08x06 - Deadly Mistake

[bunniefuu]

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NARRATOR A woman calls and reports a hellish scene.

The place is a mess.

It's a pig sty and her boyfriend is dead on the floor.

NARRATOR And police point the finger at her.

DR. G Is she hiding something?

What could she have done to him?

NARRATOR Then Dr. G is faced with the haunting

death of a pregnant teen.

DR. G My number one suspicion on this case

is that she k*lled herself.

NARRATOR And it becomes a shattering case.

I'm like, take a deep breath.

I just can't believe this.

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NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations.

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

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Each body that comes through the doors

of the District morgue in central Florida

has a compelling story to share.

DR. G When you're doing an autopsy,

you need to see what the body is saying to you.

The body's telling you something.

The body's trying to explain what happened,

and you just need to listen.

NARRATOR But when Dr. G is faced with a potential m*rder,

the stakes are even higher.

I really don't know what's going on yet.

This case is suspicious, and the police

want an answer of whether this is a homicide or not.

[music playing]

NARRATOR It's AM on a sizzling summer morning when

the emergency dispatch center receives

a frantic call from Louisa Vargas, a resident

of Pine Hills, Florida.

Her boyfriend Ruben Delgado is collapsed in the bedroom.

So she seems upset, but a little bit confused.

NARRATOR Paramedics arrive within minutes

to find an alarming scene.

DR. G His breathing stopped.

They try to resuscitate him, but the fellow

is dead on the floor.

The girlfriend was very shaken up.

She's really shock.

NARRATOR But it's not long before a suspicious picture

begins to emerge.

The scene is very disturbing.

First of all, the place is a pigsty.

It's in disarray.

It's hard to say if somebody went in there and ransacked it

or not because it is such a mess.

NARRATOR Police waste no time starting their investigation,

and they begin questioning Ruben's

girlfriend, Luisa, a cashier at a local grocery store.

They were together that evening.

She's kind of living in this apartment.

And she claims that about o'clock

she went to bed by herself, but before she goes to bed,

he was having a seizure.

But she said, oh, he always has those.

He gets over them.

She didn't think it was any big deal.

She felt tired and just wanted to go to bed.

And then the next morning, she walks in

and finds him on the floor.

WOMAN Ruben?

The police immediately think she's a little fishy.

Her story was suspicious.

She kind of was like vague and not really consistent.

And so the police are really kind of worried that something

may have happened.

I'm actually shocked that she would leave this fellow

while he's having a seizure.

That's cold.

And if she's so cold to leave him in the middle of a seizure,

could she have done something else to him?

So at this point, the police don't

know what to think either.

They're a little suspicious of this woman,

so they're anxiously waiting, uh, to see what I found.

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I'm gonna do this case first this morning

because the police want an answer of whether this

is a homicide or not.

NARRATOR And right off the bat, Dr. G sees in the investigators

report that Louisa's statement offers up

a possible motive for m*rder.

DR. G The girlfriend told us he drinks a lot.

He can be somewhat, um, belligerent when he drinks.

Is this just a classic domestic v*olence and he

ended up dying and not her?

There are many possibilities for foul play.

Uh, could be a blow to the head with blunt trauma.

We could have poisoning.

We could have suffocation.

NARRATOR And if it's true that Ruben

has a history of seizures, Dr. G must also consider

what could be causing them.
[ … ]

DR. G The girlfriend, she says for the past few months

he's been having seizures.

Could he have just been drunk and fallen and hit his head,

and-- and that's why, uh, he's seizing?

The other possibility is that he's seizing because of lack

of oxygen to his brain, possibly from something

going wrong with his heart.

NARRATOR Dr. G will also be on the lookout

for signs of epilepsy, a brain disorder

characterized by seizures.

But I don't know if he truly has epilepsy.

We're relying a lot on what she said,

and I don't know how reliable she is.

So we will send out requests for medical records

to all the local hospitals to see if he's

got a history of seizures.

NARRATOR Then as Dr. G continues to pore over

the investigators report, a critical detail from the scene

catches her eye.

In his apartment, the police find a lot

of empty prescription bottles.

And when they asked the girlfriend

why he takes so much medication, she

says that he has told her he has cancer,

that is cancer of the stomach.

So I'm anxious to get on the inside.

I want to start figuring out what happened here.

NARRATOR But over years of experience

tells Dr. G that she's in for a bumpy ride.

So the bottom line is I've got a girlfriend

with a flaky story.

I don't have medical records yet.

This really may be a challenging case.

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NARRATOR Dr. G is on a mission to find out

why Ruben Delgado, a -year-old waiter at a local restaurant,

d*ed suddenly with no apparent cause.

This could be foul play.

It is my job to be suspicious.

It is my job to not trust anyone until we have all the facts.

NARRATOR And Dr. G suspects that Ruben's

girlfriend, Louisa Vargas, may be

somehow involved in his death.

DR. G I find it odd that she just went to bed

in the middle of a seizure.

Is that a true story or is she hiding something?

Or it could be cancer.

She told us he has stomach cancer.

You just don't know.

I mean this can go anywhere at this point.

NARRATOR Today, Dr. G will also be mentoring a Florida State

medical student, Natalie Ciomek, who

is doing her forensic pathology rotation at the morgue.

I'm planning to go into pathology,

and I had no exposure to autopsies, which is something

I'll have to do in residency.

All righty.

Let's see.

[music playing]

Sandy, why don't you go ahead and start

taking pictures of him?

And-- and take the full body.

So he certainly doesn't look like an end

stage cancer patient.

Uh, he's robust looking, still somewhat muscular,

certainly well-fed.

NARRATOR But Dr. G can't rule out cancer until she

completes the autopsy.

For now, she palpates his head for more clues.

I look at his head.

He's got a full head of hair and I don't see any blood.

We don't see a lot of blood, one would

think that there is no direct trauma, but that's not true.

He can have blow to the head.

He could even been sh*t with a small caliber w*apon.

With his full head of hair.

I'm not gonna be able to say for sure

until I look under the scalp.

NARRATOR But as Dr. G continues to palpate Ruben's head,

she makes a key discovery.

I feel this contusion, a pretty big bruise on the back,

uh, side of his head.

And I'm thinking, this may be the reason why he d*ed.

But whether this is accidental or whether this is foul play,

I'm not gonna be able to tell until I get into that head.

NARRATOR For now, Dr. G scans Ruben's body,

looking for any other suspicious injuries.

I am paying very close attention to the neck,

uh, for possible signs of strangulation.

But I don't really see any.

The next thing I look at is in the inside of his mouth

to see if there is any marks from the seizure,

to see if he's bit, uh, sides of the mouth.

He doesn't have that.

I'm still not sure what's going on,

but clearly with that contusion, foul play

is still a huge possibility in this case.

Sandy, let's go ahead and do his head.

[music playing]

NARRATOR Dr. G slides her scalpel across Ruben's scalp
[ … ]

from ear to ear.

When you start cutting the cranial nerves--

when I reflect the scalp, I see the contusion,

but he doesn't have any skull fracture.

It doesn't mean that he doesn't have trauma to the brain.

So I remove that calvarium, the top of the skull,

and he doesn't.

His brain looked completely normal.

I don't see anything.

It looks good to me.

That's disappointing.

And there was no damage to either his brain or his skull

from a blow to the head or from a g*nsh*t wound.

All right.

NARRATOR Dr. G continues to examine

the brain for any abnormality that could

have caused the fatal seizure.

But when I section the brain, there's nothing.

I don't see anything.

Although I haven't truly ruled out a death

associated with epilepsy because sometimes

you just don't see anything.

I need to do the rest of the autopsy to know for sure.

So there's still a lot of possibilities, everything

from a heart att*ck to something associated with this stomach

cancer he supposedly has.

NARRATOR But the most disturbing scenario

still on her mind is homicide.

There are many possibilities for foul play.

Is the girlfriend trying to cover up for something?

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NARRATOR Dr. G's autopsy has yet to uncover a cause of death

in the mysterious case of -year-old waiter, Ruben

Delgado.

The police, they're just waiting for me

to say it's not foul play, but I can't say it

and they're still anxious.

I mean the girlfriend, her story is-- is not holding up.

So did she somehow cause his death?

Hopefully we're going to get answers and either rule her

in or rule her out.

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NARRATOR Dr. G makes the standard Y

incision across Ruben's chest.

I'm looking for hemorrhage underneath the skin,

and I don't have any.

I'm looking for rib fractures, and I don't see any.

All right, there's nothing.

NARRATOR The next step is to draw blood for lab tests.

I think this toxin can be a very interesting.

Possibility of poisoning is still out there.

And we've got a lot of prescription medication vials

around.

I'm hoping that the tox will have the answer.

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

In the meantime, she continues scouring

Ruben's body for anything out of the ordinary.

The number one way you would die suddenly

and unexpectedly would be from your heart, inferior vena cava.

So it could just be a heart att*ck.

So first of all, take the heart out

and it is a little bit enlarged.

That is bigger than it looks.

Maybe a little less than grams.

A normal heart for him should be , .

So it looks like it's had the effects

of long-term high blood pressure,

but things over-- overall look normal.

But when I look at his lungs, though, that's another story.

There's a lot of fluid in his lungs.

That lung is heavy.

We sometimes can see that with seizures.

We sometimes can see that with overdoses.

But heavy lungs are a nonspecific finding,

and I really need to see how they fit

with the rest of the finding.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G is eager to examine the stomach.

The girlfriend told us he has stomach cancer

and that's why he takes a lot of pain medication.

I'm expecting evidence of surgery, evidence of cancer

because she had said now it's reoccurred.

NARRATOR But immediately she is caught off

guard by what she doesn't find.

I'm actually shocked.

Wow.

Look at this.

When I look at his stomach, he doesn't have anything abnormal.

There is no evidence of cancer.

There's no evidence he ever had cancer.

And surprisingly, I don't see anything.

Now I'm worried.

She's claiming that he's got cancer.

I'm wondering now if she is just a liar.

What could she have done to him?

So even though we've ruled out a blow to the head,

a g*nsh*t wound to the head, there

are other ways that there can be foul play on this poor fellow.

Possibility of poisoning is still out there.

NARRATOR The investigation now hinges on one

thing, Ruben's lab results.
[ … ]

DR. G I think toxicology is gonna be key on this case.

Oftentimes what we look for in tox

is to see if he's on seizure medication.

Did he just recently stop a seizure medication?

Those people are the ones that tend to have the sudden death

associated with seizures.

Or is this is gonna be a drug death of some type?

And the possibility is still there that she poisoned him.

That was very rare, but it's something we'll look for.

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NARRATOR One week later, Ruben's lab work is finally

delivered to the District morgue,

along with his long awaited medical file.

I'm always excited to open up that chart

and see if that gives me the answer.

And in this case, it does.

I see his cause of death, and this is

a tragedy all the way around.

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NARRATOR Dr. G has just discovered

in the toxicology report what k*lled Ruben Delgado.

Now she can give police the information

they've been waiting for.

I am relieved because now I know why he d*ed,

and I think it's pretty clear what happened.

It's a terrible situation.

NARRATOR According to his girlfriend, Louisa Vargas,

Ruben Delgado was bravely battling

some serious health problems.

DR. G She's claiming that he's having seizures

and that he has gastric cancer, and that's why he

takes a lot of pain medication.

But in his physicians records, there's no mention of any kind

of history of cancer.

There is no record of any kind of history of epilepsy.

He's never been treated for seizures.

What they have a history of is multiple types of chronic pain,

multiple types of back pain, multiple types of wrist pain,

multiple types of neck pain, multiple times

where he's lost his medication.

This is classic drug seeking behavior.

It was easy for him to get.

It was legal, and he was getting high.

It's like legal heroin.

So he was truly a--

a drug addict.

NARRATOR But on the night of his death,

Ruben goes one step too far.

Although he's used to taking these pain medications and you

build up a tolerance, you start taking-- wanting more and more

to get that same feeling.

And that evening, he crossed the line.

He took too much.

NARRATOR Ruben's toxicology report

shows that he took a substantial amount of oxycodone,

a narcotic pain medication, and alprazolam,

an anti-anxiety drug.

Once these two powerful dr*gs enter his system,

they set off a cascade of disastrous events.

He's taken so much pain medication

that he has suppressed his central nervous system

to the point where it can't give the signal out for his heart

to b*at or his lungs to breathe, and the fluid starts

building up in the lungs.

NARRATOR This explains the heaviness Dr. G

found during the internal exam.

She speculates that the dr*gs may have also caused

Ruben's apparent seizure.

I don't know whether it was just the effects of passing out

from the medication, or if he was truly

having some type of seizure from a lack of oxygen to the brain.

NARRATOR But one thing is certain.

When Louisa goes to bed that night,

she has no idea that Ruben is slowly dying.

Although it was odd behavior that she just went to bed

in the middle of a seizure, I think she's seen this before

and I think she thought he would be OK.

But unfortunately this time he just took a little too much.

And then the next morning, he was dead.

[music playing]

NARRATOR Louisa Vargas is grateful to Dr.

G for uncovering the truth.

She didn't have anything to do with his death.

I'm actually relieved she's off the hook

because you certainly never want to accuse

somebody who is innocent.

I think she was lied to.

I think he lied about having cancer to cover up, uh,

the use of his pain medication.

So she may be gullible, uh, but she's not a m*rder*r.

NARRATOR For Dr. G, Ruben Delgado's death

is a symptom of a growing problem in the United States.

I always hate to see a relatively

young person in my morgue because

of bad lifestyle choices.

In my jurisdiction, we have more prescription pain

medication deaths than we have automobile deaths now.

And it's getting worse.

It is an epidemic.

These are powerful addicting dr*gs.
[ … ]

They can ruin your life and they can k*ll you.

NARRATOR Medical student Natalie Ciomek

is glad to have witnessed the autopsy

and seen firsthand how Dr. G put the pieces together.

I basically have a one on one lesson with her

and other pathologists, and you just can't

b*at that kind of teaching.

One of the reasons she I think is

liking it is putting the pieces of the puzzle together

and that it is just a really interesting field

and that we all like coming to work.

We still have enthusiasm for our job.

And-- and gosh, who doesn't want that in day to day work?

[music playing]

Since we have no idea what's going on at this hour.

NARRATOR No one knows better than Dr. G how thin the line

is between life and death.

But just when she thought she'd seen it all,

a heartbreaking case puts her to the test.

DR. G This is a sad case.

This is a -year-old girl that's found dead in bed

at a mental health care facility.

She's about eight, nine weeks pregnant.

It's either gonna be something really

catastrophic or really sad.

I want to get the answer.

[music playing]

NARRATOR It's May in Bear County, Texas,

and most college students are cramming for final exams.

But for -year-old Claudia Alvarez, the party never ends.

DR. G She was a college student kind

of into the alcohol, some drug abuse,

really got into partying.

Nothing too bad.

The mother had d*ed.

The father has been out of the picture.

The only person who really had anything to do with her

was a grandmother, but the grandmother felt like she

had no control over her.

Her family had enough with her partying.

NARRATOR After repeated warnings and arguments,

Claudia's grandmother can no longer handle her wild behavior

and throws her out of the house.

But out on her own, Claudia quickly runs into trouble.

One day, she discovers something that

will change her life forever.

DR. G She ends up finding out she's pregnant.

She has no idea who it is that got her pregnant,

which is a bad situation.

NARRATOR To make matters worse, two months

into her pregnancy, Claudia wakes up

one day feeling terribly sick.

DR. G She goes to the ER complaining of pain all over,

abdominal pain, back pain, leg pain,

and they're worried about her.

This is a -year-old pregnant girl.

They work her up.

Her vitals are fine.

So they're wondering, is something

wrong with the pregnancy?

NARRATOR The doctors do an ultrasound test that shows

the fetus developing normally.

DR. G They can't figure out what's wrong with her.

They send her on her way.

NARRATOR But the next night, Claudia is still in pain.

She races back to the ER.

They had already worked her up for an OB problem.

They've worked her up for any other kind of abdominal pain,

but she's crying constantly.

NARRATOR Then out of the blue, Claudia

makes a horrifying thr*at.

DR. G She looks at them and said,

I feel like k*lling myself and this baby.

I'm gonna jump in front of a car.

I'm gonna get a g*n.

I can't go on.

And she didn't say it just once.

They send her to a mental health hospital for evaluation.

It's not just saving her life.

It's saving her unborn baby's life.

She is in the mental health facility for about two days.

She had a normal temperature, normal heart rate, normal blood

pressure, normal respiration.

NARRATOR But that night, the unthinkable happens.

DR. G She goes to bed and she doesn't wake up.

They find her dead in bed.

They immediately call and ship her to the emergency room,

but she was already dead.

She was cold by the time she got there.

NARRATOR Now it's up to Dr. G to make sense

of this mysterious tragedy.

Even though this grandmother had disowned her,

she's still upset.

She was truly grieving.

I cry when I'm talking to the loved ones on the phone.

In fact, they make me cry all the time,

but not in the morgue.

I'm there to get the answers.

I'm not there to grieve for them.

I was very anxious to find out what
[ … ]

k*lled this girl so quickly.

[music playing]

The body of Claudia Alvarez arrives at the morgue

just three hours after she was found dead

in a mental health facility.

It's an incredibly sad story.

We have a -year-old girl who's about eight,

nine weeks pregnant who's very despondent,

two days earlier had said she wanted to k*ll herself

and the baby and is found dead, but she

was also complaining of pain.

So you wonder, what's going on here?

NARRATOR Dr. G's first step is to scour the investigators

report looking for clues.

My number one suspicion on this case

is that she k*lled herself with dr*gs.

I don't know how she got them in that health care facility,

but people find a way when they want to commit su1c1de.

I have to be the one that always suspects everything

until I find the facts.

So I scoured those records to see if they missed something.

Although they do an ultrasound and saw an inner uterine

pregnancy, I didn't see any good description

of the fallopian tubes that come out from the uterus.

She could still have an ectopic pregnancy

with an intrauterine pregnancy.

And that happens about one in , pregnancies, where you

get a pregnancy inside the uterus, where it should be

growing normally, but one fertilized egg

gets stuck somewhere else, like in the fallopian tube,

and it can burst and she could bleed to death.

So I'm wondering, did they not pick that up?

NARRATOR And there was another deadly complication of

pregnancy Dr. G must consider.

A real possibility with her is that she

d*ed from a pulmonary embolis.

That's a blood clot that develops in her leg,

and then breaks off into the blood,

and then going into the lungs gets stuck.

No blood can get in, no blood gets back to the heart,

and you go down fast.

She's at risk because she's pregnant.

Estrogen goes up and your blood wants

to clot a little more readily.

So that is certainly a cause for sudden death.

NARRATOR Dr. G then cancer is another red flag in Claudia's

family history, Lupus, a chronic disease where the immune system"], index ,…}

destroys healthy tissue.

Lupus can be fatal if left untreated.

Her mom who's dead had Lupus.

With a first degree relative with Lupus,

you have a much higher chance of having Lupus.

It can affect your heart.

It can affect your lungs.

It can really affect your kidneys.

That's why a lot of people die from,

but Lupus can often give you some weird pains.

There's a lot of possibilities, so it'll

be interesting to see what we see on the external exam.

[music playing]

It's a shame. Oh.

A little scrape abrasion.

I start the external.

She's got long fingernails.

She's got extensions in her hair.

Her hair is actually quite long.

Nail polish on her toes.

That's post mortem just drying out her fat.

I am looking very carefully for any kind of rash

on her face that would indicate a Lupus

or kind of a scaly rash.

She had pretty skin, no trauma on the skin, and no rashes

on the skin.

NARRATOR Dr. G can't rule out Lupus

until she completes the autopsy and does

additional blood tests.

For now, she continue scanning the body

and quickly notices something alarming.

She's got frothy fluid in her nose and her mouth that's

from the buildup of fluid in her lungs

what we call pulmonary edema.

That can be from several things.

It can be a heart failure.

It could be some neurologic event.

But the number one reason we'd see that fluid buildup

would be a drug overdose.

Yeah.

Somebody is depressed, you don't know what tips them over.

She didn't have any scars on her wrist.

NARRATOR But then Dr. G notices something

else that concerns her.

That's a weird thing.

Slight contusion on the forehead.

She also has a little abrasion on her forehead,

maybe a half an inch by one fourth inch.

NARRATOR And this raises another more

sinister possibility.

I've had patients before who have been m*rder*d

in mental health facilities.

And they keep close watch on you most of the time,
[ … ]

but I have to be the-- the one who's paranoid.

I don't know what's wrong with this poor, little kid.

I can't rule out anything yet on this external exam,

except a g*nsh*t wound.

So I'm anxious to get on the inside.

[music playing]

Let me open her up and see.

I do my normal Y incision.

I continue that Y incision into the abdomen

because I'm thinking there's something

catastrophic going on.

Did she actually have an ectopic pregnancy?

In fact, what was going on in her belly was nothing.

The fallopian tubes looked normal.

She doesn't have a ruptured ectopic.

There was no free blood.

There was no pus.

There was no abnormalities in any of the organs

that I could see.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G draws blood for toxicology.

DR. G I've got to get toxicology, as in all cases,

but particularly this case because if I was a betting

woman I'd say she d*ed from a drug overdose,

but you never know.

NARRATOR She moves on to examine the fetus.

DR. G Restart her uterus too.

The uterus is maybe the size of an orange.

I open it.

She's got a well formed fetus about an inch

in size in an amniotic sac, and that looked to be going well.

Let's see.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G moves on to examine the chest organs.

So we'll take off her chest plate by cutting

her ribs in the front.

We take her heart out.

We weigh it.

It's of normal size we dissect it.

It all appears normal.

There was no thickening to the heart muscle.

There was no congenital abnormality to the valves

or to the coronary arteries.

All right.

So let's feels this lung.

NARRATOR Dr. G will be on the lookout for a pulmonary embolis

or blood clot.

But both the right and left pulmonary arteries

are completely clear.

No blood clot.

I follow them deep into the lung.

I'm like there's gotta be blood clot in here somewhere.

There is no blood clot in her lungs.

NARRATOR Dr. G also sees no hemorrhaging

or inflammation that might indicate

Lupus or anything else.

Now, what I do find in her lung is frothy tan fluid.

I'm still thinking mainly of a drug overdose,

but I haven't ruled out some neurologic event.

I'm not gonna be able to tell until I get into that head,

and I can't rule out foul play yet.

So I'm thinking, hm, what am I gonna find in that brain?

First, I palpate her scalp.

I look for other signs of trauma because she

has that little abrasion on her forehead,

and I look very carefully.

I'm feeling her head for lacerations

or, uh, tears in the skin.

Because we have no idea what's going on with this woman.

I don't really feel anything, so I'm not gonna be able to tell

till I reflect that scalp.

All right.

So we can go ahead.

NARRATOR And when she does, she finds something that might turn"], index ,…}

the whole case upside down.

Oh my.

Did something happen to her?

She didn't deserve this.

[music playing]

Look at this.

NARRATOR Dr. G has just discovered

something that makes her wonder if Claudia

was m*rder*d after all.

DR. G I'm surprised that she has a big bruise

on the back of her head.

Did somebody hit her in the head?

There is a chance that somebody in that health care facility

comes up and tries to k*ll her.

I have the techs cut the skull cap off.

I slowly remove it thinking I'm gonna maybe

see a collection of blood.

And I breathe a sigh of relief because there

is no blood there.

Good.

This is not gonna be trauma.

I don't know why she had the bruise.

She probably fell at some point, but it didn't cause her death.

NARRATOR Dr. G is relieved to rule out m*rder,

but if a person didn't k*ll Claudia, then what did?

At this point, I just decide to remove the brain.

And it was swollen, but it didn't look that abnormal to me

until I pull the brain back and try
[ … ]

to start cutting the dura that's holding the brain in place,

and I see her cause of death, and I can't believe it.

Oh.

Something's wrong here.

She has green goopy pus over the base of her brain.

Oh.

It's oozing now.

She's got meningitis.

Oh my.

That was lightning out of the blue.

It's very rare for a pregnant woman to die from meningitis.

Pregnant women don't tend to have a predisposition

for meningitis.

It's maybe reported in the literature.

It is uncommon.

NARRATOR Vaccines have dramatically

reduced the risk of meningitis, especially

in children and young adults.

How in the world could this girl have meningitis?

I do at least three different cultures

of the cerebrospinal fluid.

I also do a smear on a glass slide

and I photograph that brain.

NARRATOR She is particularly eager to look

at the results of the cultures.

And in a few days, she has them in her hands.

I was anxious to see what the cultures grew,

and when I look, I'm like, wow, I am shocked.

This was unexpected.

Totally unexpected.

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Two days before her death, Claudia is sent

to a mental health hospital.

While she is suicidal and emotionally distraught,

doctors find nothing physically wrong with her.

Her vitals were completely normal.

She had no fever, no headache, no stiff neck.

Those are what would you typically have

symptoms of with meningitis.

She did have some generalized lower abdominal pain, which she

was having for days, but I don't think any of her symptoms

in those first two ER visits were in any way

related to this meningitis.

You don't get pain in your lower abdomen from meningitis.

They put her in the mental hospital

because she's suicidal, and she's actually

feeling a little better there from what

you can see in the records.

NARRATOR But Claudia could not escape her tragic fate.

Based on her rapid decline, it appears

she developed meningitis while she was in the mental hospital.

Dr. G knows from the cultures Claudia's

meningitis is from a bacteria called Group C strep.

It is commonly found on the throat

and on the mucous membrane, but it

rarely causes serious disease.

DR. G She could have contracted it anywhere.

A fairly good percentage of people will have it

and it doesn't usually cause infection.

NARRATOR But if this bacteria gets into the brain,

it is deadly.

And that is exactly what happens to Claudia

while she is fast asleep.

DR. G This bacteria makes its way

into the cerebrospinal fluid.

How it gets there is unknown.

And once that bacteria gets into the brain,

we don't have a way to fight it off.

It just takes hold and causes a bacterial infection

of the meninges, the covering over the brain,

and causes the brain to swell.

And when the brain swells, the fluid starts building up also

in the lungs, and you can get that froth

coming out of her oral cavity.

NARRATOR Finally, the brain can no longer send signals

to the rest of the organs.

They shut down one by one.

She dies in her sleep before she could

even complain of a headache.

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This type of meningitis is-- is rare on all levels.

I can't explain it.

It's sad.

NARRATOR Dr. G has the heavy task

of telling Claudia's grandmother she lost not one,

but two members of her family.

She had no idea that her granddaughter was pregnant.

She had disowned her just from the dr*gs, alcohol, partying.

And she was very distraught to hear

that she was also pregnant.

She was so sorry that she'd had that falling out with her.

This is a tragedy all the way around.

She was on a spiral that bad things were gonna happen,

but she didn't deserve this.

It's just unbelievable, you think

you can figure things out.

And that's the beauty of forensics,

it always surprises you.

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