Dr. G: Medical Examiner - Season 7, Episode 3 - Deadly Mistake - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: A woman calls 911 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: I'm really worried she got a hold of some drugs
and she killed himself. NARRATOR: And it becomes a shattering case. I'm like, take a deep breath.
I just can't believe this. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,
shocking revelations. These are the everyday cases of "Dr. G Medical Examiner." [MUSIC PLAYING]
Each body that comes through the doors of the District 9 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 murder, 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 11:00 AM on a sizzling summer morning when
the 911 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 1 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.
[MUSIC PLAYING] 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 murder. 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 violence 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 25 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.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. G is on a mission to find out why Ruben Delgado, a 37-year-old waiter at a local restaurant,
died 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 shot with a small caliber weapon. 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 died. 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 gunshot 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 attack 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?
[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. G's autopsy has yet to uncover a cause of death in the mysterious case of 37-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. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 attack.
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 500 grams. A normal heart for him should be 375, 350. 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 gunshot 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: One week later, Ruben's lab work is finally
delivered to the District 9 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. G has just discovered
in the toxicology report what killed Ruben Delgado. Now she can give police the information
they've been waiting for. I am relieved because now I know why he died, 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 drugs 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 beat 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 drugs 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 murderer. 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 drugs. They can ruin your life and they can kill 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
beat 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 19-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 19-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 died. 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 19-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 threat.
DR. G: She looks at them and said, I feel like killing myself and this baby. I'm gonna jump in front of a car.
I'm gonna get a gun. 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 911 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 killed 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 19-year-old girl who's about eight,
nine weeks pregnant who's very despondent, two days earlier had said she wanted to kill 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 killed herself with drugs. I don't know how she got them in that health care facility,
but people find a way when they want to commit suicide. 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 7,000 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 died 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 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 murdered 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 gunshot 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 died 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
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 murdered 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 kill 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 murder, but if a person didn't kill 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 50 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 drugs, 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. [MUSIC PLAYING]

A pregnant teen is admitted to a mental hospital after threatening suicide but is found dead days later. Dr. G must dig deep to uncover what took Claudia’s life.

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

Brief Summary

Dr. G investigates the deaths of Ruben Delgado and Claudia Alvarez, revealing drug overdose and rare meningitis as causes.

Key points

A Hellish Scene. A woman reports her boyfriend dead on the floor, leading to a tense investigation.
The Mystery Deepens. Dr. G uncovers troubling details about Ruben's health and the girlfriend's story.
A Shocking Revelation. Dr. G discovers Ruben had no evidence of cancer, raising suspicions about his girlfriend.
The Tragic Truth. Ruben's toxicology report reveals a deadly combination of drugs leading to his death.
A Growing Epidemic. Dr. G reflects on the rise of prescription medication deaths in the U.S.
Unexpected Findings in the Autopsy. Dr. G discovers alarming signs during the autopsy that raise questions about foul play.

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What could she have done to him?

0:35WatchJun 29, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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