October 31, 1974: "The Man Who Killed Halloween"

October 31, 1974: It's Halloween in America. All over the country, kids are dressing up as their favorite monsters, TV characters, superheroes, and sports stars, trick-or-treating in the hopes of getting all that great candy they saw in TV commercials.

In East Brunswick, on the New York side of New Jersey, your humble author, then only 4 years old, dressed like a cowboy (it was my mother's idea, not mine), and was trick-or-treating for UNICEF, with the little orange box with the coin slot on top (also my mother's idea).

And, in Deer Park, Texas, a suburb of Houston, then home to a toddler named Andy Pettitte, who went on to become a great pitcher, Timothy O'Bryan, 8 years old, dies. He was murdered, by his father, Ronald O'Bryan, who had poisoned the boy's candy, specifically Pixy Stix.

He did it in order to claim the insurance money. He also distributed poisoned candy to his daughter and 3 other children, in an attempt to cover up his crime, but none of them ate it.

He was convicted on June 3, 1975. It would take until March 31, 1984 for him to be executed.

O'Bryan, known as "The Candy Man" and "The Man Who Killed Halloween," is the source of all those awful myths about tainted Halloween candy: Poisoned Hershey bars, razor blades hidden in apples, things like that.

His death was by lethal injection -- a far less painful death than his son had. For putting fear into the heads of trick-or-treaters and their parents ever since, I wish he'd been left in the prison yard for his fellow inmates to beat him to death. (From what I've heard, they would have been happy to try: No one, not even a hardened criminal, likes a man who killed a child, especially his own.)

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October 31, 1974 was a Thursday. This was also the day NBC broadcast the 1st episode of The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball season ended 2 weeks earlier, with the Oakland Athletics beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Football was in midweek. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks, 93-90 at Madison Square Garden. Earl "The Pearl" Monroe scored 35 points.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons, 118-101 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio. Austin Carr scored 33 for the Cavs. Bob Lanier scored 41 in defeat.

* And the Houston Rockets beat the Washington Bullets, 95-92 at the Hofheinz Pavilion (now the Fertitta Center) in Houston.

There were no games in the American Basketball Association. There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-1 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Washington Capitals, 3-0 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the St. Louis Blues and the Los Angeles Kings played to a tie, 1-1 at The Forum outside Los Angeles.

And there were 3 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The New England Whalers beat the Indianapolis Racers, 6-1 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Michigan Stags, 4-2 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. The Stags didn't finish the season as the Michigan Stags. They became the Baltimore Blades. They didn't finish the season under that name, either. They didn't finish the season at all.

* And the San Diego Mariners beat the Chicago Cougars, 4-3 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena).