Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and in this week’s episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into a heartbreaking case of betrayal that shocked the small town of Maquon, Illinois. This is the story of 71-year-old Police Chief Richard Young, a man who served his community with integrity and compassion. Even after retirement, he remained a mentor and protector to those around him. But behind closed doors, the person he trusted most, his longtime partner of 30 years, Marcy Oglesby, was slowly poisoning him. As Richard’s health began to fail in 2021, friends noticed the changes: dizziness, fatigue, erratic heart rhythms. But Richard dismissed it, leaning on the woman he loved, who was cooking his meals and preparing his drinks... with a hidden ingredient. It turns out, Marcy was slipping tetrahydrozoline, found in over-the-counter eye drops, into his food over a period of months. In today’s episode, I’ll walk you through the chilling details of this case, the toxicology behind the poison, and the shocking discovery made in a nearby storage unit that finally revealed the horrifying truth. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Matson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. I wanted to say hello to all my new followers that I picked up from the CrimeCon 2026 Facebook page.
00:44
It's so welcoming to post something and to just kind of share your podcast with other people who are going down the same road that you are trying to get into CrimeCon 2026, and I've already submitted my application.
01:00
I've tried to get in before and wasn't able to. I'm kind of just trying to promote myself a little bit more so any help that you can give me would be much appreciated if you're able to share my podcast, tell your friends about it.
01:14
Sharing it on your Facebook page helps a lot. For them to actually download it on Apple, Google, Pandora, iHeart, Spotify, all the different platforms, that's what gets me recognition. So, if you like my Facebook page, thank you so much, but I need you to actually go to the platform and download it.
01:38
I have over 175 episodes there and I would love for you to listen to them. Of course, not all of them at one time. I mean if you could that'd be great, but a lot of the stories are local stories that I've worked, cases that I've been a part of.
01:56
Many of them are cases from all over the world. This week has been pretty busy. On Tuesday we are off for Veterans Day and so actually get the luxury of working from home, which is awesome. Some of the bigger offices don't get that advantage because they have to be in the office all the time because bodies are coming in and bodies are going out and our office is small enough that we don't actually have to have someone there all the time.
02:23
So, we do get the luxury of working from home when there's a county holiday. Now we don't have admin to answer the phone so many times it's still busy, but I think the general public knows that we're closed and so unless it's an emergency they probably should not expect an answer from our office.
02:45
Of course, everyone always has the ability to contact dispatch and page the investigator on call. But you know that's part of signing up for this job and just like being a nurse you know we knew when we did this that there would not be any days off unless we requested them.
03:02
Today I want to talk to you a little bit about police chief Richard Young. Now imagine a killer who doesn't use a gun or a knife, there's no forced entry, there's no struggle, there's just a few drops of something from the medicine cabinet.
03:23
Today we're diving into a case where love turned lethal. A respected Illinois police chief was slowly poisoned to death by the woman he trusted the most and the weapon was ordinary eye drops. And I'd heard of this before, not this particular story, but I guess back when I was dating and there was so much fear of GHB and Rohypnol and date rape drugs and kidnapping and it was scary when you'd go out because you always feared that and you never left your drink,
04:01
you never set it down, you didn't trust anybody with it. I had heard of people actually putting eye drops in people's drinks and if you don't give them too much you know it can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, those types of things but of course if you give them too much you can actually kill them.
04:20
But I've heard of cases of people getting sick from people putting visine in their drinks at bars. This is a story of 71 year old police chief Richard Young. Now Richard was poisoned over a period of months by his long-time partner 53 year old Marcy Oglesby.
04:45
Maquon, Illinois is a small quiet community, and Richard Young was its heart. So as police chief he protected and served with honesty and compassion. described him as loyal, devoted, and kind. Now, after retiring, as many officers do, he still helped his neighbors and mentored younger, new police officers.
05:14
He shared his life with Marcy Oglesby, and the two had been together for about 30 years. They lived across from a small storage facility, one that would later hold a horrifying secret. By summer of 2021, Richard's health began to fail.
05:34
He was fatigued, he was dizzy, he was nauseated. His heart raced one day, and then the next day it would be slow. And doctors just kind of suspected age, I mean, he's 71. And stress, he had a long life of working in the police force.
05:52
Friends urged him to seek help, but he trusted Marcy. Marcy cooked his meals every day, brought him drinks every day. But he didn't know that those meals were killing him. Tetrahydrozoline is a compound found in many over-the-counter eye drops and nasal sprays.
06:13
Some of those are Visine, Tizine, Mirroring Tears Plus, and OptiClear. When you use it like it's supposed to be used, it actually shrinks the blood vessels in the eye to reduce redness. If you swallow it, though, it constricts blood vessels throughout the body.
06:34
Your blood pressure might spike, and then all of a sudden it crashes. Your heartbeat slows down, breathing becomes shallow, and in large doses, it can cause coma or even cardiac arrest. Symptoms can include blurred vision, vomiting, tremors, cyanosis, which is like blue discoloration of your fingertips and your lips, and then dangerously low body temperature.
07:05
As a forensic nurse, I know these symptoms can easily be mistaken for natural illness, especially in older adults. And that's what makes this poison so insidious. Prosecutors said Marcy began lacing Richard's food and drinks with tetrahydrozoline in mid-2021.
07:28
And over several months, his condition worsened. He grew weaker, he was disoriented, he became withdrawn. And by November 1st of 2021, he was dead. Now when Richard died, Marcy didn't report it. She didn't call 911.
07:47
She didn't try to get help. She didn't panic. She placed his body in a plastic container and moved it to the storage unit of the hospital. across the street from their home. She continued paying rent for the storage unit for almost a year.
08:04
Inside, the former police chief's remains lay hidden while she just carried on with her life like nothing at all happened. On October 7th, 2022, police discovered the body after receiving a tip. And of course, it had been a year, so the remains were badly decomposed and an autopsy later confirmed death by tetrahydrozoline poisoning.
08:32
That discovery transformed a missing person inquiry into a homicide case. Detectives retraced Marcy's steps, so she had receipts showing repeated eye drop purchases, which that's weird. Her internet search included eye drop poisoning and how to make someone sick slowly.
08:56
So, we all know the police go back and they look at your computer, mention this numerous times, cameras and computers. Dumb criminals are easy to catch. When questioned, she offered conflicting stories.
09:09
At one point, she said that Richard died naturally. Later, she told investigators that she laid and talked to him for several days in the bed after he died before she moved him over to the storage unit.
09:24
But that chilling statement became central to the prosecution's case. Knox County State's attorney, Ashley Worby, said she killed a man who loved her and who cared for her for nearly 30 years. And she didn't just kill him, she poisoned him and she watched him suffer.
09:45
Now poisoning is one of the most deceptive forms of homicide. And it can mimic natural death, which is scary, especially in people who already have health problems. And I've said it many times, there's probably been a lot of cases where someone has been poisoned, and we never caught it.
10:04
We never suspected. Maybe it's a caregiver who's tired of taking care of their loved one. Maybe it's a caregiver who just gets pissed off and decides they're gonna kill you. But here's one reason why it can mimic natural death.
10:22
Headaches, nausea, dizziness, or heart irregularities can very easily be blamed on stress, age, or chronic disease. And Richard symptoms match those of many common medical conditions. At 71, he suffered over a period of months.
10:43
And it wouldn't be abnormal for him to pass after that and for it to go completely undetected. And honestly, between you and I, if she had reported it immediately, nobody would have been the wiser. It wasn't until she hid the body, and the body was found, and suspicion arose, and the investigation opened up that she was actually caught.
11:07
If there's no signs of trauma or foul play, a medical examiner might just perform a standard autopsy, but they're not going to do comprehensive toxicology. Those baseline tests, when we do toxicology, only test for common drugs like alcohol, antidepressants, and painkillers, but they don't test for rare agents, things that we don't normally find in the body, like tetrahydrozoline.
11:35
Older adults or people with existing health issues are particularly at risk. Their natural decline makes poisoning easier to conceal and more believable as a natural cause. Some poisons, like potassium chloride or Sucks in a choline break down quickly into natural compounds, and they make them almost impossible to detect after death.
12:03
So, when given in small doses over time, poisons can create a slow decline that looks more like a chronic illness than a homicide. Usually, poisoning is uncovered only because someone, a clinician or family member or an investigator, questions the story.
12:22
They notice patterns that don't fit like sudden collapse in an otherwise stable patient or an unusual mix of symptoms. Again, comprehensive toxicology testing is critical. And forensic labs use advanced tools like gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry to identify chemical compounds at microscopic levels.
12:51
But those tests have to be ordered, they have to be intentional. And it can only happen when you know what you're looking for. I hope that makes sense because a lot of people don't really understand that.
13:05
Environmental clues like empty containers or purchase receipts can also point investigators the right direction. I mean, if there were a lot of empty Visine bottles, why? Your eyes that dry, like what's going on?
13:21
I know I went on a scene, this was years ago. The man was an alcoholic, and he had numerous empty bottles of vanilla all over his house. I mean, they were all over the floor. The house was a mess all over the floor.
13:38
Well, I never thought about it. I mean, he was drinking mouthwash and then he would drink vanilla extract. It's 95% alcohol. You have to drink a lot of little bottles. It's like a shot each time you open one.
13:51
But clues like that, empty containers, purchase. That kind of helps the police know what they're looking for. In short, poisoning often goes undetected, but not because the science is weak, because no one thinks to look for it.
14:07
In court, toxicologists explained exactly how tetrahydrozoline kills and how they detected it in Richard's decomposed remains. They used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to isolate the compound from the tissue samples.
14:26
The jury heard about the deliberate nature of the poisoning and the year-long concealment of the body. And of course, they found Marcy Oglesby guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and aggravated battery.
14:41
At the sentencing, the judge called her actions calculated and cruel. She received 50 years in prison, but she was credited with 326 days of pretrial detention. Even then, she refused to accept responsibility.
14:59
She said she disagreed with the court's findings and will not be referencing a murder that did not happen. Now, Richard Young was a respected public servant and a man who spent his life protecting others.
15:13
He deserved truth and compassion, not suffering and deceit. And this case is a reminder that not all murders leave visible wounds. Just like not all sexual assaults leave visible trauma. Poisoning is very intimate.
15:31
It takes time, it takes access to the person, and it takes trust. And it often hides behind the illusion of natural decline. So forensic nurses, death investigators and pathologists, it reinforces the importance of looking deeper, especially when the symptoms don't make sense.
15:53
Every unexplained death deserves a closer look. Now, that doesn't mean that three years after your dad dies, if you find an empty visine bottle in your mom's medicine cabinet that she poisoned your dad and that they're gonna disinter his body and do toxicology.
16:11
But it does mean that if it's completely unexplained, it needs to be investigated. And that's where the police come in. But this case isn't really unique. Several others have used the same chemical weapon.
16:27
I know in Wisconsin, Jessy Kurczewski and Lynn Hernan, I hope I said that right. Jesse actually poisoned her friend Lynn Hernan with visein, and this was in Wisconsin in 2018. She told police that her friend overdosed, but toxicology revealed a massive dose of tetrahydrozoline.
16:50
She was convicted in 2023 and sentenced to life in prison. In North Carolina, Joshua Hunsucker and Stacy Robinson Hunsucker, Joshua was a paramedic, and he was accused of poisoning his wife Stacy with eyedrops in 2018 for life insurance.
17:11
Now, again, dumb, did he not think that the police were gonna look at him? And the fact that she had a life insurance policy for $250,000 that he tried to claim as soon as she was cremated. But the poison was detected in tissue samples taken during organ donation.
17:31
And that is proof that forensic awareness saves lives. He was later accused of attempting to poison his daughter the same way. Daisy Zantjer, and 2024 was an Iowa woman who was charged after allegedly poisoning her husband with eye drops twice.
17:50
He survived after doctors identified tetrahydrozoline toxicity. These cases show how accessible poisons turn domestic abuse or financial motive into murder. Each victim's illness looked natural until someone asked the right question.
18:12
So, Richard Young spent his life protecting others. And in the end, he needed protection from the person that he trusted the most. And the sad part of it is, y'all, poisoning is slow. It's very personal.
18:27
It's quiet. And it hides sometimes behind caregiving, concern, and love. And as forensic professionals, we learn that every unexplained death deserves a closer look. Cuz science can reveal the truth, but only if someone suspects that it's there.
18:49
Very sad story. Again, I bet that this happens frequently. I mean, I hate to say that, but it is a drug that is obtainable by anyone. And I think back in the day when I was younger, people didn't realize it could actually kill you.
19:07
They just thought that it could make you sick. But in these cases, these women and men knew. They knew exactly what they were doing. It was methodical, it was cruel, it was quiet, and it was personal.
19:23
Again, don't call me to go disinter your mom's body or your dad's body if you find an empty bi-zine bottle inside their significant other's medicine cabinet. But you've just got to remember things like that can always be a possibility, even if their caregiver seems like the most caring, genuine person you have.
19:43
ever met. So anyway, I hope that y'all enjoy that story. I think it's so interesting and just so cruel that people actually go to such lengths to kill somebody and try to hide it. The thing about Marcy is, like I said, if she had just called the police when he initially passed away, because of his age and his history of chronic medical problems, she never would have been suspected.
20:13
No one would have ever been the wiser and no would have ever thought that she did anything to him. She could have acted it out like a lifetime movie, called the police, hacked it upset, made herself cry.
20:29
Maybe she just wasn't a very good actress, and she was afraid to try. She's afraid she'd get caught, but did she really not think she was gonna get caught after the body sat in a storage building for a year?
20:43
You know someone's going to smell that. And then what if she died? I mean, if she died, of course, no one would be prosecuted. It would be a mute point. But if she died while he was in there and then his remains were found after that.
20:57
I mean, I don't know. It's so sad. It's so sad. And there are a lot of cruel people in the world, and we do know that. It's not news to us. And at the office today, I actually said nothing surprises me anymore.
21:11
And one of my coworkers said, well, you know, that's when it's time for you to retire is when nothing surprises you anymore because you kind of automatically suspect and you feel like you automatically know certain things about certain people.
21:26
It's very interesting, very, very interesting. So this coming weekend, we're going to take our beer trailer Taps and Tunes to the McKinney trade days, and we're going to be selling beer and mimosas and redneck mimosas, which is beer and orange juice, something that I was recently introduced to and it sounds completely gross, but apparently some people like it.
21:49
And we'll be selling michelotis. And the following weekend, I get to spend fun weekend with my high school, forever friends. So, I'm super excited about that. And Thanksgiving I cannot believe is right around the corner.
22:02
It snuck up on us so fast and I'm addicted. Y'all have to admit to TJ Maxx and HomeGoods. I don't know if I've told y'all this before, but I think TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Target, and Sonic, I could just like live my entire life going back and forth between those four places.
22:20
They have the coolest Christmas gifts right now. And sometimes you have to look for them. I don't know if y'all remember when Big Lots was around. I used to dig for hours and find the coolest stuff. My kids made fun of me and they still do.
22:35
Every once in a while, when I give them something, they'll be like, Oh, did you get that TJ Maxx? And they think it's funny, but hey, I'm able to find more. because it's less expensive. So that's the way I look at it.
22:46
I would rather go to TJ Maxx and spend two hours and walk out with $100 worth of stuff than go to the casino and blow money and walk out with nothing. That's how I justify it. So I don't know how many of y'all love it, but I would love if you would go to my Facebook page and post some cool Christmas gifts that you've been able to find at TJ Maxx and Home Goods because I'm on a Facebook page, I think it's called Addicts of TJ Maxx and Home Goods or something,
23:14
and people post things that they're looking for that they can't find at their local store. So what they're hoping is that someone else on the page will find it and ship it to them for just shipping, and they would be able to get the items that they've been looking for that they can't find because we all know that if you don't buy it when you go and you go back, it won't be there.
23:36
So that's just a fact of life. And I learned that a long time ago when I was young and my mom was taking me shopping. Anyway, I will be back before Thanksgiving, but I hope that y'all are staying warm.
23:50
I know in Texas we had a little bit of a cold front come through, and I think this morning at seven o'clock it was 30 degrees here in Texas. So, we normally see it cool off around Halloween, so I think we're trending with what's normal for us.
24:07
But sometimes we have freezes all the way through February. Anyway, I hope y'all have an amazing weekend. Again, share with your friends. Please let people know about Pushing Up Lilies and go to your favorite podcast platform and subscribe.
24:24
I appreciate y'all so much, and I'll talk to you next week. Bye y'all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
24:41
This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.