home were difficult to deflect. richard s girlfriend even testified, claiming richard lied by telling her that nancy had a rare and fatal blood disease. any time that you catch a defendant or any witness in a lie and that was a pretty big one and i don t think it s a coincidence that she was going to die from a fatal blood disease. i think that those things immediately begin to color their view of him, and he was a liar. he would lie. it took a jury less than three hours to convict richard lyon of first-degree murder. he was sentenced to life in prison. i worked lots of cases like this, and the question was always why not just a divorce. you know, they may be intelligent, but they re criminally stupid, and for good reason. and thank god they are, because
spending with her children. nancy was also experiencing some physical ailments. and on a january night in 1991, her symptoms included vomiting and severe stomach pain. her husband, richard, took her to the hospital emergency room. doctors were initially baffled. she was seen by multiple consultants, infectious disease, gastro neurologist, pulmonologist, nephrologists, and because of her multi organ failure. and still, in spite of all the resuscitation measures, she was not recovering. nancy s condition deteriorated, but she provided doctors with a potential clue. she said she first got sick several months earlier after drinking some wine from a bottle
that s the way the park cities is. nancy dillard lyon lived most of her life in texas. she was a harvard-trained architect and the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected dallas family. nancy met her husband, richard, while at harvard. they married and soon had two children. they had great energy, great friendliness. when we moved in, they gave gifts of ice cream and they baked cookies and bring them over to us. and my husband, who i ve said is rarely hyperbolic about anything, used to say she was the nicest person in the world. nancy became the youngest partner in the history of a trammell crow, a large real estate development firm. but success came at a price. i think she always had, as many women did at that time, a conflict between the amount of hours that she wanted to work to develop her career and time
minute. i mean, you ve got someone who s dying a very, i would consider hideous death, certainly capable at any time of voicing that she had taken the poison because the symptoms are, you know, both painful, and you certainly are deteriorating with this. absolutely ludicrous. i mean, she had two children she loved dearly, she was a mother, she was young. she had everything to live for. also among papers was a diary and it contained a blockbuster revelation. she accused her older brother, bill, of sexual abuse when they were younger. nancy said she feared her brother and questioned his ability to control himself. sex, sick sex, the notation read. with me, my girls. nancy s brother angrily denied the allegation but couldn t explain why she had written this in her diary. her family strongly suspected richard was the killer since
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 awful, and when she looked in there, there was a white powder on the top of the drink. nancy said she became violently ill later that night and told her doctor something else. my husband, he s been giving me these capsules for the past several months, and he would say, nancy, go take these, these are like vitamins and these are good for you. police confiscated every pill in the lyons home and sent them for forensic testing. two pills tested positive for barium carbonate, a toxic chemical used in the production of glass. despite her suspicions, nancy never directly accused richard of poisoning her. nobody wants to believe that they are married to somebody who can murder.