07x01 - Wounded

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

NARRATOR A young father dies under mysterious circumstances.

He hasn't been feeling well for the past week.

And now he's dead.

My god, wake up!

What is going on?

NARRATOR But before the autopsy even begins,

Dr. G's astonished by what she sees.

I am shocked at his appearance.

There is something wrong with this picture.

NARRATOR Then a man is found dead

in his home, covered in blood.

The son's story is that for no reason

his father starts stabbing himself.

But police and Dr. G immediately question

the son's bizarre story.

Police are not buying the son's story.

They are very suspicious that maybe this kid stabbed his dad.

NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations.

These are the everyday cases of Dr. G, Medical Examiner.

OK.

Let's see.

Wow.

That's a lot of trauma.

These two must have been really going fast.

A lot of people think sudden unexpected death is always

some big catastrophic event, a car accident,

a sudden big heart att*ck.

But often times, the cause of death

is things going on in your body that are subtle.

And over time, eventually k*ll you.

Oh, my God.

No.

That's why you've got to listen to your own body.

Woof, woof, woof, woof.

This guy looks like he's a heart att*ck waiting to happen.

I understand some people don't like going to the doctor.

I don't particularly like going to the doctor.

But you have to take control of your health.

Because if you don't, you may end up on my table

like this next case.

[zipping]

NARRATOR It's a blistering hot afternoon

in Kissimmee, Florida.

But -year-old Donald Finch is spending it in bed.

And his sister, Kate, is concerned.

The sister said he hasn't been feeling

well for the past week--

severe fatigue, stomach pains, chills, and possibly fever.

She went to bring him a little bit of fluid.

NARRATOR But when Kate returns, she comes face-to-face

with her worst nightmare.

She sees him on the floor collapsed.

Donald?

Donald?

NARRATOR Horrified, she immediately calls .

And within minutes, paramedics arrive on the scene.

But it was too late.

He was dead.

[crying]

The sister's just flabbergasted.

She's been letting him live in her house for a year.

And she's been taking care of him.

She can't believe that he d*ed.

She would like answers.

It's not that busy a day today.

But it looks like it's, um--

they're starting to pile up.

NARRATOR Dr. G reviews the case file, hoping it will shed

some light on Donald's death.

Let's see.

NARRATOR But instead, what she gets is a heartbreaking

glimpse into his life.

About a year ago, he lost his job.

He separated from his wife.

They had a child together.

But she moved away.

And he didn't think he'd ever see her.

And he had to move in with his sister.

And now, he's dead.

Sounds like terrible luck.

NARRATOR Dr. G's urgent priority now

is to get to the bottom of this medical mystery.

And they don't have any diagnosis.

And he really has no history that we know of for sure.

I can't get any medical records, because he

doesn't go see a doctor.

NARRATOR With no medical records to go on,

Dr. G must rely solely on what Donald's

sister told her investigators.

According to his sister, he does smoke one and a half

to two packs a day.

That's a lot of smoking.

Smoking can cause everything from heart disease and heart

att*ck, to multiple different cancers,

to chronic lung disease, and many things in between.

So that was one concern.

But I don't know what the body is going to tell me yet.

OK.
[ … ]

A week of not feeling well could

be a lot of different things.

Oh, here it is.

Let's see if we can start undressing him.

Wow.

Things are not looking good.

I am shocked at his appearance.

He looks like death warmed over.

He's awfully thin, too.

He's thin.

He's debilitated and wasted.

Oh, my God.

That's tense.

And his belly is sticking out.

It is quite a shocking, disturbing look.

Yeah.

This guy's not looking good.

Something is clearly wrong with him.

I can't believe that the sister didn't mention this.

I need the head.

I need a head sh*t.

NARRATOR Donald's alarming appearance opens

up a host of new possibilities.

Now that I see him, it's a whole different ball game.

I'm immediately thinking, AIDS--

maybe that's why he's wasted and in bed.

NARRATOR AIDS is a disease caused by HIV, a virus

that att*cks the immune system.

And some of its symptoms are the same as Donald's.

OK.

Yeah, we need to get the other side.

Yeah.

You know, nowadays, I don't see HIV cases very frequently.

It is a treatable illness now.

NARRATOR And if this diagnosis proves

true it could have serious implications for the loved

ones Donald left behind.

If he has AIDS, does the family know?

Did his wife know?

Did anybody know any of this?

Did you get the sides of the neck, too?

Did you get this?

NARRATOR Dr. G checked Donald's body for telltale signs

of the disease.

I look in his mouth to see if he has kind

of these white pillar lines on the side

of his tongue, which is called hairy leukoplakia,

a sure sign of AIDS.

I don't see any.

But there's nothing there.

NARRATOR But AIDS will remain a possibility

until she gets the results of Donald's blood work.

All righty.

NARRATOR For now, she's keeping all her options open.

I'm thinking cancer, maybe even a chronic disease

like a TB or a diabetes.

NARRATOR But as Dr. G's undressing Donald,

she stumbles across something so unexpected--

What is this?

--it stops her dead in her tracks.

There's something wrong here.

It's quite disturbing.

He doesn't have underwear on.

He's got an adult diaper on.

And it's soiled.

This is about as bad as it gets.

There's something wrong with this picture.

I got it.

I got it.

I've seen disposable diapers on adults.

But they've had some chronic illness

that makes them incontinent.

I've never really come across someone that just nonchalantly

starts wearing them.

Could I see his back real quick?

NARRATOR And when Dr. G turns his body over,

she gets another surprise.

Yuck!

Look at this!

NARRATOR A bed sore on his backside.

Well, a bed sore we see not with just somebody in bed,

but we see somebody not moving in bed.

That makes me worry.

Why is he not moving around?

We're going to have to see what is inside of him that's

causing him to look like this.

What else we got cooking over here?

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G performs a y incision,

opening up Donald's abdominal cavity from his neck

to his waist.

And at that moment, she realizes--

Oh!

--that something is horribly wrong.

Oh, my gosh.

That's, like, gross.

As soon as you open that abdomen,

there is a hideous smell that comes out.

It does smell bad.

It just so happens that there is a decomposed body

in the room at the same time.
[ … ]

That didn't smell half as bad as my guy.

Yuck!

What is going on?

I hate that smell.

NARRATOR Dr. G's still reeling from the overwhelming stench

emanating from -year-old Donald Finch's open body.

Oh!

It smells like vomit!

I hate vomit!

Nah, you just aren't used to it.

I deal with a lot of different smells.

But that smell is one of the worst I'd ever encountered.

It's not nice.

Now I'm really wondering what's going on.

NARRATOR But first, Dr. G must collect blood for a variety

of test and cultures.

I will, of course, do an HIV test on him.

And I will take blood cultures, see if there's any bacteria

growing in his blood.

NARRATOR With the samples drawn,

she cuts deeply into Donald's abdominal cavity,

trying to locate the source of the odor.

And immediately, Dr. G realizes that something is

terribly wrong with his bowel.

Wow.

Look at that.

Something funky is going on up here.

His bowel is huge.

Nothing else could get your attention.

NARRATOR The bowel is a muscular tube that forms part

of the body's digestive system.

So a normal bowel is maybe that big around.

His is the size of a basketball.

Oh, my God.

And then, the bowel wall looks like a balloon ready to burst.

Oh, my gosh.

I hate it.

It's thin, and it's under pressure.

Something's wrong here!

He's clearly got a bowel obstruction.

NARRATOR In a healthy individual,

solid waste material, or feces, passes

through the bowel on its way to being eliminated from the body.

But in Donald's case, something is

preventing this from happening.

The fecal material can't get out of the bowel.

That's gross.

So he's clearly-- something else is going on.

NARRATOR Dr. G is now determined to figure out

what's blocking Donald's bowel.

I'm not doing anything till we figure this out.

NARRATOR She wonders if he could have been suffering

from a condition called volvulus,

in which a loop of the bowel becomes abnormally twisted.

Maybe the bowels have turned on itself.

This is if you kink a hose and the water can't get through.

NARRATOR To find out, Dr. G inspects the bowel all the way

to Donald's rectum.

It is the glamorous part of the job.

NARRATOR But to her surprise, she comes up empty-handed.

There was no volvulus.

The bowel wasn't kinked.

This might just be a cancer.

NARRATOR If Donald has cancer of the bowel,

he could have developed malignant tumors large enough

to cause an obstruction.

I don't see anything.

But there was no tumor anywhere.

There's just no cancer in his abdomen at all.

NARRATOR Finally, Dr. G cuts into the bowel itself

so she can examine it from the inside.

I knew this was not going to be pleasant.

This would keep a lot of people out of this profession.

Wow.

NARRATOR And what she finds there is unlike she's

ever seen before.

When I open up the bowel, I get my answer.

Oh, gross.

I see what it is.

He's got a fecal impaction.

NARRATOR A fecal impaction is an unusual and painful

condition in which a solid mass of hardened feces, or stool,

builds up in the bowel, causing a blockage.

That is really bizarre.

In his case, the fecal material

has gotten so large that it's blocked

up the bowel to the point where it kind of just causes a jam.

And the rest of the stool just started building up behind it.

Oh, this is just disgusting.

The biggest fecal ball was about the size of a football.

, , , , , .

And then there were multiple other hard balls

the size of a baseball.

We got or big wads of something.

It was quite the sight.

Nothing could get through it except some liquid stool,

which is why he had to wear the disposable diaper.

That had to be a lot of pain.

I find a lot of this unbelievable.

Did he not have a sense of what was
[ … ]

going on inside of his bowel?

What is it that's causing him to live with this pain?

I'm afraid to touch it.

It was slipping all over the place.

In my years as a medical examiner,

I had never seen that before.

At this point, I don't know what to think.

NARRATOR The case of -year-old Donald Finch

has just taken an unexpected turn.

His bowel is jam-packed with fecal matter.

And in more than two decades of performing autopsies,

Dr. G has never seen anything like it.

That's disgusting.

It was really quite remarkable to see that much stool

in a human body.

Oh, my gosh.

You can't live like that.

Basically, I know that that fecal impaction

is to blame for his death.

But I don't know really what's causing

him to have a fecal impaction.

I'll get those out.

And then you can get the rest out.

The only people I've seen fecal impactions in

are usually debilitated people, old people who are bedridden.

We know he has a bed sore.

So he's clearly not getting out of bed.

The real question is, what is making him bedridden?

What's causing this in a -year-old man?

NARRATOR Thinking back to the external exam

Dr. G now wonders if her earlier theory about AIDS

might be correct.

That could have made him debilitated

enough to stay in bed.

NARRATOR But to find out, she must wait for Donald's blood

work to come back from the lab.

We're going to pin this case.

LAB ASSISTANT [inaudible].

NARRATOR One week later, Donald's blood cultures

are delivered to the District morgue.

And they immediately reveal one thing.

Yeah.

There we go.

He's clearly got a lot of E. coli.

NARRATOR E. coli is a common type of bacteria that is

usually contained in the bowel.

But in Donald's case, the pressure

from the build up of feces has allowed

the bacteria to seep into the bloodstream,

causing a deadly infection.

The bacteria getting into his bloodstream

caused his final illness.

But that's just the mechanism of how he finally d*ed.

That's still not giving me the answer.

We want what caused the bowel obstruction in the first place.

NARRATOR Now she is more anxious than ever

to examine Donald's blood tests.

I'm really thinking he's got AIDS,

and this is what's going to cause all of his problems.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, the report proves to be a dead end.

His HIV test was negative.

It's frustrating.

I don't know what happened to him.

That doesn't make any sense.

NARRATOR And there's only one tool left in Dr. G's arsenal--

the microscopics.

One by one, she reviews the slides of Donald's nerves

and spinal cord, searching for any signs

of infection that could have caused him to be bedridden.

But I don't see any evidence of infection.

So I really need, at this point, to call the sister.

She needs to give me more answers.

KATE (ON TELEPHONE) Hi, I have a question for you.

NARRATOR Over the phone, Dr. G describes

for Kate the circumstances that led to her brother's death.

Then she probes for more clues.

I asked her, why didn't you tell me he was bedridden?

She said he wasn't.

He would get up when he wanted to.

But for months, he'd lay in bed and not want to move.

NARRATOR Now Dr. G is truly stumped.

I told her I don't have a medical reason that

would have caused all this.

NARRATOR But finally, Kate reveals a surprising detail

about her brother's past.

She told me a really important piece

of the puzzle that I wish I'd have known at the beginning.

NARRATOR On the afternoon of his death,

-year-old Donald Finch is trapped

in bed, fighting what appears to be a bad case of the flu.

But Dr. G now knows he's suffering from something far

more insidious and devastating.

According to the sister, he was severely depressed.

It all started about a year ago when he broke up with his wife.

They had a child together.

And it became clear to him that he

was never going to be able to get into that little girl's

life again.

And that was devastating for him.

He sank into a deeper and deeper depression.
[ … ]

NARRATOR Soon Donald stops eating

and slowly begins to waste away.

He laid in bed and didn't move for long periods of time.

That's how severe his depression was.

NARRATOR And his prolonged immobility

eventually causes a bed sore to form on his backside.

He didn't care.

I just think he lost the will to live.

But Dr. G believes that Donald's depression

also set into motion a deadly chain reaction inside his body.

Our bodies are meant to move.

When we don't move, bad things happen.

His bowels became sluggish to the point where

firm, hard stools started developing,

to the point where it became obstructed,

to the point where no stool could get through.

He must have had tremendous abdominal pain.

But I don't think that was matching

the pain that he was feeling for the loss of his daughter.

NARRATOR As Donald's stool continues to build up,

his bowel becomes stretched to the breaking point,

with disastrous consequences.

The bacteria which had been confined in his bowel

gets translocated into his blood vessels.

NARRATOR With E. coli bacteria loose in his bloodstream,

Donald developed a massive infection that overwhelms

his already weakened body.

He gets out of bed.

His blood pressure drops.

He collapses.

And it doesn't take long before he dies.

That's really sad.

Because he's a really young guy.

He comes from a good family.

It's just a tragedy.

NARRATOR After a four week investigation,

Dr. G is finally able to give Kate some conclusive answers

about her brother's death.

She was a little surprised.

She didn't think that depression could k*ll you.

We have people who are depressed that come through our morgue

all the time.

Depression is a serious medical illness

that ultimately can k*ll.

If you have major depression, if you

know somebody with major depression, seek help.

Things can be done for depression.

It's a treatable illness.

NARRATOR The case of Donald Finch

is yet another example of a death that

could have been prevented if only he would

have listened to his body.

But sometimes a death is so sudden,

there are no signs at all.

I just find it odd that he starts stabbing

himself out of the blue.

What's leading up to this?

This is a case that is somewhat bizarre.

We have a -year-old male that lives with his -year-old son.

And the son's story is that for no reason,

his father starts stabbing himself.

NARRATOR It's just before AM on Saturday morning

when the Orange County emergency dispatch

center receives a frantic call from -year-old Damian Harper.

He calls and says my dad stabbed himself.

NARRATOR Moments later, paramedics

arrive to a grisly scene.

[interposing voices]

They tried resuscitation, take him to the hospital,

but there's nothing I can do.

He's pretty much dead on arrival.

[siren blaring]

NARRATOR Now it's up to Sgt. Brennan of the Orlando Police

Department to get to the bottom of this strange and disturbing

set of circumstances.

It appeared to be a very violent scene.

We found signs of a struggle, a lot of blood.

The son's story is that, for no reason,

his father grabs a kitchen Kn*fe and starts stabbing himself.

But Damian's story is so bizarre that police

are immediately suspicious.

The fact that the father had multiple s*ab wounds

was so out of the ordinary that it led you to believe

that it was a homicide.

We oftentimes see suicides with cutting instruments.

It's rare to see stabbings.

Typically, it's more of a slashing

or a slicing or a cutting rather than a stabbing.

NARRATOR And it isn't long before police notice something

else that makes them even more suspicious.

The son had injuries to his hand

that made us believe that he was possibly

involved in an altercation with his father.

NARRATOR Now Sgt. Brennan is counting on Dr. G

to help determine if Damien k*lled

his own father in cold blood.

You know, the police don't know really

what to believe at this point.

But they suspect that kid.

So they want to know my opinion on what I think happened.
[ … ]

Is it a su1c1de?

Is it a homicide?

NARRATOR The next morning, the body of Jack Harper

arrives at the District Morgue.

All right.

Let's see here.

Let's see here.

NARRATOR As a first step, Dr. G reviews

the investigators' report.

We don't know anything about his medical history

or social history.

We really don't know what his life was like.

Where does one begin here?

All I have is that this is a person that's multiply stabbed.

He's got some really significant wounds

to his neck and some s*ab wounds to the chest.

Now everybody always wonders, why

do we bother doing an autopsy?

By golly, this person's stabbed.

Why bother?

We all know why this person d*ed.

Well, no!

There's more to it.

What can we gather from this autopsy that could help

explain what happened that day?

Because the only person that's talking is the son,

and he's a suspect.

Can we confirm or deny this story that he's telling?

NARRATOR In fact, this particular scenario

is so troubling, Sgt. Brennan decides to sit in

on the actual autopsy.

We were hoping that the examination would reveal just

exactly how the father incurred his injuries,

whether or not they were self-inflicted,

as the son had alleged, or whether or not they

were possibly from a homicide.

Sometimes the nature of the wounds

internally help us decide whether it's

a su1c1de or a homicide.

NARRATOR For instance, if Jack was stabbing himself,

Dr. G would expect to see only one fatal wound.

Typically with the suicides, we have

one wound that's really bad.

And we don't see a lot of wounds that are really bad.

He'd be losing consciousness too fast to keep going.

So does he have multiple wounds that

would have caused his death?

If that's true, we know that he's probably

not doing it to himself.

If that's the case, it really looks bad for that kid's story.

But we want to see what the forensics tell us.

Even though the police don't believe the son's story,

I have to keep an open mind.

I'm going to let the body speak for itself.

Yeah.

So the first thing I look at is just the general appearance

of the body.

And he's got a tremendous amount of blood on him.

NARRATOR Morgue technician Carlo Gonzalez

carefully washes away the dried blood

covering Jack's upper torso.

Then, wound by wound, Dr. G begins a painstaking

examination of the injuries.

Well, the first thing you see is these five s*ab wounds

that just catch your eye.

They go across the chest.

They're all angled, all about the same size.

The next thing I do is turn my attention to the neck.

I was told there was really quite severe incised wounds.

All righty.

An incised wound is longer than it is deep.

And he's got two of them.

He's got one that's seven inches long.

But that one's fairly superficial.

Then he's got one that's gaping, that's about four inches.

That actually goes into and through

the subcutaneous tissue.

NARRATOR But surprisingly, neither of these wounds

appear severe enough to be fatal.

Next, Dr. G cleans the remaining dried blood from Jack's neck.

And what lies underneath could turn

the entire case upside down.

It was interesting.

When we removed that blood, something else showed up.

Oh, my.

[inaudible]?

NARRATOR Dr. G has just made a shocking discovery

in the external exam of -year-old Jack Harper.

These two are [inaudible].

Oh, look at that.

After I wash him off, I notice that he's

got five hesitation marks on the left side of the neck.

NARRATOR Hesitation marks are small,

superficial, self-inflicted cuts.

This discovery is the first piece of concrete evidence

that could suggest Damien is telling the truth.

These marks on the side of his neck

are classic for the father thinking

about committing su1c1de.

NARRATOR And as Dr. G examines these cuts more closely,
[ … ]

she finds yet another clue that points towards su1c1de.

There's kind of a curvilinear pattern to some of those

and suggests that he might have been holding the Kn*fe.

If a son is standing from behind,

the natural tendency would be to have them diagonal.

And if a father and son are having an altercation,

that's going to be a rough and tumble, quick kind of action.

I don't think the -year-old son is sitting

there torturing the father.

Now I'm kind of wondering, hm, maybe he did this to himself.

NARRATOR But many questions remain.

What about the cuts on Damien's hands?

And if it is su1c1de, why?

In over two decades on the job, she's never

seen anything quite like it.

I can't imagine who would do this to themselves.

NARRATOR Still, the only way to know for sure

if Jack took his own life is to examine the severity

of his other injuries.

I need to see what's going on with those s*ab

wounds of the chest.

NARRATOR With scalpel in hand, Dr. G

makes her standard Y-shaped incision down Jack's torso.

When you have all these wounds,

you still gotta do your normal procedure

or you're going to forget something.

So you still gotta do your tox and your panels.

NARRATOR She carefully collect samples of Jack's blood

and sends them off to the lab for analysis.

Is he under the influence of dr*gs?

Is that what caused him to possibly k*ll himself?

We don't know yet.

But you always take tox.

NARRATOR Then Dr. G begins charting the path of each wound

to determine if more than one of them

could be potentially fatal.

Where are these s*ab wounds going?

Got something to measure it?

Two of the s*ab wounds go downward.

And they go through the diaphragm and into the liver.

One of them goes pretty deep in the liver.

Not a lot of blood has accumulated

in that abdominal cavity from those liver wounds,

maybe about cc's that I can kind of gather up.

You've got the rest [inaudible]..

NARRATOR This tells Dr. G that the injuries to Jack's liver

were not fatal.

He probably could have survived

those s*ab wounds to the liver.

NARRATOR She then turns her attention to the injuries

in Jack's chest cavity, and with just one glance,

she can see that they're the most severe.

Oh, my gosh.

Look at that.

When I opened that floor cavity up,

it has cc's which has spilled

into each pleural cavity.

NARRATOR Dr. G ladles out the blood so she can get a better

look at Jack's heart sac.

His pericardial sac has a s*ab wound through it.

And there is a slice through that heart.

He's not going to survive that s*ab wound to the heart.

That really is the one that got him.

NARRATOR At this point, Dr. G is

determined that even though Jack had five s*ab wounds,

only one was fatal.

We've got hesitation marks, as if he's holding the Kn*fe.

We have no defensive wounds on him.

And there's only one true major wound.

And so if you put that all together,

it really is making homicide go down on our radar and su1c1de

go up.

NARRATOR But these findings raise an even

more perplexing question.

What could have caused Jack to take his own life in such

a brutal and bizarre way?

The question is not the cause of death.

The question is the manner of death.

Is it truly just a totally impulsive act?

Or is it some psychiatric problem?

Is it some medical problem?

NARRATOR And there's only one place left

to look for clues, the brain.

Believe it or not, there are many things in the brain that

may precipitate some type of abnormal, acute change

in behavior.

NARRATOR As a first step, Dr. G cuts across the top

of Jack's head, slicing from ear-to-ear

and reflecting the scalp.

He does have a contusion or bruise to the scalp,

but it looks like when he must have

collapsed, because there's really no underlying

bleeding over the skull.

There's no skull fracture.

NARRATOR She then extracts the brain

and carries it to the dissecting table for a closer inspection.

And I section the brain.

I don't see anything that suggests any natural disease.

I don't see anything there, either.

The brain looks completely normal except pale.
[ … ]

But you will see that with a bleeding out.

NARRATOR With this, the autopsy comes to a close.

At the end of this autopsy, it really looks like it's

going to be a su1c1de.

But we still need some information.

My job will be getting the medical records

and I'm going to have Sgt. Brennan

to ask the son more about the father's behavior

prior to this.

Is it truly out of the blue?

We may never know why he did this,

but we won't know unless we start asking some questions.

NARRATOR Dr. G had just completed the autopsy

of -year-old Jack Harper, whose

bizarre death appears to be a su1c1de due

to self-inflicted s*ab wounds.

So at this point, we're kind of looking

at this more as a su1c1de.

But if it's a su1c1de, I just find it odd that it

would be out of the blue.

What's leading up to this?

I need to get his medical records.

NARRATOR Several days later, the records arrive

at the District morgue.

And they immediately reveal one thing.

The father does have a history of depression,

had been seeing a psychiatrist.

But what's troubling is, on the last visit,

he complained to the psychiatrist

that he really started to think people were after him.

He really started to have some kind of paranoid thoughts.

NARRATOR Jack's son Damien confirms that his father had

been exhibiting some odd behavior in the days leading up

to his death.

And the son is saying that the father's acting really strange.

He's hearing these voices.

And then the next thing he knows,

the father picks up a Kn*fe and starts stabbing himself.

NARRATOR While it's extremely unusual

Dr. G must now consider the possibility

that Jack's underlying depression somehow

led to feelings of paranoia, and ultimately, a full on psychotic"], index ,…}

break.

So possibly, his depression, maybe, was getting so bad

that he did become psychotic.

People can have these brief psychotic episodes

and may never have one again.

Maybe that's what it is.

And unfortunately, he committed su1c1de because of it.

But that's really, really rare.

The only last piece of the puzzle is the toxicology.

When I get the toxicology report,

I'm actually quite surprised at what I found.

Because I do think it adds another piece to the puzzle.

And I really didn't think it would.

He had cyclobenzaprine in him.

NARRATOR Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant that

is commonly prescribed to help relieve

the pain of a muscle spasm.

A lot of people are on cyclobenzaprine.

But interesting, his level is very high,

really high enough to be toxic.

Does that explain what happened?

It certainly could have.

NARRATOR It's a lazy Saturday morning at the Harper

home in Orange County, Florida.

-year-old Damien is trying to enjoy his breakfast, even

though his dad Jack has been acting

a little strange as of late.

He's had kind of a rocky road with his depression

and anxiety.

He also felt that people were starting to follow him.

He's really starting to get a little bit paranoid.

At some point, probably a week, a day prior to this incident,

he must've sprained his back or sprained a muscle.

[inaudible].

Then he gets a prescription for cyclobenzaprine.

NARRATOR But as the toxicology results

reveal, Jack's cyclobenzaprine level was exceptionally high.

Now the question is why is it that high?

Was he maybe having some more muscle spasm and just took,

you know, one's good, , , may be better.

NARRATOR Although Dr. G can't be certain,

she believes the elevated level caused

a very rare but extremely dangerous

side effect of the drug.

When cyclobenzaprine gets at that toxic level,

the known side effect of that is to become psychotic,

start hearing voices.

And probably, that is what then led him to pick up that Kn*fe

and started stabbing himself.

He first starts hesitating, he cuts his throat.

NARRATOR At some point, Damien tries to step in.

He attempts to grab the Kn*fe from his dad

and gets cut in the process.

Dad!

[inaudible]

The father's able to fend him off

and continue stabbing himself.

He stabs his liver.
[ … ]

He cuts his heart, loses blood pressure.

He collapses on the ground.

His son is finally able to call .

[phone dialing]

Ambulance gets there, rushes him to the hospital.

[siren blaring]

But it's too late.

They can't save him.

NARRATOR With this, Dr. G reaches out to Sgt. Brennan

to share her final ruling on what

is perhaps the strangest su1c1de she's ever come across.

Dr. G's findings close this case as a su1c1de.

And as a result, the son was no longer a suspect

in his father's death.

Even though we've relieved any suspicion on his son,

I'm sure the son is devastated with the death of his father.

It was terribly traumatizing to have his dad act in that way.

If that father was in his right mind,

I'm sure he wouldn't have done that.

Unfortunately he was not in his right mind.

And the person that really pays the price is the son.