HOUSTON -- The ex-wife of Ronald Clark O'Bryan, awaiting execution for poisoning his son, said Friday she believes her former husband is guilty and his death will give her 'a brand new beginning.'
'I'm glad it coming to an end,' said the former Daynene O'Bryan, 39. 'I don't think Ronald is a sick or insane person, but he is perverted.'
O'Bryan was sentenced to die at 12:01 a.m. CST Saturday.
'It's the end of a nightmare and the beginning of a brand new beginning,' said the former O'Bryan who has remarried and asked that her new name not be disclosed. 'The slate will be wiped clean and we will get on our life.'
The former Mrs. O'Bryan said, however, she holds no ill will against her ex-husband.
'I don't hate Ronald. I just feel nothing,' said the former Mrs. O'Bryan in an interview with UPI. She had refused until Friday to be interviewed since her ex-husband's trial and conviction eight years ago.
She said she has remarried and continued her life, although she has for the past 9 years felt a void following the death of her son Timothy, on Halloween night, 1974. He died by eating candy laced with cyanide. Authorities said the father, scheduled to die early Saturday, had hoped to collect insurance money.
She said she was nervous, but hoped she and her 15-year-old daughter Elizabeth could put behind them the ordeal.
'My concern during these years have not been for myself. They have been with my daughter. She has done remarkably well until the last few days,' she said.
She said about six months ago Elizabeth wanted to contact and visit O'Bryan on death row, but she adamantly prohibited her daughter from making any contact with her father.
'She has no ties to him. I think she has struggled through that. But she accepts the fact that he intended to kill her, too,' she said.
'We refer to him in this house as Ronald and he is her biological father, only and nothing more,' she said.
She said before the trial in 1974, she would visit her husband each week at the Harris County Jail, and each week he would cry and tell her of his innocence.
'He was so convincing. Sometimes I thought, 'what if he is telling the truth.' But I knew he was lying,' she said.
She said before her son's death, her husband made an appointment for her with an insurance agent to buy a life insurance policy for her.
'I think I really was the original intended victim,' she said. The appointment was canceled because the couple did not have the money to pay the policy premiums.
'There were early signs in our marriage that he was a liar. He only admitted to me once that he lied, but never about Tim's death,' she said.
'But I know in my deepest heart of hearts that he is responsible for my son's death.'
She remembered once, before Tim's death, O'Bryan quoted the Bible story about how Abraham must have felt about losing and sacrificing his only son.
'I just started putting all those things together. He was my husband and I wanted to believe him,' she said. 'But knowing him and living with him almost 10 years, I knew it was possible.'
She divorced O'Bryan and remarried four years ago. She has never cashed the $31,000 life insurance policy, calling it 'blood money.'
