NARRATOR: What happens when a healthy middle aged woman suddenly collapses and dies, And medical science can't find the cause of death? Months later, a second forensic look discovered evidence that had been right under their noses the entire time. NARRATOR: Dana Point, California, just 60 miles south and a world away from Los Angeles, is a haven for those seeking a quiet, oceanside lifestyle. In 1988, it was home to Janet and Richard Overton, and their 17-year-old son, Eric. 60-year-old Richard was a successful computer consultant and part-time professor. 46-year-old Janet was a member of the local school board. BAILEY: She was such a genuinely nice person - smiling, and had good things to say. NARRATOR: The Overtons lived on a tranquil cul-de-sac. After 19 years of marriage, they seemed to be a classic example of 'when opposites attract'. While Janet was outgoing and high school educated, Richard held a PhD, and was much more reserved. McADAMS: He was always the loner, and I understand that he graduated from high school after three years. He was editor of one of his campus newspapers. As I said, he was a very smart man. NARRATOR: Janet was passionate about her work on the school board, a job she took seriously. At one point, she served as president. But her number one priority was her son. BAILEY: She took such pleasure in him, and I know that one of her goals was to hand him his diploma when he walked across the stage, graduating from Dana Hills High School. NARRATOR: On January 24th, Janet and her son Eric packed up the family van to spend the day on a yacht with some friends. But before leaving the house, Janet collapsed. Eric told his father, who immediately called for an ambulance. By the time emergency personnel arrived, Janet was unconscious. When they got to the hospital, she was dead. An autopsy found no indication of how she died. SEDGWICK: They did not find anything that they were comfortable calling a cause of death. Or even close! NARRATOR: Surprisingly, Janet's medical records indicated she had made 60 visits to different doctors, clinics, and hospitals in the last year. SEDGWICK: There was just an amazing amount of workup done on the deceased, Janet Overton, in the previous year, because she had been very sick, and had been to all sorts of special clinics, working things up. They didn't find anything. NARRATOR: Janet had complained of a number of various ailments, from nausea, to skin irritations, to general pain. BAILEY: She was walking very slowly, and had a cane to help her walk, and was really looking miserable. NARRATOR: It appeared to the medical examiner that Janet's death was as mysterious as her other medical problems over the past year. Her death would have remained a mystery, had it not been for a telephone call, about an incident 14 years earlier. NARRATOR: Janet Overton's death at the young age of 46 was officially listed as 'pending investigation', which is another way of saying 'unknown'. For the next six months, there was no further investigation into Janet's death. That is, until the local sheriff's department recieved a telephone call from Dorothy Boyer, who was once married to Richard Overton. Dorothy had heard about Janet's death, and had a story to tell about Richard's past. Dorothy said she divorced Richard when she found out he was a bigamist. He was married to another woman at the same time he was married to her, and had children with both women. McADAMS: He maintained two households, and he decieved two women. He consistently had troubled relationships with women. All of his adult life, which went to his first marriage, the bigamist marriage with Carolyn Hutchinson, and his third marriage with Janet. There was a definite pattern there. NARRATOR: When the couple divorced, Dorothy gained custody of their children, and took possession of their house, which infuriated Richard. Almost immediately, Dorothy began to suffer from skin lesions, nausea and pain - the same symptoms that plagued Janet Overton. One day, after their divorce, Richard visited Dorothy to discuss some issues relating to their children. Dorothy noticed an unusual odor coming from her milk. She took the milk to police for testing. Scientists discovered large amounts of selenium, a type of poison. Dorothy accused Richard of placing the selenium in her milk during his visit. When confronted with the evidence, Richard confessed. In return, Dorothy refused to press charges against Richard. McADAMS: He had to admit 'Yes, I did do this,' and he was sent into anger counseling. When he came out of anger counseling, he made another attempt - which he denied. And that was when Dorothy confronted him, and just told him, 'You make any more attempts on me, or anybody in my family, and I'm gonna have you taken away in handcuffs.' And from then on, he backed off, and he didn't do anything to Dorothy. NARRATOR: After hearing this news, Lieutenant Carney wanted to exhume Janet Overton's body for another autopsy. But there was a problem. Janet Overton had been cremated. Toxicologist Paul Sedgwick's only option was to rexamine Janet's blood and tissue samples left over from the autopsy. When he tested those samples for selenium, he could find none present. Despite the setback, investigators pressed on. And soon discovered that Janet had a secret life of her own. She had been involved in a long-time affair with Bill Dawson, someone she worked with on the school board, and who owned the yacht she was going on the day she died. CARNEY: Mr. Dawson was very forthright, very honest, he knew his career was on the line by revealing this. NARRATOR: Mr. Dawson was also adamant that he had nothing to do with Janet's death. In Janet's home, police discovered 133 computer discs, and dozens of diaries written by Richard Overton - some were written in Russian, and Spanish. CARNEY: As you read the diaries, and read the diskettes, it tells a whole different story of Richard Overton's relationship with Jan. The relationship Richard pointed out to me, at my time of interview, they're having a 'loving relationship, and the bonds of love were strong' - was totally inconsistent with what he wrote in his diaries. NARRATOR: And Lieutenant Carney noticed an interesting deletion in the diaries. CARNEY: "I opened up the diary for January 24th - the handwritten diary, of January 24th - this was the day that Janet died. He had cut the page out of the diary. NARRATOR: Many of the discs contained portions of documents that had been deleted. The discs were sent to a computer forensic examination firm for analysis. When material in a computer document is deleted, it's not actually deleted - instead, the material is identified on the disc as space available to be reused if needed. If that space isn't needed, the deleted material is still there. The recovered information from Richard's hard drive revealed that Richard knew of his wife's affair with Bill Dawson, and was angry about it. Overall, his writings chronicled a deeply troubled relationship. CARNEY: Approximately one week before her death, he made an entry that said 'the love-hate relationship between Janet and I has turned to pure hate. I will deal with this soon.' NARRATOR: Some passages of the handwritten diaries had been covered with correction fluid. Carney suspected incriminating information might be underneath. To find some way to see underneath the deletions, the diaries were sent to the forensics lab. BLACK: A forensic document examiner had brought the diary for us to look at, and was curious if we could use some type of light source that was available to us in the indentification bureau to illuminate the information that was underneath the correction fluid. NARRATOR: Black used what a decade ago was a new and untested piece of equipment - a lazer. The process worked. Some of those hidden entries corroborated the severity of the problems in the Overton's marriage. McADAMS: The Overton marriage was a marriage that slowly deteriorated over a period of time, and then quickly deteriorated, to the point where there was no contact between Richard and Janet Overton - they had separate bedrooms, they took meals separately. She confided to a couple of her friends that as soon as Eric graduated from high school, she was outta there. And he knew it, too. JACKSON: The diaries were important because it showed motive. We saw the relationship between Jan and Richard on a daily basis. There was everything listed in these diaries, and when I say everything, I mean everything. NARRATOR: But if Richard was somehow involved in Janet's death, the diaries gave no hint of how he killed her. NARRATOR: Forensic scientists suffered a major setback when they could find no trace of the poison, selenium, in Janet Overton's tissue samples. Years earlier, Richard Overton admitted putting selenium in his ex-wife's drink, because he was angry about the financial terms of their divorce. But his ex-wife never filed charges. But this admission of an earlier poisoning prompted forensic scientists to take a second look at Janet Overton's tissue samples. Almost immediately, the toxicologist made a startling discovery. He detected the odor of bitter almonds. SEDGWICK: Within seconds, the odor of cyanide didn't really overpower me, but it just jumped out - I was two or three feet away, and there was just no question this was cyanide. And large amounts. NARRATOR: Only 1 person in 3 has the ability to detect cyanide in this way. But he would need more proof than his nose. Sedgwick preformed a Prussian blue test. A sample of Janet's stomach contents were mixed with water and sodium hydroxide. Then, after adding some ferrous sulfate, the mixture was heated to boiling. If there was cyanide present, the mixture would turn a deep Prussian blue. The result was positive. Cyanide in Janet's stomach meant she had ingested it shortly before her death. And toxicologists found something else. Traces of cyanide in Janet's brain tissue - an indication she had ingested cyanide on previous occasions. Cyanide was found in trace amounts in some herbal and prescription medicines that Janet Overton had been taking. To see if any of Janet's herbal treatments could have produced the cyanide, Sedgwick tested all of the substances she was taking. SEDGWICK: I ground them up, I tried blending them any way I could, to bring out any cyanide that might possibly evolve from these compounds, and then I smelled them, and I tested them chemically. And I found no cyanide in any of the compounds. NARRATOR: Another obstacle was reports that cyanide can be created in blood samples after death. Before heading to trial, prosecutors needed to know whether the storage process caused the cyanide in Janet's tissues, and wanted testing done by an internationally known expert. JACKSON: I called Scotland Yard, because Scotland Yard dealt with more poisonings than we did here in the states. So I called up, and I said 'Do you know of an expert that deals in cyanide that would know exclusively about cyanide', and I was referred to Bryan Ballantyne, one of the foremost experts in the world on cyanide. NARRATOR: The level of cyanide found in Janet's blood sample seven months after her death was 2 micrograms per 100 milliliters of blood. While that amount was consistent with other fatal cases of cyanide poisoning, Ballantyne's personal standard was much higher. He studied the storage conditions in the lab containing Janet's tissues, and mathematically determined cyanide's conversion and evaporation rates. When this was complete, Dr. Ballantyne knew that the cyanide in Janet's system was the result of foul play. BALLANTYNE: This was a death from acute cyanide poisoning. NARRATOR: The quick acting cyanide that killed Janet had to be administered minutes before her death. This fact eliminated Janet's lover, Bill Dawson, as the killer, since he had an alibi that he was on his boat at the time of Janet's death. But if Richard Overton had given his wife the cyanide, where did he get it? It wasn't long before investigators discovered the answer. Richard's friend owned a gold and silver mine, and he kept a lab in his house which contained cyanide, since it's used in mining operations to extract precious metal from the raw core. CARNEY: This individual frequented these mining operations, and while he was gone, Richard would go over to his house, and pick up the person's mail, feed the animals, et cetera. NARRATOR: Prosecutors could now prove Richard had access to the murder weapon, and had opportunity and motive. 3 years after Janet's death, Richard Overton was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. NARRATOR: Richard Overton was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife, Janet. He insisted he was innocent. Prosecutors believe that Richard Overton was jealous of the notoriety his wife achieved as president of the local school board. Their marriage deteriorated when Richard learned that Janet was having an affair - he was hurt. McADAMS: When you're finished with the working day, and you're married, whether it's a long-term marriage or a short-term marriage, there should be something to come home to. And in Janet's case, there wasn't anything to come home to. NARRATOR: When Richard discovered that Janet planned to divorce him, he got angry, and sought revenge. Just as he had done to his previous wife, Dorothy, when she divorced him. At the trial, Dorothy testified against Richard about her poisoning incident. Richard Overton also testified in his own defense. CARNEY: He could not explain, logically, the prior poisoning of Dorothy Boyer, and came off by making a comment that he thought that the poisoning of her was just a neat joke. And I think that was a damning thing to say, and something that the judge and jury could not understand, in my opinion. NARRATOR: The forensic evidence against Overton was overwhelming. Not just the toxicology which found the cyanide in Janet's system, but also the forensic document examination of Overton's diaries, which clearly shows Overton's frame of mind at the time of Janet's death. McADAMS: The theory is that Richard Overton really fixed her a real good cocktail in the morning, with her orange juice. After she drank it, she was going whale watching with her son Eric, and collapsed in the driveway. CARNEY: He was very clever, very good, and almost got away with it. NARRATOR: Seven years after Janet's death, Richard Overton was found guilty of first-degree murder. JUDGE: "This defendant is sentenced to the term of life without parole." NARRATOR: Sadly, in 1999, Dorothy Boyer died of lymphoma. CARNEY: There's a possibility that the years of selenium poisoning could have caused this. It's nothing that, right now, science or technology can prove without a reasonable doubt. SEDGWICK: We get people off, in our job, as well as finding the guilty, and either one is satisfaction. But I will have to admit that finding murderers and getting them off the street's a big one. JACKSON: We had to show the cause of death, and the only way we were gonna show cause of death is forensically. And the forensics, those are scientists, those are facts, those don't lie. You can't beat forensics, you can't beat science. CARNEY: The forensics were very important to this case. This case was primarily a science case, and if I were to put a number to it, I would say it was probably 90% science and 10% investigation.
