On this day, Oct. 31, in 1974, Ronald O’Bryan killed his 8-year-old son Timothy by giving him cyanide-laced trick-or-treat candy. Timothy pouring powdered sweetener from a Pixy Stix straw into his mouth, complained that it tasted bitter. O’Bryan gave him some Kool-Aid to wash the taste out.
Houston-area detectives quickly combed the neighborhood, recovering four other Pixy Stix. One straw was still clutched in the hand of a child who’d fallen asleep after failing to open the straw, which had been stapled shut. Two inches of each straw had been packed with a deadly dose of cyanide.
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