The fatal dose was administered two days before nancy was admitted to the hospital where she died. to hide his involvement, richard created the fake invoice for the arsenic. and forensic analysis proved that it was richard who wrote the sex-related entries in nancy s diary implicating her brother as a possible suspect. i think it was calculating. he thought himself as a lady s man. i think he was a cold-blooded killer, and he did it in the most despicable way possible, slowly ingesting arsenic to his wife. when he went on trial for murder, richard lyon pled not guilty. but the forensic handwriting analysis, the timeline of the
Adrink, 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. i mean, because then what are you saying about yourself?
Poisonings captured in nancy s hair and the discovery of poison in vitamin pills found in the 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 we couldn t catch them. it was hard for me to believe
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 spending with her children. nancy was also experiencing some physical ailments.
Information. nancy had ingested small doses of arsenic every week starting four months before her death. the dose of arsenic increased four weeks before her death. the highest amount of arsenic was in nancy s system two weeks before her death. her levels were anywhere from 4 to 100 times what normal levels were, so, it was a very significant level and it was lethal. the forensic tests showed the poisoning started when nancy s husband, richard, moved back home after the separation. but richard wasn t the only person in nancy s life who had both motive and access. nancy s handwritten diary alleged her brother, bill, had sexually abused her as a child. investigators wanted to know whether this was a possible motive. to see if these entries were