Forensic Team Investigate Potential Poisoning | The New Detectives | Real Responders

in Washington State two people died agonizing deaths both are victims of poison laced excedrin capsules the news causes public panic and costs manufacturers tens of millions of dollars in Virginia a cardiac care unit experiences an epidemic of unexpected deaths is this bad care or bad luck or is it something more sinister and a man tries to murder his wife in an insurance fraud honors are among the most elusive killers today forensic detectives are employing an arsenal of techniques to uncover and convict them who is winning the war [Music] Elsbeth star was dead it is nine o'clock on a Saturday night when dr. Joseph Whittle makes his final rounds Whittle is co-director of the coronary care unit at General Hospital in Petersburg Virginia doctor well he has been on duty since noon it is time to go home among his patients is Josephine Thomas a 73 year old retired teacher she was admitted with heart problems several hours earlier and now is resting comfortably at around 11:00 p.m. Whittle orders an IV [Music] [Music] miss Thomas Chris Thomas [Music] the duty nurse signals a code blue a patient emergency and calls in dr. wittle Josephine Thomas is in crisis it takes Whittle just 15 minutes to return [Music] shocking too late Josephine Thomas cannot be revived [Music] the death troubles the staff an epidemic of unexpected deaths has struck the cardiac care unit in the past few weeks two nurses suspect that Josephine Thomas may not have died of natural causes their suspicions deepen an hour and a half later when a package of lidocaine is found to be missing lidocaine to Graham no you don't find any to Graham didn't use it okay all right well we should have one - Graham life came in lidocaine is a drug given to stabilize heartbeat in large concentrations it can be fatal [Music] whenever a death seems unusual or suspicious medical and law enforcement personnel are required to contact the medical examiner's office dr. Marcella Fierro is chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia in her first year as an assistant medical examiner she worked on the Petersburg case the problem arose when it became apparent that there was one an increased number of deaths in the unit as compared to previous months and secondly that a significant number of them were occurring in the presence of or were being discovered by Leroy Hargrave Leeroy Hargrave was a 21 year old nurse's aide whose reputation around the hospital was decidedly mixed it was hard rave who had called the alert on Josephine Thomas several other deaths had also occurred during Hargreaves ships was this coincidence or was something else going on no one had seen Hargrave do anything wrong it would take all the resources of forensic science to establish what had happened throughout the United States and autopsy is performed whenever the cause of death is unknown this unknown male was found dead on a Michigan Street all right go ahead and check the status of the hair looking for any injuries on the head how did the individual die was it natural death an accident a homicide or suicide sometimes the answer is undetermined no not this guy he was found dead in an older part of town I'm wondering about lead poisoning you think we ought to get a heavy metal screen on him why don't we get some head hair - since arsenic can accumulate in the hair if we do find arsenic on the general heavy metal screen then we can fractionate the hair since hair grows about one centimeter a month see if there's any chronicity to the poisoning pathologists gather a variety of samples including muscle tissue brain kidney urine and blood about 30 CC's will be enough Paul alright let's get a piece of kidney - Paul each sample may tell a story about the victims life and death poisoning is a rare occurrence according to James volunteer head of the toxicology laboratory for the Commonwealth of Virginia poisoning is not automatically suspected it depends on the circumstances or a lack of other evidence following the investigation if an autopsy is conducted on a young person an otherwise apparent good health and no cause of death is found than the suspicion of drug involvement or drug contribution to that death increases and we proportionally increase our analyses until we rule out all the possibilities that we ever can today poison specialists called toxicologists employ of the wildering array of sophisticated technologies antibodies protein substances the body produces to combat foreign matter are used to detect toxins to test for cocaine at its metabolic products for example blood is mixed with hatty bodies specific to certain parts of the cocaine molecule a fluorescent label is added to the mixture if cocaine is present the pattern of fluorescence changes to identify poison compounds they must be broken down into smaller parts called ions dr. volunteer and his colleagues used the most powerful techniques available which include the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer which are often used in combination chemicals are added to a sample to separate any organic drugs present from the blood matrix the isolated portion is vaporized and passed along a hydrogen filled tube molecules of different size migrate through the tube at different rates as molecules emerge from the tube their concentration is measured next the mass spectrometer shatters the molecule into ions its chemical building blocks a complex molecule may generate hundreds of ion fragments the pattern of ions produced is unique to a particular molecule to identify the unknown substance it's ion signature is compared to those of tens of thousands of chemicals in the computer's database in time techniques like these would reveal not one but six poisonings at Petersburg General Hospital the world is filled with deadly chemicals an average home harbors dozens of dangerous substances such as chlorine bleach drain opener and aspirin each capable of causing death the Blodgett regional poison center in Grand Rapids Michigan receives thousands of anxious phone calls each year many concern overdoses accidental or intentional many more involve children would even some bright berry or sample the household bleach and a few involve deliberate attempts to kill John tress trail directs the center and is an authority on poisons and poisoners the poisoning homicides differ from normal homicides in that there usually are no witnesses there are no visible signs of trauma you see no bullet holes no stab wounds no bruises usually it's very covert very secret the evidence is usually lacking there's no cartridge cases or anything often it's missed and thus crime scene is cleaned up tres trails office reveals a lifetime of fascination with things poisonous take for example spires we know that this small spider compared to one big spider here you say well which one's more poisonous while most little kids will say obviously the big one well the tarantula there's no more point no more worse than being stung by a bee what the black widow it's capable of killing so size is not always associated with a degree of deadly notes in tres trails view mankind's knowledge of poisons is extremely ancient in all likelihood it goes back to making the connection between eating something and getting sick okay here we have an example of what primitive man might have first associated cause-and-effect relationships with here is a mushroom called the fly agaric common name Amanita muscaria and it contains chemicals that produce hallucinations and a lot of other bad garvey's that go with it but I'm sure at one time in prehistory man looked at someone eating this and said what he what he did when he ate this was it caused these symptoms and from that they said this mushroom contains these poisons I have this knowledge this knowledge led to mystery and and the shadowy figures of the shamans and witch doctors and everything so the whole history of toxicology began a couple of hundred thousand years ago it's probably the third weapon developed after the stick and stone poison the essence of poisoning is stealth to shoot or strangle a person the murderer must be present poison offers the opportunity of long distance homicide there is also the chance that homicide won't be recorded at all that the death will be deemed due to natural causes this is what had occurred at Petersburg general hospital until Josephine Thomas's death began to arouse suspicions the first lady came in and was autopsy and was found to have serious heart disease but she also had lethal concentrations of lidocaine in her blood and in her tissues which she should not have had because she had no order for it in her chart nor had she been given lidocaine during her code concerned about the rising death rate the hospital reviewed all the fatalities since Leroy Hargrave had been assigned to the unit and they identified ten persons that they thought might be at risk for lidocaine poisoning James Dalton's now a judge was assistant Commonwealth's Attorney in Petersburg when the deaths took place I received a call from an attorney he said we've got a something I hope doesn't exist but I'm afraid that it's a possibility that had been a number of people actually killed at the hospital Dalton also learned the name of the chief suspect Leroy Hargrave they were on his shift and he may have his shift may have varied but he was he moved around so whenever he was on his shift but it was a night shift normally that these occurred and I guess it was not too suspicious initially because I think there's some history of people dying at night more frequently so far the evidence was circumstantial Hargrave happened to be around when the deaths took place to convince Dalton and ultimately a jury that they were premeditated murders the medical examiner had to show that the patients had been given lidocaine in unusual amounts the task was made more difficult because several of the victims had been dead for several months it was a toxicological masterpiece as far as detective work because they were in one case they're working with fresh tissue in other instances they had to recover the poison from bodies which had been embalmed and buried and in the third instance they had to try and establish sufficient tissue levels in the biopsy samples from the previous autopsy so when it was all over of those ten deaths that were suspicious six were established as due to acute policeman prosecutors piece together a likely scenario leading to Josephine Thomas's death it begins with Hargreaves stealing some lidocaine once the cardiac care unit has settled for the night he slips into Thomas's room unobserved [Music] after loading a hypodermic with a massive dose of lidocaine he temporarily disables Thomas's cardiac monitor alarm [Music] within seconds of administering the drug it will disrupt the rhythm of Thomas's heart causing a fatal seizure then our grave raises the alarm to divert suspicion from himself in here Leroy hartgrave was convicted of poisoning Josephine Thomas and sentenced to life imprisonment he never confessed and his motive for killing Thomas and the other Asians was never established dr. Fierro talks about one theory the code the actual code procedure the cardiac arrest procedure with the response by a resuscitation team is a very dramatic event it's very intense it's very rapid there are orders there's no pleases there's no thankings just instructions and this is quite exciting two persons who are on the outside you know if you're not related to the person who's being coded so it was thought that he really got into the code without the initial suspicions of the nurses without the technology to precisely identify lidocaine weeks or months after death Leroy Hargrave might have gone free John tress true how many bodies do you dig up to find a bullet hole none they catch that before they're buried how many bodies you dig up to find a poison most of them we're missing them at the point of death and we're burying the evidence that's difficult to overcome but that's what we're going to do [Music] among the most difficult poisonings to detect are those involving product tampering in 1982 seven people in Chicago died from poison laced tylenol a rash of copycat crimes followed each with its own bizarre twist to June 11th 1986 the town of Auburn Washington fifteen-year-old Hayley Snow finds her mother collapsed in the bathroom Susan snow is unconscious her pulse is weak her breaths come in long irregular gasps Hayley dials 911 for hours this apparently healthy 40 year old mother of two will be declared dead when paramedics arrive at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center Susan snow is comatose Harbor view is the best trauma center in the northwest but snow is fading fast snow's condition puzzles the emergency team her brain appears swollen inflamed she is struggling for breath and her vital signs are failing she never recovers consciousness an hour after admission she was declared brain-dead what appeared at first as a random death soon will be revealed as murdered it will cost a pharmaceutical company tens of millions of dollars in sight public panic and set off one of the largest law enforcement operations ever mounted in Washington State special agents Jack Cusack and Mike Byrne were part of the FBI investigation team the first victim in this case was a soos no she was a 40-year old bank teller that lived in Auburn Washington and in her daily routine she always ingested excedrin the cause of Susan snows death emerged almost by chance at her autopsy the assistant medical examiner noticed the smell of bitter almonds a telltale sign of cyanide poisoning many people cannot detect the odor by a quirk of genetics the assistant medical examiner could dying by cyanide isn't Pleasant inside each cell cyanide displaces oxygen in the energy transport mechanism deprived of oxygen cells collapse the body dies slowly asphyxiating bit by bit by June 16 the cyanide source had been identified the bottle of extra-strength excedrin capsules in Susan snows kitchen 750,000 bottles of excedrin were immediately recalled or withdrawn the news made headlines all over America fresh in everyone's minds were the tylenol poisonings in Chicago how many would die this time to catch a poisoner it helps to get inside his or her head John fresh trail explains how poisoners target their victims one is Type S s meaning specific victim that victim has a name they know exactly what's going to be whether it's their spouse or was a political figure or somebody they're going out after an individual with the name the other type is Type R random victim in other words they know they're gonna get somebody they have no idea who it's going to be and this is where you find your campers or work at work either for ego or for industrial blackmail and sometimes you can actually find individuals cloaked and camouflaged as random poisoners that are specific so this gets to be a real mind game the investigation of this kind of an offender Susan snows death it would turn out was a random killing she was poisoned in a cold-blooded attempt to draw attention away from the real target on June 5th six days before Susan Snow died Bruce Nichol had suddenly collapsed at his mobile home in Kent Washington when paramedics arrived they found the 52 year-old nickel on his back gasping for breath his face was cherry red his body deathly pale the paramedics had never seen such symptoms before Nichols wife Stella told them he had been complaining of headaches shortly before collapsing he had taken to extra-strength excedrin capsules Stella emphasized excedrin over and over the paramedics would remember later she even retrieved the bottle from her kitchen evacuated to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle nickle died a few hours later the autopsy recorded death from natural causes nickel had died from emphysema strains enough Stella Nickell was also making a few additional calls on her own she called a doctor are you sure this is what he died up she called the paramedics it could have been anything else are you sure that you know he died of natural causes she wasn't quite that obvious but but she didn't make these telephone calls Stella called again after news of Susan snows poisoning appeared the lot number of snows excedrin matched the capsules Bruce had taken tests quickly proved that Nichols capsules were laced with cyanide Nichols body had been buried but a vial of his blood remained it too was tested again cyanide across the state shelves were cleared of excedrin but of the thousands of bottles screened only five were found to contain cyanide a little quirky thing about that was Stella had two of the bottles and even more strange than that was she said yeah I bought one of the bottles about a month before Bruce died and I bought the second bottle little more than a week before he died the odds of that are unbelievable Stella's deadly plan began to unfold first she poisoned Bruce with cyanide laced capsules then to make his death appear a random killing she placed more contaminated capsules on drug store shelves investigators began searching for a motive they soon found one insurance fraud when Bruce Nichols died and he was found to died of natural causes Stella stood to gain approximately $31,000 if he died accidental death then has jumped up to about seven hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars and in addition to that she had a couple twenty thousand dollar policies to insurance companies dying by poison counts as accidental death but had Bruce taken out the policies handwriting experts scrutinized his signatures comparing them to Stella's the height and width of a letter its shape and slope all contain telltale clues so does the fluidity the flow and rhythm of the writing which is very hard to fake Bruce had not signed the documents Stella had could the investigators now tie Stella to the cyanide when the capsules were shipped to the FBI's toxicology laboratory in Washington DC an unexpected clue appeared the white powder was contaminated with tiny green specks the specks were 99% sodium chloride ordinary table salt bulking out products with salt is a common manufacturing practice but what of the remaining 1% laboratory analysis revealed four separate chemicals to were used almost exclusively in preparations called algaecides one commercial product contained all four of the chemicals it came in the form of tablets which were bright green laboratory called us back and said we have positively identified those green crystals as a product known as algid destroyer it's an algaecide used in fish tanks by fish fancier and that that really rang a bell for us because from the first time any of our agents went in Stella's residence it was obvious she was a fish fancier [ __ ] fish aquariums all around the front room the cyanide had led to algae destroyer with algae destroyer now lead to stella agents combed pet stores all over Seattle someone might remember stella and the kind of algaecide she preferred the search ended at a store not far from where stella lived it stocked algae destroyer and the manager recognized a photograph of the woman who frequently bought it there it was Stella Nickell four months after Bruce Nicholls murders Stella avoided taking a polygraph test her health would not permit it she explained in November 1986 she finally agreed to cooperate the test is designed to pick up tiny physiological changes blood pressure and pulse rate are carefully monitored each may change when an individual lies forensic detectives use the polygraph to eliminate innocent individuals from their suspect list that was not to be Stella's fate I remember the comment she made when we were walking back to the examination room and she kind of turned around said I feel as though I'm walking into a lion's den I didn't understand the significance that comment but a little unusual Stella took the took the examination I formulated the questions they were clear-cut she caused your husband's death did you put potassium cyanide in those extra-strength excedrin capsules Stella clearly clearly showed deception on the test when we informed her of that and straightforward fashion she asked for her attorney it was in the waiting room and basically everybody knows how the Miranda rights bill that pretty much terminated that interview that day more trouble was in store for Stella this time it came from an unexpected source her daughter Cindy when she heard Stella had failed the polygraph she contacted Jack Cusack no there's no doubt about it we had a lot of good breaks come our way in this case and one that paid off and initially was the fact that Stella's daughter Cindy decided to share with us some of the conversations that she had had with her mother out of the airport in 1985 after years of feuding Stella and Cindy briefly reconciled they even got jobs together as security guards at Seattle's SeaTac Airport it was there in the pauses between flights that Cindy heard hints of Stella's plan first Stella asked her daughter where she might buy heroin what was a lethal dose how much cocaine then she talked about hiring a hit man to shoot Bruce while she was out of town or less plausibly to kill him in an automobile crash finally she talked about poisoning Bruce Nelson he told us that you know my mother spent a lot of time doing research at the library he said my mother would go to the libraries within the CL area within King County and research various plants at first Stella hope to identify poisonous plants on her property which she could surreptitiously feed to Bruce to check out Cindy's story the FBI sent teams of agents to every library in South Kent County it was a monumental task they were searching for a book any book that would tie Stella to poison boxes of books were sent back to the FBI laboratory in Washington DC there a team of examiner's scrutinized them for Stella's fingerprints what kind of part of the human behavior aspect to the case and that's a lot of ways that's pretty interesting you're in on the interviews you're kind of put the piece of the puzzle together a lot of the unsung heroes in this is the poor guy back in the FBI laboratory that gets a half a truckload of books and a set of fingerprints and said find him in there and he spends months and months all of a sudden calls us up one day and says hey there's one book of the multitude of books you sent me I found 104 Stella's fingertips in there and I found three palm prints you can imagine when we're on the receiving end of a telephone call like that the circle was closing on Stella special agent Mike Byrne so now we have library books that we went out came up with her latent prints on library books where she actually researched cyanide we had the insurance where she forged Bruce's signature and now we had the LG destroy product that she actually purchased on May 9th 1988 Stella Nickell was found guilty of murdering Bruce nickel and Susan Snow she was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole she never buckled when when Jack had a chance the interviewer said you failed the polygraph examination it was just a stone face and she never buckled even to this day she's never never said anything no one saw Stella poisoned Bruce she never even met Susan snow still she refuses to face her guilt denial may be a characteristic of poisoners according to John tress trail imagination is another we also find that poisoners are very intelligent certainly more so than the typical typical brute like clubbing of an individual as a sophistication of the weapons delivery we find they're very artistic artistic I don't mean they paint pretty pictures but I mean that they can design almost something like a play investigators believe Jo Mealing adopted Stella Nickell scenario when he read about her story in Reader's Digest the case begins on February 2nd 1991 in Tumwater Washington 50 miles southwest of Stella Nichols home one evening as the mailings are preparing for bed Joe reminds his wife Jennifer to take a sudafed Jennifer's snoring disturbs him he claims she must be congested Jennifer does not feel congested but under Joe's continued pressure she agrees a week earlier Joe had purchased some sudafed capsules but why sudafed which they have never used and why capsules after Stella Nickell Jennifer is wary of using them moments later Jennifer collapses and rapidly becomes unconscious Special Agent Tom Ferguson was involved with the FBI investigation what happens when someone is poisoned by sodium cyanide was perhaps best described by Joe mailing himself when he called the 9-1-1 operator and described to the operator what was happening to his wife it was fast it was Swift and she was in agony rushed to the emergency room Jennifer is in a coma the staff struggles to save her life treating Jennifer for diabetic ketoacidosis elevated acid and blood sugar levels in the midst of it all Joe kneeling makes a curious suggestion to the position in charge have you considered poison cyanide in particular miraculously Jennifer recovers she tells the emergency room doctor that she had taken sudafed at her husband's insistence the doctor alerts the police and orders a cyanide test next day his suspicions are confirmed there is cyanide in Jennifer's blood without Joe millings comments about cyanide Jennifer millings poisoning might have been overlooked just as Bruce Nichols poisoning initially was missed but why don't tuck psychology laboratories routinely screen for cyanide Washington state toxicologist dr. Barry Logan it's relatively uncommon to uncover an unsuspected poisoning usually if an investigation has been done properly by the investigators office by the coroner's office we have information upfront about what the circumstances are surrounding the death so we know whether it's likely to be a poisoning or not dozens of compounds show up on routine drug screening tests cyanide does not and there is a further complication prior tests for cyanide have taken a long time to do and it's been difficult to generate the results in a way in which the the information can be used effectively by the investigators before 1991 detecting cyanide involved a multi-step test which took at least a day to complete every sample of tissue or blood had to be tested separately dr. Logan has devised a simpler procedure a litmus test chemicals are added to a sample generating hydrogen cyanide gas if cyanide is present at the same time the litmus strip - paper impregnated with a complex of chemicals is added to the tube if hydrogen cyanide has been produced the strip turns purple the degree of coloration is a rough guide to how much cyanide the sample contains the test that we currently use in the slab to screen for the presence of cyanide is very easy to do we can do a large number of screens in a short period of time which is a big advantage within days of Jennifer mailings near poisoning dr. Logan had the opportunity to try out his new tests on February 11th and February 18th there were two mysterious deaths both fell within Logan's jurisdiction we conducted a full drug screen on the sample and found the presence of therapeutic levels of compound called pseudoephedrine which is the major component of sudafed that in itself wasn't particularly remarkable but at the pathologist request we also did a test for cyanide the cyanide test came back strongly positive a level that indicated almost a certainty the cause of death as being cyanide poisoning on March 1st a pattern finally emerged three cyanide poisoning two deaths all three victims had taken sudafed next day sudafed was withdrawn and the FBI was called in before we actually focused on Joe because that's one of the things we look at are the victim families but Joe made several comments that that he is the primary suspect and that he's too smart to ever be caught and he certainly wouldn't be caught by the FBI but Joe Mealing underestimated the agents tenacity and the FBI's resources FBI agents carefully examined the backing of the sudafed packages in the hopes of finding some evidence of tampering [Music] they found that on untampered packages the foil breaks when the pill is pushed through the back leaving a jagged edge but on the tampered packages the break in the foil was smooth Mealing had removed the capsules with a razor carefully slicing them from the package so he could replace them later throughout the investigation we tried to learn about nearly every aspect of jail mailings life we tried to reconstruct everything that he did for a fairly extensive time period geographically place him into the areas of the crime scenes to find out what's making him tick try to find the motive how does he operate we want to know everything about Joe kneeling Joe and Jennifer married in 1986 from the beginning they had quarrelled mostly about money Jennifer took multiple jobs to make ends meet Joe indulged his hobbies photography computer and theatrical makeup but in the days before her poisoning Jennifer later admitted Joe's normal behavior had changed five days before her collapse Joe bought the sudafed capsules which neither of them had used before when Jennifer returned home she found Joe polishing his grand scale why now he had not used it in 18 months stranger still Joe was wearing latex gloves he never cleaned the kitchen it wasn't his job finally there was the matter of the insurance policy Joe caught Jennifer on the way to work one day and asked her to sign what she thought was a small life-insurance policy for only $30,000 he knew exactly what he was doing he asked her to sign it when she was in a hurry on the way out the door she signs and now he has a total of seven hundred thousand dollars on her catching poisoners is rarely quick or easy despite the forensic detectives arsenal of sophisticated scientific techniques often the most important element of a successful investigation is sheared doggedness the FBI evidence response team begins by meticulously examining a crime scene agents Don's special clothing not to protect themselves but to safeguard the evidence with today's ultra sensitive techniques a single drop of blood or saliva a strand of hair or scraping of skin may seal the conviction of a criminal careful record-keeping is vital where each item was found when and by whom must be documented if the evidence is to stand up in court FBI headquarters in Washington receives so many items of evidence for testing each day it has been given its own zip code fingerprints still remain among the most important clues the FBI has more than 200 million on file there are dozens of ways to develop otherwise invisible prints latent prints one of the most effective is with the vapor of superglue which adheres to the print and raises it to the surface in the sudafed poisoning case agent urges in' and his colleagues fingerprinted every piece of evidence that might implicate joe mealy six contaminated bottles were eventually retrieved but Joe's fingerprints could not be found dozens of library books were examined again without success perhaps Joe remembered that fingerprints helped catch Stella Nickell and so he wore rubber gloves FBI agents mapped the locations where the tempered packs were found Joe told the FBI he bought sudafed from a store near his house other tampered packages turned up in a store in the lacey area near joe's work but for stores in tacoma also had tampered product special agent Tom torjussen the red dots indicate places where we could place Joe mailing through physical evidence through receipts through witnesses and other methods place him in one store for instance and in other areas around the timeframe of the tampering and in the immediate surroundings of those stores Joe's linked to the two stores near his home and work were evident enough but what of the four stores in Tacoma we found out that Joe would frequent the stripper bars and talk to the strippers and seemingly related his problems to them we found several of the dancers from topless dance clubs who recognized Joel Mealing who testified against him at the trial who placed him up here at certain not dates and times some of them said he was a regular frequenter of the establishments and they easily recognized him the investigators had tied Joe to the tempered sudafed packages could they now tie him to the cyanide as the major suspect the FBI tapped Joe's telephone early on in the investigation one day they heard him describe in vivid detail a building he had once visited from the description FBI agents identified it as the Emerald City chemical company in Kent Washington among other things emerald city chemicals sells cyanide when investigators examined the poison register for the day Joe had visited the area they could not find his signature a Richard P Johnson had bought cyanide that day it was all the FBI required as in the Stella Nickell case and writing analysis proved decisive despite Joe millings attempt to disguise his handwriting there are clear similarities between Richard P Johnson signature and Joe's own consider the formation of the Jay for example the shape of the O and the way the letters sit upon the line the person who signed the poison register was Joe it was determined that Jill million purchased one pound of sodium cyanide On January 11 a pound similar to this container which is a representative container of sodium cyanide and you might have one pound that's a lot of poison considering bill the size of a sudafed capture killed two people and injured one other one last point puzzled the investigators when the clerk at the chemical store was shown a photograph of Joe milling he failed to recognize him in the residence of Joel milling we found this array of theatrical makeup equipment experts in theatrical makeup testified at his trial and determined on the wooden stand that there is the equipment here available to make someone up to be unrecognizable as to their true identity we found a photograph of a person who looks elderly graying hair wrinkled face and it's a friend of Joel mewling in his late 20s early 30s it had taken 18 months of exhaustive investigation but by August 1992 the FBI case against Joe Mealing was complete shortly before Jennifer's poisoning he prepared six packages of sudafed in each he replaced the sudafed with capsules filled with lethal doses of cyanide five packets he returned to drug store shelves one remained at home to kill Jennifer Joe Mealing was indicted on two counts of murder and the attempted murder of Jennifer Mealing he is now serving life imprisonment among evidence discovered at Joe's home agents found one last item of note an outline for a screenplay about the poisoning of Jennifer the protagonist James Martin is described as devoted honest reliable sincere truthful Joe Mealing was greedy he was very selfish I don't think he was concerned about the health and welfare of his wife Jennifer he's concerned about Joe just as Stella Nickell learned from the tylenol poisonings and Joe Mealing learned from Stella Nichols mistakes so two investigators learn to prevent and detect such murders dr. Barry Logan there's no way to prevent a product from being tampered with what we can do is package it in such a way that if anything is done to interfere with the material that it's evident to the person when they buy from the supermarket or before they use the product what's important for the conviction of a poisoner are four things I call the conviction pyramid number one we have to have the victim number two we have to have the poisoner and then we have to have the poison and the intent and all these things have to be linked together poison to victim poison to offender offender to victim and then finally intent was the intent really to kill that victim once you get those four things locked on then you have the potential for a conviction each year forensic science provides investigators with powerful new tools how many poisoners still elude detection we don't know perhaps more than we would like to admit who is winning the battle in the end no one the fight goes on [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 266,140

Keywords: poison, doctor, hospital murderer, serial killer, medical conspiracy, attack, poison heart attack, heart, poison attack, poison dart, heart attack, poison heart, poison idea, heart attack gun, heart attack myth, heart attack hill, heart attack from energy drink, poison and harmful substances

Id: rQNdmPOZNRg

Length: 51min 24sec (3084 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 30 2019