Can't believe that Julius Patterson only got a 3rd degree murder charge and a 20 year sentence and Hyte only got 6 years jail! she is probably out and about in society now, probably the reason that they didn't show a picture of her on the updated UM story. She even got a plea bargain.

The world sucks sometimes :mad:

For real? I thought he had a life sentence.

I've always been curious about this case. What the heck prompted Julius Patterson to call the police in the first place? Was he trying to get revenge and frame Paulette for the crimes?

What the hell is 3rd degree murder? Isn't it manslaughter?

No 3rd degree murder is a statute several states have that is in addition to manslaughter. In fact in Florida, 3rd degree murder actually is considered officially a lesser charge than manslaughter. It depends on the state in question in regards to severity and other stuff. In Florida I know, 3rd degree murder is a 2nd degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Whereas manslaughter in certain cases can fall under the aggravated manslaughter which is a first degree felony and carries up to 30 years in prison. Off hand I can think of Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania that have the third degree murder option. I am sure there are more states than that but those are the ones I can think of. However in the case of Patterson and Hyte, while their crimes were truly disgusting, murdering people so they could collect their social security checks, my guess is the victims had few if any relatives living and because in at least one instance, I believe that of the old man those two killed, his body was never found so I do not even know if they were ever charged in that case?

However in Pennsylvania, I remember when they pled Joanne Curley out to third degree murder. That is pretty unbelievable in that case because not only did she murder her husband Robert Curley but she did so in an extremely slow and extremely cruel way by slowly poisoning him with arsenic, it took over a year of poisoning before he died. She did it slowly because then it was more likely his death would look to be of natural causes. So as a result, arsenic like a lot of other poisons if you expose someone to it regularly but at a small dose, while it affects them it will not kill them and in fact their body will over time develop a tolerance to the poison meaning the person giving the poison has to give larger and larger doses to get the same effect.

But Joanne Curley, wow, I mean she married this guy in 89, he died in 91 and she poisoned him I believe for about a year and a half. In fact she was even poisoning him while he was in the hospital, she was putting it in her iced tea. in fact at one point she even gave herself and her daughter small doses of the poison to make it look like they were being poisoned too.

Anyway, after Robert Curley's death, she collected on his life insurance policy but Curley's family had his remains tested and they tested positive for arsenic. In fact they tested and his hair and were able to determine when he was being poisoned. Joanne was arrested about 5 years after Robert Curley's death and charged with murder, she pled out to third degree murder and she was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Sorry I made a couple of errors above. First, Joann did not poison her husband with arsenic, she poisoned him with thallium. I guess she got the idea for this because at the time she started poisoning him, Robert Curley was working for a company that was renovating an old chemistry lab that had all sorts of chemicals laying around, one of them being thallium. She started poisoning him just 6 weeks after they were married although it took over a year before it killed him because as I said, she poisoned him slowly because if she did it too quickly it would look suspicious. Also as I said, she and even her 4 year old daughter would drink from the same iced tea with the thallium in it so they would have trace amounts and their system thus it would look like everyone had been exposed. The motive for the poisoning was so Joann could cash on Robert's $300,000 dollar life insurance policy. It is also interesting that 3 or 4 years before she married Robert, Joann's first husband died in a still mysterious 'accident'. My guess is she murdered him too and when the life insurance money was getting low started looking for a new husband.

Robert Curley had his suspicions that Joann was poisoning him, so while he was laying in the hospital she gave him a large dose and it finished him off. Joann was arrested five years later in 1996 and she pled out to 3rd degree murder after the Curley family agreed to a plea bargain. They did this mainly because they wanted Joann to admit to what she did and tell how and why she did it which she did as a condition of the plea deal. She was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. She applied for parole in 2006 when she first became eligible and was turned down. The parole board will not hear her case again thankfully until 2015, just one year before her mandatory release comes in 2016.

Still gives me shivers this case.

Still gives me shivers this case.

Me too.

This is one case that one could use in an argument against plea bargains.

This is one case that one could use in an argument against plea bargains.
but the Cops love to count these murders as solved to make their stats look better

Is this Julius Patterson? certainly looks similar to the guy's mugshot in the segment, thinking about 'adding' to his condolence book.

https://obits.theadvocate.com/us/obituaries/theadvocate/name/julius-patterson-obituary?id=9304076

Is this Julius Patterson? certainly looks similar to the guy's mugshot in the segment, thinking about 'adding' to his condolence book.

https://obits.theadvocate.com/us/obituaries/theadvocate/name/julius-patterson-obituary?id=9304076


It's not. We don't know where Julius ended up after parole. His skin is a lot darker than that of the guy shown, plus the obituary does not mention a Jessie Patterson (Julius' sister).

It's not. We don't know where Julius ended up after parole. His skin is a lot darker than that of the guy shown, plus the obituary does not mention a Jessie Patterson (Julius' sister).

True I suppose you can't bury that little detail.

It's not. We don't know where Julius ended up after parole. His skin is a lot darker than that of the guy shown, plus the obituary does not mention a Jessie Patterson (Julius' sister).

Yep. Definitely not the same Julius Patterson that was featured on UM. Along with everything you mentioned, the JP in this obit was from Baton Rogue, Louisiana and lived there his whole life. The JP from UM was from Philly.