06x11 - A Deadly Deal

[bunniefuu]

[tense music]

NARRATOR An unidentified man is found in a hotel room, dead.

We don't know why he's here or what he was doing.

Who is this guy?

NARRATOR And each discovery Dr. G makes at autopsy

is more baffling than the last.

There's something strange going on.

Really, nothing makes sense.

NARRATOR Then tragedy strikes a -year-old during what

should be the happiest week of his life.

DR. G To die just a week before he

got married is especially sad.

NARRATOR And now, his devastated fiancee is

looking to Dr. G for answers.

DR. G I can't imagine how a fiancee feels.

It's all happened so fast.

She wants to know what happened to him.

[theme music]

NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations.

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

After more than a year of planning and construction,

the new morgue for Orange and Osceola counties

is nearly complete.

And to celebrate, Dr. G is treating the morgue staff

to a special dinner.

DR. G We've decided to have the soft opening for all

the employees and their families to look

at this beautiful new morgue and building.

We're going to have a dinner inside the morgue, which

has never been used, so it's perfectly

clean and fine to have dinner.

Thanks for coming!

You haven't eaten in the morgue yet,

I don't think ever, have you?

Eating in the morgue?

Yeah, we're having dinner in the morgue.

Oh, oh no.

Did you not know?

Gosh I didn't--

I haven't done that for quite awhile.

[laughter] So we can just start going to the buffet.

You know, it is just one big family.

So it's fun to see everybody.

Oh my, that is too cool.

Does it matter how I cut the cake?

I don't usually ask people how to cut these things.

We're going to do our cake in our normal Y.

That is unbelievable!

[interposing voices]

[beep]

NARRATOR But the next morning, it's

back to work at the old morgue.

DR. G Kind of a busy day.

We've got four bodies down here today.

MAN Did you uh--

I got here early.

Oh, excuse me.

The other problem is I didn't have coffee this morning.

All right, get ready.

I just need to finish documenting a few things.

NARRATOR It's high noon at the Highland Motel,

outside Orlando, Florida.

Time for the cleaning crew to make their daily rounds.

After five years on the job, housekeeper Jeanette Moran

has seen her share of trouble at this rundown motel.

Housekeeping.

[knocking]

NARRATOR So when she opens room six

and finds a man sprawled on the floor,

she assumes he's simply another guest

who's had too much to drink.

He's kind of next to the door, in between the door

and the wall.

Sir?

NARRATOR But as she leans in for a closer look,

Jeanette gets the shock of her life.

DR. G Something's terribly wrong.

He's obviously dead.

NARRATOR The housekeeper immediately calls ,

and minutes later police arrive, along

with a medical investigator from the morgue.

They find the room undisturbed, with no signs of a struggle.

And in a small suitcase on the bed

they discover the dead man's identity.

DR. G His passport was there, and we

know his name and his age.

NARRATOR The victim is Eduardo Garcia Torres, a -year-old

from Ecuador who arrived in the United

States just hours earlier.

He was last seen alive at around or ,

when he checked into the hotel.

NARRATOR But there, police hit a brick wall.

DR. G The consulate's office for Ecuador

is trying to locate next to kin for us,

but we don't have anybody to talk

to about his medical history or social history

or what he's like or what he's doing here.

He's a mystery man.

NARRATOR And the biggest mystery of all
[ … ]

is how and why he d*ed.

As a first step.

Dr. G combs the investigator's report for clues,

but she already has her suspicions.

DR. G You know, for me, -year-old man who

dies suddenly in his hotel room, I'm

either going to think he had a heart att*ck

or he had a stroke.

NARRATOR But there's something that concerns are even more.

Based on the circumstances, he'd just come off a flight,

I'm worried about a pulmonary embolus.

It's called economy class syndrome.

The problem is that they're stuck in that airplane,

and you're not moving your legs, and your blood pools and

your veins and clots can form.

NARRATOR These clots can in turn

break free, travel through the bloodstream,

and get stuck in the lungs.

DR. G And if it's a large enough blood clot that doesn't

allow any other blood to get through that lung,

that causes a very sudden death.

NARRATOR It's also possible that the culprit

is a more unusual illness.

We don't know how he was feeling on the plane,

we don't know how he was feeling before he got on the plane.

Maybe it's something infectious from Ecuador.

We have to worry about that.

NARRATOR But then a puzzling detail in the report

catches her eye.

Investigators had documented a powdered residue along

the edges of the bathroom sink.

DR. G This could be associated with some cocaine use,

so what was that all about?

Was he doing dr*gs?

NARRATOR The police will test the residue,

and Dr. G will have to collect Eduardo's blood

samples for a full drug screen.

Meanwhile, she must also consider

a more sinister scenario.

DR. G As usual, I'm always worried about foul play.

Was somebody there doing something

with him, prior to him dying?

You're just never going to know until you do the autopsy.

OK, let's see.

Does it seem warm in here today to you guys?

MAN Yeah, it is.

Good, it's not me.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) So this fellow, you know,

he's not a very big guy.

He looks about his stated age of years.

Not really a lot remarkable about him.

NARRATOR But Dr. G knows that looks can be deceiving.

Considering the mysterious residue found in his room,

her first step is to search for evidence of drug abuse.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I'm going to look for intravenous scars

or needle marks, even inside his nose for his septum,

to see if there's any perforation.

Chronic cocaine sniffers can get holes in the septum

from the chronic effects of the cocaine on the mucosa.

All right, let's see.

NARRATOR But a thorough inspection reveals no damage

to Eduardo's nasal cavity or any other indication

of illegal substances.

I'm not so sure about the dr*gs.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I certainly don't

see any signs of IV drug marks.

He's not wasted and thin like a chronic cr*ck user,

doesn't really fit that profile.

Hm.

NARRATOR With no telltale evidence on the body,

Dr. G will need to rely on toxicology tests

to reveal if dr*gs had anything to do with Eduardo's death.

In the meantime, she has her eye out

for another suspect as*ault.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We're going to look for external trauma.

We don't immediately see any g*nsh*t wounds to him,

but I'll look for external signs of trauma on the neck or blows

to the head.

All of those things.

Yeah, let's see his back before we clean him.

NARRATOR But her search for external injuries

also comes up empty.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He's got a little contusion on his elbow

and not a lot else.

But really no trauma, just a little--

OK.

NARRATOR As a next step, Dr. G examines the inside

of Eduardo's mouth, and there she spots a subtle clue that

opens a host of possibilities.

This is worrisome.

He's got some foamy fluid in his mouth.

This foamy flood is pulmonary edema, fluid

that builds up in your lung.

I can see that when something is going on in their brain

like a stroke or a ruptured aneurysm,

I see that when your heart's dilating

and causing fluid to build up in your lungs.

NARRATOR But pulmonary edema can also indicate

a drug overdose or head trauma.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) All of those things can cause fluid to form.
[ … ]

So the end of the external--

you know, he came in as a mystery man,

and he's still a mystery man.

NARRATOR To cr*ck this case, Dr. G must now

dig deep inside Eduardo's body.

DR. G All right.

NARRATOR She begins at the head,

where a fatal injury or disease might be lurking inside.

I think that might be where the money is.

So we reflect the scalp, and looking for bruises,

there are none.

I look at the bone, there's no fractures.

So then we remove the calverium, we look at the brain.

[saw buzzing]

DR. G (VOICEOVER) But there is no evidence of bleeding on top

of the brain, there's no evidence

of bleeding from an aneurysm or a out pocketing

of the vessels of the brain.

There is no evidence of anything wrong with this brain.

DR. G All right, give me a little rinse,

see if we can get some of that hair out of there.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) So we've ruled

out a lot of different things.

NARRATOR But something took Eduardo's life

in that motel room.

The question is what?

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We got to dig a little deeper here.

What's going on?

I've really got to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

[theme music]

DR. G We got everything?

NARRATOR Dr. G is on the hunt for what k*lled Eduardo Torres,

a -year-old who was found dead in a motel just

hours after arriving from Ecuador.

From the scene, all we find is passport and a suitcase.

We don't know what's he doing here, why is he here?

Who is this guy?

NARRATOR Dr. G opens Eduardo's torso with a Y incision,

then immediately takes blood and fluid

samples for a drug screen.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) There is some question

of whether he's got cocaine on his bathroom counter.

So even though he's -years-old,

I remove blood for toxicology, I remove

eye fluid for toxicology, and of course bile and urine

for toxicology testing.

NARRATOR While her assistant, Tom Hemphill,

prepares the samples to send out for analysis,

Dr. G begins a careful examination of Eduardo's chest

and abdominal cavities, looking for any signs

of a fatal as*ault.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) And I don't see rib fractures,

I don't see blood accumulation, I don't see any kind of trauma

in any of his organs.

There was no indication of foul play.

NARRATOR With trauma ruled out, she

begins an organ by organ search for indications

of natural disease.

OK, let's start.

NARRATOR And her first stop is the lungs.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I really think

that he's got a pulmonary embolus from that long trip,

and dies right when he starts his vacation.

So I remove the lungs.

I pick those up, and I cut them right

where all the vessels and the bronchi go into the lungs,

and I can immediately see if he has a big pulmonary embolus.

And he doesn't.

I've ruled out the pulmonary embolus.

NARRATOR But she does see more pulmonary edema,

the same frothy fluid that was in his mouth.

This fluid could indicate a drug overdose.

But Dr. G knows it could also signal that something

was wrong with Eduardo's heart.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I see that when

your heart's giving out, and dilating,

and causing fluid to build up in your lungs.

So my bets were that this was probably-- he's -years-old,

this is probably going to be a sudden cardiac death.

OK, let's see.

Do you have-- you know, I'm going to take a lot of tissue.

I'm just going to grab a bunch of--

NARRATOR But after a thorough examination of Eduardo's heart,

she's stymied again.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) His heart looks pretty good.

It's about grams.

Normal weight, the normal size.

It wasn't dilated.

He has some mild coronary atherosclerosis,

some plaque build up in those arteries that supply blood

to the heart muscle, but there's maybe about %

in one coronary artery, maybe maximum in another.

The coronaries didn't have enough atherosclerosis

to cause a problem, so he's--

really, surprisingly-- his heart looks good.

NARRATOR At this point, dr*gs are rising to the very top

of Dr. G's suspect list.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) There is that possibility.

If that truly is cocaine that is on his bathroom counter,

you know, maybe he used cocaine.
[ … ]

NARRATOR Cocaine can cause sudden death

by triggering an erratic heartbeat or a fatal spike

in blood pressure.

Very small amounts of cocaine can k*ll you.

It's very what we call idiosyncratic.

You can use the same amount every weekend,

and then this weekend, using the same amount, it could k*ll you.

So with the casual user it's not that they've

overdosed on cocaine.

It's that cocaine caused a physiologic reaction

in their body that caused them to die.

You don't know what level of cocaine can k*ll you,

and honestly, most of the deaths with cocaine,

it's a relatively low level of cocaine that ends up k*lling.

NARRATOR But just then, Dr. G receives

some baffling new information from the Orlando

police department.

Can you get it?

Oh, I'll get it, I'll get it, I'll get it.

[inaudible]

No, for Pete's sake.

Morgue, Dr. G.

POLICE (ON PHONE) Hi, Dr. G.

NARRATOR The detectives have preliminary findings

on the mysterious residue in Eduardo's room--

and it tested negative for narcotics.

All right.

All right, bye-bye.

NARRATOR Suddenly a drug induced

death is looking very unlikely.

But if dr*gs didn't k*ll him, what did?

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I really don't know what's going on.

Considering he's just gotten off the plane from Ecuador,

and he's dead, maybe he's sick.

Maybe he's got an infectious disease

that we know nothing about.

NARRATOR To investigate this possibility,

she collects multiple samples from his heart,

lungs, and brain to examine later with her microscope.

With her list of suspects dwindling,

Dr. G turns to Eduardo's abdominal cavity,

looking for anything that could shed light on the -year-old's

sudden death.

Maybe there's something strange going in his kidneys,

or his pancreas.

Those are really rare, but you never

know what you're going to find.

NARRATOR She begins by removing and inspecting

Eduardo's liver, which appears to be perfectly healthy.

My next step then is to remove the bowels,

and then his G.I. tract--

and that's where we have a surprise.

Oh my god.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I really couldn't

believe what I was seeing.

NARRATOR Dr. G has just made a stunning discovery

in -year-old Eduardo Torres's stomach.

My, my, my.

Look at that.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) When I snipped the stomach

to remove his stomach contents, to see what his last meal was,

I was shocked.

Wow.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) Out came little round packets

of what looked like cocaine.

It was white powdery material that

had been put at the tip of a surgical glove,

then tied with either surgical suture material

or possibly with fishing line, and then that was wrapped

in kind of a hard cellophane.

And then that was put in another surgical glove

and tied at the end.

They were smaller than a golf ball.

He had of these packets, but that's not all.

When I look in his small intestine,

he had another packets, and then I look in his bowels

and he has packets.

So he clearly is a mule.

He's a body packer.

NARRATOR According to Special Agent Trouville of the Drug

Enforcement Administration, body packing

is a common way of smuggling narcotics like heroin

and cocaine into the US.

MARK TROUVILLE We see thousands of these cases.

Body packing has been going on as long

as dr*gs have been illegal.

A body packer is a specific type of drug mule,

and that's a person who is hired to go ahead and ingest

these dr*gs and bring them across the border

into the United States.

And then once they get into the United States,

they will then take a laxative to pass them back out.

NARRATOR But clearly, Eduardo never got

the chance to pass the dr*gs and deliver them to his employer.

Let's see what we have here.

NARRATOR And as Dr. G begin sifting through the packets

of cocaine, she find a key piece of evidence

that tells her exactly why.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We clearly have a smoking g*n

and everything makes sense.
[ … ]

I think he just had some really bad luck.

NARRATOR It's sundown in Ecuador,

and Eduardo Torres is packing his suitcase

for a short trip to Florida, but that's not all he's packing.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He's poor.

He needs money for whatever reason.

He wants to make money, he's given

the opportunity to be a mule.

A body packer.

NARRATOR One by one, Eduardo crams dozens of packets

full of dr*gs down his throat.

MARK TROUVILLE They're given an anesthetic for the throat

and some sort of lubricant, and they will just slowly

start swallowing the pellets until they

have them all in there.

I would choke on those things!

I don't know how they swallow those.

They're good size.

NARRATOR When he's done ingesting the package,

he heads for the airport as planned.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He's given the ticket,

and he's given where to go.

He gets on the plane, he's probably feeling fine.

NARRATOR But then, deep inside Eduardo's body,

something goes terribly wrong.

At some point in the trip, most likely

once he gets to the hotel, one of those cocaine packets

bursts.

That floods the cocaine into his system.

NARRATOR Unleashed, the drug quickly saturates his blood.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) When the tox comes back,

he has got a whopping milligrams per liter of cocaine

in his blood.

We would see less than one milligram with most deaths.

Nobody could survive with the amount of cocaine

he had in the system.

NARRATOR Not long after the dr*gs enter

Eduardo's bloodstream, a system wide toxic reaction

begins to take place.

His blood pressure skyrockets.

His lungs fill with fluid that travels up his airways

and creates foam in his mouth.

And as he staggers to the door, trying to seek help,

his heart beats faster until it finally gives out.

It just stops.

Your heart stands still.

And cocaine has that property to do that.

And unfortunately, he dies.

NARRATOR Dr. G rules the death an accident

caused by cocaine intoxication.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We don't usually

say overdose with cocaine, but this guy was an overdose.

NARRATOR It's an ironic end, considering

Eduardo himself most likely didn't touch the drug.

They never could prove that that residue had anything

to do with cocaine, and a lot of the body packers

don't use the drug.

They body pack for the money.

Drug trafficking is a problem here in this country

and the DEA was formed years ago in direct response

to the drug thr*at that faces the United States.

Here in Florida, we have a great deal of work,

obviously, Florida being the cultural gateway

into South America.

And so we spent a great deal of our time,

as we call it, looking south and dealing with drug trafficking

organizations from South America that import

dr*gs into the United States.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) You know, if you're

one of those million people that have ever used cocaine

in the United States, somehow you've contributed to his death

or people like him.

People are willing to risk their life on this illegal drug

so people can use it in the United States.

NARRATOR Dr. G reports her findings to the police

and Eduardo's body is quietly laid to rest.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) The sad part is that we

never found his next of kin.

No one ever claimed the body.

He was buried as an indigent, unknown next of kin.

OK, I think that's all she wrote on that one.

NARRATOR But in Dr. G's next case,

the sudden death of a -year-old just one week

before his wedding leaves his entire family

grasping for answers.

They have no idea why this young man d*ed.

They deserve an answer.

Well, this is a sad case.

This is a -year-old man that's in town for his bachelor party."], index ,…}

He was going to be married next week.

He unfortunately dies and is reported to our morgue.

NARRATOR It's a beautiful June evening in Orlando, Florida,

and -year-old Reed Baley is on top of the world.

He was to marry his college sweetheart in one week.

He'd just come in town from Tampa

with his fraternity brothers, and I guess they were

going to have one last fling.

They were hitting the bars of downtown Orlando,

and they're just having a good time.

NARRATOR But at about AM, Reed
[ … ]

tells his friends he feels sick and wants

to go back to the hotel room.

He's on and off not feeling well.

Hard to say why, maybe because he's drinking too heavily.

So they come back to the room and then soon

after that I guess he gets a second wind,

he starts feeling a little better,

so he starts drinking again.

We know there was just a lot of revelry.

He'd had at least to drinks prior

even going back to the room, and then they're doing sh*ts.

Yeah!

FRATERNITY BROTHERS Yeah!

DR. G (VOICEOVER) So he's drinking quite a lot.

Not surprisingly, he kind of passes out in bed.

The next thing we know is that one of his friends

wakes up in the morning, notices his friend had just vomited,

and he's not breathing.

He immediately calls .

MAN Something is wrong.

You got to come and help, you got to come now!

NARRATOR Paramedics race to the scene,

but Reed is already in cardiac arrest.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) They shock him,

and his pulse somewhat comes back.

PARAMEDIC --grab the elevator for me.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) They rush him to the hospital.

He makes it up to the ICU.

They ended up shocking him three times.

They used a lot of medication to try to keep his blood

pressure up, but they couldn't keep

his heart in a normal rhythm.

Then he dies.

NARRATOR When the ER doctor notifies

Reed's parents and his fiancee, Monica,

they can hardly believe their ears.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) The family's floored.

They have no clue what happened.

He just d*ed so quickly, the hospital really

couldn't give them any answers.

I can't imagine how the fiancee feels.

I mean, she's thinking about her wedding and her life

with this individual, and that's all taken away.

[saw buzzing]

All right.

NARRATOR Dr. G begins with a thorough review of Reed's case

file, and by all accounts he was the picture of health

at the time of his death.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) You know, he's only -years-old.

He doesn't have extensive medical history.

That's a shame.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) At this point all

we know is he's drinking heavily and he'd been

complaining of abdominal pain.

Let's see.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) Highest on my list is alcohol poisoning,

because a couple of those cases come

from my mortgage each year.

Usually young people, and they're

usually drinking very fast.

If you drink fast enough, it raises your blood alcohol

to the point where it causes enough central nervous system

depression that it will cause you to go into a coma

and eventually stop breathing.

Oh, brother.

NARRATOR Assuming he was extremely intoxicated,

another possibility is that Reed choked

to death on his own vomit.

He vomits on himself, in bed, and then he's not breathing.

And it may just be that he aspirated on his own vomitus.

Also, acute binge drinking can affect

your pancreas, no question.

So the fact that he's complaining of abdominal pain,

I would worry about an acute pancreatitis, which

is an inflammation of your pancreas

and a sudden death from that.

Thanks.

NARRATOR Dr. G must also consider

that alcohol wasn't the only substance in play

the night of Reed's death.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We wonder, if he's drinking that much

were they also using dr*gs?

They'll admit to the alcohol, but they

may not admit to the dr*gs.

Taking dr*gs with the alcohol would

have a synergistic effect, and together would

suppress his respiratory center and k*ll him.

NARRATOR And the laundry list of alcohol related suspects

continues.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) These are a bunch of drunk guys,

stumbling around downtown Orlando.

They're going from bar to bar, they're

falling down type drunk.

Anything could have happened.

He could even have hit his head.

So we'll look for evidence of trauma,

but it might just be something totally unrelated to anything

we're thinking.

So we'll look for anything that could point

to any kind of natural disease.
[ … ]

Anything from an aneurysm to a hypertensive bleed.

We just don't know.

NARRATOR At this point, only one thing is certain

Reed's family and fiancee are looking to Dr.

G for some sense of closure.

You know, it's all happened so fast.

They deserve an answer.

DR. G Let's see.

NARRATOR Dr. G is preparing to autopsy

the body of -year-old Reed Baley,

who d*ed tragically the morning after his bachelor party.

DR. G A lot of possibilities.

Not sure what this is going to be,

and we're just going to have to see.

Do we have height and weight?

DR. G (VOICEOVER) So the external, we document

everything we see.

We document all of the efforts of resuscitation,

all of his intravenous lines.

DR. G He's obviously got a lot of medical intervention

here to try to keep him alive.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He has got IVs all over,

he's got no bleeding around the IVs,

he's got the resuscitation pads on,

the EKG pads, the endotracheal tube, the gastric tube.

NARRATOR And not surprisingly, Reed's body

is bloated with edema, or excess fluid from the IVs.

But that's not all.

Oh, look at that.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) There's bloody fluid in his mouth.

Problem is when you put those tubes down,

sometimes they can cause bleeding in and of themselves.

NARRATOR But this could also be evidence

of trauma that occurred during Reed's night of partying.

Dr. G checks for abrasions and injuries

to Reed's head and neck.

DR. G He has absolutely no trauma in his neck.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) The external exam

of the head really didn't give us much except there's

no evidence of trauma.

He's got contusions to his chest,

some burn abrasions to his chest,

all from the resuscitation, trying to shock him.

When I'm looking externally at his abdomen,

I was trying to feel the abdomen.

His abdomen was soft.

It wasn't as if a lot of blood is accumulated

or maybe an infection.

So even after death, he had a soft abdomen to palpation,

and that's what we would normally see.

So I really don't see any acute trauma besides what was

done from the resuscitation.

But you never know until you get inside.

All right, drop that in my hand.

Thanks.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) It's kind of like a can without a label.

We don't know what's in there.

DR. G Why don't we just do his head?

Make sure he doesn't have any head trauma.

We do the scalp incision, we reflect it.

NARRATOR Then, morgue technician

Tom Hemphill uses the oscillating

saw to expose the brain.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) There's no evidence of trauma

to the inside of the scalp.

The bone, the calvarium, or the brain itself.

And there's no bruises anywhere.

He doesn't look like he hit his head.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) Really, no abnormalities.

It's not that much.

A little edematous, a little softened, but nothing

that would have caused his death.

Even when we cut it, he's got the lateral ventricles that

hold cerebrospinal fluid are kind of compressed,

and that's just from the edema from the resuscitation,

from his not having adequate blood flow to the brain.

We certainly can rule out trauma to the head

or any kind of bleed into the brain,

any type of natural disease in the brain.

So at this point, we don't know what's really going on,

and we're not going to know until we get to the body.

Want to do that now?

Yeah, I'm ready to go with him.

DR. G Alrighty.

NARRATOR Dr. G starts by cutting from Reed's shoulders

to pelvis in a standard Y incision.

OK, this is going to be interesting.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) The first thing

I see is a lot of edema fluid.

Oh my gosh.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) It just kind of oozes out of the tissue

underneath the skin.

Eugh, lovely.

What we're seeing is all the ravages

of being on a ventilator, not having a blood pressure.

NARRATOR Clearing away the fluid,

she continues to look for any signs of trauma.

We look for rib fractures, because he

could have fallen on the side of a table, punctured his lungs.

Let's see what we have here.
[ … ]

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I don't see any evidence of trauma.

Eh, there's nothing there.

The bottom line, it may just be alcohol.

And see if we can get [inaudible]..

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G takes blood and fluid samples

to test for alcohol and dr*gs.

DR. G OK, so we have blood.

And that might be important, because toxicology

may be the answer here.

NARRATOR But the results won't arrive for several weeks.

In the meantime, she turns her attention to the lungs,

and right away she finds a clue that could support her theory

of alcohol or drug overdose.

Do you see these?

God.

When I look at his lungs, they're very heavy,

they're very congested.

All that goes along with resuscitation,

but it could be that way before the resuscitation.

If it was a drug overdose, alcohol

poisoning, that's what we see, those very heavy,

congested lungs.

DR. G I think there's something going on in that lung.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) Did he just vomit and obstruct his airway

so he couldn't breathe?

It is not the type of way I would want to die.

We don't usually see people dying that way.

Oftentimes, it's just a terminal event but it can happen.

Let's see here.

Well--

NARRATOR But after a careful inspection,

it appears that Reed's airway is clear.

He doesn't have any clear obstruction

of the main stem bronchi.

He really doesn't have any aspiration in the lungs.

That wasn't his cause of death.

NARRATOR Next on Dr. G's list, the heart.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) When I look at his heart,

his heart's about grams.

That's great.

Normal size.

It's so nice to see a normal sized heart,

but the heart didn't look right.

The coronary arteries are a little abnormal,

because for a -year-old I'm finding a little bit of plaque.

I'm also finding it in the aorta, which is very

unusual for somebody so young.

Not enough to k*ll him, but he'd would have

had problems in middle age.

Heart looks really funky.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) It's got discoloration, it's softened.

The right ventricle's dilated.

I'm going to go back over here.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) All that could be from resuscitation,

because his blood pressure hasn't been very

high for about three hours.

He's also on a lot of pressers, a lot of medications to try

to bring his blood pressure up.

Those have effects on the myocardium.

We see changes in the heart when people

are on prolonged medications to try to keep

their blood pressure up.

I'm not going to know the cause of the softening of his heart

until I look under the microscope.

I suspect it's due to resuscitation, though.

NARRATOR Dr. G preserve samples of Reed's heart tissue

for microscopic examination, and then turns her attention

to the abdominal cavity.

He'd been complaining that he had abdominal pain.

You know, there's reasons for abdominal pain,

some of which can k*ll you, particularly

with his history of drinking.

So I'm very interested in what the organs of

his abdominal cavity look like.

NARRATOR First up is the liver.

This liver doesn't look that bad.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We could see some fatty liver changes

with that type of binge drinking of alcohol,

but his liver actually looked pretty good.

It was brown, it had a sharp edge.

NARRATOR But the surprisingly healthy state of the liver

doesn't help Dr. G rule alcohol poisoning in or out.

The alcohol poisoning-- we wouldn't see

anything in the liver.

People always think liver, alcohol.

The chronic effects from alcohol, where his liver would

look real bad, like cirrhosis, we're

not going to see that at .

We start seeing that in the s.

He's on his way if he keeps this up, but not today.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G inspects Reed's pancreas for alcohol

induced pancreatitis.

And right away, things do not look good.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) This pancreas was not normal.

He's got a lot of edema around it, a lot of what we blood

tinged kind of look to it.

That could be from resuscitation, low blood

pressure, but I'm worried maybe he does have a pancreatitis.

Now, pancreatitis is when you get an inflammation

of your pancreas.
[ … ]

We see young people dying suddenly that way,

particularly exacerbated by a bout of heavy drinking.

I don't know, I'm not sure what's going on with him.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I have some questions about his pancreas,

but I really will need to look at that under the microscope.

NARRATOR But before she does, there's

one more system left to check.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) We still don't

have a clear cause of death, so we've got to keep looking.

DR. G I need to still look at his esophagus and his stomach.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) First of all, we look at his esophagus.

There's a little bit of erosion there.

NARRATOR Dr. G follows the trail of irritation

down into Reed's stomach.

And then I see trouble.

What's going on-- oh, wait a minute, we may have a--

NARRATOR Dr. G has finally made her first

unmistakable discovery in the autopsy

of -year-old Reed Baley.

DR. G Look at that.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He's got a bloody fluid

in that stomach of his.

So why does he got all of this fluid in his belly?

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He clearly has

gastritis, which is an inflammation

of the lining of the stomach.

That could be ultimately what k*lled him.

I've had people who drink quite heavily that get gastritis

and actually erode off some of the mucosa

and die from bleeding from that gastritis.

Let'se see what we can do here.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) So we ladle that out and measure it.

There's not much here.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He lost just about ccs of blood

in his stomach, but we look at the rest of the GI track

and there's no blood in the rest of the lumen,

no blood in the rest of the small intestine.

This could be the cause of his abdominal pain,

but it certainly didn't bleed enough to k*ll him.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, at the end of the autopsy

Dr. G still doesn't know what took Reed's life just one

week before his wedding day.

Nothing jumped out at me during

the internal examination.

Nothing was clear cut.

I'm still worried about the alcohol poisoning and drug use.

DR. G We're not going to know so we look at the tox.

NARRATOR But in addition to the toxicology samples taken

in the morgue, Dr. G also needs to test the blood drawn

when Reed was in the hospital.

That will give us a truer picture of what he was affected

by at the time he arrested.

Because the blood I'm drawing at autopsy

is three hours post arrest, so we'll get his blood

from the moment he came into the hospital, anything

the hospital have, and that's what we'll test first.

NARRATOR To track down these samples

she enlists Chief Medical Investigator Steve Hansen.

DR. G I can't go out there like this.

Tell Steve to come in here.

Hi, it's Kelly.

Dr. G's requesting your presence in the morgue, please.

Hm?

I would run out the back door, fast.

[laugh]

DR. G I hate to bother you, Steve.

He's taking his time.

If you notice, he's taking his time.

What?

DR. G This kid's gonna have more on him from the hospital.

So could you call them and see what's going?

Tell them we need the blood.

I'll jump right on it.

My hands are bloody, I didn't want to talk on the phone.

This time.

DR. G No, just see what we can do.

Yes, doctor.

So definitely this case is pending

until every possible tox is done.

It may mean four, six, eight weeks,

it just depends how backlogged they are in tox.

NARRATOR It will be a difficult wait for Dr. G,

but for Reed's parents and grief stricken fiancee Monica,

it will be grueling.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) At this point I do speak to the family,

and just say we don't know yet.

Hopefully we'll get them the answer.

NARRATOR Four long weeks later, Reed's toxicology report

finally arrives at the district morgue.

So his toxicology comes back, and what we really tested

was the blood we got from the hospital.

That was going to be important because that gave us

more of a window of what he was exposed

to at the time he arrested.

I really couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Most people who die from alcohol poisoning

are going to have at least a ., usually a ..

That first draw from the hospital, when he hit the ER,

gave us a blood alcohol the only ..

NARRATOR Despite the fact that Reed and his friends
[ … ]

were partying hard for several hours,

it now appears that he himself did not

consume an inordinate amount of alcohol.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) Even if I extrapolate that out to when he

stopped drinking, his blood alcohol, we know,

had to be under ..

His alcohol level just isn't high enough to have k*lled him,

and he has no dr*gs on the tox screen.

I really just don't know what k*lled this poor guy.

I'm hoping the micros are going to have the answer.

So when I get the micros back, the first thing I look at

is his pancreas.

There was really no evidence of inflammation or hemorrhage,

so no cause of death was evident on those micros.

NARRATOR But Dr. G still has another slide left to examine

the tissue sample from Reed's heart.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) I'm not confident the heart slides are

going to have the answer, because I really felt

the heart just showed some resuscitative changes,

but I was really surprised when I looked under the microscope.

He was a walking time b*mb.

NARRATOR In one week, Reed Baley is marrying his college

sweetheart, and in honor of the occasion

his friends take the bachelor out

for one last night on the town.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) He goes to Orlando

to celebrate with his buddies.

He was drinking, he was having a good time.

I really felt that drinking is going to play a role.

But as it turns out, what ultimately

caused his death began at least a month

prior to his bachelor party.

He got a virus that he probably didn't even

realize he had that att*cked his heart, which caused

a rip roaring myocarditis.

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle.

And this inflammation causes the heart muscle to die

and be replaced by scar tissue.

Now, in most of these cases, the virus goes away

and you don't even know you had it.

Nobody really knows why, but in some people

the virus will att*ck the heart muscle cell

and that starts up this inflammatory process where

his heart muscle is slowly dying.

NARRATOR On the night of his bachelor party,

Reed's ailing heart is on the brink of disaster.

DR. G (VOICEOVER) His heart's inflamed,

he's got a lot of dying cells, and it's

hard for the electrical component of the heart

to work correctly to get through that inflammation,

and his heart starts to quiver.

They tried to shock his heart, but his heart's

so diseased it just kept going back out of a normal rhythm.

And he d*ed from an arrhythmia brought on by his myocarditis,

his inflammation of his heart, brought

on by a viral infection.

I don't really know why that arrhythmia

occurred this night, this time.

It could have occurred at any time.

You know, I say that your choices, genetics,

and luck determine your fate.

A lot of the problems we see with the heart

are due to our choices, our lifestyle, our smoking,

our lack of exercise.

This is not one of them.

This was really bad luck.

NARRATOR This revelation does bring

some relief, however small, to Reed's fiancee, Monica.

I think with the fiancee it helped to know that this was

a fluke and it had really nothing

to do with this bad binge drinking

event that occurred because they were going to get married.

You know, when anybody dies and they leave behind loved ones,

it's difficult, but I think to die just

at the door of the rest of your life,

a week before he got married, is especially sad.

Unfortunately, we never know when our time is up.

[soft music]