Poisoned by Love: The Eye-Drop Murder of a Retired Police Chief
Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum
iHeartPodcasts and CrimeOnline
4.4 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
No one suspected that the woman he had trusted for decades was quietly planning his death.
This week on Pathology with Dr. Priya, a "Zone 7" series, Sheryl McCollum and Dr. Priya Banerjee discuss the case of Marcy Oglesby, who, over several months, secretly mixed over-the-counter eye drops into Young's food and drinks.
When his body was later discovered inside a storage unit, toxicology revealed lethal levels of tetrahydrozoline, the active ingredient in common eye drops.
Dr. Priya explains how this drug attacks the cardiovascular system, why it is almost undetectable without targeted testing, and what makes poisonings like this so difficult to identify until it's far too late.
Highlights
- (0:00) Welcome to Pathology with Dr. Priya: A Zone 7 series—Sheryl McCollum introduces the Marcy Oglesby case and the death of retired Police Chief Richard “Rick” Young
- (0:45) How Oglesby slowly poisoned her partner with tetrahydrozoline-laced food and drinks
- (2:15) Dr. Priya explains why eye-drop poisonings are rare and absent from most toxicology panels
- (6:00) Early symptoms: numbness, confusion, fluctuating blood pressure, and blue lips
- (8:00) Why doctors might miss the signs of tetrahydrozoline poisoning and attribute symptoms to age or heart disease
- (10:00) The estimated lethal dose and how even a small mouthful can cause heart-block death
- (13:45) Trust, dependency, and opportunity: the dynamics that let the poisoning continue undetected
- (20:30) What Rick Young likely endured in his final days: chest pain, dizziness, and slow suffocation
- (25:45) Closing reflections and Dr. Priya’s reminder that every case is a lesson
About the Hosts
Dr. Priya Banerjee is a board-certified forensic pathologist with extensive experience in death investigation, clinical forensics, and courtroom testimony. A graduate of Johns Hopkins, she served for over a decade as Rhode Island’s state medical examiner and now runs a private forensic pathology practice.
Her work includes military deaths, NSA cases, and high-profile investigations. Dr. Priya has also been featured as a forensic expert on platforms such as CrimeOnline and "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace."
She is a dedicated educator, animal lover, and proud mom.
Website: anchorforensicpathology.com
Twitter/X: @Autopsy_MD
Sheryl McCollum is an Emmy Award–winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnline, and the Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace."
She works as a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department and is the co-author of the textbook "Cold Case: Pathways to Justice."
Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute (CCIRI), a nationally recognized nonprofit that brings together universities, law enforcement, and experts to help solve unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and kidnappings.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter/X: @149zone7
Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
Instagram: @officialzone7podcast
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.0 | Welcome with Pathology with Dr. Priya. |
| 0:16.0 | Y'all tonight we have got an unusual case. |
| 0:20.0 | It is a poisoning where Marcy Oglesby, 53 years old, poisoned her ex-cop boyfriend with |
| 0:31.2 | eye drops. |
| 0:33.7 | Now she has been found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, |
| 0:39.2 | and aggravated battery for the death of the retired police chief Richard Rick Young. |
| 0:47.8 | Now, Oglesby poisoned Young with over-the-counter eyedrops. |
| 0:54.7 | Just regular old eyedrops that she mixed into his food and his drinks, |
| 1:00.0 | starting in the summer of 2021 until his death in November of 2021. |
| 1:08.9 | Rick Young was 71 years old. |
| 1:12.5 | She watched him suffer. |
| 1:15.5 | And I'm going to get Dr. Pre in here because I want to hear how this lifelong public servant |
| 1:23.6 | was murdered in a horrific way. |
| 1:27.4 | And y'all, she drove right across the street and hid his body in a storage unit. |
| 1:33.0 | Then when they found him and did the autopsy, of course, toxicology comes back with high levels of tetrahydrozolyne. |
| 1:43.3 | So his body was found October of 2022. So Dr. Priya, I'm going to |
| 1:52.0 | need you to jump in here and help me understand some things. I should not laugh, but we're just |
| 1:58.1 | going to put it out there that the best legal advice would be to |
| 2:02.2 | leave him or seek a divorce attorney. Please don't take this as any endorsement, right? We're |
| 2:08.4 | talking about a very atypical case. Right. This is quite complex. It is complex. And, you know, we've all heard about people |
| 2:19.0 | putting eye drops in somebody's drink. And this to me, you said something extraordinary |
... |
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