes to bobby. and we were -- we went -- i couldn't see bobby going. i couldn't. >> the autopsy confirmed that curley died of complications

caused by thallium poisoning, most likely one large dose. hospital officials notified the occupational safety and health administration to see if curley could have ingested the thalluim while working at the chemistry lab. one of the coworkers believed the work site was unsafe. >> in one lab i found a wiping rag and i remember this was after bobby was already sick. and i remember going to tell the other gentlemen and guys, don't go in that room. there's thallium. it's a heavy metal. it is a poison. i don't think we should bother by going in there. >> thallium can be ingested, it can be absorbed through the skin or i can be inhaled. any one of those routes could give you a poisoning type of exposure. >> to find out if thallium could have been accidentally ingested by those in the lab, air samples were collected, counter and shelf surfaces were swabbed, and

dust and dirt samples were all taken for analysis. joann curley told investigators that her husband had brought home some cabinets from the laboratory which were going to be discarded. the cabinets were also tested for thallium. the results of all of these tests were negative. and none of the other electricians who worked with bobby curley at the chemistry lab had thallium in their systems. joann curley requested a thallium test for herself. both joanne and her four-year-old daughter tested positive for thallium. >> it was not enough to either cause symptoms or even to need treatment, but it did indicate that there had been abnormal exposure to thallium for both of them. >> investigators found traces of thallium in curley's home. they found it in two thermoses that bobby took with him every day.

thermoses that usually held ice tea. >> i did not know who placed the thallium in the iced tea containers. i could not confirm that. but i think that somebody certainly did, and that caused his death. and homicide is one person causing the death of another. >> police turned their attention to bobby curley's coworkers and the possibility of a practical joke gone bad. double wings, extra ranch. we need to do something different. callahan's? ehh, i mean get away. like away away. road trip? double wings, extra ranch. it feels good to mix it up. the all-new, fuel-efficient volkswagen golf tdi clean diesel. up to 594 miles of adventure in every tank. introducing the all-new volkswagen golf family.

2015 motor trend car of the year. the pain felt like my feet were on fire.e pain. i had these very burning, needle-like sensations. i knew i needed to see a doctor. my doctor said, "let's try lyrica." lyrica has helped relieve my pain. it's known that diabetes damages nerves lyrica is fda-approved to treat diabetic nerve pain. lyrica is not for everyone. it may cause serious allergic reactions, or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, changes in eyesight including blurry vision, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or skin sores from diabetes. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. having less pain... it's a great feeling. ask your doctor about lyrica today.

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when traces of thallium were found in a thermos bobby curley took to work, police questioned his coworkers. >> they asked me how well he got along with the other guys on the job, was there any bad blood, did he have any arguments, stuff like that. >> bobby curley was only 32 years old when he was named foreman of the electrical job at the chemistry lab. his promotion bypassed several older, more experienced electricians. was jealousy a possible motive? investigators also discovered that curley was sometimes the victim of practical jokes. coworkers would sometimes lace his food with seasonings as a

joke. >> curley was just one of several people that had jokes played on him, but it would be like hot pepper in chewing tobacco, things of that nature. and it was theorized that possibly somebody put the thallium in his iced tea mistaking it for valium, just to see what it would do to him. >> when investigators looked closer at the thermoses at home, they found thallium in the threads of a pint-sized thermos that bobby never took to work. joann curley offered an explanation. she recalled that once after her husband came home from work, she poured some leftover iced tea from his work thermos into the smaller pint-sized one so it wouldn't go to waste. joann said she and her daughter may have consumed some of that iced tea later, which would explain how they had thallium in

their systems. bobby curley's family grew suspicious and asked authorities if there was any way to prove whether joann was involved. to find out, the district attorney had curley's body exhumed for a second autopsy. forensic toxicologist dr. frederick readers was particularly interested in analyzing bobby curley's hair. when a substance like thallium is circulating in the blood steam, it will attach to the hair root, which is a cell. thallium then stays on the hair shaft, even as the hair grows out. hair grows at the average rate of 1.38 centimeters per month, which means that a strand of hair can contain six months or more of medical history.

the doctor took samples of bobby curley's hair and cut them into smaller pieces. a process called segmental analysis of the hairpieces. those segments were then analyzed with a test called atomic absorption spectrophotometry, which shows which sections of hair contained thallium and which sections did not. the results were plotted on a calendar and indicated that bobby curley was exposed to thallium long before he started work in the chemistry lab. >> curley received a dose of thallium, not a very large one, essentially two months after they got married, about a year before he died. >> forensic tests would soon provide police with even more shocking evidence, evidence that pointed in only one direction.

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dying at the hospital. this was confirmed when the doctor found a large concentration of thallium in bobby's intestines. >> he had a very large dose not too long before he died. the concentrations in the intestine were 1,000 times higher than the concentrations in his blood and in his autopsy tissues, which meant they were of very recent origin. >> using the timeline of ingestion, investigators eliminated individuals who had no contact with bobby during the times he had been poisoned. >> this was an investigation of exclusion, eliminating the people that couldn't have done it until you got down to the one person on the left that could have done it, which was joann. >> police also learned that joann and bobby were not always a happy couple. >> at first, i do think bob was very happy.

but then, even just a few months into the marriage, i wasn't quite sure. bob made some different comments, maybe that he wished he never got married. >> police discovered that shortly after the wedding, bobby made joann the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policies worth nearly $300,000. forensic tests showed that the poisoning began approximately two months after joann and bobby got married. >> that was a shocker. i couldn't believe that. it was like she planned it from day one. when the papers were signed making her beneficiary of everything, that's when she started. >> family members recall joann's disturbing behavior the moment bobby was taken off of life support. >> i remember none of us could go into the room and stay there and watch this happen, but joann could. she wanted to stay in the room

and see bob die. >> on december 12th, 1996, joann curley was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. facing overwhelming forensic evidence and the possibility of the death penalty, she pled guilty to a lesser charge of third-degree murder. at her sentencing, joann publicly admitted what forensic testing had already confirmed, that she had systematically poisoned her husband with thallium. >> today joann curley is a confessed killer. today joann curley surrendered. in open court and under oath, joann curley admitted that she personally poisoned her husband over a lengthy period. she openly admitted to how it was done, when it was done, and

to the type of poison used. >> she placed the thallium in her husband's iced tea about a dozen times. her confession matched almost perfectly dr. reader's timeline. >> and that her confession paralleled it, frankly, i was amazed. i wasn't proud or delighted. i mean, it was good, but i was amazed. >> joann's confession told a horrific tale of murder motivated by greed. >> her answer, when asked point blank why she did this, was for the money, i killed him for the money. >> joann said she used rat poison she found in her grandmother's basement. at first, she used only a small amount in her husband's iced tea, but later increased the amount when she feared it wasn't working.

in the hospital, joann finished what she started. she poured a massive amount of thallium into his soda and gave it to him as he lay dying. >> i brought you something cold to drink. >> that's unbelievable, to be married two months and start killing your husband. and the last one, that's the one that really bothered me, that he got it while he was in the hospital. because i was there that day and joann was there. i was sitting next to her and her purse was right there between us. and to know now that the thallium was in her purse at that time, that bothered me. that really bothered me. >> tests revealed that joann and her daughter ingested minute traces of thallium after his death.

joanne may have ingested the poison intentionally and given a small amount to her daughter in order to divert police suspicions. joann curley denies this and says she has no idea how she and her daughter ingested the trace amounts of thallium. ironically, joann curley was not aware that thallium was present in the chemistry lab where bobby was working before his death. >> her not knowing what the chemical was that she was poisoning him with and then to have found it at the university where he last worked, you couldn't have ask for a bigger coincidence when you were sitting there as joann curley. >> but forensic science established a toxicological timeline of a blushing bride's evil plan. joann curley was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison. >> well, obviously she was someone who was intent upon carrying out her plan. she was intent on her result,

and the result she wanted was bob curley's death. and it was obviously a ghoulish type of crime that you don't see very often anywhere in this country. >> i could never forgive joann for what she did to bob. to watch him die like that, it was heartbreaking for me to watch him die, any human being to die like that. no one deserves to die like that. >> i know there's evil out there, but i just -- that's the first time i ever ran into anybody that could methodically poison somebody and watch them die. >> she's a monster, that's what she is. i'll always believe that. in my heart, she took somebody away from us that was very dear to us and we miss him terribly. >> i couldn't believe it. they got so much from so little. from a few strands of hair, they were able to tell when she gave

him the poison, how often she gave him the poison and how big the doses she gave of the poison right up until the last day. it's amazing on june 21st, 1978, 22-year-old karla brown was found brutally murdered in the basement of her home. it looked as if the killer had committed the perfect crime, and police could find very little evidence. but years later, investigators noticed something on a crime scene photograph that had previously been overlooked. the killer had left behind a clue.