Two-time Jeopardy! champion was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife
Callum Jones
Featured Image Credit: Orange County Sheriffs Department / ABC7
A former Jeopardy! winner has been serving life behind bars after he murdered his wife just years after appearing on the hit TV show.
Paul Curry won a staggering $24,101 after starring in three episodes of the show back in 1989, but just five years later his wife wound up dead.
Curry married Linda Kinkade in 1992 - three years after he appeared on Jeopardy! - but things quickly took a strange turn.
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It wasn't long before Curry began pressuring Kinkade into putting his name on all their finances - including the likes of the mortgage and life insurance.
Kinkade's best friend Merry Seabold recalled a particularly interesting phone call on Oxygen's true crime series, Charmed To Death.
“Paul’s getting real, real intent on getting everything put into his name,” Kinkade allegedly told Seabold. “The mortgage, the life insurance, 401k….”
Kinkade also told her best pal on the phone that Curry wanted to take out a whopping $1million life insurance policy on her.
This was all part of Curry's calculated plan.
Later on, she discovered that Curry had a child and two previous marriages. This of course created quite the fuss, so Curry decided to book a cruise to win his wife over.
Passengers on this cruise ship discovered they had Hantavirus, 'a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents', according to the CDC.
Kinkade fell ill first before it was passed on to Curry.
Kinkade's health worsened, leading to a spell of several weeks in hospital.
She got really sick again on New Year's Eve and admitted herself to hospital.
Seabold and her husband stayed with Curry at his house during this time, and they discovered something rather alarming - records of Kinkade's finances and life insurance.
“That’s when I really realized this man is trying to do something to my friend,” she said.
A nurse found a needle puncture in the tubing of Kinkade's IV days later - something that is now believed to be Curry's doing.
In June 1994, Curry wrote to Seabold asking for help, saying that Kinkade was not in a good way.
She was dead the next day, as Curry collected the life insurance policy and Kinkade's 401K.
It wasn't until September 2014 when Curry was found guilty of insurance fraud and murder in the first degree with special circumstances.
Sergeant Yvonne Shull had picked up the case years later in a bid to finally crack it.
As part of her investigation, she spoke with Curry's first two wives, with one alleging she had also been poisoned - though he has never been charged with a crime relating to this accusation.
And in another twist in the tale, Shull found that Kinkade had tested positive for nicotine the toxicology report, despite the fact she didn't even smoke.
In fact, horrifyingly she had 50 to 100 times more nicotine than a normal smoker would have in their system.
Authorities confirmed Kinkade died of nicotine poisoning, with investigators believing at the time that Curry placed tobacco in Kinkade's salad dressing over a lengthy time period.
Police believe he then drugged her before injecting a fatal dose of the drug behind her ear.
Curry will now spend the rest of his days behind bars without parole.