Searching For An Elusive Bomber | The New Detectives | Real Responders

a car bomb Perls investigators down a dark and twisted path at the end is one woman with many deadly secrets a bustling emergency room is brought to its knees with the arrival of a dying woman scientists try to determine what might have turned her blood to toxic gas a Florida family is mysteriously sickened the mother suffers a lingering death before police can catch the killer they must first find the source of the poison the most subtle of killers is absolutely silent working from the inside out to turn its victims body against itself when chemistry goes wrong scientists struggle to determine what constitutes a lethal dosage [Music] June 28 1983 began as a night of celebration judi bueno ano met her boyfriend John Gentry and the women who worked at her beauty salon at a Pensacola Florida restaurant they gathered to present one of the employees with a pendant in honor of her birthday as the dinner was finished and the party wore down Judy suggested that John go to the liquor store for some champagne so they could continue celebrating elsewhere as night fell the streets grew quiet but the silence would be shattered in an instant [Music] police and rescue raced to the scene Gentry was rushed to the hospital shrapnel embedded in his back at first investigators weren't sure if the explosion was due to mechanical failure or an attempt on Gentry's life but even a cursory look at the crime scene revealed the blast to be no accident it came from the trunk an unlikely place for an explosion of that magnitude because bombings are a federal offense Pensacola Police notified the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms by the extent of the blast ATF agents estimated two sticks of dynamite were used rigged to the taillights by yellow and orange wire Gentry was lucky to have escaped with his life as the ATF investigated the scene and the crime photos Pensacola police sought to find out who would benefit from Gentry's death that task fell to detective Ted Chamberlain what we usually do is we look at two insurance policies of the victim and that's what we did with Gentry and we looked into and we found he did have a large insurance policy on him the beneficiary was Judy bueno ano Gentry's girlfriend but that wasn't surprising the two were starting a business together by itself the information meant nothing Chamberlain needed more to go on the ATF found it they traced the dynamite to a man in Alabama a very close friend of Judy bueno ano by now Gentry was out of intensive care detectives took the opportunity to talk to him about what happened to let him know that Judy bueno ano was the main suspect Gentry found it difficult to believe but then he began thinking about it he said you know when I'm staying over there Judy says I get psycho she was giving me these vitamins to make me feel better and he said I kept getting sick he said so I quit taking them and then I felt better he said and I took him again and got sick again Gentry had been so he'll he'd spent time in the hospital there he recovered completely though his doctor wasn't sure what was wrong with him once Gentry returned home he relapsed finally he stopped taking the vitamin pills and his health returned he felt his days of illness were behind him and then his car blew up sensing a connection the detective asked Gentry if he'd saved any of the capsules as a matter of fact he had they were supposedly a popular vitamin C supplement Chamberlain sent them to the lab for analysis finding out what something isn't is easier than finding out what it is the process of elimination began with a comparison of the capsules with vitamin C it proved there was not a speck of the vitamin in the capsules that discovery alone ramped up the suspicion that the pills were poisoned but what was in them the substance in the capsules was dissolved and tested some tests analyzed its chemical makeup others measured the wavelengths of light it absorbed by comparing these results with a database of chemicals the compound was identified the capsules were found to contain a substance called para formaldehyde it has no known medical use in fact it's considered a class 3 poison which means it's moderately toxic John press trail of the Blodgett poison control center is a poisoning expert according to him if murder was the motive Farah formaldehyde wasn't the best choice when it breaks down to formaldehyde which we know is used to preserve bodies is very irritating it wouldn't be a very good poison to pick for homicidal reason to be more irritating you know irritating to the eyes or attaining the respiratory tract and I suppose in chronic exposures we know formaldehyde can cause cancer Gentry's story bolstered by the tampered pills and the explosion which gave chamberlain ample grounds to obtain search warrants for bueno anos home and beauty salon at her house they found more vitamin capsules in her son's closet they found wire that resembled the wire used to blow up the car so we sent that off to the lab and they sent us back pictures of the wire and the color coating in striations of the wire take one taken from the piece of the bomb that was have gone and the one from the boys room and you put them together it was just like matching up ballistics on bullets I mean they looked exactly alike and that was real good evidence Detective Robert Beasley mrs. Anna Festival investigates while one group of officers searched the house another group is at work collecting chemicals from dueño anos salons for judy bueno ano para formaldehyde would be a poison of opportunity the chemical is used in beauty salons as a disinfectant with evidence of the bomb and the poison police had ample grounds to arrest her on suspicion the bombing made her a suspect in a federal crime the ATF jurisdiction stretched beyond Florida to all 50 states having failed at woked poisoning and blowing up her lover bueno ano seemed like a two-time loser but his investigators checked her background they began to suspect that she may have just been in a slump as news of judy bueno on yos arrest spread detective Chamberlain received a call from the mother of one of her ex-boyfriends in Alabama a man named Bobby Jo Morris a man who had died mysteriously her son and Judy lived together and she had a very strong suspicion that he didn't die of natural causes that she had poisoned or killed her son bueno ano had pressured Bobby Jo's mother to cremate the body but she refused Chamberlain promised he'd look into the matter everybody that we talked to they all seemed to be a little bit scared of duty a little bit afraid of her that she she would always make up these incredible stories as what we were hearing from her and we even talked to one witness that the witness said that she Judy had told this girl said look if you don't like your husband poison them with stories of Bobby Joe Morris and others coming to light police began to suspect that John Gentry who wasn't wano anos first victim they found that her life at least on the surface appeared touched by tragedy but her closer inspection suggested something more diabolical judy lost her husband James Goodyear in 1971 three months after he returned from Vietnam he lapsed into delirium and died after his death judy changed her name from judy good year to judy bueno ano the spanish translation of her husband's surname the deeper Chamberlin dug the darker Judy's past became bodies were beginning to tumble out of her closet you'd open up one door and go in and and and it would lead to you about five or six more doors Evan what's the problem with her you know what just it didn't it didn't look like it was ever gonna stop you know we kept fighting the bodies everywhere one of those bodies was her own son Michael Goodyear he joined the Army in 1979 shortly after visiting his mother while on leave he became ill tests showed exposure to arsenic because his job involved working with the substance it was assumed that he'd inadvertently ingested some he soon began to lose the use of his arms and legs and he was discharged his first day home Judy and her youngest son took Michael on a canoe trip near their home despite the fact that Michael wore heavy braces he had no life jacket in the middle of the lake the boat capsized and Michael drowned back then it seemed like a tragic if stupid accident but now Chamberlain wasn't so certain too many men in Judy way Noah knows life had come to an untimely end a sinister pattern was taking shape while Judy awaited her day in court for the attempted murder of John Gentry Chamberlain gathered evidence of homicide she may have gotten away with at least so far he learned that Judy's husband James Goodyear showed symptoms consistent with any number of illnesses among them arsenic poisoning if he was poisoned the evidence was buried with him 12 years after his death his body was ordered Exuma to look for proof and when you exhume a body looking for one of the heavy metals like lead thallium arsenic antimony these are all elements elements have been around since the solar system was created they're just as detectable today as they were 250 million years ago and 250 million years down the road from now so when you talk about digging up a body looking for arsenic if it was in that body when it went in the ground it's gonna be in that body until it disintegrates Goodyear had been autopsy at the time of his death but the medical examiner wasn't looking for poison so he didn't find any almost anything can be poisonous if enough is swallowed so no single test can be used to detect all poisons the analyst must be guided by his knowledge of the symptoms so he can narrow the field and test for specific poisons arsenic tends to concentrate in the heart liver lungs and kidneys samples of each were tested for the toxin arsenic can take down a person in an hour or a year depending on how much he ingests a single large dose kills quicker than small doses over a longer time a faster death means the poison would have less time to damage organs good years lingering death suggested cumulative long-term poisoning the ravaged condition of his organs bore that out the diagnosis was crucial and incriminating because it made accidental poisoning less likely since James and Judy Goodyear lived in the same house it seemed reasonable that they both be exposed to arsenic if the hazard were present but Judy never showed any symptoms next the medical examiner set out to determine how much arsenic was present in Goodyear's system the victims hair and nails provided a handy yardstick a complete fingernail was removed from the nail bed and dissolved in acid the resulting solution was put in an instrument called an atomic absorption spectrometer that determines the concentration of arsenic in the sample the amount of arsenic a person swallows is proportional to the amount in the victims hair and nails the medical examiner could tell that the levels were too high to have come from the environment and since hair grows at a set rate he could use it to see how long goodyear had been given the poison he determined that the contaminated portion of the hair was consistent with three months growth James Goodyear had been home from the Navy three months before he died the evidence suggested that Judy had wasted no time doing away with her husband shortly after James Goodyear's autopsy Judy's boyfriend and second suspected victim Bobby Jo Morris was exhumed his hair and nails contained enough arsenic to kill 11 men it appeared that over a 12-year period judy bueno ano managed to fatally poisoned two men and poison and drown a third other men in her life had also met mysterious ends but she was never prosecuted for their deaths the motive in every case was insurance money ironically it was the one who got away John Gentry that ultimately exposed her deadly game her botched attempt to poison him forced her to resort to using a bomb on the surface the choice may seem bizarre but to poison expert John tress trail the difference between bombs and poisons is only a matter of degree I personally believe there's a great similarity between the psychological profile of a bomber and a poisoner because what is a poison other than a chemical bomb it doesn't make any noise the effect is the same you blow up the victim poisoning is more subtle and may at first go undetected but there's no statute of limitations on murder and poison leaves its traces for a very long time one clue is all it takes to expose the truth and of course every poisoner looks for the perfect poison its undetectable and my answer is what would you call it if it's got a name don't you have to see something to name it and if you see it is it not detectable so there is no perfect non-detectable poisons judi bueno ano received 12 years for bombing Gentry's car life in prison for the drowning death of her son and is on death row for poisoning her husband for the death of Bobby Jo Morris there was simply no punishment left to give her she is one of only 48 women ever sentenced to death in the United States it took years for bueno a nosed methodical poisonings to catch up with her but once her villainy was revealed the evidence was irrefutable across the country scientists faced a more perplexing dilemma how could the body a dying woman poison the staff of an emergency room just after 8 p.m. on February 9th 1994 paramedics whisked 31 year-old Gloria Ramirez into the emergency room at California's Riverside hospital her boyfriend called because she collapsed and had trouble breathing the paramedics related to the ER staff that the patient had cervical cancer but she hadn't yet begun chemotherapy in fact there was nothing in her record to prepare the ER for what was to come when Ramirez arrived at the emergency room she already had an oxygen mask on her face then her heart rhythm began to fluctuate and the staff tried to shock it back to normal it wasn't working a [Music] nurse drew blood to run some tests and that's when the well-choreographed chaos of the emergency room began to fall to pieces Ramirez body began to take on an oily sheen the nurse drawing the blood complained of a strange odor [Music] she handed the hypodermic to a physician then she passed out the odor something like garlic or ammonia increased beige crystals were noticed in the blood sample suddenly another nurse fell in short order another nurse became dizzy and went to the nurse's station to rest there she lost consciousness her arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably occasionally she'd stopped breathing then one of the doctors succumb Ramirez was still not stabilized [Music] an emergency was declared as attendants rushed in to clear the collapsing staff and attend to Ramirez as the emergency room was evacuated gerdes were wheeled into the parking lot unable to cope with a bizarre onslaught riverside sent its staff and patients to other hospitals the caregivers suddenly became the patient's bedlam rule and at its centre lay a helpless dying woman within 15 minutes of contact with Gloria Ramirez 27 of the 37 staff members at Riverside Hospital suffered strange symptoms respiratory therapist Maureen Welch was one of them after I awoke outside was very sick uncontrollable tremors nausea retching difficulty breathing my vision felt kind of limited at that time I could only see things close to me there was simply no explaining what could have caused the symptoms many of those affected recovered quickly others spent weeks in the hospital within 35 minutes of Ramirez arrival at the hospital she was pronounced dead the crisis had passed but the mystery deepened her body was sealed in two plastic bags and an airtight casket before being moved to the hospital morgue to find the cause of the catastrophe the river sign hazardous materials or as map team arrived suited for battle ductwork sewage lines plumbing and waste disposal were thoroughly checked the air in the emergency room was electronically sniffed for toxic gases solvents or chemicals nothing was overlooked and nothing could explain what happened once the emergency room was given a clean bill of health suspicions turned to the patient an autopsy revealed nothing extraordinary Gloria Ramirez died of kidney failure as a result of her cancer dissatisfied with the findings and desperate for an explanation hospital officials sent blood and tissue samples from Ramirez to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 60 miles east of San Francisco solvents were added to Ramirez blood sample organic chemicals in the blood were dissolved leaving water and blood cells behind the result is a highly concentrated extract of the chemicals in the blood Bryan and Grayson is the director of the center here in our our laboratory are very precise and litical tools that allow us to look at every chemical that we extract from the blood sample and actually determine the chemical structure and even get concentrations all down at ultra low concentrations identifying the chemicals took a two-pronged approach first the extract of ramírez blood was heated in a gas chromatograph until it vaporized because every chemical vaporizes at a different rate the components separated the spectrometer then identified each chemical by reading the patterns of light they emitted the results were then plotted on a computer in the form of peaks and valleys what would Ramirez blood reveal every peak here is a different unique chemical that was in the blood of mrs. Ramirez and things stand out is very obvious this is all tylenol or acetaminophen is right here cholesterol is here other drugs and a very unusual chemical we initially discovered which was right here we don't know what it is at this moment but luckily we have libraries when you actually search a library in the computer it will print out what this chemical is it turned out to be a high concentration of a chemical called dimethyl sulfone or DMSO - it comes from the breakdown of another chemical DMSO or dimethyl sulfide though it's manufactured as an industrial lubricant DMSO is used by thousands of athletes and arthritis sufferers to relieve pain it's conceivable that Ramirez was using it for this purpose but it's waste product DMSO - is not toxic even in the high concentrations found in her tissues its presence did nothing to explain why the emergency room was brought to its knees from his findings and Drayson had to conclude he'd found nothing to account for the harrowing events on the night Ramirez died without any physical explanation for what was now being called the Ramirez incident the California Department of Health Services wrote it off to mass hysteria due to stress the health care workers were not buying it my response to the claim of mass hysteria was not something that I can entertain personally because the people involved in emergency care and in particular this emergency room were all like a well-oiled machine they'd all had tons of experience 15 or years better veterans of all types of Curren --is and this was just something else that they had to take care of and you can't you can't argue with that I mean these people are not generally hysterical unwilling to accept the ruling of the Health Department Welch did some homework of her own she knew that many of her colleagues and she herself had suffered long-term health problems not the sort of symptoms induced by mass hysteria she gathered up lab reports medical records and contacted Brian and Drayson andresen and his colleague deputy director Patrick grant looked over the data Welch sent them they focused on the one compound that didn't seem to fit basically I came back into my office and started looking up compounds in the chemists Bible The Merck Index looked up dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl sulfone and fortunately they're right there together and language even nuclear chemist can understand and at that point I realized that oxidation was the connector between the two if Ramirez was taking DMSO on her own to relieve her pain it seemed plausible the extra oxygen she was given on the way to the hospital could have sped the chemicals transformation to its waste product DMSO to DMSO is oily and has a garlicky smell that could explain the sheen on ramírez skin and the odor in the emergency room but it didn't explain why so many people were sickened Pat grant began to formulate a theory on the same page in the drug manual as DMSO and DMSO - was an entry for DMSO for the only difference between the two compounds was more oxygen but it was a crucial difference DMSO 2 is a harmless vapor DMSO 4 is a deadly nerve gas and if you read the toxicities and the various symptoms of people that are exposed to dimethyl sulfate experience it was quite similar to the Riverside incident Bret's theory sounded good on paper but no one had ever turned harmless DMSO 2 into deadly DMSO 4 in the lab by simply adding more oxygen if grant was asserting that a dying woman could somehow change into a canister of nerve gas he was going to have to prove it the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a daunting task ahead of them to see if DMSO 2 could turn into its deadly cousin DMSO 4 in the emergency room they had to replicate the conditions during the last few minutes of Gloria Ramirez life the work was assigned to analytical chemist rich Whipple the first obstacle was the nature of the two substances while harmless DMSO 2 dissolves in blood deadly DMSO 4 doesn't so how could the compound be in Ramirez veins the answer is it couldn't our belief is that she had DMSO too in the blood and then when it was withdrawn from her system it was then converted to DMSO for the chemical event if it happened at all happened in the syringe using his substitute for human blood Whipple performed an experiment to show how a change in temperature could change the form of the chemical at body temperature DMSO to stays dissolved in the solution but cooled to room temperature it forms crystals crystals like the ones witnessed by some of the emergency room staff in the body Ramirez blood was 98.6 degrees but the portion drawn into the syringe was immediately cooled to around 64 degrees the temperature of the emergency room the drastic temperature change may have caused the DMSO to crystals to separate out everything about the theory seemed to be holding together except one crucial point Whipple didn't manage to produce any detectable DMSO for but lab tests can never perfectly replicate a real-life situation in the emergency room only the slightest amount of DMSO 4 would have been needed to sicken all those staffers 1/10 of a gram of the substance can be lethal in smaller doses DMSO 4 can cause long-term nerve damage and other lingering health problems a year or more after the Ramirez incident some of the staffers in the emergency room still had symptoms Grant believes this is further evidence in favor of a chemical explanation not mass hysteria or some other psychological cause in comparison to the other theories that were out there before we proposed our chemical theory I would believe it over a mass hysteria of an experienced emergency room staff though Grant's findings are generally accepted many scientists await further proof before they're convinced until the mechanism for the deadly transformation is fully understood there remains a slim chance that the Ramirez incident could happen again the events in Riverside's emergency room highlight how toxic hazards can come from the least likely sources that's a fact poisoners news to their advantage since anything can be a poison the killer can hide his weapon in plain sight at 7 a.m. October 23rd 1988 Peggy Carr arrived at a restaurant in El Taurus Florida where she worked as a waitress as she waited for her shift to start she began to feel ill soon her legs started to burn and her name wrapped her chest she thought she was having a heart attack one of the regulars Army medic I think checked her pulse and reassured her that whatever was ailing her it wasn't her heart cam but the pain continued to grow Peggy was sent home to rest the pain was unrelenting and Peggy's family sent her to the hospital she was admitted and placed under observation 16 hours after her first symptoms Peggy Carr was practically incapacitated and her position was stumped three days and it's battery of tests later doctors were no closer to making a diagnosis then just as mysteriously as they had begun buggy symptoms began to fade yeah she was sent home but within a week the crushing pain gripped her again she was rushed back to the hospital besides the intense pain and her limbs and joints her hair began to fall out as she was becoming unable to move tests still showed nothing wrong with her notes doctors thought some virus had nestled in her nervous system she told her neurologist that she felt like she was walking on hot coals you're getting a description and brought to my something only read about no you know he decided to try one more test for thallium poisoning thallium is a natural element found in trace amounts in soil and water it's purified form is strictly regulated up until 1972 when it was banned in the United States it was used in rat and ant poisons tests showed that Peggy Carr system had 20,000 times the amount of thallium one might expect to find the poison was eating away her nervous system there was no cure at first Peggy's poisoning was considered accidental some church tests on her family revealed that everyone in the car household had traces of oil the Polk County Sheriff's Department and the Health Department calmed the car's house to find the source of the contamination detective Ernie Minzy led the investigation our sole purpose was to identify that poison and have removed from the environment to prevent further injury to any other persons over the next month investigators collected clean water and soil samples in the cars home and neighborhood everything was sent to the lab to be tested after an impatient wait every test came back negative investigators were desperate to find the source of the poison meanwhile Peggy could no longer breathe on her own and lapsed into a coma the search for the poison continued can I have some more how many others would be sickened before it was found among the items collected from the Carr's house who returnable bottles of coca-cola one of them was broken his things like this before all had residue on the bottom like everything else they were sent off for analysis the bottles joined the ranks of dozens of items collected from the cars house each had been subjected to the same test each had been eliminated investigators hope to have better luck with the bottles to test for thallium the residue was dissolved in nitric acid a sample was placed in a graphite tube and vaporized then a lamp with a valium filament was shined into the tube [Music] the test relies on the principle that every compound emits a specific wavelength of light an instrument called a spectrophotometer measured the amount of light absorbed by the sample it showed that the bottles contain more than 11 times the level of the toxin one might expect to find finally the source of the poison had been found but how did them get into the soft drink were others out there waiting to be consumed Mincy feared a manufacturing catastrophe or malicious tampering with the assistance of the FBI and the coca-cola company the lot numbers were traced back to the store the warehouse and the bottling plant the search came up clean no other bottles had been tainted and there'd been no other reports of poisoning the tainted bottles were specific to the cars home but who would have done it a poisoner must have intimate contact with his victims surroundings in order to plant the toxin that's why most poisonings are done within families and that's why suspicion fell on my car pi was Peggy's second husband they'd been married only a few months when Peggy grew ill but it seemed their honeymoon was long over Mincy learned that just prior to the poisoning the cars had an argument that resulted in Peggy spending the night in a hotel the weekend her symptoms first appeared pi was conveniently out of town on a hunting trip when he returned he resisted taking his wife to the hospital everything seemed to point to PI car but convictions aren't made on such circumstantial evidence min sees Criminal Investigation had just begun more evidence needed to be gathered more leads followed so near somewhere cars every moment was scrutinized almost as an afterthought he presented a convenient clue in his own defense he showed detectives a threatening note he claimed he received two weeks before the poisoning the cars didn't pay much attention to it at the time but I kept it just in case so this note indicated that ever who had written it wanted the entire family to move out of the state of Florida or else they wouldn't die the note along with the fact that Pye Carr had consumed some of the tainted soft drink weakened the accusations against him but he wasn't home free yet he could have written the note himself and taken the poison intentionally to deflect the pall of guilt Mincy kept his eye on my car while he sought other suspects who would want to kill the family [Music] Mincy learned that the cars didn't get along with their neighbors george trepal and his wife diana several weeks before the poisoning Peggy and Diana almost came to blows over the cars loud music it hardly seemed like grounds for attempted murder to find out more about the icy relationship between the neighbors Mincy paid a visit to george trepal RuPaul's reaction to the subject of the cars was unexpectedly harsh yeah went into a tirade about the problems with these rednecks children and family that lived next door to him their kids make all kinds of noise play the radio reel then mince he asked him why he thought anyone might want to harm the family he quoted the threatening letter the cars had received weeks before verbatim he said exactly what was in a note nobody else knew of its existence nobody except law enforcement at that moment george trepal became the prime suspect but Mintz he had no more to go on with Jay Paul than he had with by car so he began looking into trip all surprising past [Music] trepal was an eccentric man who enjoyed creating games and crafting scenarios he also belonged to Mensa an elite Society of people whose IQs are among the top 2% in the world he and his wife were trained chemists what's more the quirky genius had done time for masterminding one of the largest amphetamine manufacturing operations in the southeast thallium is sometimes used to make amphetamines according to John tress trail trip all had the means and the mind to orchestrate a poisoning they can plan a script of a death she'll be here and she'll be eating this and then she'll do this and I'll do this and it's all laid out so I think this takes a great deal of an of intelligence to plan this out this is not a brute force weapon this is mine not muscle but what would his motive be in his prison records Mincy found a letter to Paul wrote complaining to officials about his fellow inmates radios as hard as it was to believe loud music seemed to be an overwhelming sore point for him on March 3rd 1989 Peggy Carr died after lingering in a coma for three months Mincy now had to prove that true Paul was a murderer with nothing but the flimsiest circumstantial evidence Mincy couldn't get a search warrant for true Paul's house the only way to crack this case was to outsmart the certified genius after several months of background checks on george trepal detective Mincey was confident he poisoned Peggy Carr all he needed was proof but trepal was too clever to leave clues out in the open Mincy needed to get inside his house and get inside his head to carry it off he needed someone to befriend the alleged killer win his confidence and then betray it for this deadly game he counted on special agent susan goreck she became Sherrie Gwyn a woman on the verge of divorce who counted on trip all shoulders to cry on she met him at a party that he organized for Mensa members it's themed I could call was murder I learned a lot about his personality and about his habits about his associates one of the things that I learned was that he did have a large ego I did use my personality of Sheree to play off of that ego and to get him to talk more and I used that to my advantage the friendship blossomed slowly forcing goreck to maintain her Shari Gwynn's persona for a full year all the while she lived in fear that RuPaul would see through her masquerade putting her life in danger slowly she gathered what evidence she could to build her case hoping he tipped his hand as the months went by she didn't have much I gained a multitude of small evidence small statements that all put together was overwhelming but if you looked at one small statement it did not look like a lot of evidence like playing an excruciating game of hangman goreck slowly drew her picture of trepal as the murderer but even after a year she was still waiting to add that final stroke essential to win the game finally in December 1989 gorrik got the break she needed drew Paul and his wife moved out of town and allowed Shari Gwyn to rent their as a tenant she could search the entire property without a warrant she'd gotten all she could out of trip all perhaps now his house would give up his secrets she called in the Polk County crime scene unit they combed the premises collecting whatever they could find believing for Paul would be too smart to have kept anything him around his house they looked for its telltale residue I truly believe that if we were going to find valium that it would probably be either in the air conditioning filter or possibly down one of the drains and we spent a lot of time with the crime scene people swabbing the drains trying to get any residue that he may have poured out while some investigators were in the house looking for trace evidence others collected vials of chemicals from the garage everything was labeled and sent to the FBI for analysis months went by before the results came back I assumed because it took so long with the lab report that they didn't find anything but gorrik was wrong when the reports came back they showed that one of the vials picked up from the workbench in for Paul's garage contained thallium powder for gorrik and Minzy 15 months of deceptions paid off the evidence to convict george trepal of poisoning the cars was in hand at true Paul's trial it was clear that he was a killer without a conscience like the murder weekend party he organized death was just a game to him george trepal had absolutely no remorse for his action he justified it with his superior intelligence in the fact that people with lesser intelligence did not deserve to live on this planet unlike most poisoners try paul's motive was neither love nor money he wanted to kill his neighbors simply because he found them annoying according to john Terrestrial the ego that led him to think so little of others ultimately led to his own demise the container containing the evidence was left in his home why would he do that here's a very intelligent man didn't he look down the road to say I better get rid of this bottle now his ego said they'll never get this far they'll never figure out how this happened a jury found george trepal guilty of 14 felony counts including first-degree murder in the death of Peggy Carr he was sentenced to death as we go about our daily lives most of us seldom think about the toxic world we live in in the past that lack of diligence provided the poisoners greatest opportunity but now science is catching up more than ever unexplained deaths are viewed with suspicion and in the lab more of those suspicions are being justified [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 217,444

Keywords: the new detectives, true crime, forensic science, new detectives, car bombs, car bombing, true crime stories, police documentary

Id: oECN_b725yI

Length: 52min 35sec (3155 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020