As notorious killer Joann Curley exits prison today after 20 years, the man who prosecuted her is revealing for the first time many inside details of the sensational murder case and reasons behind key decisions.
Former Luzerne County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. maintains he wanted the Wilkes-Barre woman convicted of premeditated, first-degree murder sentenced to death for the killing of her husband, Robert Curley, in September 1991.
But the prosecution’s case hinged on emerging forensic evidence never introduced before in Pennsylvania courts, and investigators worried Ms. Curley would walk free if a judge barred the evidence from trial, Mr. Olszewski recalled recently in a phone interview.
“If that was excluded, she walked. There’s no case,” Mr. Olszewski said. “The entire case was based on the toxicological testing.”
Likewise, the defense worried Ms. Curley could be sent to death row if the evidence was allowed and a jury believed the prosecution’s theory, according to Ms. Curley’s lead attorney Frank Nocito. He offered a plea to third-degree murder that would jail his client for 10 to 20 years, the maximum penalty at that time.
“The science was still emerging. It was going to be a true clash of the experts. Given the uncertainty of the sciences on both sides, it made sense to come to the agreement,” Mr. Nocito said. “It’s hard to believe 20 years have gone by.”
Heavy metal murder
Ms. Curley remained free for more than five years after her husband’s death, until breakthrough forensic testing results assured investigators that she was the only person who could have systematically poisoned him during their 13-month marriage.
She was arrested, and imprisoned 20 years ago today: Dec. 12, 1996.
The new evidence included hair and fingernail clippings taken at a second autopsy by forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden after Mr. Curley’s body was exhumed in August 1994.
The pioneering doctor from Montgomery County had discovered a new testing method — segmental analysis — that could establish a timeline accurate almost to the day of when toxins entered someone’s body based on the growth rate of hair and fingernails. While new at the time, it’s since become a common testing method.
Prosecutors hit a major roadblock when they exhumed Mr. Curley’s body from Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kingston Twp., Mr. Olszewski said.
The concrete vault and Mr. Curley’s coffin were filled to the top with water, possibly compromising the evidence.
“It was like a double problem for us. In the normal course of events, this type of testing was never admitted in Pennsylvania before. But in our case, the evidence was underwater for a substantial amount of time,” Mr. Olszewski said. “That kind of evidence had never been introduced anytime, anywhere in the United States.”
At the conclusion of his testing, the doctor, forensic toxicologist Fredric Rieders, believed Mr. Curley, 32, was poisoned with thallium — a heavy metallic chemical once used in rat poison — for up to 11 months, with a massive dose given to him in his final days.
That finding was the “game changer” that led to Ms. Curley’s arrest, but doubt still hovered over whether the test results would hold up in court against a defense challenge, Mr. Olszewski said.
Confession of a killer
Mr. Olszewski, who was still leaning toward taking the case to trial as the lead prosecutor, said his entire prosecution team instead favored Mr. Nocito’s plea deal, which carried a maximum prison sentence of 20 years at the time.
They privately huddled at Mr. Olszewski’s home to debate the offer and unanimously voted in favor of accepting the plea deal.
The family of Mr. Curley was on board, as well, he said.
But they had one condition: force Ms. Curley to confess and tell investigators everything about how she poisoned him and why.
To their surprise, she agreed to talk.
They set up a meeting at a conference room in the Luzerne County Correctional Facility on July 15, 1997.
Ms. Curley told investigators she started poisoning her husband early in their marriage because she was unhappy with how it was going, according to transcripts of the interrogation published in The Citizens’ Voice days after the confession.
“Why not divorce him and get rid of him? Why did you have to kill him?,” Mr. Olszewski asked her.
“I wanted the insurance money,” she replied.
As the investigation dragged on for more than five years, Ms. Curley was paid nearly $300,000 from her husband’s life insurance policy and other benefits, money later used to pay her top-flight defense team.
Ms. Curley told investigators she started by putting a “pinch” of rat poison in the thermoses of iced tea her electrician husband took to work every day. She said she gradually increased the amount over many months until he got badly ill. She said she delivered the final dose during his dying days at Hershey Medical Center in Dauphin County after other family members had left for the day.
“I took the rat poison and just walked up and put it in a drink, like a, like a fountain drink — you know with a plastic lid and stuff. I put it in there,” Ms. Curley said. “I guess I really didn’t know for sure that he was going to drink it. I offered it to him and he did.”
Ms. Curley’s detailed confession provided answers that may have never been revealed had the case gone to trial, no matter the outcome, Mr. Olszewski said.
“The family got closure in terms of what happened to Bob Curley and who did it and why she did it,” he said.
Prior to the confession, Ms. Curley was interviewed many times, denied responsibility and even passed lie detector tests, Mr. Olszewski noted.
World renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, an expert witness for the prosecution, wrote about the Curley murder case in his 2003 book, “Mortal Evidence: The Forensics Behind Nine Shocking Cases.” He devoted a chapter to the thallium poisoning case, entitling it “Heavy Metal Murder.”
“I highly doubt Joann Curley would have ever admitted killing her husband had it not been for the powerful evidence against her provided by the segmental hair analysis,” Dr. Wecht wrote.
Despite the confession and guilty plea under oath in Luzerne County Court, Joann Curley denied responsibility for the murder during her last bid for parole in 2015, according to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole.
She was once again rejected for early release because she denied responsibility and lacked remorse, a letter from the board said.
Mr. Olszewski took exception to Joann Curley trying to rewrite history.
“Obviously, she accepted responsibility when she was interviewed by our team and, obviously, she accepted responsibility when she was under oath by the trial judge,” Mr. Olszewski said. “If she denied responsibility to the parole board, she’s a liar.”
Misdirection
The Curley investigation dragged on for more than five years because of misdirection from the beginning.
Mr. Curley died Sept. 27, 1991, at Hershey Medical Center in Dauphin County after suffering weeks of agonizing pain. He had been transferred there after two stints at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital.
How he was poisoned was a mystery, but his death wasn’t immediately treated as a crime. His death was suspected to be from accidental industrial or environmental contamination.
No law enforcement officials attended an autopsy a day after his death.
Questions soon arose about what county or agency would have jurisdiction to look into the death.
It wasn’t until Oct. 22, 1991, that a criminal investigation was launched by Wilkes-Barre police and Luzerne County detectives. Authorities executed a search warrant at the Curley home at 33 S. Cleveland St. and interviewed Ms. Curley for the first time. By that time, Ms. Curley had already thrown out a huge jar of rat poison that locals knew her grandmother, shop owner and landlord, had stored in the basement of the family homestead to deal with the local rodent problem.
The Dauphin County coroner didn’t rule the death a homicide until Dec. 17, 1991.
The initial focus zeroed in on Robert Curley’s co-workers, who were doing electrical work at a chemistry lab at Stark Hall at Wilkes University. The lab happened to possess thallium. Some theorized a prankster co-worker might have laced one of Mr. Curley’s drinks with the chemical, confusing it with the similar sounding prescription drug muscle relaxer called Valium.
As details about the case leaked, Ms. Curley used the happenstance to her advantage. She even sued Wilkes University.
During her confession, Ms. Curley said it was “luck” her husband happened to be working around thallium around the time he died and she used the scenario to deflect suspicion from herself.
Chester Zaremba, 70, of Nanticoke, was a sergeant with the state police crime unit at Wyoming at the time of Mr. Curley’s death. He said he urged his superiors to allow state police to take over the investigation early on.
“I was told it was a Wilkes-Barre case. I said, ‘The man died in Hershey. It’s a state police case.’ I was told we’re not going to look at it,” Mr. Zaremba recalled.
Their minds apparently changed when Mr. Olszewski, the 30-year-old son of a Pennsylvania Superior Court judge, took office in January 1992.
On Jan. 6. 1992, one of his first days in office, Mr. Olszewski launched the “Curley Task Force” with Mr. Zaremba in charge.
Mr. Zaremba said investigators were initially provided with much misinformation by supposed experts in the science and medical field.
When investigators suspected rat poison as the source of the thallium, an official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doubted that as a possibility based on the high levels of thallium in Mr. Curley’s system, Mr. Zaremba said.
“He said, ‘If it was rat poison, he’d have to have eaten a roomful of it,’” Mr. Zaremba recalled. “We were told it would have had to be a heavy dose of industrial-strength thallium.”
Additionally, doctors and investigators in Hershey “swore there was no way he could have ingested thallium at Hershey Medical Center,” he recalled.
“Now we know different,” Mr. Zaremba said.
Investigators were also working on the theory that Mr. Curley was poisoned once, not over the course of many months as turned out to be the case when the segmental analysis testing was used.
Mr. Zaremba retired in January 1993 with the case still in limbo.
The emergence of segmental analysis testing in later years — which determined Mr. Curley was poisoned for up to 11 months — helped a new team of state police investigators finally arrest Ms. Curley.
“Had I had that one bit of information, we would have taken a different approach,” Mr. Zaremba said. “I’m glad science finally caught up with the times.”
Mr. Olszewski credited then-Major Michael Jordan, area commander in charge of state police troops based in Wyoming, Dunmore and Montoursville, with providing him in 1994 with the resources to finally crack the case.
“He went to his other troops. He pulled four experienced investigators from all their other duties. He said you have one exclusive job — the Curley investigation,” Mr. Olszewski recalled.
Led by Lt. David Wondolowski, of state police at Montoursville, the investigative team was split into two groups.
Troopers Joe Pacifico and Dan Gentile were assigned to interview Mr. Curley’s co-workers. Troopers Robert McBride and Frank Karvan focused on the Curley family, including Ms. Curley. The out-of-town detectives planted roots here for nearly two years, often staying at local hotels rather than commuting each day. The group worked alongside First Assistant District Attorney Dan Pillets, county detectives Stanley Jezewski and Dan Yursha, and others to solve the case.
“It was a team effort,” Mr. Olszewski said.
Dogged reporting
Former Citizens’ Voice reporter Carol Crane relentlessly covered the Curley case for six years from beginning to end with the help of a colleague, the late Mike McGlynn.
Ms. Crane said there were many times she thinks the police and the prosecution gave up on the case. She said she always sensed Ms. Curley was the killer, calling her a “classic sociopath.”
“If it weren’t for the media, this case would have been buried. The media helped catch a murderer,” Ms. Crane said.
Ms. Crane said people were and still are fascinated with the case because of the methodology of the murder.
“It was strange. No one knew what thallium was. All we knew was what rat poison was,” Ms. Crane said. “We provided so much detail on how that poor man died and how he was tortured.”
Ms. Crane said she often visited Mr. Curley’s grave for inspiration.
“I had a lot of sleepless nights from that story,” she said.
Where will she live?
It’s not clear where Ms. Curley, 53, will live when she is released from prison.
Ms. Curley did not respond to a letter The Citizens’ Voice sent to her last month at State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, a women’s prison in Crawford County.
Since she has served her entire prison sentence, she will not be on parole or face any type of monitoring.
Several relatives and in-laws still reside in Luzerne County.
Throughout her court case, three sisters of her first husband publicly supported her. At least one of them still does.
“I know her very well. She is a very sweet girl. That’s all I have to say,” said Roberta Searfoss of Buck Twp. when reached by telephone recently.
Ms. Searfoss is the sister of Ms. Curley’s first husband, John Chopack.
Mr. Chopack died in an April 1988 vehicle crash in Monroe County after his vehicle was hit by a trucking company vehicle.
Two days before Mr. Curley’s death, Ms. Curley reached a $1.7 million settlement against the trucking company that was structured to pay her $400 monthly until her death, in addition to several large lump sum payments.
The settlement also provided money for Ms. Curley’s daughter, Angela Chopack, who was 9 years old when her mother was arrested and jailed.
At the time Ms. Curley went to prison, her then-boyfriend, Alan Gurnari, was temporary guardian of the girl. In a brief phone call, Mr. Gurnari indicated he is no longer associated with Ms. Curley or her family.
“That was 20 years ago,” Mr. Gurnari said. “That was a long time ago and I am way past that now.”
Angela Chopack, 29, did not respond to a message sent to her on Facebook and later blocked her page from a reporter.
Justice for Bobby
For 25 years, the family of Robert “Bobby” Curley sought justice in his name.
Ms. Curley becoming a free woman today is unjust, the victim’s sister, Susan Curley Grady, said.
“I can’t believe this day is here — that 20 years have passed,” Ms. Grady said. “The third-degree plea bargain is certainly not enough. Twenty years is not enough for what she did to Bobby. She gets to be free. Bobby will never be free.”
Ms. Grady said the family, somewhat naive to the criminal justice system at the time, reluctantly agreed to the plea deal and their reluctance only grew as time passed on.
They weren’t prepared for the fight they still had ahead.
After 10 years, Ms. Curley was eligible for parole. Every year since, they have waged a public campaign to convince the parole board to keep the killer jailed until the last day possible.
That day is today.
The family of Mr. Curley became tireless advocates for crime victims over the past quarter century. In June 2013, they flanked Gov. Tom Corbett as he signed a law to allow crime victims and their families to testify in person before the state parole board decides to release a prison inmate.
They did it all in Bobby’s name to keep his spirit alive, according to Ms. Grady.
“For 25 years, you’d mention his name and people knew the story,” Ms. Grady said.
Ms. Grady fears Ms. Curley will emerge from prison and claim she is innocent.
“Joann is going to read this and laugh. She’ll say, ‘I didn’t tell the truth. I just told them what they wanted to hear to avoid the death penalty.’”
Ms. Curley is so cunning she ingested thallium and gave some to her young child after her husband died in an attempt to claim she and the daughter were also victims, Ms. Grady said, referring to trace amounts of the poison found in their systems after testing.
“If she would give poison to her own 4-year-old daughter, beware,” Ms. Grady said. “I’m telling people to beware. She could be your neighbor.”
Defending the prosecution
Mr. Olszewski said he knows people will be stunned a confessed, calculated killer is being set free, but emphasized investigators only got the confession as a result of accepting the plea deal.
At the time, the maximum penalty in Pennsylvania for third-degree murder was 10 to 20 years, not 20 to 40 years like today.
“In a case like this, under the circumstances we had, third-degree murder, a maximum of 10 to 20 years was better than a very real possibility our evidence would be excluded at trial,” Mr. Olszewski said.
He said he inherited the case four months after Mr. Curley’s death — after key forensic evidence had failed to be taken during the initial autopsy.
At that point, the top suspects were the co-workers, he said.
“The bottom line is that investigation was going nowhere. There was no evidence against the co-workers other than they were with him working in a chemistry lab that happened to have thallium,” Mr. Olszewski said.
When the segmental analysis testing emerged later on and established a timeline indicating each incident in which Mr. Curley was subjected to poison, investigators used the process of elimination on potential suspects to see if he had any contact with them on the dates of ingestion.
The initial ingestion dates of thallium pre-dated Mr. Curley’s work at the Wilkes chemistry lab, the analysis determined.
“They did a phenomenal number of interviews. They excluded everybody else in the world. They were able to exclude every person except Joann Curley. That’s a difficult way to prove a case,” Mr. Olszewski said.
Then the prosecution team was left to wonder whether a judge would allow the new forensic testing conducted on specimens obtained after exhumation — specimens that had been waterlogged for up to two years.
No court in the world ever ruled on the issue before and it wasn’t worth being the first prosecutor to take the risk, Mr. Olszewski said.
“If anybody wants to judge what happened, to do that accurately, you have to consider all the information I just gave you because that’s the truth. At that time, I couldn’t talk about it,” Mr. Olszewski said. “Now, 20 years later, I could tell the truth about what the issues were and what kind of judgments were made.”
TIMELINE: MARRIAGE, MURDER, SENTENCE, RELEASE
Aug. 11, 1990: Robert Curley marries Joann Seligo Chopack.
Sept. 25, 1991: Joann Curley reaches $1.7 million settlement with trucking company for the car-crash death of her first husband.
Sept. 27, 1991: Robert Curley, 32, a Wilkes-Barre electrician, dies in Hershey Medical Center of thallium poisoning, a metallic element once used in rat poison.
Sept. 28, 1991: Autopsy held in Dauphin County with no law enforcement present. Death was suspected to be from accidental industrial or environmental
contamination.
Oct. 22, 1991: Criminal investigation launched.
Dec. 12, 1991: Luzerne County District Attorney Jerome Cohen announces Mr. Curley’s death is a homicide.
Jan. 6, 1992: New District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski assembles the “Curley Task Force” and state police investigators join the case.
May 1992: Investigators continue to focus on Mr. Curley’s co-workers performing electrical work at a Wilkes University chemistry lab, which possessed thallium.
Dec. 1993: Dauphin County officials insist Mr. Curley wasn’t poisoned while in Hershey Medical Center.
Aug. 23, 1994: Mr. Curley’s remains are exhumed for a second autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who takes hair, fingernail and skin samples.
August 1995: Forensic poison study completed. Leading expert Dr. Fredric Rieders finds Mr. Curley was systematically poisoned for up to 11 months, including massive exposures days before his death while hospitalized at Hershey Medical Center.
November 1996: Mr. Curley’s widow hires prominent defense attorney Frank
Nocito.
Dec. 12, 1996: Ms. Curley is arrested on first-degree murder charges and jailed. Mr. Olszewski announces he will seek the death penalty.
Feb. 3, 1997: Ms. Curley ordered to stand trial after preliminary hearing.
Feb. 21, 1997: Ms. Curley pleads not guilty in Luzerne County Court.
July 15, 1997: Ms. Curley confesses to investigators she poisoned Mr. Curley to death to cash in on insurance money. She received nearly $300,000.
July 17, 1997: Ms. Curley pleads guilty to third-degree murder, gets sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison, the maximum penalty at the time under Pennsylvania law.
Sept. 1997: Mr. Curley’s family submits petition with 13,000 signatures asking the parole board to reject Ms. Curley’s future bids for parole.
June 19, 2013: With family members of Mr. Curley by his side, Gov. Tom Corbett signs a law that allows crime victims and their families to testify in person before the state parole board decides to release a prison inmate.
Sept. 2015: Parole board rejects Ms. Curley’s parole application in her final shot at early release.
Dec. 12, 2016: Ms. Curley to be released from state prison.
In her own words
The following are excerpts of Joann Curley’s July 1997 confession during questioning by Luzerne County District Attorney Peter Paul Olszewski and state Trooper Joseph Pacifico.
On marital problems
Trooper Pacifico: “At what point, what made you decide to start poisoning Bob?”
Ms. Curley: “The marriage wasn’t going the way I thought it would be — the way I expected it to be.”
Mr. Olszewski: “Did he ever hit or abuse you?”
Ms. Curley: “No he didn’t. He never hit me. It was always — he wanted things to be his way.”
Mr. Olszewski: “Did he ever abuse you like physically or verbally?”
Ms. Curley: “Verbally?”
Mr. Olszewski: “Like curse at you or scream at you?”
Ms. Curley: “I wouldn’t describe it as screaming. He would yell, but it, overall, I wouldn’t. I don’t know. Maybe abuse is too strong of a word, but he just wasn’t like he was when we were dating. He would want things his way, right then, right now.”
On first time poisoning him
Trooper Pacifico: “Can you tell us what happened and what you did?”
Ms. Curley: “I started to put rat poison in his iced tea.”
Mr. Olszewski:” What was your intention when you did that?”
Ms. Curley: “I guess I just wanted to see what it would do.”
Trooper Pacifico: “So what did you decide to do when you saw that Bob wasn’t getting ill from the poison?”
Ms. Curley:: “I gave him more.”
On suspicion cast on co-workers
Mr. Olszewski: “It was lucky or played into your benefit that Bob’s last place of work was Stark Hall, which was a chemistry lab, which had thallium in it?
Ms. Curley:: “Correct.”
Mr. Olszewski: “That was pure luck?”
Ms. Curley: “Luck.”
Mr. Olszewski: “That worked in your favor and led the first group of investigators to another, other suspects? Is that right?”
Ms. Curley: “Yes.”
On poisoning husband on the deathbed
Trooper Pacifico: “Can you explain for us what happened when you poisoned Bob down at Hershey? Tell us the circumstances of it.”
Ms. Curley: “They (other family) were already gone for the day.”
Trooper Pacifico: “Okay. And tell us what happened. How did you do this?”
Ms. Curley: “I took the rat poison and just walked up and put it in a drink, like a, like a fountain drink you know with a plastic lid and stuff. I put it in there.”
Trooper Pacifico: “How did you know he was going to drink it?
Ms. Curley: “I guess I really didn’t know for sure that he was going to drink it. I offered it to him and he did.”
On why she did it
Trooper Pacifico: “Joann, this is a question I’ve wanted to ask you. If Bob didn’t have that much insurance, was divorce ever an option (for) you? Did you ever consider just divorcing him instead of poisoning him?”
Ms. Curley: “I guess everybody knows you could always get divorces, but ...”
Mr. Olszewski: “Why not divorce him and get rid of him? Why did you have to kill him?”
Ms. Curley: “I wanted the insurance money.”
bkalinowski@citizensvoice.com
570-821-2055, @cvbobkal
