Dr. G: Medical Examiner - Season 7, Episode 6 - Desperate Measures - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: A son discovers his mother bound and gagged and his father in bed riddled with bullets.
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 killers. 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 drugs 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." [MUSIC PLAYING] At the busy District 9 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 gun.
Was it a distant gun shot wound, or was it close range? What could they have done after they got shot?
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 killers.
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 26-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 911, please. NARRATOR: Cameron quickly untied his mom
and immediately calls 911. 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 gunshot wounds.
NARRATOR: The bullets went through John's body, penetrating the bed. The water, uh, clearly was leaking out of the waterbed
because of the gunshot wound. NARRATOR: Lead investigator, Detective Mark Hussey,
a 35 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 drugs.
She says there was a lot of screaming going on. She said they asked for money and drugs.
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 bullets from the waterbed. Investigators suspect the missing seventh bullet
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 murder weapon,
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 shooting 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 killed John Walker. DR. G: The victim is a 52-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 kill 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 9 morgue, the body of 52-year-old John Walker who was shot multiple times in bed is
now being prepped for autopsy. We had three gunshot 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 gunshot 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 killers.
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 shoot him.
He looks like a well groomed 52-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 gunshot wounds.
There are seven entrance gunshot wounds. Let's look and see what the, uh, exit wounds look like.
I'm interested, though, in where these bullets go. So I document all my exit wounds,
and it looks like six exit gunshot wounds. Six bullets 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 gunshot
residue, hoping to reconstruct the crime and figure out how far away the victim's killers were
when they shot 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 shooters 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 shooter 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 killers 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 killers of 52-year-old John Walker. I'm afraid I may not end up with any useful information
or helpful information, uh, for the police. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Dr. G has just finished the external exam
on 52-year-old John Walker. And so far she has found little evidence that will help police catch his killers.
All of these projectiles indicating that this shooting was probably about three feet away.
NARRATOR: Now Dr. G is hoping the internal exam will yield clues that will help solve this murder.
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 bullets to gain insight
into the victim's last moments. [MUSIC PLAYING] Dr. G starts by examining the two gunshot
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 kill 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 52-year-old man who works every day to have drugs in his system, but I'll tell you,
the vast majority of home invasions we see unusually of drug dealers or people who deal drugs 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 bullets. How many are lethal?
What could he have done after that gun show, and did they kill 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 bullet did to that inside of the body until it exits.
We got a lot of blood. NARRATOR: Dr. G moves on to examine the gunshot 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 bullet wounds to the shoulder, chest, and one above the left nipple.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5. All of those bullets 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 killed 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 .38 to me. NARRATOR: Dr. G gives the bullet 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 bullets took can tell her anything else about how the murder 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 bullets 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 shooting him basically
while he's flat in bed. He never moved. Well, what's that about? [MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: During the internal exam of 52-year-old John Walker who was shot 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 shoot 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 drugs 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 shot 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 drugs
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 drugs 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 kill 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 bullets.
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 bullet 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 bullets
were fired from the same gun. So indication is that we're only looking for one shooter.
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 shot 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,
45-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 killed her husband and that she needed his help. NARRATOR: Derek admits to police that he helped tie up Patty,
and then hid the murder weapon. He took it to his home and buried it in the backyard.
Our forensics people, uh, came out and dug up the gun and collected it. NARRATOR: And with that, the final piece of evidence
needed for an arrest is uncovered. The gun that the gentleman friend gave to detective
Hussey, they test fire that and that matched the bullet 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 murder and is sentenced to 22 years in prison.
It was a horrible thing to do, kill 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 murder, 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 38-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 911, 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 crack 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 drugs,
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 9 morgue,
the body of 38-year-old Isabel Sanchez, who died 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 suicide? 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 suicide 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 killed 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 drugs 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 crack and cocaine. She's a chronic alcoholic. We know she's into prescription drugs.
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 38-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 crack 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 kill 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 kill 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 drugs
she can get her hands on. Is that the cause of death? At this point, I still don't know why she died.
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 drugs. People are sympathetic to people with cancer. I'm seeing more and more people lying about that
so they can get drugs. 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
drugs with some illicit drugs. 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 drugs,
and she had no prescription drugs. I certainly can rule out an overdose. She didn't kill 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 died. [MUSIC PLAYING] I think what happened is she was drinking.
I think she got pancreatitis. I think she started killing 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 died from a lack of alcohol
and not from an overdose. But I think he's relieved that at least it wasn't a suicide.
She died 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 drugs, that is a recipe, no doubt about it,
for an early death and a trip to my morgue. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Cameron Walker finds his dad dead in bed and his mom bound in the closet. When the woman's story as to what happened doesn’t add up, police turn to Dr. G to uncover the true killer.

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

Brief Summary

Dr. G investigates a murder and a sudden death, revealing drug involvement and alcohol withdrawal as causes.

Key points

A Son's Discovery. A son finds his mother bound and his father shot dead in bed.
Dr. G's Challenge. Dr. G faces the daunting task of solving a complex homicide case.
The Shocking Truth. Toxicology reveals the victim was drugged before being shot, leading to a shocking confession.
The Mysterious Death of Isabel Sanchez. Isabel Sanchez, a 38-year-old woman, is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Investigators and Dr. G delve into her troubled past to uncover the truth behind her sudden demise.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This must be devastating for the wife.

Dr. G reflects on the emotional impact of the case.

7:21WatchJun 29, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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