♪♪
Up next, this medical
professional was obsessed
with staying healthy.
Herbal supplements
were her big thing.
She was always trying
to have everyone healthy.
But in a matter of days,
what looks like a disease
cuts her down.
Whatever it is just came on,
and it k*lled her.
Is she dead
from natural causes...
or something more sinister?
This is probably
the most bizarre case
that I've ever worked on.
♪♪
♪♪
Utica is so far north
in New York state
that it's closer to Canada
than to New York City.
Locals are proud of their past.
But like a lot of people
in Rust Belt communities,
they face an uncertain future.
It's just a beautiful city.
Was a beautiful city.
It's gotten
its little hairy parts now,
but it was a beautiful city.
Bill and Mary Yoder's
chiropractic business
was one of the busiest
in the area,
which came as no surprise
to their hundreds
of loyal patients.
Mary and Bill...
they build up
this chiropractic business,
and they turn it, really,
into a family business
that everybody in Utica
really looks to as,
"This is the place to go."
The Yoders had been married
for nearly 40 years and
had three grown children.
On July 20, 2015,
Bill had the day off
while Mary worked with clients.
But late that afternoon,
Mary got sick to her stomach,
and this didn't appear
like an ordinary bug.
Patients report
she's running in and out
of the bathroom,
something she never did.
Once Mary got home,
things got worse
and then spiraled
steadily downward.
The next day,
she went to the hospital.
She's in the E.R.,
and she is severely ill.
Her legs are swelling.
Her skin is turning green,
basically.
They can't figure out
what's going on.
Mary was known
for taking a lot of supplements.
She lives
a kind of green lifestyle.
She only puts healthy things
in her body.
Could one of those supplements
have caused her illness?
Baffled doctors didn't think
this was likely
but couldn't be sure,
and testing on those products
could take time,
which they didn't have.
They do not have a firm grip
on what has taken place
with her.
That night, Mary
rebounded, but not for long.
Soon, her whole body,
including her heart,
started failing.
Less than 36 hours
after being admitted...
she was dead.
It all happened so fast
that her family
and many in the community
were blindsided.
I mean, you're shocked.
I just saw her.
She just worked on me.
She was fine.
So, I was in shock.
She was healthy when I left.
How did Mary go from the
healthiest person in the family
to dead?
That question
confounded doctors,
and Mary's autopsy provided
limited answers.
Doctors discovered
a physiological process
called apoptosis.
Mary Yoder's cells
appeared to be
attacking themselves,
and that is an indication
of a person
who has either undergone
a strong dosage of chemotherapy
or had poison introduced
into their body.
Mary certainly hadn't
undergone chemotherapy.
In fact,
just a few days earlier,
she'd been in perfect health.
Standard toxicology screens
all came back negative.
Mary's case didn't make
any sense to anyone.
So, the Medical Examiner's
Office is stuck.
They don't know
what k*lled this woman.
They were looking at
every possible angle,
and they just
did not have a conclusion.
One test result ultimately
did provide the answer
to what k*lled Mary Yoder.
But that result also raised
a host of shocking questions
about how it happened
and who might be responsible.
♪♪
Just three days
before her death,
Mary Yoder was
the picture of health,
but her autopsy showed
a ravaged body.
Her system had sustained
the kind of damage
suffered by someone
undergoing long-term
intensive chemotherapy.
She wound up having
multi-system organ failure
over a very short period
of time.
Everything pointed
to some type of poison.
So the medical examiner
reached out
to clinical toxicologist
Dr. Jeanna Marraffa
with the Upstate New York
Poison Control Center.
I was thinking, "Could there be
something terribly wrong
with her vitamins
and supplements
and it be a contaminant
in there?"
And as those
were quickly ruled out,
then I didn't know the source.
Mary's symptoms
were distinctive...
rapid organ failure,
large-scale cell death
throughout the body,
cardiac arrest.
It usually signifies that
there's some kind of toxin
in the body.
Doctors theorized
about a possible culprit,
a drug called "colchicine"
that's normally
used to treat gout.
Jeanna Marraffa looked
at all the symptoms,
looked at the medical charts,
and said,
"I think you need
to test for colchicine."
It's not very common.
I've probably only had 15
colchicine cases in my career.
Colchicine works
in ways similar to chemotherapy.
It stops the normal process
of cell division,
which is good if you
have something like gout.
If you don't,
it can be a problem.
It's potentially very toxic,
so it's used in very low doses
and usually monitored clinically
if people are taking it.
Mary's blood sample
was subjected to a process
called liquid chromatography
tandem-mass spectrometry.
The first step is to separate
whatever is not blood
from the rest
of the blood sample.
Once those compounds
are separated,
they can actually enter
the mass spectrometer.
All compounds have
a specific chemical signature
that, once isolated,
produce distinctive waveforms
in the mass spectrometer.
This is done based on
the chemical characteristics
and the mass of the compound.
In this case, the
resulting waveform was measured
against the waveform
of a known sample of colchicine.
Mary Yoder's blood
was found to have
unusually high concentrations
of the drug.
It certainly was a large amount
compared to what we see
in a clinical
therapeutic application.
I received a phone call,
and he said,
"You're never gonna believe it,
but the colchicine level
is through the roof."
And I said, "Are you sure?"
And he said,
"Yes, I have it right here."
Mary Yoder
had essentially overdosed
on colchicine.
Was her death an accident,
a su1c1de?
No one thought Mary
was suicidal.
And there are a lot of easier
and less painful ways
to k*ll yourself
than using
an obscure gout medication.
No one in the family has gout.
No one they know has gout.
Mary certainly didn't have gout.
How did the colchicine
get into her body and k*ll her?
That question landed
right in the laps
of local police
because Mary's death didn't look
like su1c1de or an accident.
What does that leave you?
That leaves you with homicide.
That leaves you with somebody
deliberately put colchicine
in something that Mary ate
or drank that day to k*ll her.
But who and why?
In November of 2015,
the Sheriff's Office opened
a criminal investigation.
A detective came to my door,
and he told me that
he was investigating a m*rder.
And I'm like, "Whose m*rder?"
♪♪
And he said, "Mary Yoder."
And I said,
"She wasn't m*rder*d.
She just di..."
He said, "No.
We believe she was m*rder*d."
By this time,
four months had passed
since Mary's death,
and detectives soon learn
that a lot of unexpected things
had happened with the Yoder
family in those four months.
Just because you're not
a great husband
doesn't mean you're a m*rder.
♪♪
Small towns are pretty
much the same the world over.
People know each other,
tend to look after each other,
and oftentimes are aware
of each other's business.
In Bill and Mary Yoder's town,
local tongues started wagging
shortly after Mary's death.
We become aware that Bill Yoder
is involved in a relationship
with one of
Mary Yoder's older sisters.
Their relationship
apparently began
soon after Mary d*ed.
And that obviously sent up
some red flags to us that
that had been the motive
for k*lling Mary Yoder.
And statistics
back up the suspicion.
In the U.S.,
nearly three women
are k*lled every day
by current or former
romantic partners.
The first person
investigators are gonna look at
is the husband.
So, if Mary Yoder
is a bull's-eye,
the first ring around
that bull's-eye is Bill Yoder.
Bill denied any
involvement in Mary's m*rder.
As police check to see
if he could have purchased
the m*rder w*apon, colchicine,
the case took
yet another bizarre turn.
An anonymous letter arrived at
the Medical Examiner's Office.
An identical letter
was sent to the sheriff.
Whoever wrote these letters
had inside information
on the investigation.
The letter-writer specifically
named what the toxin was,
colchicine,
which, at that point,
very few people knew that.
The letter-writer
was in no doubt
about who k*lled Mary Yoder.
It points specifically
to Adam Yoder, the son.
And it also claims that
Adam Yoder had motive
to k*ll his mother...
that he was going to get
some money out of this.
The letter said
the bottle of colchicine,
the m*rder w*apon,
was under the front seat
of Adam's Jeep.
Adam was called in
for an interview with police
and was stunned when told
he was a person of interest
in his mother's m*rder.
We tell him that we would like
to look in his Jeep,
under the seat, right
where this letter directs us.
You could have probably
tipped him over with a father.
A shaken Adam Yoder
asked for an attorney,
who promptly told him to consent
to the search of his Jeep.
And, sure enough,
just as the letter indicated,
a bottle of colchicine was found
under the front seat.
I wanted to see his reaction,
and I can recall him
smoking a cigarette,
and the cigarette
almost fell out of his mouth,
like he was in such shock
of what we had pulled
out of his truck.
With the bottle was a receipt
for the colchicine purchase,
and it had an e-mail address.
Adam said he had no idea
how the drug got in his Jeep
and that this e-mail address
wasn't his.
He said he'd never seen
that e-mail,
that wasn't his e-mail,
and he'd never used that e-mail.
Adam told police
he thought he was being framed,
and they didn't think
this was so far-fetched.
This guy drives his Jeep
to the Sheriff's Department
with the colchicine
that k*lled his mother?
"Hell, no," they're saying.
We don't buy that.
Who would keep the toxin
in their car
and then bring their car
up to the Sheriff's Office
and consent to the search of it?
It didn't make any sense.
Amid all this misdirection,
investigators were coming
to an unavoidable conclusion.
Whoever wrote the letter
was probably the person
that k*lled Mary Yoder.
The investigation
now centered on the envelopes
with the anonymous letters,
which were typewritten,
the bottle of colchicine,
which was found inside
a small cardboard sleeve,
and the prescription receipt
with the e-mail address.
Everything was tested for DNA,
and when those results
came back,
investigators got
yet another shock.
You know what is found on that
bottle and the cardboard?
Female DNA.
And that DNA
was not Mary Yoder's.
Could the DNA reveal
who had handled
this highly unusual
m*rder w*apon?
Which now throws this case
into an entire new direction.
♪♪
The envelopes
containing the anonymous letters
implicating Adam Yoder
in his mother's m*rder
were typewritten...
not exactly a regular occurrence
in 2015.
The office in the Yoders'
business had a typewriter.
Detectives were curious.
Bill says to him, "Look,
you don't need a search warrant.
Go. Carte blanche,
go in that office.
Take whatever you want.
I don't care.
I'm an open book."
Analysts
dismantle the typewriter,
which only four people
had access to...
Bill and Mary Yoder, Adam Yoder,
and the office receptionist,
Kaity Conley.
The examination
of the typewriter ribbon
really went back
to old-school police work.
The cartridge was taken apart,
and the used ribbon was cut
into approximately
and placed
on a white posterboard,
and you could actually read
every keystroke that
that typewriter had made.
And those keystrokes
showed the addresses
of the Medical Examiner
and the Sheriff's Office...
the destinations of
the anonymous letters.
This proved the envelopes
that contained the letters
implicating Adam Yoder
had been typed on this machine.
confronted with this evidence
and admitted straight away
that she was the letter-writer.
I specifically asked
Kaity Conley,
"Did you write us
the anonymous letter?"
And her response to me is,
"You can't protect me."
Kaity said
she was terrified of Adam Yoder,
that Adam k*lled his mother,
and that she wrote the
anonymous letters to expose him.
She made Adam seem out
to be a monster.
It turned out that
Kaity and Adam Yoder
had dated off and on
for a few years.
But about a year
before the m*rder,
Adam broke off the relationship.
Kaity had a reputation
back in high school
for getting back at boyfriends.
You know, the old scorned
lover... that was her.
Adam broke up with her.
What is she going to do next?
Well, she's gonna take away
from Adam
the thing
that he loves the most.
That's his mother.
Kaity told detectives
that she knew
nothing about colchicine,
but that Adam did.
♪♪
The keys seem to lie
in the e-mail address
found with the bottle
of colchicine,
an online record created
when the drug was purchased
over the Internet.
Whoever has control
of that Gmail account
is the one
that purchased this colchicine.
The e-mail address
was on a Google Account.
The company couldn't provide
the name,
but they could provide
what's called
an Internet protocol,
or IP, address.
It's very similar
to the phone system.
Only one phone can have
a specific phone number
at any time.
Otherwise, it doesn't work.
The Internet service provider
was able to backtrack
when e-mails were sent
from that IP address,
and GPS
could also give a good idea
where the e-mails
had been sent from.
By knowing when and where
they were sent,
investigators had a good idea
of who had sent them.
There are only two devices
that have any nexus
to that Gmail account at all.
One of them is
Kaitlyn Conley's cellphone,
and the other is the computer
at the chiropractic office
that Kaitlyn Conley uses.
Analysts searched
Kaity's devices
and found that
large amounts of data
had been deleted
from her cellphone
shortly after Mary's m*rder.
However, in a twist that
would upend the investigation,
Adam claimed he
and Kaity briefly reunited
after Mary's m*rder.
During this period,
Kaity backed up her phone
on Adam's computer,
and almost all
her deleted data was there.
It was the light-bulb moment.
It brought back
thousands of pictures
and images and screenshots.
There was...
several searches had been done
regarding colchicine.
One talked about the cardiac
impact of colchicine.
Another talked about
how you treat people
who have been poisoned
by colchicine.
By this time,
the unknown female DNA
found with the bottle
of colchicine in Adam's car
was matched to Kaity Conley.
In June of 2016, she was charged
with second-degree m*rder.
At trial, prosecutors argued
that she had planned
Mary Yoder's m*rder for months.
This is a well-planned-out,
cold, calculated thing.
I think initially
what her intent was...
"I'm going to k*ll Mary Yoder.
That'll bring Adam back to me.
I'll get back
in his good graces,"
and, in fact,
that's really what happened
shortly after the homicide.
Prosecutors say Kaity was able
to buy the colchicine online
by going through the Yoders'
chiropractic business.
The evidence appears to indicate
she spiked a protein shake
with so much colchicine
that Mary Yoder overdosed
almost immediately.
When Kaity tried
to throw off investigators
by writing
the anonymous letters,
she didn't realize
the typewriter
could be tied back to her.
She also didn't know
that the e-mail address,
the one she thought
could keep her anonymous,
would not only reveal
her identity,
it would show how she searched
online for the colchicine,
a m*rder w*apon she thought
no one would ever discover.
Finally,
despite all her attempts
to frame Adam Yoder
for the m*rder,
Kaity's DNA, not Adam's,
was on the key pieces
of evidence.
I had such a tough time
thinking that she would do that
because she was such...
she was such a sweet girl
in that office.
I mean,
I talked to her all the time.
There's no way I believed
that she would do it.
She wasn't the only one.
The jury in Kaity's first trial
couldn't reach a verdict.
I just remember
honestly going out,
walking to my car,
crying for about two minutes
in the parking lot,
and then saying, "Okay,
that's it. That's enough.
It's time to get back to work
and see if we can put
this case together again."
And that's what happened.
In a second trial,
in November of 2017,
Kaity Conley was found guilty
of first-degree manslaughter
and sentenced
to 23 years in prison.
She still maintains
her innocence,
but the DNA, the evidence
from the typewriter,
the attempted frame-up,
the Web searches,
and the purchase
of the colchicine
all pointed in one direction...
to a young woman with
a bizarre motive for m*rder.
A lot of people have
had a difficult or a tough time
accepting the fact
that Kaitlyn Conley is guilty
for the death of Mary Yoder.
But when you look at all
the forensics in the case
and everything leads you back
to one person
and that's Kaitlyn Conley,
there's no doubt that she was
guilty and responsible.