244: The Halloween Candy Killer, Ronald O'Brien USA

On Halloween night in 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Brien came home from trick-or-treating in Deer Park, Texas, excited to sample his candy haul. Among the treats was a Pixy Stix — one that would become infamous in American true crime history. Within hours, Timothy was dead, poisoned by cyanide. Investigators soon discovered that the killer wasn’t a mysterious stranger slipping poison into Halloween candy. It was someone much closer to home — his own father, Ronald Clark O’Brien. His crime forever changed the way parents across the United States viewed Halloween, giving rise to decades of fear over tampered sweets. Books: Read collections of The Evidence Locker Files , available in print and digital editions.

You can listen to 244: The Halloween Candy Killer, Ronald O'Brien USA online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

244: The Halloween Candy Killer, Ronald O'Brien USA is an episode from Evidence Locker True Crime by Audioboom.

This episode is 18:15 long.

This episode was published on Oct 19, 2025.

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