Linda Curry, Paul Curry: Former Jeopardy Contestant’s Wife’s 1994 Death By Nicotine Story Comes To ’48 Hours’

The mysterious death of Linda Curry, a California woman who died in her home of nicotine poisoning, will be featured in a new episode of 48 Hours. The case will lay out the events that led up to the death of Linda Curry and law enforcement’s investigation that led to the arrest of her husband, former Jeopardy game show contestant Paul Curry, two decades later. The case is similar to the 1999 movie Lethal Vows, which was based on the true story of wife killer Richard Overton.

Linda Curry’s case became publicized in 1994, when she was found dead in her home in San Clemente. When police arrived at the home, they were told that the woman had stopped breathing. An autopsy report concluded that she died due to high levels of nicotine being introduced into her system.

There seemed to be no explanation for her death. Linda Curry was not a smoker. Friends and family members knew that there had to be more to the story, and they thought the answers to her death could be found in her newly wed husband, Paul Marshal Curry.

When Linda met Paul almost two years earlier, she was living the good life. She was beautiful, smart, and she loved to have a good time partying on the weekend with her girlfriends. Then she met Paul, a semi-handsome businessman who had the gift of gab.

By all accounts, he was a short man, but what he didn’t have in stature, he made up for with his deep knowledge of every subject. He was impressive, interesting, and very smart. This was enough to sweep Linda off of her feet. But her friends were worried.

And when she confided in a friend just a month after she married Paul that he wanted to take out a life insurance policy on her life, her friend was shocked and concerned. It was shortly after that phone call that friends and family members began to notice that Linda Curry was ill. She was thin, and she was always nauseated, leading her to be hospitalized for her symptoms.

When she died, it was evident that her death was suspicious but the case went cold. In the years after her death, Paul Curry remarried a much younger woman and enjoyed a lucrative income working for the government.

But things took a turn for Paul in 2002. That’s when police investigators took another look at the case, and it became blatantly obvious that her death was no accident, and that Paul Curry had killed her to collect on the insurance money.

He was finally arrested, charged, and found guilty in her death. Currently, he is serving a life sentence in prison. Tonight’s 48 Hours will trace investigators’ steps in tracking down Paul Curry and connecting him to his former wife’s death.

The episode tease for tonight’s 48 Hours entitled “To Catch A Genius” reads this way, according to Futon Critic.

“A SUCCESSFUL WIFE IS DECLARED DEAD FROM NICOTINE POISONING – IS HER “JEOPARDY!”-WINNING HUSBAND SMART ENOUGH TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER? Paul Curry is considered a genius and is smart enough to become a “Jeopardy!” champion. But is he smart enough to use nicotine to poison his wife and get away with it? Erin Moriarty and 48 HOURS investigate the case against Curry for the murder of his Orange County, California, wife on[]Saturday, April 18 (10:00 PM, ET/PT).”

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