04x03 - Broken Lives

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

NARRATOR Police make a grisly discovery

when they pull the body of a bound and gagged

woman from her shallow grave.

Her tissues are very soft.

She's got greenish discoloration.

NARRATOR Her grieving mother is desperate for answers.

You want some type of justice.

Nobody has the right to do that to a family, nobody.

NARRATOR Can Dr. G prove that this young woman was m*rder*d

and help put a suspected k*ller behind bars?

If you can't put the pieces together

that say, this is a homicide, you know, he may go free.

NARRATOR Then a mentally ill man is

found dead in a halfway house.

He's got blood coming from his nose and his mouth.

NARRATOR And Dr. G uncovers a possible motive for m*rder.

They saw him on Monday.

They gave him his allowance.

And then they don't see him again.

Did somebody try to rob him?

NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations, these are the everyday cases of Dr. G,

medical examiner.

As chief medical examiner for the district nine morgue

in Orlando, Florida, Dr. Jan Garavaglia

must solve mysteries every day.

But sometimes, her job takes her beyond the realm

of simple medical diagnosis.

In some cases, Dr. G is called upon

to use her expertise to help the deceased themselves,

to speak for those voiceless victims,

and to see that justice is served.

It's my job to find the answers.

It's my job to hopefully come up with a cause of death.

NARRATOR Dr. G was called upon to play this crucial role

in when she served as medical examiner

at the Duval County medical examiner's office

in Jacksonville, Florida.

On this balmy Thursday morning in March,

Dr. G receives word that the police are bringing in a box

containing a disturbing cargo.

They think they're seeing what could

be a decomposed person in the box,

but they weren't % sure.

NARRATOR But the contents of the box

are not nearly as unsettling as the story of its discovery.

The day before the delivery to the morgue,

a man shows up at the Jacksonville sheriff's office.

He claims that two months earlier, a friend of his,

Kenneth Garrity, enlisted his help

in burying a box in the woods.

Garrity told him that the box contained his dead dog.

So he went with Kenneth out to a wooded area

and they buried this box that had this dog in it.

A few weeks later, the man starts

hearing reports of a missing person in the area,

a -year-old woman.

When he learns that the missing woman is

none other than Garrity's girlfriend,

he begins to fear the worst.

He started putting two and two together and saying,

you know, I buried a box with a supposed dog in it

about the time she went missing.

Then this fellow took the police to where he buried this box.

And they started digging it up.

I started digging, and I got down probably six or eight

inches and I hit a wooden box.

Oh, yeah, I can see it.

Look at that. Is that your box?

That's the box.

When I opened the lid of it up,

you can definitely tell it was a human

not a dog that was in the box.

Well, at that point, it became a homicide case

or a death of suspicious means.

NARRATOR Detective Bradley rushes

the box and its macabre contents to the medical examiner's

office.

He is counting on Dr. G to tell him

if this is indeed the body of the missing

woman Michelle Robertson.

And if so, how did she die?

According to her family, Michelle Robertson

was a vivacious -year-old with an insatiable zest for life.

Michelle was a very outgoing child, very small,

very petite, but very outgoing.

And a lot of fun.

You know, she really brought the fun into any kind of situation.

SHIRLEY GARNTO Always happy.

Thank you, grandma.

SHIRLEY GARNTO Had the best smile.

She was very good older sister,

very good, very kind person.

NARRATOR When Michelle fails to acknowledge her sister's

birthday on January th, her family

immediately suspects that something is desperately wrong.

THERESA KLEIN Soon as my birthday arrived and there was

no phone call, there no gift or card,

I said, there is something wrong with Michelle.
[ … ]

She is either she's gone, something has happened to her.

SHIRLEY GARNTO I started calling

their apartment and nobody answered, nobody

answered, nobody answered.

I was pretty sure that there was something really, really wrong.

NARRATOR As the days go by and Michelle fails to reappear,

her distraught family begins to fear that Michelle

is never coming home.

And they suspect that her boyfriend

Kenneth Garrity may have played a role in her disappearance.

I had told Michelle that I didn't trust him.

I think he was a bully.

He had a strange personality as far as getting mad easily.

NARRATOR Now with the excavation

of the mysterious box and its grisly contents,

Michelle's family and investigators

are anxious to know if Michelle has finally been found.

And if so, was she the victim of a homicide?

This case was somewhat of a big deal.

Everybody wanted to know, is it her?

Is it not her?

NARRATOR It is now up to Dr. G to find the answers in what

will prove to be one of the most disturbing cases of her career.

The box was delivered to my office intact.

The lid was still on it but a little bit ajar.

The box is about three feet long,

three feet deep, but narrow, about and / feet wide.

And then we open the box up.

NARRATOR A quick glance inside confirms the worst.

When you look inside, it does look like there

is a human body in there.

My immediate reaction is kind of your adrenaline goes.

And you're thinking, boy, this is going to be a lot of work,

but let's get into it.

NARRATOR Dr. G can tell right away that it's a woman,

but her identity and cause of death are a complete mystery.

To avoid destroying any potential evidence,

Dr. G and her assistant carefully

remove the sides of the makeshift coffin,

fully revealing the body for the first time.

She is bent at the waist and her knees

are brought up towards her head to fit into that small box.

She's very petite.

You can't see much of her because she's wrapped

in a yellow blanket and then an electric cord

was wrapped with four loops around the body.

NARRATOR But the shocking treatment of the body

does not end there.

We have one piece of evidence that's glaring right at me.

She's got this packing tape over her mouth, her nose, her eyes,

even goes over her ears.

She couldn't breathe through that.

NARRATOR Despite the horrifying implications of this discovery,

Dr. G is determined to stay focused and objective.

At this point, you don't react to any

of the emotion of the case.

I know that she must be the loved one, the daughter,

the sister of somebody.

But my job is to find the answers.

NARRATOR Dr. G surveys the body for clues

to the victim's identity.

Unfortunately, the body's state of decomposition

is too advanced for visual identification

or a fingerprint analysis.

She does, however, determine that the victim's appearance is

consistent with a female in her mid s with wavy brown hair,

weighing less than pounds, and under five feet tall.

Although this physical description

matches that of Michelle Robertson, for Dr. G,

it is not enough.

You know, I wanted a scientific ironclad

identification.

NARRATOR And she knows just where to look for it.

I look in her mouth.

She does look like she has some dental repair.

So we know that there must be a dentist.

NARRATOR People are often identified

by comparing their teeth to personal dental records.

We'll start with the most obvious.

We'll look at the teeth.

We'll look for the fillings.

We'll look at the restorations.

If that's not available, then we have

to use more subtle techniques looking at sinuses, looking

at angle of the mandible.

We want something unique to that individual,

whether it's a filling, a piece of bone, a root fragment.

NARRATOR For this critical task,

Dr. G enlists the help of a forensic dentist

who compares Michelle's dental records to the victim's teeth.

Within minutes, they have their answer.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Sure enough, he was

able to give a positive identification

that her dental records match this body.

So it's clearly Michelle.

NARRATOR Detective Bradley now has the heart wrenching task

of informing Michelle's mother that her daughter has

been found dead.

I already knew.

I already knew.
[ … ]

I knew that if she was in any kind of trouble,

she would have called me.

It was very, very devastating.

But, at the same time, we'd finally known.

We'd finally known.

NARRATOR Michelle's grieving family now

believes that Michelle was m*rder*d

by the very man who buried her body,

her boyfriend Kenneth Garrity.

I felt he was unstable.

He tried to keep her isolated and didn't

want her to have friends, didn't want

her to receive phone calls.

What's going on?

Didn't want her to be as close to us as we were.

NARRATOR You need to listen to me when I'm talking to you.

She would say to him, I will leave you.

And he would always say, no, you'll never leave me.

You'll never leave me.

NARRATOR But suspicions are not enough.

With only circumstantial evidence against Garrity,

this entire case hinges on whether Dr. G

can find proof of m*rder.

JAN GARAVAGLIA It's a bad thing to bury somebody

who dies in your house.

That sounds bad.

But there's not much crime to that.

There is a much more punishable crime

to k*ll somebody who's alive.

NARRATOR But in her quest to prove how Michelle

Robertson d*ed, Dr. G faces a formidable adversary,

mother nature.

The natural forces of decomposition

have left their grim mark on Michelle's body--

Her tissues are very soft.

She's got greenish discoloration.

NARRATOR --destroying the very evidence Dr. G relies on.

Will she be able to find enough clues to help

solve this mysterious death?

Or is it already too late?

I'm hoping, at this point, that there's

clear cut evidence.

Sometimes you can't tell for sure.

NARRATOR Dr. G is carefully inspecting the body

of -year-old Michelle Robertson

for clues that might point to a cause of death.

Michelle's family and investigators

suspect that Michelle was brutally

m*rder*d at the hands of her own boyfriend, Kenneth Garrity.

You want some type of justice.

You want some kind of penalty.

Nobody has the right to do that to a family, nobody.

I already have that tape that was on her face.

That could be a cause of death in and of itself.

But we're looking for other things.

NARRATOR But there's a problem.

Autopsying a decomposed body presents enormous challenges.

When you have a decomposed body

and the tissues are showing some discoloration

and the tissues are softened, it's

much harder to find trauma.

NARRATOR But as she continues her examination,

Dr. G finds Michelle's body to be surprisingly intact.

Ironically, the reason for this lies in the callous way

her body was disposed of.

Being buried helps in this case

because you're going to decompose slower.

It's a little cooler in the dirt.

You're protected from the elements.

NARRATOR But despite the relative good condition

of the body, Dr. G finds no evidence of external wounds.

As Dr. G continues her examination,

Detective Bradley learns another disturbing detail

about Kenneth Garrity, that he had a history of v*olence.

Six months before Michelle's disappearance,

he had beaten her severely causing multiple contusions.

We'd found out that she had been assaulted by Kenneth

Garrity and put in a hospital.

So I guess you'd have to say he's a violent person.

Domestic v*olence isn't just about anger.

It's about control, and it's about power.

And he was trying to have control and power over her.

That's what domestic v*olence is about.

NARRATOR This latest discovery fuels

the investigators' suspicions.

But so far, their case is purely circumstantial.

In order to arrest Garrity, they are counting on Dr. G

to prove that this is a homicide.

So far, the external exam has turned up nothing.

JAN GARAVAGLIA I don't see any major trauma on her.

So I'm very suspicious that she either has a blow to her head

or she's got strangulation or she has both.

NARRATOR Dr. G's next step is to check

for signs of strangulation.

JAN GARAVAGLIA One of the things

I look for is subtle signs of trauma on her neck.

It could even be just fingernail marks, could be just

some bruising.

NARRATOR But the initial inspection yields no clues.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Because of the greenish discoloration,
[ … ]

the skin slippage, I don't see a lot of external trauma

on the neck.

NARRATOR Undaunted, Dr. G looks for another telltale sign

of strangulation.

Then we'll look for the petechiae, the little burst

blood vessels in those thin membranes

in the inside of your eye.

Those blood vessels can burst very easily

with increased pressures put on your neck from strangulation.

NARRATOR But once again, Dr. G comes up empty handed.

When I looked on this case, she didn't have any.

Now she is awfully decomposed.

So I may be missing those, but I don't see any.

NARRATOR This finding, or lack of one,

makes it impossible for Dr. G to make

a conclusion about whether or not Michelle was strangled.

I can't rule out strangulation.

But I don't have anything to rule it in yet.

So already, I look like I'm in a hole here.

NARRATOR But Dr. G still has one

last place left to look for signs of foul play,

Michelle's head.

And when she does, she makes a chilling discovery.

JAN GARAVAGLIA One thing I find is that there's some evidence

of her being beaten.

She's got a bruise or contusion on her forehead,

and she's got a contusion or a bruise on the left side

of her head, and a broken nose.

NARRATOR But these bruises, while horrifying,

are in themselves inconclusive.

JAN GARAVAGLIA We need to see, did these cause her death

or are these just a sign of her being beaten prior to her

being k*lled?

NARRATOR Will Michelle's body give up its secrets?

Only the internal exam will tell.

If you can't put the pieces together that say, this

is a homicide, he may go free.

NARRATOR Dr. G is examining the body

of -year-old Michelle Robertson, recently excavated

from her shallow grave.

But so far, she hasn't been able to determine

the cause of death, much less a means of homicide.

I need to see what I can find on this body and say,

these are the facts that I can say happened,

and these are the things I can say didn't happen.

NARRATOR Dr. G makes the standard Y incision,

cutting from shoulder to sternum to fully

reveal the internal organs.

She then studies the body looking for any signs

of physical trauma.

We look for any rib fractures that would suggest being beaten

or stomped.

We don't see anything along that line.

NARRATOR The next step is to follow

a clue from the external exam.

JAN GARAVAGLIA I really want to evaluate those contusions

or bruises on the head.

I don't know yet if that blunt trauma to the head k*lled her.

NARRATOR Now it's time to take a closer look.

Using an oscillating saw, a morgue technician

cuts through the skull.

Dr. G then steps in and removes the skullcap.

I look inside, but I don't see any evidence of hemorrhage.

NARRATOR This is a serious blow to the case.

The absence of blood means that Dr.

G cannot make an accurate determination about

the severity of Michelle's head trauma due to the decomposition

of her brain.

Whether there's internal trauma or not,

I just can't say.

I don't see any evidence of it.

NARRATOR It appears that the case has reached a dead end.

With no way to tell if her head injury k*lled Michelle,

Dr. G is still without a cause of death,

and her options are running out.

Only one stone remains unturned.

While she didn't see any signs of strangulation

during the external exam, she knows that evidence could have

been erased by decomposition.

To completely rule out strangulation,

Dr. G must now look for evidence internally.

Definitive proof may lie with a small bone

of the neck called the hyoid.

The hyoid bone is kind of a U-shaped

bone that sits in the upper portion of your neck.

NARRATOR The hyoid bone is the only bone in the body not

connected to any other bone.

Its main function is to help support the tongue.

The tiny hyoid bone is protected by thick layers of muscle

and the mandible, making it nearly impossible to break,

except when extreme pressure is applied to the neck.

There are very few ways to break that bone

without strangulation.

NARRATOR Dr. G begins the painstaking

dissection of Michelle's neck.

And before long, she has her answer.

I do the layer Y dissection.

I see that hyoid bone, and there's hemorrhage around it

and there's a fracture of the hyoid bone.

NARRATOR This discovery can mean only one thing.
[ … ]

She was strangled.

NARRATOR But Dr. G is not quite ready to declare strangulation

the cause of death.

The broken hyoid bone, that indicates, at least,

that there is a strangulation.

Now does that indicate she d*ed from strangulation?

Possibly not.

NARRATOR There is no doubt that Michelle was strangled.

But this alone might not have been enough to k*ll her.

What it is is you're cutting off the blood supply

to your brain, and you're cutting off

the drainage from your brain.

So basically, you're not getting oxygen, and you pass out.

The problem is, even after you pass out,

there has to be some pressure maintained

because studies have shown that you can wake back up.

NARRATOR Dr. G suspects this is exactly what happened

in this case, which would explain the tape found

on Michelle's face.

She's probably coming out of her strangulation

making gurgling noises, so he suffocates her

by putting the tape over her mouth and nose

to make sure she d*ed.

NARRATOR Dr. G finally has the forensic evidence

needed to make the case against Kenneth Garrity.

The cause of death is going to be strangulation

with suffocation from the tape and then

contributing soft tissue injuries to the head.

It's a classic case of domestic v*olence, and it's tragic.

NARRATOR After an hour long examination,

Dr. G is now able to report her findings to investigators.

It's Sunday, January th, and Michelle and Garrity

are spending the day together at home.

Suddenly, something triggers Garrity's rage

and he lashes out.

JAN GARAVAGLIA There's a fight.

There's blows to the face, blows to the head

to the point where he breaks her nose, probably stuns her.

NARRATOR Garrity then grabs hold of Michelle by the neck

and begins to strangle her.

His grip is so strong that he breaks Michelle's hyoid bone

and cuts off blood flow in and out of her brain.

Michelle's brain quickly becomes starved for oxygen,

and she most likely loses consciousness.

But she probably then starts to gurgle.

And he realizes she's not quite dead,

so he puts the tape over her mouth and nose and eyes

so she can't breathe.

There is no way she's coming out of that strangulation.

NARRATOR Within a few agonizing minutes, Michelle is dead.

Then in a cold-blooded effort to dispose of his girlfriend's

body, Garrity places Michelle in a box

and buries her with the help of his unsuspecting friend.

There she remains in her shallow grave

until she is discovered by police two months later.

It just amazes me that there are people

that can do this to anybody.

NARRATOR Thanks to Dr. G, investigators finally

have enough hard evidence to arrest

Kenneth Garrity for m*rder.

Once we made the arrest, he confessed.

So that was just the final nail in the coffin.

NARRATOR On May , , Garrity is convicted

of second degree m*rder.

Although he receives a year sentence,

he serves only years and is released on April , .

No one else is charged with any crime in connection

with Michelle Robertson's death.

Michelle's mother is grateful to Dr. G for bringing

her the comfort of the truth.

If it wasn't for her, we would have never known

what caused Michelle's death.

She has children of her own.

So she knows what we're going through.

NARRATOR But Dr. G believes that Michele's death

holds a valuable message for the living.

About % of all our homicides are

some type of domestic v*olence.

And I think the bottom line here is if there's

any evidence of v*olence and you're afraid,

I would suggest leaving quickly.

I know that's very hard.

Call the national hotline for domestic v*olence

and see what your options are, make

a plan that you could leave quickly

if things get out of hand.

NARRATOR In Dr. G's next case, the body

of a mentally ill transient is found in a halfway house.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out he's dead

because he's already starting to decompose.

NARRATOR And Doctor G's first priority

is to figure out if this man was the victim of foul play.

He was last seen by the caregiver who had actually

just given him his allowance.

Did he get in a fight?

Did somebody try to rob him?

NARRATOR District nine is a busy urban morgue

in downtown Orlando, Florida, a city known for its theme

parks and resorts.

But in the morgue's jurisdiction of Orange and Osceola Counties,"], index ,…}
[ … ]

an estimated , people live on the streets

or in group shelters.

When they die, their bodies usually

end up in Dr. G's hands.

Having transients come through is a common thing.

NARRATOR And their bodies often remain unclaimed.

I have a lot of empathy for people who d*ed suddenly

and nobody cares about them.

I have to care about them.

NARRATOR Such is the case of -year-old Alex Wilcott.

Well, today, we have a middle-aged man that was

found dead in a halfway house.

NARRATOR Dr. G's investigator's report on the homeless man

reads like so many cases she's seen in the past,

no job, no friends, no family.

He'd been living at St. Paul's Residence, a halfway house

for the homeless in Edgewood, Florida,

for about a year and a half and spent most of his time

alone in his room.

So it comes as no surprise when Alex doesn't

come down for dinner one night.

But the next morning, when Alex fails to show for breakfast,

a fellow resident goes to his room to wake him.

Alex, you OK?

NARRATOR But Alex isn't sleeping.

Alex.

Then one of the roomies comes in and sees him in his bed--

Hey!

JAN GARAVAGLIA --dead.

NARRATOR A St. Paul's administrator immediately calls

the authorities, who arrive on the scene with Dean Smith,

Dr. G's medical investigator.

We entered the subject's private room, found

him lying in bed on his back.

He was covered with a blanket.

His head was kind of tilted to the right.

He'd probably been dead or hours.

NARRATOR Dean immediately begins interviewing residents

and staff at St. Paul's, who reveal

that Alex had been estranged from his family for some time.

We found out that he's pretty much for the past years

lived a pretty much nomadic life.

We know he's single.

He's never been married, doesn't have any children.

NARRATOR And according to those at the halfway house that knew

him, Alex was often irritable and suffered

from periodic mood swings.

While these few facts provide some insight into Alex's life,

they don't shed any light on how he d*ed.

There's just a lot of pieces of the puzzle

that I don't know yet.

I just told Dean that we need some more information.

NARRATOR While Dean Smith works to uncover more details

about Alex, Dr. G begins her own search

for clues in the autopsy.

OK, let's flip that leg.

NARRATOR She begins by looking for a cause of death

that she's seen all too often with transients, m*rder.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Having transients come through who

are m*rder*d is a common thing.

I mean, it's certainly something we see several times

every year.

Whenever you have communal living with a bunch of men,

some of them are very transient, some of them

have psychological problems, you always worry about trauma.

NARRATOR And despite the limited background information

available on Alex, the investigator's report

does indicate that he was last seen

alive two days earlier when a caregiver gave him

his weekly allowance of $.

There you go.

NARRATOR Is it possible that someone

k*lled Alex for his allowance?

Did somebody take his $, b*at him up and take his $,

suffocate him or do something to him?

NARRATOR To a drug addict, $ can represent

two bindles of heroin or up to four rocks of cr*ck

cocaine, a significant fix.

We certainly are going to have to rule out

foul play right off the bat.

NARRATOR Dr. G starts the autopsy by checking Alex's body

for any bruises or contusions consistent with an as*ault.

And she finds her first clue on Alex's face.

JAN GARAVAGLIA He's got blood coming

from his nose and his mouth.

Is it decomposition or is it from some type of trauma?

NARRATOR Attempting to isolate the source of the blood,

Dr. G meticulously examines Alex's head and face.

Feeling the facial bones, nasal bones,

looking in the mouth, I don't see any direct trauma.

So it could still be coming up from his GI track

or coughing up.

NARRATOR But despite these findings,

years of experience tells Dr. G that it's way

too soon to rule out foul play.

There are many people that I've

opened that I've been surprised at finding internal trauma

when I don't see anything external.

NARRATOR Sure enough, when Dr. G examines Alex's brain,

she discovers an intriguing abnormality.
[ … ]

He's got adhesions of the surface of his brain.

NARRATOR And she wonders if this

could be his hidden k*ller.

Dr. G is about to open Alex Wilcott's body

and look inside for answers.

We need his history.

We can find a lot when we go in there,

but I don't like surprises.

NARRATOR If Alex was the victim of a violent as*ault,

Dr. G would expect to find evidence of trauma to his head.

He could have a subdural hematoma

or blood over his brain.

NARRATOR So that's where Dr. G begins the internal exam.

Morgue technicians carefully saw through Alex's cranium.

But right away, the cranial exam proves

problematic for Dr. G. That's because Alex's

brain is starting to decompose.

Now in a normal body, I would cup the brain in my hand

and remove it.

You cannot do that with a decomposed body.

You get one look at the brain.

I hope that his brain is still preserved

enough that I'm going to be able to see

if he does have any trauma.

NARRATOR Dr. G quickly scans Alex's brain

and immediately spots something unusual.

He's got adhesions of the surface of his brain

to the dura, which indicates that he did have

some old trauma to that brain.

NARRATOR Head trauma, but old head trauma.

Despite the start of decomposition of Alex's brain,

Dr. G is nevertheless able to make one other key finding.

There is a no fresh hemorrhage either in the scalp

or in the brain.

There's no skull fracture.

That's easy enough to see.

So we don't have any fresh trauma to his brain.

NARRATOR No recent injury, no indication of foul play.

It's looking less likely that Alex was m*rder*d.

But Dr. G won't know for sure until she

performs the internal exam.

Hopefully, we'll have the answer very quickly.

You make your Y incision and look for hemorrhages,

see if he's had any blows to the chest,

and look and see if there's any free fluid in those regions,

see if there's any free blood in the belly.

NARRATOR But after a thorough examination,

she can detect no signs of hemorrhaging,

no pooled blood, and no signs of bruising of any kind.

It's a finding that leads Dr. G to her first conclusion

in the case.

When the head is clear, the chest is clear,

and the belly is clear, you know,

there's really not much chance that trauma

has k*lled him because we don't see any trauma.

NARRATOR Medical investigator Dean Smith

returns to the morgue with tragic new information

about Alex Wilcott.

When I heard that, I thought, what a sad life.

NARRATOR But will it lead her to his elusive cause of death?

Dr. G's next step is to remove Alex

Wilcott's organs, one by one.

So far, she has found no overt signs of trauma

to explain the -year-old transient's sudden death.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Okey dokey, I expect everything to be normal.

I don't see-- certainly don't see any trauma.

NARRATOR Then, just as the team is running out of leads,

medical investigator Dean Smith returns to the morgue

with new information about Alex that he obtained

from a childhood friend.

We got some fairly sad information

about this poor fellow.

NARRATOR Dean learns that Alex was hit by a motorcycle when

he was eight.

He was pretty much in a coma for about days

in the hospital, had some severe head injuries after that.

NARRATOR Two years later, he suffered

a second head trauma when he plummeted

from a neighbor's tree.

These accidents explain the old head trauma Dr.

G detected in the cranial exam.

She also learns that these injuries caused him to develop

a debilitating mental illness, one that

would alter his life forever.

Supposedly, he's been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

There is a lot of controversy about what

environmental factors might be involved

in causing schizophrenia.

Some studies have shown that people with a history of head

trauma are two to three times as likely to develop

schizophrenia later in life.

NARRATOR Schizophrenia is a neurological brain disorder

that causes paranoia, delusions, frightening behavior,

and disorganized thoughts.

And this new finding could take the investigation

in a completely different direction.

This new information adds some maybe

things I'm going to concentrate a little bit more on.

NARRATOR She must now consider how

Alex's mental illness may have played a role in his death.
[ … ]

There is a subset of people with schizophrenia

that do die suddenly.

So that just adds a little bit of more question.

NARRATOR Schizophrenics often die

prematurely from untreated natural disease or illness.

Schizophrenics are not going to be

as attuned to their bodies.

So we see more advanced diseases in them sometimes.

NARRATOR Dr. G now wonders if Alex developed

a serious medical condition that went untreated

and eventually k*lled him.

That's what I often see in schizophrenics.

They'll have this bad disease going on and no complaints.

NARRATOR Her next step is to examine Alex's heart and lungs.

So I might as well look at the lungs.

NARRATOR These vital organs may hold

the answer to this mystery.

As Dr. G removes the lungs, she immediately

notices something troubling.

I weigh the lungs, and both lungs are very heavy.

The heavy lungs are due to fluid buildup.

Oh my gosh, that left lung is just full of fluid.

NARRATOR A phenomenon medically referred to as edema.

So we have very heavy lungs.

Well, what does that tell me?

Well, people who have heart disease

will have very heavy lungs.

Their heart's just not pumping well enough

and the fluids get backed up into the lungs.

I'm really curious about the heart.

Well, let's do this heart.

This is where the money is.

NARRATOR And when she examines the heart,

she finds another clue.

Wow.

Look at this.

It really looks like he's starting to have

some dilatation to his heart.

NARRATOR Dr. G quickly determines

that Alex's heart is enlarged and the wall is thickened.

His heart's really thickened here,

like ., . in that vicinity.

NARRATOR This is often a result of chronic high blood pressure."], index ,…}

If your blood pressure is high,

your heart has to pump that much harder

to get it out against those pressures.

NARRATOR This extra work can cause the heart muscle

to thicken, just as a muscle thickens

in response to weight lifting.

As that heart gets thicker, it's more prone to arrhythmias,

and it's more prone to fail.

NARRATOR But as she continues to examine his damaged heart,

Dr. G finds another important clue.

When I do the coronary arteries,

it was another little surprise.

He also had some atherosclerosis.

NARRATOR Atherosclerosis is a buildup

of plaque in the heart's arteries

that supply blood to the heart muscle.

Severe atherosclerosis can block the flow of blood to the heart."], index ,…}

But surprisingly, that's not the case with Alex.

Atherosclerosis or narrowing of the blood vessels

was not that severe.

He only had about a % narrowing.

NARRATOR While the atherosclerosis in Alex's

arteries was not severe enough to k*ll him,

Dr. G quickly realizes that it paved the way for a more

serious problem to develop.

Voila, little thrombosis.

I do see a clot adhere to the atherosclerosis.

And I thought, hmm, could that be real?

Blood clot right inside the coronary artery.

NARRATOR A blood clot, or thrombus, can form as a result

of atherosclerotic plaque.

It can become deadly when it stops blood flow

to the heart muscle altogether.

For Dr. G, this clot is the final piece of the puzzle.

He already has a sick heart from the high blood pressure,

and it looks like then he gets a thrombus on top of that.

NARRATOR After an hour long examination,

Dr. G is finally ready to contact

Alex's estranged family to let them know what happened to him.

-year-old Alex Wilcott has been plagued

by a life of misfortune.

After two serious childhood head injuries damage his brain,

he is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.

He doesn't appear to be treated because we

don't have any medication.

NARRATOR Alex's debilitating mental disorder

contributes to an isolated nomadic existence.

JAN GARAVAGLIA He's been in and out of mental hospitals

and in and out of halfway houses.

NARRATOR These factors also most likely lead

to Alex disregarding his health altogether, resulting in a case

of chronic high blood pressure.

People who live in halfway houses and live nomadic lives

don't always get the best medical attention.

It's not something you routinely do is

go check your blood pressure.

NARRATOR Untreated, Alex's chronic high blood pressure
[ … ]

ravages his heart.

His heart, over years, had pumped against the high blood

pressure.

The heart got thicker.

And over time, and we're talking years,

the heart starts to fail.

NARRATOR The stress of this extra work on Alex's heart

eventually causes it to fail and also puts him

at risk for atherosclerosis.

Then he develops a small blood clot that further

compromises the weakened organ.

Now as his heart struggles to pump enough blood out,

his lungs back up with fluid.

He would have a little bit of cough.

Maybe he'd have thought that was maybe the flu coming on,

little shortness of breath.

Maybe that's he went to bed.

NARRATOR Over the next several hours, as Alex sleeps,

his overtaxed heart fights to continue b*ating.

But eventually, his heart gives out.

He most likely d*ed in his sleep.

NARRATOR Unlike many of the transient cases in Dr. G's

morgue, Alex Wilcott wasn't m*rder*d,

and he did not overdose on dr*gs or alcohol.

He d*ed a natural, quiet death.

JAN GARAVAGLIA Dying in a halfway house all alone,

I mean, it really makes you think what a sad, sad life

some people have.

NARRATOR In the end, Alex's untimely death ironically

may have stemmed from two tragic head injuries

he sustained as a child.

This trauma might have led him to develop

a debilitating mental illness, which in turn caused

him to neglect his health.

This poor guy's got no luck either in his youth, all

these horrible accidents that occur to him,

down to dying in a halfway house all alone.

Whenever I do an autopsy, you really do

get a window in people's lives.

This poor kid's life was unlucky from the beginning to the end.