Dr. G: Medical Examiner - Season 6, Episode 12 - Fatal Encounters - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: A 25-year-old man is rushed to the ER with a mysterious illness. He's got this skin disease that's expanding
in front of their very eyes. And within hours, he's dead. NARRATOR: Now Dr. G is forced to consider
a catastrophic possibility. It's one of those things that terrorists could use to wipe out a large part of the population.
Like, wow. NARRATOR: Then, when a man answers a knock at the door, he's shot dead in cold blood.
There's no rhyme or reason to this world sometimes. NARRATOR: And police are counting on Dr. G
to help them track down the perpetrator before it's too late. Everyone in the system is working so this killer
is no longer out on the street. [THEME MUSIC] NARRATOR: Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,
shocking revelations-- these are the everyday cases of "Dr. G, Medical Examiner."
It's after closing time at the District 9 morgue, and Dr. G is finishing up some paperwork from the day's cases,
when she receives a surprise call from a doctor in the ICU at a local hospital. I remember distinctly.
It's about 7 o'clock at night. [INAUDIBLE] that certainly doesn't happen every day.
It looks like it's-- NARRATOR: He informs Dr. G that one of his patients has just died mysteriously less than 24
hours after being admitted. Unfortunately, they weren't able to get a diagnosis,
and they really felt that this needed to be diagnosed because it killed him so quickly.
He was worried that this was a public health concern. And now they're asking, could I do the autopsy?
I am worrying. Most of the time, we can come up with an answer, but sometimes we don't.
But I like a mystery. NARRATOR: It all started about a day earlier, shortly after 25-year-old Johnny Tran arrived in Orlando
on a flight from Los Angeles. He'd been looking forward to spending a long weekend with friends.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: As soon as he got off that plane and he met his friends, they realized that something
is clearly wrong with him. He had a cough, and he was getting rapidly short of breath.
His friends realized that he was very sick. NARRATOR: They rush Johnny to a nearby hospital,
but his condition continues to deteriorate rapidly. Within an hour or two of him coming to the emergency room,
he's innovated and on a ventilator. NARRATOR: A team of ER doctors scramble to find out what's going on.
But it isn't long before a chilling new development stops them dead in their tracks.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: He's got this skin lesion that's going down his neck onto the upper chest.
He didn't have that when he came in. His skin disease started expanding in front of their very eyes.
They put him in an isolation room in the ICU. But he has a rapid downhill course.
Within less than 18 hours, he's dead. It's always a tragedy when somebody dies so quickly
and at such a young age. NARRATOR: The 25-year-old had moved to the United States
from Vietnam just six months earlier. And when authorities contact his parents back home,
they are absolutely grief stricken. They're devastated by the news, and they just wanted to know why he died.
NARRATOR: This morning, the atmosphere at the District 9 morgue is unusually tense.
It is? I know I'm testifying on it. I just didn't know. That's not until November.
Why would it be in my office? I don't know. It's not in the file. I got bigger fish to fry.
This poor fellow is a tragedy. But he's got everybody on pins and needles because it might be something infectious.
You know, coming off of an airplane, immediately getting sick and dying relatively quickly with this huge rapidly
progressing skin necrosis. Like, wow. Do we know anything about this? Let's get some info, and I'll be right back.
NARRATOR: Now it's up to Dr. G and her team to figure out exactly what happened to Johnny Tran.
And her first order of business is to review his hospital records. All right, let's see here.
NARRATOR: As she reads through the file, she notes right away that ER doctors ran a battery of tests
on the 25-year-old. When he's in the ER, one of the things they do is a chest X-ray.
And they could see that he had a bad pneumonia. NARRATOR: Pneumonia could explain his coughing,
but it doesn't account for his strange skin lesions and extremely rapid decline.
Something else was going on. He got a lot of symptoms. NARRATOR: Digging deeper into the medical records,
another notation catches Dr. G's attention. One of Johnny's doctors had come up with an alarming but plausible theory.
He was worried that this was anthrax. Anthrax was a bacterial disease, and usually, it's spread through contact with soil
or hides of certain animals. And it's very, very rare to see this in the United States.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: This is not something we normally see, but he had a rapid death and he's got skin lesions.
So that kind of fits this fellow. NARRATOR: With this new finding in play, Dr. G knows that there's a lot at stake.
If the 25-year-old died from anthrax poisoning, an untold number of others could be at risk.
It's one of those diseases that you worry about as a weapon of mass destruction, as a way
that terrorists could use to wipe out a large part of the population. NARRATOR: In fact, back in 2001, a terrorist
sent several packages containing a powdered form of anthrax through the US Postal Service.
The bacteria made 22 people sick and ended up killing five. I don't have anything.
NARRATOR: Now Dr. F wonders if Johnny could be the first victim in another terror attack.
Is this some kind of terrorist bioterrorism? And he's the first case that we're seeing.
I mean, who knows? We really needed a look at him. NARRATOR: Dr. G informs her chief medical investigator,
Steve Hanson, that a body needs to be retrieved from the hospital. As with all cases where there's a possibility of contagion,
he must follow strict safety guidelines to protect himself and others from any risk of exposure.
Nobody ever handles a body, be it the investigators or transport service, without wearing gloves.
If it's appropriate, they'll wear gowns and masks. Our transport people will put the body in a body bag,
seal it, bring it into here, and we will get the body into refrigeration as soon as we can
because that's going to help mitigate the potential of exposure. NARRATOR: Back in the morgue, the entire staff will be taking
preventative measures as well. We're definitely going to take precautions. First of all, I'm going to limit who's in that room with me.
I will ask which tech wants to volunteer for the job. OK, Tom. Are you ready? TOM: Yep.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: I will make sure we're gown head to toe. We've got the face shield.
We've got the N95 masks. So we're going to need sterile stuff. We get a game plan on how we're going
to limit any type of spray or any type of splashing. Better safe than sorry. All right, let's see.
Oh, boy. Brother, he looks sick. He looks thin, almost debilitated. Oh, he's a skinny little kid.
OK. Let's see what's going on here. NARRATOR: Dr. G's first priority is to examine the unusual lesions on Johnny's neck.
Wow, this is a sick, sick [INAUDIBLE].. It was one of the more disturbing things
I've seen on an external exam. This guy's got problems. Oh, boy. Something terrible is going on here.
That is just nasty looking. NARRATOR: Dr. G is reeling from the gruesome sight of skin lesions on 25-year-old Johnny Tran's neck.
I've never seen anything quite like that. Let's see-- oozing. Let's see what it's oozing.
He clearly has some type of rapidly developing skin infection across the neck and onto the upper chest.
You get the sides of the neck, too? Did you get this? Yep. My question is, what's causing this?
Maybe this is anthrax. NARRATOR: Sores on the skin are one of the telltale signs
of anthrax. But as she examines the lesions more closely, she isn't entirely convinced.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: With anthrax, you would expect a black [INAUDIBLE] scab on it. He had more of a red ulcerated lesion.
So it doesn't look like anthrax. But I can't say for sure till I get inside. NARRATOR: Dr. G collects tissue samples from the lesions
to send to the lab for analysis. The results could shed light on what was causing Johnny's skin necrosis.
We don't know what that's going to be. But we certainly need to culture it. NARRATOR: In the meantime, she continues
scouring Johnny's body for anything out of the ordinary. And right away, something odd catches her eye.
He's got these large lymph nodes. NARRATOR: Lymph nodes are usually tiny rounded glands
found throughout the body and vital to the proper functioning of the immune system.
He had almost a lumpy, bumpy neck. It was quite a sight. What is causing them? I'm not going to have this answer by just
looking externally on him. We'll see what the internal shows. You want iodine or alcohol or anything?
That's OK. I'll just got for a-- Gimmie, oh, like, you just give me the sterile scalpel.
NARRATOR: Dr. G makes the standard Y incision across Johnny's chest. JAN GARAVAGLIA: When I open the body,
I look for anything that could help me explain how he got into this state. NARRATOR: Based on Johnny's diagnosis of pneumonia,
her first stop is the lungs. He's got a bad pneumonia. I can already feel it. So we know his lungs are going to be bad when I get there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lots of adhesions. I have seen bad lungs in my life, but I have not seen lungs this bad.
NARRATOR: In fact, Johnny's lungs are so severely damaged that instead of floating freely within the chest cavity,
they have actually become stuck to the chest wall. You know what the problem is?
It's not so much the adhesion as his lung is disintegrating every time you touch it.
I couldn't get the left lung out in one piece because it was so necrotic. This guy's lungs are really bad.
This wasn't a typical pneumonia. NARRATOR: But as with the lesions on Johnny's neck,
Dr. G knows that this type of lung damage could not have been caused by anthrax.
With anthrax, we're expecting to see hemorrhage in the mediastinum, that area between the two lungs.
But you don't see anything in the lungs. So clearly, this wasn't anthrax. Whoa, look at that.
But I do see something very odd. Do you see these? - Oh, geez. Gosh. His lungs have areas of little white spots all over.
NARRATOR: These white spots are a telltale sign of something both lethal and highly contagious.
That's not good. I really strongly suspected what this was. That lung pretty much gave it away for me.
Oh, wow, his neck is stiff. NARRATOR: Dr. G believes that what she has just discovered
in the lungs of 25-year-old Johnny Tran holds the key to the case. Those little white speckles in the lungs gave it away.
I've never seen it that bad. I am pretty sure it looks like tuberculosis. NARRATOR: Tuberculosis, or TB, is
a deadly and extremely contagious disease that is spread through the air. You know, TB is probably the number one infectious disease
killer in the world. We don't have a very high rate of TB in the United States. Some countries, it's rampant.
NARRATOR: And despite the lower incidence rate in the United States, Dr. G is beginning to suspect that Johnny
may have contracted TB. But TB didn't explain everything. We still have the skin lesion, which doesn't fit with TB.
So I really think something else is going on here. NARRATOR: She sends the cultures of the skin lesions and lung
tissue off to the lab to test for TB and any other bacterial, fungal, or viral infections.
Now all Dr. G can do is wait for the results of the lab work and hope that it can help her put the pieces of this puzzle
together. So I was interested to see what the cultures would show. I can't wait to figure out what's going on.
NARRATOR: One week later, Johnny's lab results are finally delivered to the District 9 morgue.
Now Dr. G is pinning her last hopes on Johnny's cultures. And the culture has confirmed that it was a tuberculosis.
But when she reviews the cultures of his skin lesions, they reveal something completely unexpected,
something that finally solves the mysterious death of Johnny Tran. He really had the double whammy.
It was just fascinating to put these pieces of the puzzle together. NARRATOR: Dr. G has just reviewed
the bacterial cultures of the skin lesions and lungs of 25-year-old Johnny Tran.
And they contain a vital clue that finally makes sense out of his sudden death. Once I get everything back, you know, things start
really falling into place. NARRATOR: On September the 21st, Johnny Tran arrived at Orlando
International Airport. He's looking forward to being reunited with some old friends,
but he's also been struggling to ignore some troubling symptoms. He was ill. He's losing weight, slowly getting more debilitated.
NARRATOR: The primary culprit-- tuberculosis. It was probably breathed in when he was in Vietnam.
This guy had probably been infected for years. For most people, they can get what's called a latent disease,
and it's living dormant in your body. NARRATOR: All the while, Johnny's immune system
has been suppressing the infection. But eventually, it can no longer fight it off.
Over probably a period of months, it became active tuberculosis. And he went on to develop this terrible disease.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: His TB spread through his bloodstream. It ended up going into his lungs, causing a pneumonia.
NARRATOR: Johnny's friends realize right away that he's extremely ill and rush him to the emergency room.
They could see that he had a bad pneumonia, but they didn't know what was going on with him.
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the infection has already spread into Johnny's lymph nodes,
causing them to become enlarged and inflamed. The TB keeps growing in those lymph nodes
to the point where they put pressure on the skin and eventually erode through the skin.
NARRATOR: Eventually, the skin becomes necrotic and dies, which, in turn, creates open sores on his neck.
And the cultures of the lesions reveal that a second deadly infection entered his body
through these open wounds. He didn't have just TB, he had a necrotizing skin infection
from staph aureus bacteria. Staph aureus, this was a common bacteria that causes a lot of infections.
NARRATOR: And the addition of the staph infection spells certain and swift disaster.
This staph aureus bacteria is probably the coup de grace, just the final insult. He was already well on his way
from dying of TB. That just tipped the boat just a little bit. That bacteria took hold in his skin,
and then spread through his bloodstream, and then spread very quickly to his already weakened lungs,
to the point where he has to be intubated, but his lungs are so necrotic from the TB
that those lungs were well beyond repair. And he quickly dies. NARRATOR: With the definitive cause of death in hand,
Dr. G immediately reports her findings to the state health department. They did a great job tracking down his contacts,
and all of his friends were tested and treated. NARRATOR: Her next call is to Johnny's relatives in Vietnam.
The family was a little flabbergasted. They are still in shock that he died so quick.
I think the mystery of this case is why this guy didn't do anything about this. It's always unbelievable to me the way people
can walk around being so sick and not do anything about it. It's a totally unnecessary death.
This man could have easily been treated with medication. Some TB is drug resistant in certain pockets of the world,
but his wasn't. It's sad that he wasn't listening to his body. NARRATOR: Unexpected deaths are nothing new to Dr. G.
But when a grisly homicide comes into the morgue, she finds herself facing a whole different set of challenges.
All right, let's see here. Let's see here. We have a 49-year-old unfortunate fellow dead on his kitchen floor with multiple gunshot wounds.
That is just a shame. There's no rhyme or reason to this world sometimes. I don't understand the senseless killing.
NARRATOR: It's a cool October evening in Orlando, Florida. Newly divorced Karen Douglas has been
living with her older brother, Keith, for the past three months. The two are enjoying a relaxing evening at home,
when suddenly, they're interrupted by an unexpected knock at their back door. He goes to answer the door.
She says, all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose. [GUNFIRE] She hears gunfire, multiple gunfire.
She ducks for cover, takes off through the front door, and calls 911. EMS is dispatched.
Police are dispatched. And they find him dead on the kitchen floor with multiple gunshot wounds.
NARRATOR: Police immediately secure the area, and their first call is to chief medical investigator Steve
Hanson at the District 9 morgue. They contacted the medical examiner's office so that an investigator could go out to the scene
and collect as much information as we can. JAN GARAVAGLIA: Now when we have a case like this,
the body is the jurisdiction of the medical examiner. So the police aren't going to touch
the body until my representative gets there. NARRATOR: Once on the scene, the medical investigator
examines and photographs the body, while police launch a full scale homicide investigation.
Really, the only thing the police knows is that this fellow went out to his backdoor,
and gunshots were heard. NARRATOR: And although the victim's sister, Karen, is overcome with grief, detectives must question her
in hopes of gleaning any information that could lead to the perpetrator. The only thing she provided is that there has been
a dispute between her ex-husband and the decedent, her brother. NARRATOR: According to Karen, there
had been some tension between the two men since the divorce. But she insists to investigators that her ex-husband
isn't capable of murder. Things somewhat point to this ex-husband, but you know,
at this point, they don't know. There's really no evidence. NARRATOR: With few clues to go on,
police must consider a number of possible scenarios. Maybe it was an attempted robbery, which he interrupted.
There's a lot of gang activity. It could be drugs. It could be just a cold blooded random murder.
We have to keep all options open. NARRATOR: Unfortunately, at this stage, only one thing is certain.
A killer is on the loose. And there's no telling where or when he'll strike again.
We need the truth of what really happened. That's why we do an autopsy. The whole point is to make sure this killer
is no longer out on the street. NARRATOR: The body of 49-year-old Keith Douglas,
a construction worker gunned down at his home last night, has just arrived at the District 9 morgue.
Do we have labels on that guy yet? NARRATOR: And police are counting on Dr. G for much more
than just a cause of death. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it looks like he died from gunshot wounds.
But we need more information than that. The police need to know what happened and who did this to this person.
NARRATOR: And as with all homicides that come through her door, the clock is ticking.
The whole point is to make sure this killer is no longer out on the street. So that's why everyone in the system
is working so this doesn't happen again to someone else. All right, we're ready, right?
Oh, gosh. So when I first see him, he's covered in blood. The thing that strikes you first is that he's got a huge hole
in front of his left ear. Oh, Lord. And there appears to be multiple holes in his clothing.
So we've got a lot of holes. Besides gunshot wounds, I have to look for any other evidence
of trauma. Are there other signs of struggle? I'll be looking for trace evidence.
That's why his hands are bagged, so the evidence in his hands won't be contaminated.
Do you have his X-ray somewhere? Yes, ma'am. In the back, OK. NARRATOR: As with all cases involving gunfire,
Dr. G orders a full body X-ray. JAN GARAVAGLIA: The police are always hopeful that I
can find bullets in the body. So we do x-rays, pretty much head to toe. Interesting.
And sure enough, he does have projectiles in him. He's got five. NARRATOR: But this doesn't mean that Keith
was only shot five times. While some bullets get lodged in the body, others pass straight through.
Sometimes they exit the body, and they can't be found. OK, let's see what we're doing over here.
NARRATOR: Now Dr. G must determine exactly how many times Keith was shot and analyze
each of the gunshot wounds. What's the distance between the end of the barrel and the skin?
What are the angles? NARRATOR: This information could shed light on the circumstances
surrounding the crime and help police develop a profile of the killer. What can we tell about those wounds that
might help the investigation? It's really a puzzle. Because you really have to figure out
which is the entrance, which is the exit. NARRATOR: An entrance wound is usually small, round,
and surrounded by an area of scraped skin, while an exit wound is irregular in shape.
But every gunshot wound is just a little bit different. And there's always exceptions to the rules.
All right, let's see. You do a lot of diagramming-- where the holes are, what they look like, what its size is,
and where it's located on the body. NARRATOR: But after a careful examination, Dr. G is able to isolate each and every one of Keith
Douglas's bullet wounds. And the final count is staggering. At the end of the external, we know that he's got at least 10.
Why would somebody shoot somebody 10 times? NARRATOR: At that moment, the autopsy
is interrupted by her chief medical investigator Steve Hanson. So during the course of Dr. G's autopsy,
I got a call from the police department. Told me they found a gun. NARRATOR: Now Dr. G will need to retrieve the bullets
from Keith's body so senior firearms examiner and longtime colleague, Ed Love, can try to match them to the gun found
near the scene. Dr. G and I worked a lot of cases together. I love working with her.
The success rates in IDing a bullet back to a gun actually is very good. You can't really assume anything.
So now the most important is going to be recovering those bullets. NARRATOR: With scalpel in hand, Dr. G makes a standard Y shaped
incision down Keith's torso. She knows from the X-rays that he has one bullet lodged somewhere in his upper chest
cavity near the neck. See it, that hole? When I opened up the body, I can see that the path of the projectile went through the lung,
and there's blood there. NARRATOR: This is a critical finding. The blood is a sign that Keith's heart
was still pumping at the time that bullet entered his body. JAN GARAVAGLIA: So he would have still been alive
when he got that gunshot wound. There it is. Now when I recover that bullet, I find that it's a medium caliber, consistent with maybe a 9
millimeter. NARRATOR: Dr. G carefully places the bullet on an evidence tray and zeros in on the three
located in Keith's hip. One of those wounds actually goes to the iliac artery. That's a main artery in the pelvic region,
but there's no blood associated with it. So he clearly was already dead by the time
he got that gunshot wound. NARRATOR: Gently, she turns Keith on his side and painstakingly dissects his pelvic bone
to retrieve all three bullets lodged inside. When they're embedded in bone like that,
it's very difficult sometimes to retrieve the bullet, because you want to cut near the bullet
to be able to get it out, but you don't want to scratch it at all. NARRATOR: And as Dr. G carefully pulls them out,
she makes a key discovery. Well, look at that. The projectiles I found in the hip
were large calibers, like a 45. NARRATOR: The presence of two different caliber bullets inside the body can only mean one thing.
I have got two different guns being fired into this fellow, two people doing a shooting.
NARRATOR: This unexpected finding sends the homicide investigation into overdrive.
It now appears there are not one, but two killers on the loose. The perpetrators are still out walking around.
They need to be caught. NARRATOR: Police are in the midst of the full scale murder investigation
of 49-year-old Keith Douglas. And Dr. G has just uncovered surprising evidence that promises to turn the case on its head.
Definitely call the police to let them know that there are two individuals involved in this shooting
and two different guns. It could be drugs or an angry neighbor. It could be just a random murder.
You just don't know what's going on. NARRATOR: But so far, despite investigators' best efforts,
they haven't come up with any solid leads. They're up against the clock. They need to know who did this.
NARRATOR: Now, police are depending on Dr. G more than ever to uncover additional clues
from Keith's body. So we need to gather as much forensic information as we can. NARRATOR: Dr. G begins the cranial exam
with a careful examination of the gunshot wound to Keith's head. See all that soot on there?
Uh-huh. There's soot and gunpowder all within that wound, a lot of soot. Soot deep in the wound and soot on the edge,
a little bit of searing. Oh, that's nice. NARRATOR: The soot is a telltale sign that one of the killers
pressed the muzzle of his gun directly against Keith's head as he pulled the trigger--
a clue that offers revealing insight into the perpetrator. Here, this is clearly a contact wound to the side
of the head on the right side. Oftentimes when we see a contact wound, somebody is angry at somebody.
This sounds like a premeditated murder to me. NARRATOR: Using an oscillating saw,
morgue technician Tom Hemphill cuts through Keith's skull. JAN GARAVAGLIA: All right.
NARRATOR: And as Dr. G steps in to examine the brain, the metal projectile comes into view.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: Yeah, there we go. That projectile was also a medium caliber, like a 9 millimeter.
Here, take a nice picture of this. NARRATOR: And based on the severity of the internal damage, she can tell right away that this
was the shot that killed him. The wound to his head clearly killed him. You couldn't survive that wound at all.
NARRATOR: As the autopsy comes to a close, Dr. G relays her findings to homicide detectives.
I can give them the number of wounds in the body, which ones roughly in an order that occurred,
and I can give them five projectiles, five bullets. First thing I received in this case
was the five bullets from autopsy from Dr. Garavaglia. And those were in very good condition.
So we really had some good firearms evidence to deal with. NARRATOR: Now, it's up to Ed Love to compare these bullets
to the only gun they have, a 9 millimeter discovered near the scene of the crime.
When a bullet extends down the end of the barrel, there are unique nicks and imperfections on that barrel
that will impart unique characteristics on the edge of the bullet. So we can look at those individual marks that are left
and match those back to a gun. NARRATOR: And in this case, it doesn't take long for him to make a positive firearms match.
The good news was that the projectiles I recovered from the body actually matched that gun.
NARRATOR: Armed with this information, investigators begin a search of Florida's gun database.
And within less than an hour, they have a name. And guess whose gun it was? NARRATOR: The 9 millimeter gun used
to shoot Keith Douglas is registered to a man named Gary Hernandez, Karen's ex-husband.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: The police got a warrant for the arrest of the sister's ex-husband.
NARRATOR: It doesn't take long to track their suspect down. And by the end of the day, police have him in custody.
He's going to have some serious questions to answer. NARRATOR: After intense interrogation,
Gary confesses to the shooting. I have no doubt that they got their man. NARRATOR: But when it comes to the identity
of the second shooter, Hernandez is evasive. Using the evidence Dr. G discovered at autopsy,
along with the findings from the firearms examination, police continue to press him on specific details.
They confronted him with all the evidence. NARRATOR: Boxed into a corner, Hernandez ultimately cracks.
And after a week long investigation, detectives finally learn the truth behind the brutal murder
of Keith Douglas. He gave details of the crime that perfectly matched what I found at autopsy.
NARRATOR: Karen Douglas has been living with her older brother, Keith, since the recent divorce from her husband
of five years, Gary Hernandez. And ever since, there's been escalating tension between the two men.
And it came out that the decedent had said a derogatory comment to his sister's ex-husband.
That's the reason the ex-husband is mad at the decedent. NARRATOR: In fact, Hernandez is so
mad he decides to put an end to the dispute once and for all. And on the night of Keith's death, he and a friend
named Mark Edwards come up with a plan. They come to his back door. They knock. The decedent comes, opens the door.
It looks like they probably fired once at his chest at a distance which is about right for him opening the door
and them being at the doorway. They continue shooting. He drops. And then somebody comes up to him
and shoots him close range in front of his left ear. NARRATOR: This shot kills Keith instantly.
But the bloody rampage isn't over yet. The other fellow, meanwhile, is shooting him more towards his feet.
NARRATOR: Three of these bullets lodge in Keith's hip, but by this time, he is already dead.
JAN GARAVAGLIA: These two perpetrators run out of the house, and ultimately, within eight days of me
completing the autopsy, they were arrested and booked for murder. NARRATOR: A trial date is set, and both Dr. G and Ed
Love present their evidence to the jury, I'll testify to my findings, and of course, Ed Love
will testify to his findings of how he matched the projectile to the specific gun.
The jury saw fit to convict them, and each got 30 years in jail. NARRATOR: After the trial, both men appealed their convictions,
but were denied. In the end, Dr. G and her team at the District 9 morgue played an integral role in making
sure that justice was served. The importance of Dr. G can't be overstated. It is so important that you have a good pathologist
there to do the work and someone that cares about what they do. So when I was done with my part of the puzzle,
I had a lot of information. And when Ed was done with his exam, he had a lot of information.
And it all came together, and these two criminals, murderers, are off the street.
NARRATOR: But for Karen, it's small compensation for her loss. JAN GARAVAGLIA: The sister is devastated.
I can't imagine what she's going through. But I think I was able to close that chapter for her.
It is unbelievable how many cases I do because somebody insults or disses somebody else.
What a stupid reason to kill somebody. Check your emotions. Nothing is worth killing somebody over.
You run the risk of spending either your life or 30 years in jail. And I can guarantee you'll be dissed in jail, too.

Keith Douglas is met with a barrage of bullets as he opens his door. The police are looking to Dr. G for hard evidence to link certain suspects to the murder.

A Florida medical examiner takes viewers through puzzling cases while explaining procedures and conclusions.

Brief Summary

A young man dies from tuberculosis, while a homicide investigation reveals two shooters in a brutal murder case.

Key points

Mysterious Illness Claims Young Life. A 25-year-old man dies mysteriously after a rapid decline in health, raising public health concerns.
Dr. G's Investigation Begins. Dr. G is called to investigate the sudden death of Johnny Tran, a young man with a mysterious illness.
The Shocking Cause of Death. Lab results reveal that Johnny had tuberculosis and a necrotizing skin infection, leading to his tragic demise.
Two Killers on the Loose. Dr. G uncovers evidence suggesting two shooters were involved in the murder of Keith Douglas.
The Shocking Confession. Gary Hernandez confesses to the shooting but remains evasive about the second shooter.
Justice Served. Both shooters are convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison, thanks to Dr. G's findings.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I like a mystery.

Dr. G expresses her interest in solving the case.

2:18WatchJun 22, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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