Giving out candies to kids on Halloween is a long-standing custom, usually bringing joy to children on the 31st of October every year.

However, for an eight-year-old boy named Timothy O’Bryan from Texas, USA, Halloween turned into a tragic nightmare. The young boy met a fatal end on Halloween after ingesting a Pixy Stix candy contaminated with lethal potassium cyanide.

The individual behind this heinous act was none other than Timothy’s father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan.

Dubbed as ‘The Man Who Killed Halloween,’ Ronald O’Bryan, an optician and deacon at a local church, committed a monstrous crime that forever tainted the innocence of Halloween.

On that ill-fated Halloween evening in 1974, Ronald took his two kids, Timothy and Elizabeth, along with a neighbor, Jim Bates, and his two children trick-or-treating in their Pasadena neighborhood. They visited various houses collecting candies.

One house didn’t answer the door, prompting the children to move on to the next house while Ronald stayed behind. When he caught up with the group, Ronald gave each of the four children, including his own and the neighbors’, a Pixy Stix. The candy had reportedly been tampered with, with its straws resealed with staples after being opened. Ronald claimed he received the sweets from the house that did not respond. He also allegedly gave another Pixy Stix to a 10-year-old boy from his church.

Later that night, Timothy requested a sweet before bedtime. Ronald mentioned that Timothy chose the Pixy Stix from his collection. While struggling to consume the candy, Timothy had difficulty getting the powdered candy out, and his father supposedly assisted in loosening the powder for consumption.

After tasting the candy and finding it bitter, Ronald gave Timothy some Kool-Aid to mask the taste. Timothy soon complained of stomach issues, became severely ill, and started vomiting and convulsing. Ronald claimed he held Timothy as he vomited and lost consciousness. The young boy passed away on the way to the hospital less than an hour after consuming the tainted candy, as reported by the Mirror US.

Though initially not suspected by the police, an autopsy on Timothy revealed the fatal dose of potassium cyanide in the Pixy Stix he had ingested.

Four of the five Pixy Stix given out by Ronald were recovered, and fortunately, no other child consumed the deadly candy. The remaining four Pixy Stix reportedly contained enough cyanide to kill several adults, according to a pathologist who examined the poisoned candies.

Initially uncertain about the source of the Pixy Stix, Ronald’s claim that he received them from the unresponsive house raised suspicions. Further investigation revealed that none of the houses in the area had distributed Pixy Stix on that Halloween night.

Ronald later stated that he got the candies from the house that didn’t answer, alleging