D.A. Alleges Overton Has ‘Wicked’ Side : Trial: Prosecutor leads jurors through diary of poisoning-death defendant, saying it shows an obsessive, jealous husband. Defense says evidence that client killed his wife is inconclusive.

Jurors were urged Wednesday to consider the “wicked and strange” side of accused murderer Richard K. Overton shown in private diaries when they decide whether the Dana Point computer consultant is guilty of fatally poisoning his wife with cyanide in 1988.

“This is a man with two faces,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans said during arguments capping the six-week retrial of Overton.

As the prosecutor did earlier in the trial, Evans led jurors through dozens of journal entries portraying Overton as an obsessive man wracked by jealousy over Janet L. Overton’s suspected sexual affairs and unhappy in a bitter marriage that in the end had become “pure hatred.”

But Overton’s defense attorney dismissed talk of the couple’s marital strife as “innuendo,” saying there was inconclusive evidence to prove that Janet Overton died of cyanide poisoning.

The defense maintained that the 46-year-old victim died suddenly from natural causes. Some researchers testified for the defense that cyanide found in her stomach and blood may have resulted from her ulcer medication and was detected in amounts too tiny to kill.

“I’m not here to ask you to give this man a Nobel Peace Prize for his conduct,” said Overton’s attorney, George A. Peters. “I’m telling you, don’t convict him for something he didn’t do and isn’t proven.”

Peters’ closing argument in Orange County Superior Court was abruptly interrupted when Overton said he was not feeling well. He left the courtroom escorted by marshals and returned about 40 minutes later, ashen but saying he felt better, according to Peters. Overton, who takes medication for a heart ailment, has told his current wife, Carol, that he felt poorly during the past week and a half.

At the end of the court session Wednesday, Overton smiled and waved quickly to friends who have sat through the trial. His son, Eric Overton, who testified early in the trial for the prosecution, sat expressionless in the front row throughout the final arguments.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberations today.

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Overton, 66, is accused of using cyanide to poison Janet Overton, 46, an elected trustee of the Capistrano Unified School District who collapsed in the family’s driveway on her way to a whale-watching excursion on Jan. 24, 1988.

Overton was later charged with murder, but his case ended in a mistrial in 1992 after his former defense attorney suffered a severe depression and could not work on the case.

The mathematician and computer expert with a doctorate in psychology pleaded not guilty to the poisoning.

Overton, who testified during the abbreviated first trial, did not take the stand in the current trial.

In both trials, prosecutors portrayed the defendant as a man consumed by his wife’s dalliances and her rejection of him. Evans said that as the couple’s spite-filled 19-year marriage deteriorated--years before the alleged cyanide poisoning--Richard Overton began poisoning his wife with non-lethal doses of a chemical called selenium, causing nausea and lesions, and making Janet Overton’s feet turn reddish and peel.

Prosecutors said the defendant similarly had poisoned an ex-wife of nearly 20 years by spiking her coffee and milk with prescription drugs and selenium during the early 1970s. Overton later admitted to “adulterating” the coffee with prescription drugs. The ex-wife, Dorothy Boyer, testified in the recent trial that she had symptoms identical to those later suffered by Janet Overton.

For about six months, investigators were unable to determine how Janet Overton died until Boyer called authorities to tell them she had been poisoned years previously. Coroner’s officials re-examined tissue samples and determined that Janet Overton died of cyanide poisoning.

The trial featured complicated debates over chemistry, chiefly about whether the small amounts of cyanide found in Janet Overton’s body were a result of deliberate poisoning and were sufficient to kill. Peters argued that the traces could have been produced naturally in Janet Overton’s body.

“Janet Overton did not die of an acute dose of cyanide,” Peters said.

Evans said that even small levels could be fatal. “That’s all it takes to kill you--a tiny, minuscule amount,” he said.