Medical Mystery - Someone They Knew with Tamron Hall

perfect couple perfect family perfect everything she was in a car accident the woman slumped over the wheel and so they try to get her out of the car she starts vomiting within an hour she is dead i think everybody immediately their spider sense was definitely aroused did you ever discuss the fact about paying people not to testify he knew that he was either going to go to prison or he was going to testify truthfully [Music] yazid and rosemary issa had a fairytale life together he was a charming emergency room doctor and she was a beautiful nurse who stole his heart although they were from two very different cultures their love knew no bounds but on february 24 2005 the fairy tale came to a tragic end in the wake of a car accident what followed was a five-year quest for justice that would cross continents and test family loyalties [Music] yazidis was an emergency room doctor in akron ohio which is just stone's throw away from cleveland and yaz was considered to be a kind of a rock star good looking very charismatic a lot of friends and fans rosie was from a lovely family in cuyahoga county in cleveland they also were from that that same area that gates mills ohio area by all accounts a lovely person adored by her family and friends yazidis was an emergency room doctor who had his wife rosemary he was working as a resident she was a nurse at the old mount sinai hospital and so when he married rosemarie di puccio the family thought well this is great because i mean what a handsome guy we all seem to i mean he's just so nice and warm and fuzzy and so they embraced him and they moved into a lovely neighborhood and you have a doctor and a beautiful wife and then they have two little kids not long after so perfect couple perfect family perfect everything he lived in a really beautiful suburb he was a very successful person if you saw him you would have thought that he was and had everything success awesome job beautiful family he and his brother for us had a company called dish one up which was one of the early purveyors of you know cable access and stuff and did really well with that this went up had its own offices so they were very close and did really well in terms of the the finance part of the business the events of february 24th of 2005 is that rosemary issa had planned to go see a movie at the local mall and uh was going to drive there by herself rosie had been going to the movies with her sister they were going to meet at a movie theater for a later afternoon movie rosie was talking on the phone with one of her friends she calls her friend ava and says i feel like crap i just feel horrible and so she's talking about that with her friend ava so she then passes out there's no more conversation and so she was in a car accident middle of the day and he was on a small road so nobody's going fast and in fact when they look at the damage on the cars it was minor you know a side swipe no big impact no airbags and yet when the ems people got there the woman slumped over the wheel and so they try to get her out of the car she starts vomiting it seemed like an unusual circumstance because the crash was such a low level crash that it didn't make sense to anybody involved as to why a young healthy woman who you know for all intents and purposes was in excellent health would have this sort of an issue the husband the family all rush in and this it's just stupefy this makes no sense at all did she have an aneurysm was there a heart attack there had been something [Music] it's february 24 2005 38 year old mother of two rose marie issa is on her way to take in an afternoon movie while driving to the theater she suffers a major medical emergency which renders her unconscious leading to a seemingly benign traffic accident as paramedics and police arrive on the scene they quickly realized rosemarie's condition is far more dire than they could have imagined back in 2005 the police respond to a call that has been a minor accident but the driver of the vehicle is not responsive we have a female who's healthy who when ems gets to the scene she's vomited she's unresponsive things as an emergency physician i would be thinking about is did she have a aneurysm that ruptured in her brain and she has a large hemorrhage did she have a dissection of her aorta that damaged her vessels and they rush her to hillcrest hospital which is not that far away and within an hour she is dead the husband the family all rush in and this it's just stupefy this makes no sense at all i mean did she have an aneurysm was there a heart attack there had been something because it was not the accident there had to be a devastating event and a young female to have this occur i'm sure the emergency physician at the time was frustrated you don't want to see this and someone is a young mother who's coming in you then expect the autopsy to be able to give you the idea of what caused this [Applause] strangely enough um dr balraj was the coroner at the time a long time coroner and nothing unusual showed up no medical cause there was no aneurysm there was no heart attack there was no uh drugs there was no uh obvious clue because there was no trauma to the body that would indicate that this was a fatal uh reaction in this instance this case there was not a determination that this was a homicide this was a belief that she had died from natural causes when the autopsy doesn't show you anything then you start thinking well what else could this be that gets into the law enforcement and they're gonna have to start thinking outside the box do they have access to other aspects could there be something nefarious here and i think in this case that's what happened dominic dipuccio who was incredibly smart also a brilliant lawyer really started to dial in on things that were suspicious and that's when they started making those phone calls eva mcgregor called dominic and began to explain her suspicions and explained that rosie had not been feeling well on the phone when she was driving she told dominic that she thought that something was terribly a mess so avod says i have a weird thing that happened rosie was talking to me just before she died and she was mentioning that yaz gave her this pill but she said it just made her feel terrible so you need to look into that so dominic then says to the police hey you need to talk to ava because her conversation with me about this pill is kind of strange i mean i don't know what to make of it but it doesn't make sense to me the investigator said well maybe we should look into that so the police officer calls dr issa says hey do you still have those calcium calcium i do he says well can i meet you at the house let's get those because what if it's like product tampering because of the the old tylenol scare i mean there was you know absolute pattern in history of people being killed by someone putting poison in a pill so jazz meets them at the house hands them over the bottle of calcium pills the detective bags it tags it and sends it off to a scientist and person who is an expert in looking at the spectron microscopy didn't know what is in the supplements i took in the evidence which was submitted to our laboratory which was a plastic bottle filled with pills that were purported to be calcium pills my job at this point isn't to prove that there was poison my job at this point is to prove that these capsules are all calcium i found a bunch of calcium however i also found nine of these pills had been tampered with the calcium pills had a white crushed powder appearance to them these nine pills had this crystal rock candy kind of appearance to them and so um i immediately called the detective actually dropped off the evidence at our laboratory i'm like holy cow that okay one of these things is not like the other and so then i went back and started to do my lab analysis the actual chemistry nerdy type stuff we use infrared light and i tested it with this material it showed the presence of cyanide when it was sent off it took i wanna say three four days but in those three or four days suddenly jazz uh told the family members and some of his friends hey one of my buddies just got hurt i've got to go up to detroit and uh so the kids are taken care of he had two different women come in to be their nannies and so they didn't know who these women were the fact that the victim's friend had reported to the police officer that the victim was literally forced to take these pills and then the fact that she died in the manner that she did very suddenly i just figured that okay this case just went from an unknown unsolved death to a homicide i think everybody immediately their spider sense was definitely aroused and certainly after the next few days some of rosie's friends you know they were immediately suspected of uzidisa once yazide had turned over the calcium tablets and it would be highly likely once they were tested that the cyanide would be found at that point in time then the focus would come down on dr dr issa and what he chose to do is run he goes up to detroit goes across the bridge to windsor from windsor to toronto from toronto to cyprus from cyprus to beirut and why beirut well of course he's lebanese but beirut does not have an extradition treaty with the united states so there he sat because he had a buddy over in lebanon that had connections had papers had safe houses and a place for him to just if you're gonna be on the lam the perfect place to be he is living the playboy life he is just having a great old time he would get happy in the nightclub and say you know they say i'm a killer haha i could be a killer his friend goes what are you doing [Music] perplexed by the cause of rosemary's untimely death authorities hone in on the calcium pill she had taken after providing investigators with the remaining pills from the bottle for testing dr yazid issa tells friends and family he's taking a trip out of town and then quickly flees the country upon testing the remaining calcium pills it is determined they were laced with cyanide once though the police bagged and tagged the pills he realized i'm going to have to get out of here and that's right i can go to lebanon i can go to beirut i can hide from everybody and my buddies will take care of me my family will send me money i will live like a king over there and nobody can touch me once it was determined that this was cyanide poisoning that took place here and then you know dr issac becomes conspicuous by his absence and he's on the run and uh he was a fugitive from justice there was charges that were brought against him for the murder of his wife the lead detective when he finds out that yaz is gone and they can't find any trace of him contacts the fbi and said this guy our suspect may have fled the country and that becomes your problem because if he's taken off then he's trying to escape our jurisdiction so we need your help he made a new life for himself literally in beirut in lebanon which did not have an extradition policy with the united states at the time he left behind his children i think he probably knew that the deputy family would step up and care for care for them as they have it was bizarre though the fact that he thought it out and was able to to do what he did so efficiently and so calculate in such a calculated manner it was two years that he was he was missing eventually through in a good context that the fbi had with interpol and with with other investigative agencies in the middle east was able to identify where dr issa was was able to monitor his whereabouts and then a plan was put in place as to how to secure him so that he could be brought back he is living the playboy life he is just having a great old time so much so that the guy that was his patron in lebanon said i need you to be quiet i need you to shut the hell up about being so bold about everything because he would apparently get you know happy in the night club and say you know they say i'm a killer haha i could be a killer dr issa wants to start dating again so he gets a new address and his new address for emails is fugitive hotmail.com his friend goes what what are you doing fugitive hotmail.com he goes oh yeah it's funny it's great to love it really well the fbi of course is now still monitoring all of this there was a significant amount of information as to him traveling through lebanon and the fbi was made aware that he was going to be traveling to cyprus so the fbi finds out he's about to leave for cyprus they contact the cypriot authorities and say this guy's probably going to show up with a fake passport which makes him uh somebody you can arrest for bad papers so when you arrest him let us know ensures yes with his hair now completely changed he's got a fro uh you know he's he's the the playboy of lebanon he's he's he's all into it and the police are there say excuse me we need you to do your fingerprints here because the fingerprints give them away he had a false identity i think his name was khalifa who is what the false identification false paperwork um they eventually identified him so they arrest him because of course as a doctor in akron his fingerprints were on file so now you faked it you broke the law we can arrest you and overcomes the fbi so doctor we'd like you to come back to um the states we want you to come back to cleveland at the time that dr issa was charged with aggravated murder and although there were not specifications or requests that this be handled as a possible death penalty case persons could construe that aggravated murder would carry the death sentence so that was something that we had to navigate through as far as using the united states state department with the folks in cyprus to make sure that they understood that we would not be looking for the death sentence because they would have been reluctant to allow him to return for uh for a trial where capital murder was involved it took a couple years for this negotiation to go on finally he said i'm coming back and so they bring them back in cuffs and now we move to the next phase which is having a prosecutor and a team that really has nothing more than circumstantial evidence because we've got pills that had poison in them we've got a guy who fled the country bad who had a email address fugitive hotmail.com another bad thing but how do we prove all of this the most compelling testimony of that entire trial was the testimony of yazidis brother did you ever discuss the fact about paying people not to testify after three long years on the run yazid issa is finally extradited back to the united states to stand trial for the murder of his wife rose marie the prosecution team of steve dever and anna feralia will have to prove to the jury that dr isa using his knowledge of medicine violated his sacred oath in an attempt to commit the perfect murder my drive was to do a really good job for the people of my my state to do my job well and to not let my personal feelings or anything else interfere i also knew that in going forward if i had made errors that my own career would be defined by this case that so much of what i was doing was being scrutinized all right good morning everybody again we're back on the record in state of ohio versus the azide esa case number 476832 we are getting ready to begin opening statements at this time on april 20th 2005 the cuyahoga county coroner ruled that rosemary issa died as a result of acute cyanide intoxication when this tragedy was announced this 38 year old mother of two had been in her grave for nearly two months meanwhile her husband had fled this country over a month earlier and it started a new life in beirut lebanon living as maurice khalifi steve dever was the lead assistant county prosecutor and steve is not flashy he is not somebody who's the old sort of theatrical style of bombast and stuff very simple very business-like but very precise of all of the people who commit the crime of murder the poisoner is probably the most craftier of all of those types of killers and the reason being ladies and gentlemen is that it's so difficult first of all to detect poison and secondly it's very very difficult to identify who could be the perpetrator both of the defense attorneys did a good job because you know our client of course is uh lebanese you know people he's not going to get a fair shake because of you know the animus between americans and the lebanese right now there is no question that the death of rosemarie isa was senseless needless and certainly tragic and i'm certain that when you hear from every witness that knew rose marie you were going to hear that she was a terrific person whose life clearly ended way too soon i have a lot of respect for the two fine defense attorneys mr bradley and mr marine they are worthy adversaries and they work this case up they worked it hard and all of that is true but equally true and what you will come to see as this trial unfolds over the next several weeks is that dr yazid isa did not commit this crime he did not intentionally poison the mother of his two young children the woman with whom he was actively trying to conceive a third child and add to their family something they both wanted and you're going to see that he did not commit this crime because there was no reason for him to have committed this crime the most compelling testimony of that entire trial was the testimony of yazidis's brother definitely those two guys were the best of friends they had built a great business together and they were active in each other's lives now up until that time when your brother contacted you that was following the the interview with the police isn't that correct yes and you actually came over to their to yazidis house in gates mill did you yes right and he was pretty worked up about that interview wasn't he was a little nervous yeah he was scared all right and what was he afraid of uh basically that people would find out about his affairs and because of that the fact that that your brother had had a relationship while married that caused him so much concern that you advised him that hey you better go talk to your lawyer is that correct that caused me concern okay at that point in time we don't have a murder and we don't have a poisoning right don't you think you kind of jumped the gun about that concern people jumped the gun all the time okay well you did that day right i just thought it was spark for him to speak to an attorney that was right well when did he tell you that he gave the pill to his wife that killed her you know some time after she passed away so sometime within those two or three days those days kind of blur together for me because it was a pretty bad period i mean we just lost somebody we love all right and when you had that conversation with him about that did you ask him well who possibly could have put cyanide into those pills yes all right and did you ask him if he killed his wife yes and what did he say he said no i think for us knew the stakes i mean he knew that he would likely go to prison if he did not cooperate and i think that it was very very challenging for him because he knew that he was either going to go to prison or he was going to testify truthfully let me ask you this your conversations with your brother do you ever discuss the fact about paying people not to testify no did you ever have a conversation with your brother about paying 35 000 dollars to shut somebody up no no can you queue that up please we were able to uncover several conversations that dr issa was having with his brother concerning trying to influence witnesses what we perceive to be an attempt to bribe or intimidate a witness not to testify or not to testify truthfully you talked to your brother on the telephone when he arrived back here at the justice center is that correct yes and you're aware that those conversations that take place from the justice center are recorded is that correct right yes okay and every testimony that you're given here today to the ladies and gentlemen the jury and yesterday has been the truth and the complete truth is that correct yes right and there was in fact a conversation you had with your brother about pain quote that 35 000 to shut her up so that right i believe so yes okay the prosecutor said stop well hold on are you telling me the truth now do you want to think about this do you want to take a break and come back because you know perjury's a big deal here at this time i want to advise you of your right against self-incrimination you know that you have the right to remain silent you do not have to answer questions that would incriminate yourself if you would like to consult with your attorney at this point you are able to do that and i will give you the opportunity to step off the witness stand and to take that time he consulted with an attorney he had the choice of either provide truthful testimony concerning what his brother said concerning the death of of rosemary issa or he could face the consequences of obstruction of justice intimidating witnesses as well as committing perjury she said to me that she was gonna call yaz and ask him if the calcium pill he gave her could be making her sick he bragged about it every damn day [Music] the prosecution has struck a potentially devastating blow to yazid issa's defense in the murder trial of his wife rose marie while testifying on the witness stand ferrous issa is caught lying to the jury regarding a pre-trial jailhouse conversation he had with his brother the defendant yazid although for us is excused to speak to his attorney the defense knows full well that once recalled to the stand he may have knowledge that can sink their case the fact that you have a successful popular charismatic emergency room doctor who had the perfect lifestyle a loving wife two adorable kids and then it all gets crushed by his evilness that to me was and and the parents and the families demand for justice to me was a perfect story and that needed to be shared and i think that's why people related to it he had affairs he had more than two affairs but there were two that admitted that there in fact were had relationships with dr issa this relationship you had with the defendant was this a sexual relationship at one point after we were married in 2001 we began another sexual relationship so after you were married after the defendant was married is that correct and uh do you know the defendant yazidis yes i do and how do you know yazidis um i had a romantic relationship with him well in order for this relationship to have a future it was your position that he could no longer be married is that correct yes all right and did you express that to him probably a couple of times the suggestion by the prosecution was that he of course was having affairs all through his marriage and that the two women who became his nannies were his lovers at the time and then after rosemary is killed he brings them right into the house how would somebody do that that's something that is diabolical in my book i think that eva mcgregor's testimony was incredibly compelling and during that day did you receive a phone call from rosie yes and [Music] where were you when you received your phone call i was at my office the last conversation that mrs isa had with her good friend and neighbor concerning the calcium pills was one of the revelations as far as focusing down on the pills as a possible source or having something to do with uh mrs isa's death she said she wasn't feeling well and i said why what's the matter she says well i'm feeling a little nauseous she said that she had taken a a calcium pill right before she left her house and i said calcium i said when did you start taking calcium and she said well she was at um yaz's families and they had a discussion that because of her age she should start to take calcium and she said she didn't really want to take it and she said as she was in it you know rushing out the door he said here take it take your calcium and she said i just you know that i took it and she says now i don't know if that's what's making me sick so your understanding was that yaz had given her a calcium yes mrs mcgregor when did you talk to rosemary again [Music] was that your last phone call with rosemary yes what was your reaction what was your feeling at the time when you talked to eva mcgregor i could not believe what she had just told me and what did you do we called the coroner in the morning and told him that to make sure he does a full autopsy of full toxicology and why was it important for you to have the coroner do a full autopsy in full toxicology at that time because of what eva told us and she was insistent she was absolutely insistent that we promise her that we will do that right one of the instances in the trial that stood out to me was when they brought in uh mr khalif from who had been his protector in lebanon he took the witness stand i tried to help him for all the way through what do you mean by trying to help oh no to establish a life over there how did you try to help him establish his life over there getting my ideas and getting him things to do over there what kind of ideas did you give to the defendants five six different ideas so how does one legally in lebanon get false identifications for a free fugitive for mr khalifi was also larger than life very boisterous very gregarious in the courtroom he was a very interesting character okay well what was the context that he would talk about his white stem the context so he bought me two sign appeals in a chart there was like six seven thousand vitamin jar and he gave her two pills and he grounded the cyanide refilled the pills that information was critical specifically the admissions that dr issa had poisoned his wife and killed his wife that was significant evidence he bragged about it every damn day in lebanon it [Music] yes and it's been accounted three different ways yes frost comes back takes a witness stand raises his right hand the prosecutor goes i was asking you some questions before let me ask you what did your brother dr isa tell you about this murder i asked him if he was responsible for her death and he said yes what did he tell you that he did he said that he put the cyanide in the capsules when your own brother now says you admitted to him this is the person who is protecting you sending you money your business partner your flesh and blood said you admitted to him we're done we are so done with this thing when you found out that information what did you say to your brother he told me i mean why did you say that because he took rosie's life and i loved her he just ruined his whole family it was a heartbreaking moment because for us clearly loved rosie and he was i think in the worst position that one could possibly be in jamal khalifi was worthy enough to hear yeah say he killed rosie so what about us today what do we deserve are you man enough [Music] over the course of this trial the prosecution has clearly demonstrated for the jury the type of person yazid isa is what they say is that the truth can't be discounted that a young mother of two was murdered leaving heartbroken friends and family members with more questions than answers defense attorneys stephen bradley and mark marion have the difficult task of convincing the jury that their client had no motive to commit this crime this was a case that i had at the very beginning of my career as a judge and it was like going from the minor leagues up to pitch at the world series on the last game it was the most intense trial that i've ever had the power of the emotion that you can feel when you consider the sympathy towards the dipuccio family those children and rosemarie herself and the power of the emotion that you feel in terms of the disgust and disdain that you might maintain towards this man as a human being and you have to remind yourself that that is not evidence you have to consider the evidence that was presented and if you feel that any of the evidence that was presented raises a reasonable doubt in your individual minds to recognize that doubt and return a verdict of not guilty i think that all of the pieces of this case came together and the prosecutors were very thorough in their presentation but of the most important testimony you have heard or that you will ever hear came right from this witness stand when even mcgregor sat down and she looked at you and she told you something very important very rarely does a victim speak to you she told you in her own words he handed me a calcium pill as i walked out the door and you come to find out ladies and gentlemen that that calcium pill is laced with cyanide the same cyanide that killed her no one's asking you to make a quantum leap in this case ladies and gentlemen and no one's asking you to think outside the box the only thing we ask is that you use your common sense and your good judgment the jury was incredibly thoughtful and deliberate during the course of their deliberations they took their time from the jury please [Music] you can be saved thank you ladies and gentlemen i understand that you have reached a verdict in this case is that correct yes very good mr four person if you would hand me the verdict form we the jury in this case being duly impaneled and sworn do find the defendant yazid isa guilty of dedicated murder in violation of 29 03.01 a of the revised code dr isa was found guilty of aggravated murder that this was a pre-calculated decision to cause her death [Music] her mom and dad when you watch their faces during the testimony and you watch their faces when uh the guilty verdict came in you know they're hugging each other and they were so lovable so you understood their pain and i i just i was moved by that february 24th 2005 i told gigi our luck ran out we lost our rosie for no reason there is no closure i mean we were changed forever but will will survive will handle it the only thing i'm hoping that from now on [Music] maybe there'll be less nights that my wife cries herself to sleep in the deputy family they needed to speak and there was nothing that i could have said that would have been any better than what each one of them had said what do you say to a person that murders the mother of his children a murdering coward no heart no compassion no remorse evil [Music] seven weeks looking at the devil in his eyes and a blank expression may your life in prison be as miserable as you are the brothers being you know attorneys and being men who are trying to be more stoic about it but just gushed the trauma and the and the disbelief and the pain and the betrayal jamal khalifi was worthy enough to hear yeah say he killed rosie and his brother was given that special treatment to hear those words [Music] so what about us today what do we deserve he set the bar but i'm not holding my breath [Music] five years ago this nightmare started with the act of a coward and i predicted aligned with one i challenge him to find the courage today to admit what he did to provide the apology that my mother my father my sister my wife my brother rachel deserve are you man enough are you forget that appeal stop wasting your brother's money it's your last chance to save your soul right here right now very nice [Music] he was there in the room with him never ever gave him any indication that he was overwhelmed with any kind of grief and or remorse at trial i am so glad that you will be leaving my courtroom now and that i hopefully will never have to look upon you again at this time i sentence you to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 20 years we've all taken an oath as physicians to do no harm to take your knowledge base and to use that to do harm against someone who's a family member or others in society that's just a whole other level we're offended for anyone to do this but certainly someone with that knowledge base to use it after taking an oath is even more so i think that yazid issa wanted to have everything the status the warmth the love the companionship of these people but he also wanted to have affairs he wanted to have mistresses if rosie divorced him he would lose the de puccio family and he would lose likely a great deal of custody of his children and his bad character would be revealed i think that in his own narcissism he could not have that [Music] on march 5th 2010 yazid issa was convicted of murdering his wife rose marie he is currently serving out a life sentence in the ohio state penitentiary he will be eligible for parole in january of 2029 i'm tamaran hall thank you for watching someone they knew [Music] you

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Id: OnvzC2bmhJk

Length: 44min 1sec (2641 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022