For making us fear Halloween candy.
Every year, many rumors and myths about candy tampering and poisoning during Halloween time resurface. The delicious dark holiday has been plagued by worries of candy contamination for decades. Parents fear that some madman will poison and distribute candy to unsuspecting boys and girls during their yearly trick-or-treating. There most certainly have been some scares, as well as false accusations. However, rest assured, there have been no “true” cases of random Halloween poisoning.
Nonetheless, someone has used the myth to try to get away with murder…
Okay, so Ronald O’Bryan did not invent the urban legend, but we have to blame someone, and he is about as nasty as someone can get. Long story short, he poisoned his own son with cyanide-laced Pixy Stix and blamed it on an aimless Halloween treat-giver. It turns out O’Bryan was just trying to collect on a large insurance policy he took out on the poor kid. He was found guilty and put to death, appropriately, by lethal injection.
Murder is one thing. Murdering a child is another. But putting the hit on your OWN son? Jokes fail me in this instance.
Another young boy, five years old, supposedly ate cruel counterfeit confections on All Hallows’ Eve. But it turned out that story was just a cover-up. He accidentally poisoned himself with his uncle’s all-too-accessible heroin stash. To throw off the police, the family sprinkled the drug on some candy after the child died. This brings the tally up to zero random psychos giving out tainted goodies on the frightful holiday. Which, statistically speaking, actually makes it safer to take candy from a stranger than from your own family. Nevertheless, parents still spend countless hours checking the safety of their kids’ sweet stash every year for apparently no reason. Some even go to the airport to get the candy X-rayed. It has all been fueled by rumors, assumptions, and assholes like Ronald Clark O’Bryan.