America's Most Shocking Cases - Deadly Deception

[bunniefuu]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

Next, I take you outside my own ward

for an inside look at America's most shocking cases.

NARRATOR A grisly discovery in a b*rned out garage

leads Miami authorities on an investigation that seems

to get stranger by the moment.

Something looked really wrong here.

I'll never forget it.

He said, you're [BLEEP] me.

NARRATOR And then a rash of mysterious deaths

leaves a community desperate for answers.

It seemed as if everybody who got it was dying.

Chills just went down my back.

I remember thinking, oh my goodness, we

have a crisis here.

WOMAN ON TV This could be the biggest

serial k*ller in history.

years later, science rewrites an old case.

MAN ON TV Is he an angel of mercy or an angel of death?

MAN ON TV August st, people were brutally m*rder*d.

As a medical examiner, I see the results of tragic accidents

every single day.

But in this next case, what first seemed

like an unfortunate mishap grew into one of the strangest

and farthest reaching investigations the city

of Miami had ever seen.

[EERIE MUSIC]

NARRATOR It's just after PM on a balmy evening

in the quiet Miami suburb of Kendall,

when suddenly a terrifying noise shatters the peace.

[GLASS SMASHING, FLAMES BURNING]

WOMAN ON POLICE RADIO , repeat

the location and standby.

NARRATOR A roaring fire has engulfed a garage

and threatens to spread to the adjacent house.

But as firefighters work quickly to extinguish the flames,

a frantic man appears out of nowhere

and tries to run directly into the fire.

POLICEMAN (SHOUTING) Sir, don't go in there!

Stop! Stop!

NARRATOR Police quickly restrain him.

POLICEMAN I got him!

NARRATOR But he remains hysterical.

POLICEMAN Sir!

Sir!

He was fighting the police at the scene,

trying to get into the burning garage, which of course,

would have been impossible because of the-- the fierceness

of the fire.

[POLICE RADIO CHATTER]

NARRATOR The distraught man, Wakil,

claims that his best friend, Ezzat, a Lebanese immigrant,

is trapped inside the deadly inferno.

[POLICE RADIO CHATTER]

EDNA BUCHANAN He was so grief stricken

and upset about his friend that the fire

rescue had to treat him.

[POLICE RADIO CHATTER]

NARRATOR Finally, the firefighters

managed to put out the blaze.

And as the smoke clears, they find

a b*rned out shell of a car.

EDNA BUCHANAN The car had been so enveloped in flames--

you couldn't see what color the paint was.

You couldn't even determine what kind of car it was.

NARRATOR But it's what they discover underneath the car

that startles even the veteran team of firefighters,

a smoking human corpse.

There was very little clothing on him because the skin

was charred, seared.

The body was b*rned to a crisp.

NARRATOR Wakil explained to authorities

that he'd spent the better part of the day

helping Ezzat fix his ' Vega.

EDNA BUCHANAN Wakil said that the car was jacked up,

and Ezzat was under the car with one

when those portable lights that they use

when they're repairing cars.

NARRATOR But at around PM, Wakil left the garage

to go pick up a pizza.

And when he returned, the house was ablaze.

For this experienced team of detectives and fire

investigators, the gruesome discovery makes for a puzzle

with a simple solution.

EDNA BUCHANAN Their theory was that the car slipped off

the Jack, fell on top of the victim, who was beneath it,

and that the jack handle ruptured the gas t*nk.

And a small spray of gasoline began to land

on the burning light bulb.

And eventually, it ignited, and the whole garage

became enveloped in flames from the burning gasoline.

[MAN SCREAMING]

[POLICE SIRENS]

It just seemed it was one of those freak accidents

that sometimes happens.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR Still, Ezzat's friend, Wakil, isn't so sure.

He was shocked.

He thought that Ezzat was too smart and too agile to die
[ … ]

in a stupid accident.

He felt that he must have been m*rder*d.

[POLICE RADIO CHATTER]

NARRATOR Now, it's up to the medical examiner's office

to figure out what happened.

Ezzat's remains are immediately transported to the Dade County

morgue, where Dr. Joseph Davis's team is waiting

to perform a routine autopsy.

The role of the medical examiner

is ultimately to determine what happened, to determine

the cause of death, and to answer any questions that

can be answered from that body.

EDNA BUCHANAN There was nobody more experienced

in doing sudden death autopsies than Dr.

Joe Davis, a former medical examiner

for many, many decades.

The guy is a genius.

The body was extensively charred and blackened.

Parts of the underlying bone was visible as this flesh having

been b*rned completely away.

NARRATOR As the team continues to scan the body,

they discover that the deceased has fractures

on both of his forearms.

[CAMERA FLASHING]

DR. JOSEPH DAVIS That's perfectly normal.

It just shows that there's an intense fire.

The bones get brittle.

They begin to warp.

They break.

So it's common for those things to fracture.

There are many changes that occurred to the body

during an intense fire.

The muscles start to contract.

The muscles burn away and expose the bone,

causing them to fracture.

These are all things we expect to see.

NARRATOR Doctor Davis's team performs

a full autopsy, including a toxicology screening.

And when the report comes back from the lab,

they have their answer.

The carbon monoxide level was certainly

high enough that in a few minutes

that person would be dead.

NARRATOR This confirms that Ezzat d*ed in the fire

by breathing in its deadly fumes.

[MAN SCREAMING]

It was a horrible way to die.

This man b*rned alive pinned under a car.

NARRATOR Putting to bed Wakil's theories of foul play,

Doctor Davis concludes that the death

was accidental, exactly as the detectives originally thought.

Official cause of death--

smoke inhalation.

[HEART b*ating]

[POLICE RADIO CHATTER]

The detectives next step is to notify

Eat's only known relative living in the US, his sister, Ghada.

Ghada Aboul-Hosn was a nursing student in Tampa,

and she and her brother were reportedly pretty close.

NARRATOR Ghada is devastated at the tragic news.

But given the state of the remains,

it's impossible for her to identify

the body as her brother's.

Now, it's up to Doctor Davis to provide a positive ID.

And he has his work cut out for him.

We couldn't get fingerprints because the hands were b*rned.

And this is before DNA was invented.

There was no way you could look at that person

and see who it is.

NARRATOR But as is standard procedure in the morgue,

he enlists the help of forensic odontologist,

Dr. Richard Souviron, to examine the dead man's teeth.

Dental identification is the fastest,

cheapest way of identifying an unknown individual.

Dental identifications are very

common in a forensic office.

We use them all the time.

You're basically taking the deceased that you have,

charting his teeth, X-raying his teeth,

and comparing it to who you think it is.

DR. RICHARD SOUVIRON Teeth are very important because they

really don't change.

They're not like a fingerprint, of course, that is there

for the rest of your life.

Obviously, you can have orthodontics or extractions

or capping, or whatever.

But primarily, the teeth will survive decomposition.

And they survive fires much better than any other area--

NARRATOR Dr. Souviron begins by removing Ezzat's jaw

to get a closer look.

DR. RICHARD SOUVIRON In cases like this, where they are

severely b*rned, there's no way that you can go in there

and get that mouth open without removing the jaws.

The teeth, in this particular case, survived very well.

The front teeth were there.

The back teeth were there.

They were intact.

It takes extreme temperatures over a long period of time

to disintegrate teeth.

The World Trade Center is a good example
[ … ]

of where there's very little dental evidence

left because of the extreme intensity of the fire.

If it melts steel, it's going to melt teeth.

In this case, the teeth were consistent with what you would

expect with a gasoline fire.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR Next, he prepares X-rays of the teeth

and documents their key features.

DR. RICHARD SOUVIRON We record where the fillings are,

where the missing teeth are, if there are spaces

or gaps or breaks, or whatever.

NARRATOR And it's not long before he

reaches his first conclusion.

We were able to state that the individual

was a white male in his late teens

to mid 's, in that age range.

NARRATOR These findings seem to match the victim's

biological profile.

But in order to positively ID the body,

Dr. Souviron needs Ezzat's dental records.

They asked the sister, Ghada, if she

knew where her brother's dental records

were, where his dentist was.

And she said no.

The bottom line was, I had nothing to compare to.

There was no way that we could make

any kind of statement, one way or the other, as to identity.

It didn't bother the investigators that much.

They relied on the testimony of the neighbor of Wakil,

saying that he was under the car.

Based on the circumstances that the age, the sex,

the overall characteristics matched,

they did a presumptive identification.

That was it.

There-- there wasn't really, you know, that much more that was

going to be done on the case.

NARRATOR The investigation into Ezzat Aboul-Hosn's death

is now officially closed.

[TELEPHONE RINGING]

Until, a surprise visitor appears on the scene

and threatens to turn the entire case upside down.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Six months after -year-old Ezzat Aboul-Hosn

was k*lled in a freak fire in his garage,

out of the blue [TELEPHONE RINGING]

an insurance investigator called the Metro-Dade Police Station.

RAY NAFARIO He wanted to talk to me.

He said he was suspicious about the case.

MAN ON PHONE Yeah, so I--

NARRATOR According to the investigator,

at the time of his death, Ezzat carried

six separate life insurance policies, totaling

an astonishing $. million.

In fact, one of the six claims, in the amount of half a million

dollars, had already been paid out to the sole beneficiary,

Ezzat's sister, Ghada.

But the next insurance company thought it was pretty odd.

He's a relatively young man and has no wife

or children to worry about.

It didn't look right.

Why would he be insured for $. million

and then suddenly die in a freak accident?

[MAN SCREAMING]

NARRATOR Now, they refused to settle the remaining claims,

until the dead man is officially identified, once and for all.

Fortunately, forensic odontologist, Dr. Souviron,

saved the victim's jaws and teeth.

It was standard practice in people who were d*sfigured

to remove the jaw and keep that in case

a scientific identification can be done in the future.

Now we tend to do the X-ray, do the charting, and remove DNA,

without necessarily removing the jaws.

In this case, storing the jaw was a good forensic practice.

NARRATOR But with no dental records,

Dr. Souviron must resort to a less conventional

means of identifying the body.

There was no records of the individual,

prior to death, such as a dental chart, dental X-rays--

there was nothing to help with the identification.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR And he has one last trick up his sleeve,

a cutting-edge method of comparison

that could yield a swift result. His tool of choice--

a simple photograph.

At the time this was done, very few forensic odontologists

anywhere in a country were dealing

with smiling photographs.

So this was not common, by any means.

NARRATOR Investigators immediately

conduct a thorough search of Ezzat's home,

hoping to locate a suitable picture.

They couldn't find any pictures.

And they didn't find his driver's license, his passport,

or his Green Card.

NARRATOR And that's not all.

When they take a look at his Ezzat's finances,

they discover something suspicious.

They found a bank account with $. balance,

and that was about it.

Something looked really wrong here.
[ … ]

NARRATOR Now, investigators wonder

if Wakil's initial theory of foul play

may hold water, after all.

Maybe someone m*rder*d him.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

NARRATOR As questions multiply, detectives

are more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this case.

And it isn't long before they catch a lucky break,

when they uncover an old driver's license

picture in the files of the Florida

Department of Motor Vehicles.

And that's when the story gets to be interesting.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

The driver's license photograph was great because it

was a full, open-mouthed smile.

So you could see both the upper and lower teeth.

NARRATOR With a careful eye, Dr. Souviron

compares the victim's teeth to the driver's

license photograph.

DR. RICHARD SOUVIRON And the teeth didn't match.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

I could say without any hesitation

that they were not the same individual.

So the deceased was not Aboul-Hosn

positively, without doubt.

NARRATOR Immediately, Dr. Souviron calls the detectives

with the shocking news.

Their reaction was classic, the Detective Ray

Nasario's comment, when I told him that they're

not the same person.

And I'm going to say exactly, word-for-word.

I'll never forget it.

[MAN TALKING ON PHONE]

He said, you're [BLEEP] me.

I was confident that this was Aboul-Hosn.

Yeah, you know, I thought I had my, uh, case closed.

And it's not Aboul-Hosn.

[CHUCKLES]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR Metro-Dade detectives have just

learned that the body they pulled from Ezzat

Aboul-Hosn's b*rned out garage six months

ago was not Ezzat Aboul-Hosn.

Even more disturbing is the fact that Ezzat

carried a staggering $. million in life insurance.

Now you have / hindsight.

You say, well, if the individual underneath the car

was not Aboul-Hosn, and Aboul-Hosn had a huge amount

of insurance on his life, well, it's

pretty obvious that the person under the car

was a victim of a homicide.

NARRATOR Now the hunt is on to identify

the dead man under the car and find out

exactly what happened to Ezzat.

Detectives immediately turned to the one

person who may be able to provide some clues,

Ezzat's sister, Ghada.

But to their dismay, they learn that Ghada

has left the country.

After the first insurance pay off

of about half a million dollars, she returned to Lebanon.

NARRATOR Unable to contact her and with virtually

no other leads, investigators begin canvassing

Miami's tight-knit Lebanese community, interviewing

everyone who knew Ezzat.

And it's not long before one of them drops a bombshell.

They learned from people visiting here

from Lebanon that they had seen him

in person back in his hometown.

After the fire, he'd come back rich from America.

NARRATOR This astonishing news galvanizes the investigation.

Detectives now believe that Ezzat deliberately

k*lled the stranger in his garage,

in order to fake his own death and collect

the insurance money.

EDNA BUCHANAN He was seen alive and well in Lebanon,

living like a rich man.

I mean, that looked suspicious on its face.

It became pretty clear that fraud had taken place,

and m*rder had taken place.

What shocks me--

it's not so much that it was insurance fraud.

I think every medical examiner has had one.

It's that this innocent person was m*rder*d.

That is truly disturbing.

NARRATOR Police immediately launched a full

fledged homicide investigation.

And Ezzat, the man once thought to be the victim,

is now the suspect in a heinous crime.

He's the only one in the house other than the victim.

There's no one else there.

He's the man that we got to-- we had to go--

go get.

NARRATOR But there was a major obstacle.

There was no extradition treaty with Lebanon.

So even if the authorities there knew,

you'd have to wait 'till he went to some neutral country

and try to arrest him there.

NARRATOR With no proof that Ezzat is alive, much

less guilty of any wrongdoing, the investigation
[ … ]

grinds to a halt.

They definitely weren't going to go to Lebanon.

And Aboul-Hosn was not going to come here.

NARRATOR The Miami Herald newspaper

soon catches wind of the case and is eager to get the story.

They waste no time assigning it to their Middle East

correspondent, Dan Goodgame.

But the task is a daunting one.

Could you find him for us, somewhere in Lebanon,

a person with this name?

I laughed.

Here's a country at w*r, impassable roads,

and all I've got is one person's name.

I thought, not possible, can't be done.

NARRATOR Still, Goodgame is intrigued by the story.

And when he mentions Aboul-Hosn's name

to his local guide, he gets a whole lot

more than he bargained for.

The thing to understand is Lebanon is

a country of clans and tribes.

And if you know someone's name, you probably

know a good bit about them.

You know where they live.

You know what their religion is and what the politics are.

So when I told him, he says, oh, yes, all of the Aboul-Hosns

live in Btekhnay.

[CHUCKLES] So I said, well, let's find them.

NARRATOR The two men embark on a harrowing journey over snow

covered and treacherous terrain, slowly making their way

to the remote mountain village, located several miles outside

of Beirut.

It was quite an adventure just getting there.

NARRATOR But when they finally arrived, their luck runs out.

The people in the village asked

what our business was there.

And I said, well, I'm looking for a Mr. Aboul-Hosn.

And one of them laughed and said in Arabic,

everyone here is named Aboul-Hosn.

And I [CHUCKLES] just thought, you've got to be kidding me.

This is a village of , people,

and everyone is named Aboul-Hosn?

And he said, yes, that's correct.

So my thought was, we're never going to find him.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

NARRATOR Reporter Dan Goodgame is

hot on the trail of -year-old Ezzat Aboul-Hosn.

Unfortunately, he has just discovered

that everyone in the remote Lebanese village

shares the missing man's surname.

I laughed.

This is a village of , people,

and everyone is named Aboul-Hosn.

So I said, well, great.

How about rich Ezzat?

And he said, oh, right this way.

And everyone knew who the rich Ezzat was.

NARRATOR The reporter is led to an extravagant house,

glaringly out of place among the villagers modest homes.

It was a steel and glass ski chalet, about three stories

high, with a peaked roof and brand

new Japanese and German imported cars

and pickup trucks surrounding it.

It looked like someone was dropping a lot of money on it.

NARRATOR It appears that Ezzat is far from dead.

In fact, he's living like a king.

But there is no sign of the wanted man himself anywhere.

My guess is that he was in the vicinity

and hiding out with friends, just to avoid being seen by us.

NARRATOR However, Goodgame does manage to track

down Ezzat's sister, Ghada.

Ghada was not happy to see me and not happy to be

filling questions for me.

She basically says, listen, I didn't

know I was the beneficiary of the insurance policy.

I thought my brother had d*ed.

I was so sad about this.

And then when I got back here, I learned that he was alive.

I felt used.

This was all his doing.

And she basically admitted that there

had been an insurance fraud and blamed it all on her brother.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR Immediately, Goodgame is anxious to get out

of the village.

My driver became very agitated when he began to suspect

that Aboul-Hosn was nearby.

He thought he would k*ll us.

It was a very violent and unpredictable place

because there's really no law back there.

We probably never would have been found if he had k*lled us.

I mean, the mountains are very rugged back there.

It would not have been hard to get away with that.

[expl*si*n AND FIRE CRACKLING]

NARRATOR Now, there's little doubt

that Ezzat has pulled off one of the most diabolical insurance

scams ever seen.

In over years as a medical examiner, I've seen a lot.

There's not a lot that shocks me.

But this case is at a whole other level.
[ … ]

This is a case of greed.

It wasn't for jealousy, it wasn't in rage.

It was a cold blooded k*lling for money.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

EDNA BUCHANAN There have been a number of cases

where people faked their death.

But the ones that we know of were never this slick.

Let's just be cold about this.

If you were setting out to commit this fraud,

you have to find someone your age and size, in good health,

alive, to put under this car.

NARRATOR The exact manner in which the victim was k*lled

may never be known.

But the scenario favored by authorities

is the stuff of nightmares.

I think he tied him up with his face close

to the exhaust pipe of the car and just left him

in the garage with the car running until he was

so overcome carbon monoxide.

And what's truly disturbing is that he was

alive when that fire occurred.

The body was alive when it was underneath the car.

That's the real horrible part about this.

This individual was not dead when he was under the car.

He was alive.

EDNA BUCHANAN Once he was overcome,

Ezzat could position him under the car, release the jack,

puncture the gas t*nk, and leave some kind of paper fuse, which

would ignite after he left.

[FLAMES BURNING]

And that paper fuse would disappear.

There'd be no trace of it left in a gasoline-fed fire.

[MAN SCREAMING]

And the scheme then was to collect his own insurance

and go back to Lebanon a rich man.

NARRATOR Sadly, the true identity of the victim

may forever remain a mystery.

RAY NAFARIO We have no earthly idea who he is.

We've never been able to identify him.

They went through all the missing persons' reports

they could find.

But they never were able to put them together with the corpse.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR To this day, Ezzat Aboul-Hosn remains free.

Given the lack of an extradition treaty, federal authorities

simply cannot arrest him.

There was simply nothing they could do.

He had fled to a country with which the US

had no extradition treaty and to a village

where there was no law.

He was home free.

NARRATOR Meanwhile, neither Ezzat's sister,

Ghada, nor his friend, Wakil, have

been implicated in or charged with any wrongdoing

in the case.

But if Ezzat ever sets foot on US soil again,

there is little doubt that he'll be brought to justice.

There's no statute of limitations on--

on-- on m*rder.

NARRATOR As for the fate of the cremated stranger,

according to Ghada, when her brother's friend, Wakil,

learned that Ezzat was, in fact, alive,

he apparently threw the ashes into the Atlantic Ocean.

There are now no remains of whoever the person

was who was under that car.

They're washed away by the tides.

[SEA BIRDS CRYING]

This is one of my favorite all time stories

I've ever worked on.

And I learned a lot about the best and the worst

that people are capable of.

It seemed to me that Ezzat Aboul-Hosn had probably gotten

away with the perfect crime.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

In this next case, when a young, healthy couple

die mysteriously, what their autopsies eventually reveal

could help save hundreds of lives.

NARRATOR It's early on a warm spring morning,

and -year-old Navajo Merrill Bahe,

along with his sister-in-law Carolyn, are on their way

to Gallup, New Mexico, traveling straight

through the vast heartland of the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation is in what's called the Four Corners area,

where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado come together.

NARRATOR But less than an hour into the drive, Merrill

suddenly begins gasping for air.

DENISE GRADY They veered off the road

to go into some kind of a convenience store

to use a telephone.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

I don't know what to do.

DENISE GRADY They called for an ambulance.

And the medics came, and they tried to revive him.

But by the time they got to the hospital, he was dead.

NARRATOR Merrill's mother, Annie Bahe,

is devastated by the loss of her eldest son

and can't fathom what could have k*lled a seemingly healthy

-year-old so suddenly.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

NARRATOR In the state of New Mexico, when
[ … ]

of the reasons for a death are unknown,

the Office of the Medical Investigator

must determine the cause.

Richard Malone is the agent assigned to the case.

But what he learns from Merrill's grieving family

doesn't make much sense.

Merrill Bahi was a cross-country runner

and an athlete and had no medical history, didn't use

dr*gs, didn't abuse alcohol.

We had no clue as to why he d*ed.

NARRATOR In fact, the only complaint that Merrill had

was a mild case of the flu that started three days earlier.

Baffled, Malone prompted the family for more information.

I sat down with them, and I asked

them what happened to Merrill.

And they told me that they were on their way

into town to attend a funeral.

The funeral of his fiance.

You're on your way to one funeral,

and now you have another death in the family.

And they began to describe Florena's death

with the same kind of details and the same kind of symptoms

that involved Merrill.

And as soon as they said that, the chills

just went down my back.

And I remember thinking, my goodness, we have a crisis

here.

Although it's possible that Merrill and Florena

could have d*ed from something different, highly unlikely.

They had the same symptoms.

They were in close proximity to each other.

Whatever they d*ed from is suspicious

that it's the same thing.

NARRATOR And as Malone digs deeper,

he learns of yet another unexplained death in the area.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD MALONE The -year-old female

had been rushed into the Gallup Indian Medical Center

with the very same kind of symptoms.

NARRATOR Three healthy young adults

dead with no explanation.

Suddenly, Malone and state health officials

find themselves grasping for answers and fearing the worst.

DENISE GRADY It was really frightening because they were

young, totally healthy people.

And they would have what seemed like some kind

of mild case of the flu.

And in a relatively short time, they would just be dead.

NARRATOR Medical investigator, Richard Malone,

is baffled by the sudden deaths of Merrill

Bahi and his fiancée, Florena.

And his only hope for an answer lies with an autopsy.

If there was something contagious,

then we had a much better handle on it

if we autopsy both people.

NARRATOR Merrill and Florena's bodies

are rushed to the New Mexico office of the Medical

Investigator, where Dr. Patricia McFeely

will perform the autopsy.

It was after hours, and I arranged

to have people there, technicians there,

so that we could get going very quickly.

NARRATOR Her prime suspect is an unusual, but highly lethal,

disease, [CHURCH BELL RINGING] the plague.

Between and , it k*lled roughly million people,

almost half of Europe's population.

I think when people hear about the plague,

we think of the millions of deaths that occurred

during the Middle Ages.

We still think of it as something very deadly.

But it's just a bacterial infection

that we have antibiotics for.

NARRATOR But while cases of bubonic plague

are relatively rare in the United States,

it's still a thr*at in the American Southwest.

DR PATRICIA MCFEELY It's endemic here.

I mean, every year, we have had plague deaths.

So it's something that we knew was around

and had dealt with before.

NARRATOR Still, even a single diagnosis of bubonic plague

is enough to raise alarm bells across the region.

Within days, the disease can develop

into a highly contagious and lethal pneumonia.

Every time they breathe out or cough, or something,

they're distributing all these organisms.

And other people can then obviously breed them in.

And that's how plague spreads from person to person

and can spread at a very fast time.

NARRATOR As soon as the bodies arrive,

Dr. McFeely cuts open the chest cavities

and begins extracting tissue samples from their lungs.

Then she draws blood to test for the plague bacteria.

I arranged to take specimens for culture, so that we could

get those going very quickly because that

was a high level of concern.

The cultures were one of the things we could do right away

and needed to get in process because they take some time.

NARRATOR Early the next morning,

Dr. McFeely begins the back-to-back autopsies,

starting with Florena.
[ … ]

Standing over the open chest cavity,

she carefully lifts out the lungs

and immediately discovers a serious problem.

A normal lung is filled with air, and it's light and fluffy.

They weren't light and fluffy.

They weighed two or three times what they should've weighed.

So they were heavy.

They were definitely heavy.

NARRATOR Even more alarming--

they were also filled with fluid.

There was both fluid inside the lungs

and surrounding the lungs.

And there's a lot of it.

NARRATOR But while the lungs are clearly abnormal,

the damage is not consistent with the plague

or anything else that Dr. McFeely has ever seen before.

DR. JAN GARAVAGLIA It's very frustrating

when you have a case that you know they've

d*ed from some type of infectious agent,

and you can't identify it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR Next, she turns her attention to Merrill,

searching for any sign of the plague.

But finds none.

However, she does note that his lungs

look very similar to Florena's.

DR. PATRICIA MCFEELY Obviously they d*ed because of something

that was making their lungs fill up with fluid,

so they couldn't breathe.

There was something that was affecting the blood vessels

in the membranes in the lungs, so that they, instead

of retaining the fluid that ordinarily

is normally in your body, they were leaking.

NARRATOR Suddenly, Dr. McFeely is

beginning to doubt her initial theory of the plague.

But she does know one thing, whatever att*cked or infected

their lungs was fatal.

Surely, we were concerned about something

that was extra virulent, you know, really

more deadly, or something.

NARRATOR And it isn't long before more fatalities

begin to show up on the radar.

They very quickly realized they had five deaths,

and all of them had d*ed with this awful flooding

of the lungs.

But what became more alarming were the stories that

went on over the next few days.

It became clear that there were cases

popping up in other places, and they were not all Navajos.

And there were more cases and more

cases and still no explanation.

NARRATOR Two days later, the results

from the bacterial cultures finally

land on Dr. McFeely's desk.

And sure enough, they are negative for the plague.

Meanwhile, the death toll continues to climb.

DENISE GRADY It was getting up to , , cases.

And it seemed as if everybody who got it was dying.

It's such a helpless feeling to know

that young people are dying and not

be able to identify the cause.

NARRATOR Now, the race is on to figure

out what could be k*lling so many healthy young people.

And then we really had kind of a big gap,

you know, as to what else it might

be because there really weren't a lot

of things that fit very well.

We were looking at everything at the time.

RICHARD MALONE We thought they might have encountered

some kind of toxins inadvertently,

or some kind of poisons, that none of us were familiar with.

And so the search was on.

NARRATOR Their main concerns are rat poisons,

pesticides, and possibly chemicals

used in Indian jewelry making.

RICHARD MALONE We went to the house, to the barns,

to the shed, looking for those kinds of poisons.

And instead, what we found were substances like dish soap

and deodorant and laundry, soap, and stuff that all of us

have in our cabinets and under our sinks at our houses.

We were very stumped and frustrated.

At a loss for answers, they consider a long sh*t.

Maybe it was some kind of horrible new strain of flu

that they hadn't encountered before.

NARRATOR The flu, or influenza, is a prolific k*ller.

Every year in the United States, the seasonal flu virus claims

approximately , lives.

But every decade or so, a lethal strain

emerges that has the potential to be far deadlier.

DR. BRIAN HJELLE That is the single biggest concern,

this fear that we will have a pandemic flu

that will be highly lethal and highly transmissible.

You have to look at it as a disease, where it infects

so many millions of people.

I mean, this current version will

probably infect billions of people,

when it's all said and done.

By flu's in general--

every year we typically lose thousands of people to the flu.

NARRATOR The most devastating flu
[ … ]

pandemic occurred in , at the end of the First World w*r.

The outbreak lasted nearly two years, leaving

an estimated million dead.

Mysteriously, most of the victims

were young, healthy adults.

People who were really in the prime of their health and life

were dying in droves.

NARRATOR Fearing that this is what k*lled Florena

and Merrill, the State Lab runs tests

for the flu and any other known respiratory

viruses and bacteria, with the hope that they'll hit pay dirt.

But doctors are soon frustrated, when

all results come back negative.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

Even more frustrating to medical personnel throughout the region"], index ,…}

is their inability to treat the infected patients.

It didn't seem as if there were some low level bunch

of mildly ill people out there.

It seemed like if you got this, you were just done for.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR Merrill Bahi and his fiancée, Florena, d*ed

suddenly, just two weeks ago.

And since then, at least other healthy young people

have been k*lled and what seems to be

the same mysterious disease.

Facing a dangerous and deadly outbreak,

New Mexico State Health authorities decide

it's time to call in the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

is this federal health agency in Atlanta.

And they're kind of like the infectious disease detectives

for the United States.

NARRATOR CDC officials waste no time

assigning one of their top experts

to the case, Dr. Stuart Nichol.

DR. STUART NICHOL There was quite

a bit of fear and anxiety.

But was this something that was spreading?

How is it being transmitted?

Was it suddenly going to mushroom up

into a large expl*sive outbreak?

NARRATOR At this stage, only one thing is clear.

Dr. Nichol and his team of scientists

need to find answers fast.

DENISE GRADY It's really like a police investigation,

but a medical one, to try to figure out what possible things

they could have been exposed to that

might explain this illness.

And they start doing all kinds of lab work.

I mean, they get samples from the blood, from the lungs,

everything they can get.

NARRATOR They test each sample for a myriad of rare disease

agents, Machupo, [INAUDIBLE],, and an unusual form

of meningitis.

But all of the results were negative.

We were coming off with blanks.

NARRATOR Then, after a week of around-the-clock investigation,

a blood test on one of the deceased patients

yields a shocking result

On June th, the testing showed that what they had

was a hantavirus.

NARRATOR Hantavirus.

A deadly disease contracted from rodents.

It's spread when their urine or feces dry out

and turns into deadly dust.

DENISE GRADY It spreads through the air.

If it dries out and starts blowing around, you inhale it.

NARRATOR But this finding makes little sense.

Hantavirus almost always leads to kidney disease.

It's never been known to affect the lungs.

DR. STUART NICHOL These hunter viruses

were viruses which weren't known to be

associated with any respiratory disease problem, at all.

So it had us kind of scratching our heads as to, is this real?

NARRATOR And there's something even more

baffling about the discovery.

This disease was, namely in various areas

of China throughout Asia, known to be a problem.

Prior to the outbreak in the southwest,

it was not known to cause any infection in the United States.

NARRATOR It's a sobering notion.

If what's k*lling these folks is, in fact, hantavirus,

it will literally rewrite the medical textbooks.

But first, the team needs ironclad proof.

DR. STUART NICHOL So when we had that test result, which

suggested that maybe, maybe this is a hantavirus,

you know, how can we prove it to people?

How can we prove it to ourselves before we

announce it to anybody else?

NARRATOR Dr. Nichol and his team

must decode the virus's RNA to determine if it's a match.

They amplify a tiny genetic strand of material

to compare it with other strains of the virus.

DR. STUART NICHOL And we sequenced,

you know, the ACGTs, you know, the genetic code

of this genetic fragment.

And when we lined it up with what

was known with hantaviruses that we'd seen in the past,

we showed that, wow, it really is a hantavirus.
[ … ]

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

NARRATOR They run a battery of follow up tests.

And scientists can hardly believe their eyes,

when one result after another comes

back with a newly discovered strain of hantavirus.

Now the team has only one hope of containing the outbreak,

identify the source.

They figured that there must be some rodent

involved, but which one?

So doctors from the CDC and the state

went out to the reservation and put traps around

to try to catch rodents and then start testing them

and see if any of them came up positive for this new virus.

NARRATOR A week later, doctors finally have their answer,

wild deer mice.

Finding that the virus was in deer mice

was the worst case scenario.

Why?

Because the deer mouse is probably the most abundant

small mammal in North America.

NARRATOR Scientists now believe that this

is the reason the lethal virus spreads so quickly.

And it doesn't take long to determine

that this particular strain of hantavirus

has existed in the United States for years.

They figured that it had to have been here for a long time

because it wasn't k*lling the rodents.

They were perfectly adjusted to it.

And that takes a long time to happen.

NARRATOR But this raises another question.

If the virus has been here for so long,

why is the first outbreak appearing now?

What was special about the spring of

was it had been a lot of rainfall, a very mild window.

So, of course, you have a lot of vegetation.

DENISE GRADY And that that led to a big increase

in the rodent population, and that there were just more

mice around.

NARRATOR Authorities are relieved to have

finally pinpointed the source of the outbreak.

But unfortunately, there's still no cure for hantavirus.

There's no magic b*llet.

We don't have a wonder drug which can help these patients

who are infected.

So really, the only thing we can do

is try to prevent people from getting

infected with the virus.

And we've done that through very aggressive

kind of media campaigns--

NARRATOR The CDC and the state of New Mexico outline key steps

to follow in order to reduce the risk of infection.

Seal off cracks and holes in the home to prevent

a rodent infestation.

Set traps around the house to eliminate rodents.

Keep all food in tight containers.

Remove possible nesting spots.

And wear a face mask and use bleach

when cleaning infested areas.

So you protect yourself, you protect your airways.

And simple things like that greatly

reduce your chance of getting this virus infection.

[TRIBAL MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR As a result of the public awareness campaign,

infection rates begin to drop off dramatically.

DENISE GRADY Lives probably were

saved because they started warning people about keeping

mice out and disinfecting.

NARRATOR And as communities across the Southwest

begin to breathe a sigh of relief,

Merrill's mother also finds a measure of comfort

in finally putting a name to her son's k*ller.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

NARRATOR For the medical community and the CDC,

the discovery of hantavirus closes the chapter on one

of the most high-stakes investigations

in their -year history.

The fact that we were so hugely successful

at cracking the case in record time

just makes it very, very memorable.

This case shows the crucial role of an autopsy.

Without one, this deadly hantavirus pandemic

may never have been identified.

And who knows how many more lives would have been lost?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(WHISPERING) Atlas.