Forensic Files Season 11, Episode 4 - Sunday's Wake - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a little girl died and investigators didn't know why or how was it an accident was it an unexplained
illness or was she murdered scientists would go halfway around the world before finding the answer in two
unlikely places a shredded legal document and her mother's signature [Music] [Music]
in the spring of 2000 a two and a half year old girl was in the intensive care unit of a new hampshire hospital
fighting for her life in the very beginning no one knew that she had anything more than a bad cold
but then she went downhill so dramatically her name was sunday abec and her story was unlike any other in
the hospital [Applause] sunday was from the sudan where a bloody civil war was claiming thousands of
lives she and her family were lucky to be alive she had to flee because of violence in
her area her father was a political prisoner in sudan and that may have been more dangerous for her
family to remain in the sudan because of that my yeah people were being killed didn't matter what side you were on we
had to leave shortly after sunday was born the family fled to a refugee camp in egypt
after two years a missionary group was able to get them to a small apartment in manchester new hampshire
no one in the family spoke english the change from their life in africa was enormous it must have been a culture
shock this is an old mill city in new hampshire big mill buildings and whatnot much colder weather but this family
moved in and started to prepare a better life a safer life they thought at least their kids could
be raised without getting shot at the family had been in the u.s for just a little more than a month when one day
for no apparent reason sunday started vomiting she ran a high fever and she became delirious
her mother was sleeping on the hospital floor in sunday's room she would sit and
hold the child in her arms and that was her main concern was that sunday was sick
and she had to get her better at first doctors thought sunday had contracted a bad case of the flu
but none of their treatments worked and they were unsure what was wrong with her
sunday's initial symptoms were high fever and vomiting and that could be anything that could be virus that could
be all kinds of problems i didn't know what the problem was the doctors didn't know
they couldn't tell me what happened despite a battery of tests the cause of sunday's illness couldn't be determined
none of her siblings or her mother had gotten sick three days after she was admitted to the
hospital sunday's temperature soared and her brain swelled uncontrollably she went into a coma
and died when you have children god gives them to you and he can take them when sunday died i tried to remember
that god gave her to us and now he wanted her back for sunday's family the promise of a
peaceful life in america had turned into an unspeakable tragedy the mother's lawyer said that she had
told him that she had any idea this could have happened she never would have moved her family to the united states
but of course she she couldn't have known she knew she was moving them away from a danger she just had no way of
knowing she was moving them into another danger soon an investigation was mounted to
find out how it happened and what it uncovered was not an illness but a crime during a spring snowstorm in 2000 two
and a half year old sunday abec was laid to rest thousands of miles from her native sudan
i'll never forget the women in the group wearing their african clothes and wool hats and gloves and they were singing
african prayers as the snow came down they probably never saw snow before and the whole
scene to me was just one of the saddest things after two years on the run the family
thought they had finally found a safe haven in america but they were wrong they had come here trying to have a
better life for their daughter and they end up burying her in the snowstorm in new hampshire
and that led to an intriguing story how did this come to pass investigators thought poisoning might be
a possibility whenever there's an unexplained death of a child i think the police first suspect
is always a family member sandy's mother was questioned but she had no apparent motive she was asked if
one of the siblings could have done it hello [Music] in africa a child cannot poison her
sister or her brother or even me they wouldn't know how did not come from the family
africa was it possible one of the neighbors perhaps resentful over the influx of
refugees into the neighborhood was responsible and our apartment complex was another
family from sudan before my child got sick so did theirs but he recovered he didn't die
but a severe flu caused that child's illness new hampshire officials couldn't determine how sunday died
and this raised alarms one of their initial concerns was to make sure there was not the importation
in the u.s of some exotic disease that could have been transmitted by sunday or her family into the u.s
all members of the family were thoroughly tested everyone was perfectly healthy but then results came back from an
extensive test on sunday's blood analysts were shocked by what they found her blood contained unusually large
amounts of lead 392 micrograms per deciliter 40 times the lethal level for a child
high level for us might be 50 or 60. i think we may have even had a 70 or an 80 over the years that have done
inspections but a 392 was just absolutely off the charts for us lead kills by attaching itself to red
blood cells this takes oxygen out of the blood and starves the brain sunday's official cause of death was
lead poisoning the first such case in the u.s in more than a decade the family seemed to be having trouble
grasping what had happened one of them said to me you know we don't have lead in africa and africa led us
bullets they're getting shot at investigators now checked the rest of the family to see if they'd also been
exposed to lead the tests showed they were all within normal levels there was something unique to sunday it
wasn't something that they had commonly all been exposed to that created this horrific problem for all of the family
how could a killer dose of lead have gotten into sunday's system while the rest of the family was
unaffected their apartment building was locked down in a search for answers [Music]
paint the most common source of lead poisoning was tested with a portable x-ray analyzer it uses a radiation
source to basically excite the lead atoms in the paint and then it actually sends x-rays back into the machine
minor amounts of lead were found in the paint not unusual in an old building and
not nearly enough to kill someone now investigators moved on to the water the air the cooking utensils and toys
everything in the apartment was tested we select an area of the home and mark off a square foot and actually wipe it
with a sterile wipe and collect the dust and put it in a sterile container and that's analyzed to see what the dust
level in the home the contents of the wipes were dissolved in hydrochloric acid [Music]
in a process called atomic absorption the solution was exposed to temperatures of more than 3000 degrees fahrenheit it
burns the sample in the flame much like an acetylene torch and the instrument is set up to see only
lead no abnormal levels were found nothing in the building could produce a dose of lead large enough to kill
and i walked back to the office and said i don't think it's the house or something else going on
extensive testing provided no clues as to how little sunday abec was exposed to a lethal dose of lead
lead has been known as a hazard for 2000 years lead was one of the uh first occupational diseases identified by the
romans and even the greeks many many years ago so it's not a new issue while investigators couldn't rule out an
intentional poisoning by someone in the u.s they had to consider the possibility
that sunday was poisoned before she got to america perhaps in the refugee camp they even brought in the health
department in egypt and they sampled the formula that the little children were giving because if something was
contaminated in the formula that could affect thousands of kids food air water and soil in the camp were
tested everything was negative it seemed the question of how sunday had been killed might never be answered
there was this mystery what had happened to her and why investigators now turn back to sunday
herself since lead is a poison the body goes to great lengths to expel it deposits build up in the nails and hair
the average person's hair grows about a half inch per month sunday's hair was an inch long
and provided a wealth of information she had spent a month in the united states and before that she had been in
egypt so by taking her hair and looking at it specifically for lead content and dividing it in half so that we had
the half inch that grew in the united states and the half inch that grew before that
we were able to make a comparison and time her exposure the hair was bombarded with radioactive
[Music] neutrons this caused different elements in the sample to react in unique ways
the tip of sandy's hair had trace amounts of lead but the base the part closest to the scalp showed massive
amounts what that tells me is in the united states she got exposed to a pretty significant amount of lead
and that her level before that wasn't abnormal so her exposure was in this country it wasn't back in egypt
investigators must have overlooked something but they didn't know what they went full circle they went back to
manchester and they started saying what did we miss they questioned sunday's mother again
and were told something they had not heard before sunday spent a lot of time on the front
porch of their apartment building i knew always that the cause of sunday's sickness had something to do with the
apartment they were able to ascertain that the child did in fact spend time playing on
the porch and the mother had seen the child pick up pick at the paint on the porch
the porch of the apartment was in bad shape the paint was old and peeling suddenly investigators thought they'd
solved the mystery it looked to be a phenomenon called pica the word comes from the latin name for magpie
a bird that eats almost anything pica is a condition particularly of children but not always of children it's
sort of a craving for food items to eat lead paint often tastes sweet so here's a little malnourished girl who's never
had enough food and it became pretty clear she was probably picking up chips of paint and sucking on them or chewing
on them samples of paint from the porch showed levels of lead 37 times the legal limit
to see if it was this paint that killed sunday investigators brought in the centers for
disease control the samples were dissolved in nitric acid and then heated so the isotopes or chemical signature of
the lead would be exposed we can run the sample of analysis for the child's blood
and compare that to the different potential sources that she was exposed to and then plot that out and we can either
identify or exclude various sources the isotopes from the paint on the porch and
from sunday's blood were identical this test left no doubt sandy avec got a lethal dose of lead by
eating the paint on the front porch of her apartment building but the case was far from over
investigators soon found evidence that someone knew sunday was in danger all along
and mounted an elaborate cover-up to keep that knowledge from her family and police
a year-long forensic investigation proved without a doubt what killed little sunday abec we concluded that
lead paint and dust in the environment of her apartment in manchester was the principal source of her lead
poisoning property records showed the rental agent for the apartment building james annex
dean had been informed that his building did not meet current standards for lead
safety by law he had to let his tenants know this landlords and property managers who
lease buildings constructed prior to 1977 they are required to provide general lead paint warning notices
to prove that they had been informed tenants must sign these disclosure documents
the landlord provided photocopies of these documents and signed an affidavit saying they were legitimate
investigators weren't so sure the tenants advised us that they had not signed those documents we looked at the
signatures on those documents and were actually looking at them to see if they were forged
document experts compared signatures from the documents to known signatures of the tenants
the signatures were exact matches he was too good at it actually because the signatures were too much alike if he
had varied them in some way it would have been a much more difficult case to resolve
the signatures weren't forgeries they were duplicates of signatures from other documents the tenants had signed
the signatures are what we determined to be a layover they were an exact replica
of an authentic signature which indicates to us that it was placed there by some other means and was fraudulent
one of these signatures stood out it was from sunday's mother mary allaroot in the document provided by the landlord
her name was spelled out but at the time mary could barely write english she was
still signing her name with an ex though she was undergoing training by a church-sponsored teacher to learn how to
read and write and speak the english language it was readily apparent to non-handwriting forensic examiners
that this was indeed not her signature investigators raided the landlord's office
in the bottom of a trash can they found more than 60 torn scraps of paper the secret service reconstructed that
document for is finding all but one of the 60-something pieces when the pieces were reassembled
investigators found the original forgery of mary allaroot signature identical to the one on the lead
disclosure notice he forged the signature of sunday abec's mother on the lead paint disclosure form
he copied it and produced copies to the environmental protection agency and the grand jury
the landlord's fingerprints were on the document mary allaroots were not it's very unlikely that she had handled
or had anything to do with that particular document investigators say that when annex dean
found out about sunday's death he knew he was potentially liable so he took his tenant signatures copied
them from other documents and then placed them back onto the lead disclosure agreements
[Music] his biggest mistake was forging the signature of sunday's mother apparently
he was unaware how she signed her name so it was clear this was not her signature
if i were to grade his attempts here at forgery he'd probably be about about a d
when faced with the evidence james annex dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and failing to
notify his tenants that they were living in unsafe conditions what motivated him
and what motivates all of our criminals in this arena it's all about money i want to save it and at what cost i think
the cost in this one was real high not to him to her repainting the porch would have cost
just a few hundred dollars and would have saved sandy's life her family won a 700 000 civil award
against annex dean and his real estate company he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined 40 000
his was the first ever conviction in the u.s for failure to notify about the presence of lead he dug himself a real
deep hole and got hit with a big penalty and i think the epa hoped that sent an alarm across the country so other
landlords don't take part in similar activities i was happy he got punished he was lying
i never signed those papers he lied and it was right that he was punished sandy's family has relocated to
tennessee they're still adjusting to life in america and the aftermath of sunday's
death meanwhile sunday lies in an unmarked grave in a new hampshire cemetery hundreds of miles from her family
thousands of miles from home her death could easily have been avoided but thanks to the forensic analysis
it's far less likely another family will suffer the same tragedy her death couldn't have been solved
without forensics the work in the lab is what solved this case and uh and it happened at the federal state and
local level took a lot of technicians to study this material and figure out exactly what happened and they did which
is gratifying i'm sure [Music] [Music] [Music] you

When a little girl got sick and died, investigators were stumped. Was it an accident, an unexplained illness, or murder?

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Sunday Abec died from lead poisoning due to her landlord's negligence, revealing a tragic cover-up and systemic issues in housing safety.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Sunday Abec. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl dies under mysterious circumstances, leading to an investigation.
Lead Poisoning Revealed. Investigators discover that Sunday died from lead poisoning, the first such case in over a decade.
A Tragic Cover-Up. The landlord forged signatures to hide the unsafe conditions that led to Sunday's death.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

When Sunday died, I tried to remember that God gave her to us.

A mother's reflection on loss.

3:50WatchJan 20, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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