As she brushed her hair and applied a quick coat of mascara, Janet Overton was excited to spend the day with her son.
A devoted mum who was active in the local school, the 46-year-old planned to take teenager Eric whale-watching on a boat with family friends.
It was meant to be a picture-perfect outing.
But as Janet walked out of her home that day in January 1988, she collapsed on the driveway.
Janet’s husband of 19 years, Richard, who was a mathematician and lecturer, quickly dialled emergency services, and he and Eric followed behind the ambulance as Janet was rushed to hospital.
But she was pronounced dead on arrival.
When the coroner’s office conducted the autopsy on Janet’s body, the result was inconclusive, meaning they were unable to determine why she died.
She’d complained about developing painful sores, rashes and lesions
Police officers began to look into the mysterious death. They scrutinised her medical records and interviewed friends and family about her life leading up to her demise.
One friend told them Janet had been feeling ‘pretty crummy’ for a long time. She’d complained about developing painful sores, rashes and lesions on her body.
She’d felt constantly nauseous and, at times, experienced such discomfort, she had to use crutches. But doctors had no idea what was wrong.
Investigators also discovered that Janet had been having an affair with a man named Bill Dawson, a married administrator at the school.
The pair had been secretly meeting for six years.
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At some point, their affair had been discovered, and printed flyers declaring that Janet Overton ‘has affairs with married men’ were distributed on all the cars in the school car park.
Janet had later told Bill she’d found what appeared to be a master copy of the flyer locked in one of her husband’s filing cabinets.
Could there be something more sinister about Janet’s unexplained illness and sudden death?
Could the affair and Richard’s humiliation be a motive for murder?
Police interviewed Richard, but he insisted he and his wife had had a happy and loving marriage. Police needed something more concrete.
Six months after Janet’s death, police got the solid lead they’d been waiting for.
They received a phone call from Richard’s former wife, Dorothy Boyer, who alleged she had developed a strange and sudden illness in the 1970s when she’d asked her husband for a divorce.
Dorothy told investigators she began to suspect that her former husband was sneaking into her house and poisoning her food because he was ‘upset and angry with her that she would divorce him’.
Suffering similar symptoms to Janet, she went to the police who determined, through fingerprints, that Richard Overton had spiked her shampoo, milk and coffee with selenium.
While it’s an essential nutrient, an overdose can cause death…
They’d confronted Richard with the evidence, but, while he admitted to the poisoning, he’d never been prosecuted and was instead referred to local mental health services.
So, if Richard had poisoned his first wife, could he have poisoned Janet too, this time fatally?
Paul Sedgwick, the coroner’s toxicologist, examined Janet’s stomach contents and immediately found evidence of foul play.
‘I smelled cyanide instantly,’ he later revealed in an interview. ‘Cyanide simply should not be in a person’s body in concentrations strong enough to detect by odour.’
Richard Overton was brought in for questioning, but maintained he had a happy, loving marriage and could not possibly have access to cyanide.
But police discovered that he did have access to it through a contact who worked in gold mining.
Richard abruptly stopped the interview when police pushed him for the truth.
At this point, the couple’s son Eric revealed he had believed his parents were heading for divorce, and that his father was capable of murdering his mum.
Police obtained a search warrant for the Overtons’ home.
There, they found articles about selenium and journals in which Richard meticulously recorded his wife’s every move.
The diaries revealed the marriage was far from happy and that he knew about Janet’s affair.
He also believed she was having affairs with other men and hinted about slowly poisoning her.
Richard had spiked his wife’s mascara and eyeliner with selenium
Police collected items belonging to Janet, including her make-up, and they were tested in a lab.
They found Richard had spiked his wife’s mascara and eyeliner with selenium which, brushed on daily, would be absorbed by the skin and have a cumulative effect.
Police also believed that on the day Janet had died he had put a larger dose of cyanide in her morning coffee.
On October 1, 1991, Richard Overton was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder.
During the first trial, in California, US, he allegedly suffered a heart attack and a mistrial was declared.
But after a second trial in 1995, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life.
Prosecutor Christopher Evans called Overton the ‘single most blatant, arrogant, yet curiously effective liar and manipulator of the truth’ he had ever seen.
In a sentencing report, Eric said what bothered him most was knowing that ‘his father is responsible for the death of the person he loved most in the world’.
Overton continued to proclaim his innocence until the day he died, in 2009, aged 81.
He had advanced dementia and complications from diabetes.
Having killed his wife, Richard Overton was a black widower – with an even darker heart.
Compiled by Russell Bell
