WILKES-BARRE \u2014 In less than a week, one of Luzerne County\u2019s most notorious killers will be a free woman.<\/p>\n
Joann Curley, 53, will be released from state prison on Monday after serving every day of a maximum 20-year prison sentence for poisoning her husband, Robert Curley, to death in 1991, prison officials confirmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel she served enough time,\u201d said the victim\u2019s sister, Susan Curley Grady. \u201cShe should be serving a life sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curley Grady and other family members, who reluctantly agreed to a plea deal Joann Curley reached with prosecutors in 1997, fought for years to keep Joann Curley behind bars.<\/p>\n
The state parole board has rejected her bid for early release every time it\u2019s come before them over the past decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s over. I cannot do anything else. We kept her in there 20 years to the day. She\u2019ll be a free woman now,\u201d Curley Grady said. \u201cNobody knows where she\u2019ll go when she walks out of that place. She\u2019ll be able to go wherever she wants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joann Curley did not respond to a letter The Citizens\u2019 Voice mailed to her last month at State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, a women\u2019s prison in Crawford County. Efforts to reach local relatives over the past week have also been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
Joann Curley systematically poisoned Robert Curley, 32, by slipping thallium \u2014 a colorless, odorless and tasteless chemical used in rat poison \u2014 in his drinks during their 13-month marriage while they lived in the Miners Mills section of Wilkes-Barre.<\/p>\n
Following a five-year investigation, Joann Curley was charged with homicide.<\/p>\n
After pleading guilty to third-degree murder in 1996, she was sentenced to a 10- to 20-year prison term, which was the maximum penalty for third-degree murder at the time.<\/p>\n
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