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Forensic Files

Writers Block

Forensic Files

HLN

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode originally aired August 12, 2019. A brilliant young architect became ill and died just before she was to testify in a criminal trial. The autopsy revealed she'd been poisoned with arsenic; it was a slow and painful death, so suicide was unlikely. Investigators had to determine who among her family, friends and business associates had a motive for murder.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

A brilliant young architect mysteriously died just before she testified in a criminal trial.

0:10.1

Her diary contains stories of sex, betrayal, and intrigue.

0:15.6

Investigators needed to know if the stories were true.

0:30.3

Music to know if the stories were true. University Park, Texas, just outside of Dallas, is better known as the bubble.

0:36.2

It's a place of privilege and prestige,

0:39.5

an address many would like to have,

0:41.7

but few can afford.

0:44.2

It's kind of the Beverly Hills of Dallas.

0:46.5

That's the way the Park City says.

0:49.7

Nancy Dillard Lyon lived most of her life in Texas.

0:53.7

She was a Harvard-trained architect

0:55.5

and the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected Dallas family.

1:01.4

Nancy met her husband Richard while at Harvard.

1:04.5

They married and soon had two children.

1:07.4

They had great energy, great friendliness. When we moved in, they gave gifts of ice cream, and they baked cookies and bring them over to us.

1:17.6

And my husband, who I've said is rarely hyperbolic about anything, used to say she was the nicest person in the world.

1:23.6

Nancy quickly became the youngest partner in the history of Trammold Crow, a large real estate development firm.

1:31.7

But success came at a price.

1:35.2

I think she always had, as many women did at that time, a conflict between the amount of hours that she wanted to work to develop her career and time spending with her children.

1:46.1

Nancy was also experiencing some physical ailments. And on a January night in 1991, her symptoms

1:54.9

included vomiting and severe stomach pain. Her husband Richard took her to the hospital emergency room.

2:03.5

Doctors were initially baffled.

...

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