08x02 - Desperate Measures

[bunniefuu]

[music playing]

NARRATOR A son discovers his mother bound and gagged

and his father in bed riddled with b*ll*ts.

They wanted him eliminated, and I wanted

to make sure that it was done.

NARRATOR And in a race against time,

Dr. G is the last hope police have of catching the K*llers.

Can I collect any trace evidence to help

link this to these people?

NARRATOR Then a young woman dies suddenly,

and all indications point to an overdose.

DR. G She is addicted to dr*gs and alcohol.

She'll take anything.

NARRATOR But in an incredible twist,

Dr. G discovers nothing is as it seems.

Oh my god.

This case it's just not making sense.

[music playing]

NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,

shocking revelations.

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

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At the busy District morgue in Orlando, Florida,

Dr. G routinely takes on mysterious cases.

And because homicides can be some of the most challenging,

Dr. G wants to make sure medical students learn

to look beyond the obvious.

Why do the autopsy, right?

You know the cause.

You think you know the manner, and then

the police officer says they were fighting over the g*n.

Was it a distant g*n sh*t wound, or was it close range?

What could they have done after they got sh*t?

Well, you're not gonna know unless you do that autopsy.

So when you get done with the case,

you should be able to answer every question that I have.

It's never as straightforward as you think it is.

Okie dokie.

Thanks, guys.

You're welcome.

NARRATOR And today, an exceptionally puzzling case

comes into the morgue.

[camera clicking sound]

DR. G The son comes over to visit

and he finds his mom in the closet bound

and his dad's dead in bed.

This is a disturbing case, there's no question about it.

NARRATOR Now it's up to Dr. G to collect as much information

from the body as she can to help police track down the K*llers.

DR. G It's important for law enforcement and me

to put this puzzle together.

The crime scene is controlled by law enforcement.

The body is controlled by the medical examiner.

That is my jurisdiction.

[music playing]

NARRATOR It's a cloudy spring morning in Pine Hills, Florida,

when -year-old Cameron Walker drops by his parents' house.

DR. G He always visits them in the morning,

and he thought something was up because the car was

in the driveway.

Dad should have been gone for work.

NARRATOR Cameron becomes alarmed when he sees

the front door is wide open.

He hears his mom yelling, and it's muffled,

and he finds her in the closet.

She's bound, hands and legs, so she couldn't get out.

WOMAN Call , please.

NARRATOR Cameron quickly untied his mom

and immediately calls .

Within minutes, paramedics arrive and discover

a terrifying scene.

Cameron's father John Walker is lying in bed flat on his back

covered in blood.

There was something very unusual about the case in that

he wasn't just on a bed.

He was on a waterbed, and clearly he does

have multiple g*nsh*t wounds.

NARRATOR The b*ll*ts went through John's body,

penetrating the bed.

The water, uh, clearly was leaking out of the waterbed

because of the g*nsh*t wound.

NARRATOR Lead investigator, Detective Mark Hussey,

a year veteran of the Orlando Homicide Department,

is called to the scene and immediately questions

the victim's wife, Patricia Walker.

She is clearly shaken, but manages

to tell police a harrowing story that began the night before.

Three guys in ski masks break into the house

and start demanding money and dr*gs.

She says there was a lot of screaming going on.

She said they asked for money and dr*gs.

Uh, they took the victim's wallet

and, uh, they continued to ransack the house.

She just gets so scared, she passes out,

then doesn't remember anything.

NARRATOR Detectives discover seven shell casings,

but they only recover six b*ll*ts from the waterbed.

Investigators suspect the missing seventh b*llet

is still inside John's body.

Then I walk through the scene to see what I could see.
[ … ]

NARRATOR After a thorough search of the house,

investigators do not find a m*rder w*apon,

but they do find some potential leads.

There appears to be some prying marks at the door

where they got in.

JOHN HUSSEY We have had home invasions

and burglaries in that area.

DR. G If these three people are doing random home invasions

and sh**ting people, I mean this is dangerous.

They need to get these guys off the street.

NARRATOR Now investigators are counting on Dr. G

to help piece together enough evidence to catch

whoever k*lled John Walker.

DR. G The victim is a -year-old black male, uh,

lives with his wife.

They've been married a long time.

He works at the local hospital as an X-ray technician.

The wife works as a hairstylist.

He supposedly goes to church, to--

coaches his grandson's basketball games,

and, uh, it's hard to believe that somebody

would want to k*ll him.

This really may be a challenging case.

We don't know what's going on and I'm

afraid I maybe not having any information

for the police with this case.

All right.

Do we have any paperwork on him?

No.

NARRATOR With the clock ticking,

Dr. G's biggest challenge is to gather

enough physical evidence to help police solve this homicide.

DR. G They want to solve the case.

They don't want this to happen again.

[music playing]

NARRATOR In the District morgue,

the body of -year-old John Walker who

was sh*t multiple times in bed is

now being prepped for autopsy.

We had three g*nsh*t wounds of heads today,

so you got to keep the story straight.

NARRATOR Dr. G hopes he can collect enough evidence to help

solve this case, not only for authorities, but also

for the victim's family.

DR. G It's a horrific thing for the son

to find his dad dead in bed with multiple g*nsh*t wounds.

This must be devastating for the wife.

I can't imagine, uh, what she went through.

Let's see.

NARRATOR Dr. G hopes the external exam

will yield physical evidence that will lead to the K*llers.

DR. G I may not find any evidence

and I may find evidence.

I don't make up the evidence.

If it's there, it's there.

If it's not, it's not.

I just have to be open to it.

Do we have his height and weight?

The external is key on this case.

[music playing]

Ah.

Detective Hussey is here.

How are you? JOHN HUSSEY I'm good, and you?

Good. Good.

This is gonna take all day.

I know.

Not-- not my fault. I didn't sh**t him.

He looks like a well groomed -year-old

African-American gentleman.

Can I collect any trace evidence off that body to help link

this to these perpetrators?

All right.

Well, we'll go ahead and take fingernail clippings.

So I'm looking for trace evidence under his nails,

uh, specifically DNA trace evidence.

And so those nails will be clipped

after we photograph them.

Give me a swab, uh, Tommy.

I will take a-- a-- a swab and put a little sterile saline

on it and swab any areas that look like there may be

the struggle, maybe the hands if they got into an altercation,

trying to pick up cells left by the perpetrator.

NARRATOR Unfortunately, Dr. G finds no trace evidence.

There is a chance that the waterbed,

uh, may have made some of the trace evidence disappear.

NARRATOR Although she's had a setback, Dr. G doesn't give up

and searches for other clues.

One of the things I'll be looking at

is to see if there's any defensive wounds.

Was he fighting with them?

I'm gonna look for scratches on his body.

Go ahead and undress him.

NARRATOR After a thorough exam, Dr. G does not find

any evidence of a struggle.

Nothing.

There is no evidence.

Did you notice this one over here?

No.

He's got a lot of g*nsh*t wounds.

There are seven entrance g*nsh*t wounds.
[ … ]

Let's look and see what the, uh, exit wounds look like.

I'm interested, though, in where these b*ll*ts go.

So I document all my exit wounds,

and it looks like six exit g*nsh*t wounds.

Six b*ll*ts actually go through him.

So there should be one projectile in him.

And that's confirmed on X-ray, one projectile in him.

There it is.

NARRATOR Then Dr. G looks carefully for any g*nsh*t

residue, hoping to reconstruct the crime

and figure out how far away the victim's K*llers were

when they sh*t him.

We need to look for evidence that may give me information

about the distance between the, uh,

end of the barrel and the skin.

NARRATOR If the sh**t were within three feet

of the victim, there would be tattooing

or abrasions caused by gunpowder left on the skin.

There's one on his face, right at the jaw line with some very

sparse powder tattooing, and the one on his left arm

has very sparse, just a couple stray, uh, gunpowder flakes.

So these all look like they're at least two to three feet

away.

We can almost place this person right at the side of the bed.

JOHN HUSSEY What do you think?

The sh**t was stabbed at the foot of the bed?

Um, I think it was at the foot and a little to the left.

OK.

NARRATOR The close proximity of the K*llers to the victim

paints a disturbing picture.

It's overkill.

It shows, uh, that whoever did this

had some kind of personal dislike, if you will,

for the victim.

And, uh, I think that, uh, they wanted to make sure that, uh--

that he was dead.

NARRATOR Although Dr. G is finishing up her external exam,

so far she has found little evidence

that could lead to the K*llers of -year-old John Walker.

I'm afraid I may not end up with any useful information

or helpful information, uh, for the police.

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NARRATOR Dr. G has just finished the external exam

on -year-old John Walker.

And so far she has found little evidence that will

help police catch his K*llers.

All of these projectiles indicating

that this sh**ting was probably about three feet away.

NARRATOR Now Dr. G is hoping the internal exam

will yield clues that will help solve this m*rder.

DR. G I just want the truth to be known

and the right person to be charged with this crime.

NARRATOR Dr. G's next step is to analyze

the path of the b*ll*ts to gain insight

into the victim's last moments.

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Dr. G starts by examining the two g*nsh*t

wounds to the head and neck.

DR. G The one caused a skull fracture,

really didn't cause much injury to the brain.

Uh, the one in his neck just goes out beneath the scalp.

Doesn't really hit any major vessels in his neck.

Didn't really do much.

So those don't k*ll him.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G makes the standard Y incision

across John Walker's chest.

DR. G You have to be very attentive at the initial part

of that Y incision because you don't want to destruct

anything because you want to find

the path of those projectiles.

NARRATOR She then immediately takes

samples from John's pelvic veins for a toxicology test.

I go ahead and take my toxicology from his iliac veins

because toxicology may be important in this case.

We certainly don't expect this -year-old man who

works every day to have dr*gs in his system, but I'll tell you,

the vast majority of home invasions we see unusually

of drug dealers or people who deal dr*gs or some-- something

to do with the drug trade.

NARRATOR Dr. G puts a rush on the toxicology

and then moves on, removing the chest

plate in order to follow the paths of the remaining b*ll*ts.

How many are lethal?

What could he have done after that g*n show,

and did they k*ll him right away?

What's going on?

You cannot say for sure until you get inside and you follow

the path of that projectile through the body,

and then you document what harm that b*llet did to that inside

of the body until it exits.

We got a lot of blood.

NARRATOR Dr. G moves on to examine the g*nsh*t

wound in the victim's arm.

It goes through his arm, just the muscle of his arm,

kind of behind the bone, and comes upward and exits.

NARRATOR She also examines the b*llet

wounds to the shoulder, chest, and one above the left nipple.

, , , , .

All of those b*ll*ts would--

probably were survivable, except for the one through his heart.
[ … ]

The projectile that entered just outside of that left nipple

goes upward and completely destroys that heart.

It goes through the right ventricle,

the left ventricle, part of the atrium,

part of the pulmonary artery.

It ruins a tricuspid valve.

So it is a mess.

I recover, uh, the one projectile that k*lled him,

and that's the one that destroys the heart.

That could have been really hard to find.

That really did a lot of damage.

I weigh it.

I measure it.

it's a medium caliber.

It was slightly deformed, but it looks like a . to me.

NARRATOR Dr. G gives the b*llet to Detective Hussey, who

will send it to ballistics to see if it matches

the ones found at the scene.

In the meantime, she takes a closer look

to see if the path the b*ll*ts took

can tell her anything else about how the m*rder went down.

What could he have done after these projectiles

go through his body?

Was he getting out of bed?

Did he struggle?

NARRATOR After looking at the angles the b*ll*ts

entered and exited the victim's body,

Dr. G makes a key discovery.

DR. G Wow.

Look at that.

All of these projectiles are going upward.

Almost very similar angles.

That actually tells me a lot.

What that tells me is somebody's sh**ting him basically

while he's flat in bed.

He never moved.

Well, what's that about?

[music playing]

NARRATOR During the internal exam of -year-old John Walker

who was sh*t multiple times, Dr. G has just

made a startling discovery.

This guy didn't move at all.

So somebody's just unloading in this fellow while he's in bed.

This isn't adding up.

Uh, why didn't he try to get out of the way?

Most of the time, uh, a victim's

not going to let someone stand there and sh**t him.

OK?

I mean that's just not human nature.

He would have tried to defend himself.

DR. G The wife's story that there were screaming going on,

three guys in ski masks demanding dr*gs and alcohol,

it's just not making sense.

NARRATOR Dr. G is puzzled as to why

the victim didn't move as he was being sh*t seven times.

And after learning from the crime lab

that no DNA was found on her swabs, she has only one place

left to look for answers, the toxicology report.

We're going to look to see if he has any illicit dr*gs

because is this home invasion have anything

to do with some extracurricular activity

this guy may be involved in?

[music playing]

NARRATOR Two weeks later, Dr. G gets the results

from the toxicology lab, and while there's

no trace of illegal dr*gs in John's body,

there's one finding that catches her eye.

He did have a very high level of diphenhydramine,

three times the upper level of what you

would use, uh, as a sleep aid.

Now, diphenhydramine is fairly safe.

You'd need lots of it to k*ll you,

but that would really be enough, uh, to make him fall asleep.

NARRATOR Now she knows why the victim wasn't moving as he

was being riddled with b*ll*ts.

This clearly knocked him out.

He was sleeping the whole time.

Well, what's that about?

NARRATOR Dr. G immediately calls Detective Hussey

to report her findings to him, and he shares the results

of the ballistics tests done on the b*llet

taken from John's body.

We compare, um, the projectiles taken

from the victim's body and the projectiles that we discovered

at the scene, and all those b*ll*ts

were fired from the same g*n.

So indication is that we're only looking for one sh**t.

This wife has some more explaining to do.

I re-contacted, uh, um, the victim's wife and asked her

if she would come to the Orange County Sheriff's Office

for another interview I, um--

I told her that as we continued with our investigation there

were some discrepancies and we needed to talk

to her again and-- and try to--

try to clear some of these things up.

DR. G Detective Hussey talks to the wife again

and confronts her with the information

that the medical examiner said he didn't get up

and tried to fight these defendants.

JOHN HUSSEY She, um, initially stuck to her story about,
[ … ]

uh-- about the home invasion.

She-- she reiterated the-- the fact that there

were three individuals.

And, uh-- and I let her, um--

I let her finish her story, and, uh-- and then I told

her the results of the tox.

I told her all of--

about all of the evidence that we had collected,

and I told her basically that her story did

not fit the physical evidence.

NARRATOR Faced with Dr. G's autopsy findings,

Patty Walker finally caves under the pressure

and tells a different story.

Her second story is that the guy's a jerk.

He abuses her.

There was alcohol involved.

They were drinking.

He became abusive to her like he always does.

She admits to putting a large amount

of diphenhydramine, a sleep aid, in his drink

to get him to go to sleep.

Then he went to bed, and, uh, she waited until he was asleep,

went in and got his revolver, uh, out of the bedroom,

out of a drawer, and she sh*t him as he slept.

[music playing]

DR. G She then tries to make the house

looks like it's been ransacked.

She actually puts pry marks on the door

so it looks like somebody pried the door open.

NARRATOR Then Patty tells Detective Hussey

something that doesn't add up.

She says she tied herself up and got in the closet,

but he doubts she could have done that without help.

So he digs a little deeper.

Now, interesting, they were able to match her cell phone

records from her saying when this home invasion occurred,

and she supposedly passed out and tied up,

they look at her cell phone records.

She's making phone calls.

Who is she making phone calls to?

Her male friend.

We discovered that she had a boyfriend,

and that, um, she'd been seeing this individual on the side.

NARRATOR Detectives tracked down Patty Walker's boyfriend,

-year-old Derek Marino.

JOHN HUSSEY We confronted him with the evidence that we had.

He admitted that, uh, he had gotten

a call from this victim's wife, telling him that--

that she had k*lled her husband and that she needed his help.

NARRATOR Derek admits to police that he helped tie up Patty,

and then hid the m*rder w*apon.

He took it to his home and buried it in the backyard.

Our forensics people, uh, came out and dug up the g*n

and collected it.

NARRATOR And with that, the final piece of evidence

needed for an arrest is uncovered.

The g*n that the gentleman friend gave to detective

Hussey, they test fire that and that matched the b*llet that I

pulled out of the victim.

He clearly just gave it up.

There was nothing he said, uh, that they couldn't confirm.

And so everything made sense.

So it all pointed to her.

NARRATOR Thanks to Dr. G and Detective Hussey's teamwork,

Patricia Walker is charged with second degree m*rder

and is sentenced to years in prison.

It was a horrible thing to do, k*ll somebody in their sleep,

and--

and justice is served.

NARRATOR Patty's friend Derek Marino is found guilty of being

an accessory after the fact and is

sentenced to two years of house arrest

and two years of probation.

Her male friend didn't get off Scot free.

JOHN HUSSEY Without the physical evidence and without,

um, the information from the medical examiner's office,

we may very well have just taken her at face value and, um--

and moved on and-- and, uh--

looking for three individuals that didn't exist.

The most rewarding part is that somebody doesn't get

by with a m*rder, and that I was able to add a little piece

of the puzzle to help Detective Hussey get

the correct perpetrator.

[music playing]

NARRATOR Dr. G knows all too well about untimely deaths.

It's clearly something we see in the morgue

on a regular basis.

NARRATOR So when a young woman's life ends suddenly,

she is determined to uncover the truth.

DR. G This is a -year-old woman just found

dead in her brother's house.

We don't know really what her cause of death

is going to be until we do that autopsy.

[music playing]

NARRATOR It's a chilly winter morning in St. Cloud, Florida,

and Robert Sanchez is late for work.

But before he heads out the door,

he checks on his younger sister Isabel who came to stay

with him a few days ago.

They were fairly close because they were orphaned
[ … ]

at an early age, but he's basically

a street person except when she comes to live with him.

He keeps a rope for her.

She hasn't been feeling well the past few days.

She felt tired.

She's been in bed.

NARRATOR Robert finds her unresponsive.

He immediately calls , and paramedics raced to the scene.

DR. G No signs of life.

She was dead.

[music playing]

NARRATOR Police arrive and immediately

question Isabel's brother.

Robert tells investigators that his sister has struggled

with addiction all her life.

DR. G He knows she's used both cr*ck and regular cocaine.

She'll take anything, illicit or prescription,

and she has been an alcoholic for most of her life.

Her brother tried to keep her straight,

but it was a task he just couldn't do.

It was devastating for him.

NARRATOR Investigators search the house

thoroughly for any evidence.

DR. G The police have to look for dr*gs,

look for drug paraphernalia, look for anything

that's out of place.

They don't find anything.

NARRATOR Now it's up to Dr. G to put the pieces of the puzzle

together.

DR. G There's a lot of possibilities.

Ultimately we have to figure it out.

[music playing]

NARRATOR At the busy District morgue,

the body of -year-old Isabel Sanchez,

who d*ed suddenly under mysterious circumstances,

has just arrived.

The only family she has is this older brother

who periodically takes her in.

She's basically a street person on and off.

NARRATOR Dr. G turns to Isabelle's case history,

hoping it will shed some light on the cause

of Isabel's sudden death.

That's interesting.

She's been in the hospital several times for overdoses.

She has had several near-death experiences

with very high levels of everything,

from alcohol to cocaine to opiates.

NARRATOR And to make matters worse,

Isabel had recently shared some devastating news

with her brother.

DR. G Her brother said several weeks ago

she told him that she was diagnosed with breast cancer

and that she was receiving chemotherapy.

He said she came back from one of her cancer treatments

and didn't feel good, and in fact,

he said she hasn't been wanting to eat the day before she dies.

She felt tired and just wanted to go to bed.

NARRATOR Dr. G will also have to consider a darker scenario.

DR. G Maybe she's had enough.

She knows what kind of life she's leading.

Now she's got this diagnosis of cancer,

and maybe that was the coup de grace.

Is it a su1c1de?

I don't know.

Foul play and trauma were never high on my radar.

Of course, because of her lifestyle,

I have to consider foul play.

It'll be interesting to see what the autopsy shows.

[music playing]

When I do the external, I need to see what her state of health

is.

When I first see her, I'm taken aback.

She looks bad.

She looks very ill.

She's got overall poor muscle mass.

Is that cocaine?

Is that cancer?

Is that just her lifestyle?

Does she has a chronic infection?

All of those things could cause this.

I'm looking for just minor trauma

that may suggest a struggle.

I start looking for any kind of contusion, bruises.

There's nothing here.

No evidence of any type of, uh, trauma.

NARRATOR Dr. G sees no external signs of su1c1de or foul play,

but she will have to complete the autopsy to rule them out.

Look at this.

I [inaudible] her breast and she does have a breast mass.

I can feel very firm nodule, uh, at least

three centimeters in that right breast just above the nipple.

NARRATOR Dr. G wonders if the cancer is what k*lled Isabel

or if her death was caused by something else.

So it'll be interesting to see why she dies.

The answers are gonna lie in the autopsy.

Let me open her up and see how--

if I see anything.

[music playing]

We might just find some swelling in her brain,

uh, from the dr*gs and alcohol.
[ … ]

We might find the stroke.

This could be the cause of death.

And I'm also going to be looking for any kind of metastasis.

Certainly the cancer can spread more than they'd realize.

Oftentimes we-- we might find it in the brain.

NARRATOR Dr. G's morgue tech Tom Hemphill pulls

back Isabel's scalp and saws open the skull,

revealing the brain.

Let's see.

I section her brain and I don't see

anything out of the ordinary.

There's no evidence of foul play.

So far, nothing.

She certainly doesn't have any metastasis.

No signs of stroke.

Her brain does not look like it's the cause of death.

Let's see what else is going on.

[music playing]

NARRATOR With her scalpel in hand, Dr. G

makes the standard Y incision down Isabel's torso,

then she collects blood samples from the iliac veins

for the toxicology analysis.

She's used both cr*ck and cocaine.

She's a chronic alcoholic.

We know she's into prescription dr*gs.

So you bet my main focus is gonna be getting

enough blood for toxicology.

NARRATOR Dr. G puts a rush on the results.

They won't be back for several days,

so she focuses on Isabel's breast cancer.

We don't know much about her breast cancer.

I need to biopsy it.

So I take multiple sections of that firm, white mass

in an area of yellow fat.

I remove part of that and save some of it

so I can look at it under the microscope

to read if it's cancer or not.

NARRATOR Next, Dr. G turns her attention to Isabel's heart.

Let's try the heart.

The first thing I do is weigh the heart.

It was of normal size.

I look at the coronaries.

Her coronaries looked good.

Her heart appeared normal.

Her heart don't look bad at all.

Normal size, normal shape.

And we look at the lung.

NARRATOR And at first glance, Dr. G sees that Isabel's lungs

are anything but ordinary.

They look much worse than smokers' lungs,

if you can believe it.

That's nasty.

Is that the cause of death?

[music playing]

NARRATOR Dr. G has just come across an unusual finding

in the lungs of -year-old Isabel

Sanchez, who was found dead at her brother's house

after feeling ill.

Her lungs do not look normal.

They are the grayest, blackest looking thing, uh,

that you'll see.

I clearly know that she smokes cr*ck cocaine.

NARRATOR Now Dr. G removes the lungs

and begins dissecting them.

After examining them closely, she

sees no signs of lung cancer.

I don't see any metastasis.

I don't see any tumor nodules in them.

The-- the-- the breast cancer certainly

didn't go to the lungs, which breast cancer often does.

I didn't see any of that.

Also, we're looking for blood clots

because some cancers cause a hypercoagulable state,

and she didn't have any blood clots.

She did not die from a pulmonary embolis.

All right.

They looked ugly, but they looked functional.

I don't see much else going on here.

NARRATOR Given Isabel's history of alcohol abuse,

Dr. G carefully examines her liver, hoping

it will provide some clues.

According to the brother, she's a chronic alcoholic.

One of the common things we see with alcohol

is going to be cirrhosis.

She does look like she has abused alcohol.

Um, she's kind of got a rounded liver,

and it's somewhat yellow, but I've seen much worse.

She doesn't have any evidence of cirrhosis.

I don't know.

NARRATOR Dr. G moves on from the liver to the pancreas,

and finally something catches her eye.

Oh my god.

There is something abnormal in her pancreas.

There is kind of a--

edema or fluid buildup in some of the tissues

surrounding the pancreas, and the pancreas itself, uh,

looks like there's some hemorrhage in it.

There's little areas of necrosis or kind

of dissolving of the fat surrounding the pancreas.

It looks terrible.
[ … ]

She clearly has pancreatitis, inflammation of your pancreas.

I don't know if it was enough to k*ll her.

If the pancreatitis was widespread enough,

that certainly could've caused her death.

NARRATOR But Dr. G won't know if it's severe enough

to k*ll her until she looks at the tissue

under the microscope.

We've got some of the pieces, but we

don't have all the pieces, and we don't

know how it fits together.

We know she has a mass in her breast.

Was that cancer or not?

We know she likes to drink any kind of alcohol

she can get her hands on and use any kind of dr*gs

she can get her hands on.

Is that the cause of death?

At this point, I still don't know why she d*ed.

We're gonna have to do a lot of tests, look on the microscope,

and actually do some investigation also,

see what we can find out about her.

The toxin micros, I don't know if they're gonna come up

with the answer or not, but they're gonna

give us pieces to the puzzle.

[music playing]

I will look under the microscope to see

the extent of the pancreatitis, just as I'll

look under the microscope to see if her breast

cancer is breast cancer or not.

That's fibrous tissue.

Thank God she was lying.

She was never diagnosed with cancer.

I hate to say this, she's claiming she has cancer

so she can get more dr*gs.

People are sympathetic to people with cancer.

I'm seeing more and more people lying about that

so they can get dr*gs.

It's sad.

[music playing]

NARRATOR When Dr. G examines the pancreatic tissue

under the microscope, she makes an important finding.

She clearly has some pancreatitis,

but I don't think it's enough, uh, to cause her death.

I think that at this point toxicology

is going to be the answer.

[music playing]

I'm expecting a mixed bag of alcohol and maybe prescription

dr*gs with some illicit dr*gs.

Lo and behold, her toxicology doesn't take a long time,

which surprised me.

Her toxicology was completely negative.

She had no alcohol, she had no illicit dr*gs,

and she had no prescription dr*gs.

I certainly can rule out an overdose.

She didn't k*ll herself.

NARRATOR Dr. G thinks back over her autopsy findings,

including the unexpected tox results.

And after considering all the possibilities,

she now knows what happened to Isabel.

Now I know why she d*ed.

[music playing]

I think what happened is she was drinking.

I think she got pancreatitis.

I think she started k*lling off part of her pancreas, which

caused inflammation and irritation

to the pancreas, which caused her to not feel well.

You don't feel like eating.

She didn't want to eat, but she also didn't want to drink.

I think that pancreatitis caused her to stop drinking.

For her, who always has alcohol running through her vessels,

that can be deadly.

This was a girl that started drinking at an early age

and never stopped, and when she finally

stopped because her pancreas was hurting her

and she didn't want to take anything by mouth,

the lack of alcohol in her blood ultimately caused her death

by going into withdrawal.

Her brain has gotten so used to that alcohol

that it can't go on without it.

She probably went into alcohol withdrawal.

Your brain is so depressed and the neurotransmitters get so

change, it actually changes the chemicals in your brain

that when you don't have that alcohol,

you start hallucinating or you start seizing,

and you can actually cause your respiratory and heart

centers to stop and you die.

If she would have sought medical intervention

with the pancreatitis, her death would probably

be avoided because they would have treated

her for alcohol withdrawal.

NARRATOR But now Dr. G has one last duty to fulfill.

She contacts Isabel's brother.

He was surprised that she had the pancreatitis

and that she probably d*ed from a lack of alcohol

and not from an overdose.

But I think he's relieved that at least it wasn't a su1c1de.

She d*ed the way she lived, and that didn't surprise him.

This kind of death is sad.

It's a wasted life.

The choices we make are often what cause us to die early.

If you are that much of an alcoholic
[ … ]

and that you mix it with cocaine and you mix it

with prescription dr*gs, that is a recipe, no doubt about it,

for an early death and a trip to my morgue.

[music playing]