Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 10 - Core Evidence - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 1996 more than a dozen children in seattle washington were seriously ill and fighting for their lives all gripped by
a mysterious illness when one of the children died officials feared more deaths would follow
and medical detectives frantically searched for the cause [Music] terry and kelly beverly both worked in
the computer industry and have two children a son michael and a daughter bettina
after a leisurely day of playing in the woods michael complained of pain in his stomach later he had uncontrolled
diarrhea when his diarrhea contained blood his parents became alarmed he was just laying on the couch
just still having bloody diapers every every 30 minutes and just very painful and
it was just just changing him just heart looking at his little body it was turning itself inside out
the beverly's took michael to a hospital emergency room where doctors discovered
that his blood count had dropped to dangerous levels his kidneys were failing and life-threatening clots were
forming in his blood acute bloody diarrhea and otherwise healthy child is an important medical
problem and physicians here and elsewhere work that up very aggressively take that very
seriously michael's stool sample was sent to the laboratory for testing doctors were alarmed when they found a
potentially deadly pathogen known as e coli o157 it's a bacteria usually found in the
intestines of both humans and animals when an individual becomes infected there is no cure
e coli o157 infects more than 20 000 people each year killing 500 of them in 1993
four people died after eating e coli tainted hamburgers from the jack-in-the-box fast food chain
fully cooking hamburgers can kill the e coli bacteria but these burgers had not been fully cooked
when i found out it was the strain of e coli and i asked him if it was the same strain
that affected the kids in jack in a box he said yes michael has the same strain and i said oh my god
when he call il-157 is in a widely disseminated vehicle out for out in the population for
general consumption it's like a serial murderer is potentially loose in the population
was one of the children infected with e coli 0-157 from an undercooked hamburger
purchased at the jack-in-the-box restaurant she was in a coma for six weeks the e coli produces cytotoxins which
kill other cells breaking through the endothelial layer of the intestines spilling poisons into the bloodstream
that complication is called hemolytic uremic syndrome although brienne kiner eventually came
out of her coma most of her major organs were damaged and she'll need a kidney transplant when she's older
michael beverly also developed hemolytic uremic syndrome which can cause brain damage kidney damage sepsis and death
doctors immediately placed michael on kidney dialysis to cleanse his body of toxins hemolytic uremic syndrome is
life-threatening of all the kinds of diarrheas a child an otherwise healthy child is can get in north america
almost none will cause a death or could cause a death except for this one that's why this one
is so uh fearsome once it gets into a person the kidney specialist came in and he said it's very serious and he might
not pull through the night it's up to his little body and then that's when i just broke down i came out and i started
crying immediately i just i said this is it as michael beverly lay near death in a
seattle hospital medical investigators were still trying to figure out how he came into contact
with this deadly pathogen [Music] as two and a half year old michael beverly lay unconscious and near death
in a seattle hospital 12 more children were admitted to local hospitals all diagnosed with the same deadly pathogen
e coli o157 since there is no cure for e coli o157 investigators needed to find the source
of the outbreak before even more people were infected my biggest concern was that the
cases we were seeing every other day were just the very beginning of a much larger outbreak
medical investigators suspected that food was the probable source but the e coli might have been in one
food source or many dr mansour samadpur's job was to see if he could identify the exact strain of e
coli that infected the children to find out he turned to something usually used for criminal investigations
dna testing when we say e coli 157 it's a very large clan very large family or tribe in the e
coli species when we do genetic fingerprinting we can go to the individuals in that family so
instead of saying that some you know someone with the last name of smith killed someone else we can say that
john smith with social security number of such and such living in such and such place committed to crime
like human beings a pathogen like e coli has its own genetic fingerprint using what is called micro restriction
fingerprinting the e coli samples were placed in a buffer of restriction enzymes which break the cells open
then the dna strands are cut into smaller pieces making them easier to analyze the fragments are placed into a gel with
a dye and after a process called electrophoresis the genetic profile appears similar to a barcode
the results indicated that all of the e coli strains were the same in other words
all of the sick individuals had been infected from the same source we had nine patients that had e coli
o157s in them with the same genetic fingerprint definitely that that shows that you have a growing outbreak
e coli o157 has a long incubation period five to seven days far longer than most
food-borne illnesses dr russ alexander's job was to figure out what was causing the outbreak the
standard method is to employ what's called a case control study investigators questioned all of the
patients families to find out what the victims had consumed five to seven days before first developing symptoms
they also compared those answers to what others in the same family consumed who were not infected
our early thinking was that this was probably a meat sauce because that's what mostly is what it is so we
are looking for everything they've eaten and what kind of restaurants they've been to what kind of fast food
restaurants in particular but the initial interviews did not reveal any one food item that all had consumed
there was something in common with these individuals that made these individuals
ill on the other hand the preliminary interview did not produce any obvious sources of infection
but when investigators looked more carefully over their initial results they found a clue
one of the sick children was a vegetarian we had this one case that was a clear-cut case it was a
vegetarian family and there was no chance of any meat in this particular instance so we
quickly realized we were into something else this time another more detailed questionnaire was designed with meat
excluded as the possible cause the new questionnaire centered on fruits vegetables dairy products and related
food sources not until we had gotten enough cases uh coming in with this uh extended
questionnaire that we began to see something else that was in terms of the source
by the end of the week we were already pretty sure that there was that there was one thing that
was standing out the second set of interviews revealed that the victims had all consumed
apple juice but with hundreds of brands on the market investigators feared it would be
difficult to find out which one when seattle health officials discovered that apple juice was consumed by the e
coli patients they needed to find out which brand and there were hundreds of brands on the market
but their next clue came from an unexpected source in denver colorado doctors were treating a desperately ill
16 month old girl named anna gimistad anna also had an e coli 0157 infection and her parents told doctors that they
had been in seattle just one week earlier the gimmick dads recalled feeding anna
some apple juice a brand she preferred because of the bright rainbow colors on the label
odwalla the beverly family also recall feeding their son michael the same brand from a
neighborhood coffee shop this one particular sunday i went up and stood in line and you know to order our drinks and
i saw them prepare it and i last went you use old walla for the kids and they go well yeah
so i'm like oh further investigation revealed that the other victims also consumed odwala apple
juice five to seven days before developing symptoms the odwalla company manufactures and
distributes juice products in seven states and british columbia it's a brand known for its freshness
most fruit juices are pasteurized which means they're heated to a temperature high enough to kill any bacteria
but odwalla juice was not pasteurized the company believed that pasteurization hurt the taste of their juice
the company's mission statement read if it's not fresh squeezed then it's not odwalla
just nine days after the outbreak health officials asked the odwalla company to voluntarily remove their product from
store shelves the company complied even though there was no conclusive proof that odwalla was the source of the
outbreak as you know immediately upon hearing of the possibility of consumer health risks
we recall our products contain apple juice our primary concerns for the health and welfare of our consumers
the news that the source may have been apple juice was little relief to the gimmistad
family in evans colorado sixteen-month-old anna was taking a turn for the worse like some of the other victims anna
developed hemolytic uremic syndrome a complication of the e coli infection that produces toxins that shut down the
kidneys less than two weeks after anagemist had consumed the odwalla apple juice
she died for the beverly's news of anna gimistad's death was terrifying just knowing that there was a 16 month
old that died i was very that just to me i knew he was i thought he was going to
die to be frank i said this is it he's going to die and although investigators discovered
that all of the affected individuals had consumed o'dwalla juice there was no proof that the juice was the source of
the outbreak the proof if there was any would be in the juice itself thousands of bottles of odwalla juice
were tested for e coli 0157 but the deadly pathogen could not be found medical investigators were starting to
wonder whether they were ever going to find scientific proof that the apple juice was the source of the outbreak
all of the e coli victims remember drinking odwalla apple juice shortly before getting sick
but investigators couldn't find the e coli bacteria in any of the odwalla juice bottles they tested but on
november 4 1996 at the odwala distribution center investigators found one bottle of apple
juice that tested positive for e coli o157 the question now was whether the bottle
contained the same strain that caused the death of anna gimistad and infected michael beverly and the other children
to find out investigators turned once again to dna testing the dna profile on the left is the e
coli strain from michael beverly on the right the dna profile of the e coli found in
the bottle of odwalla apple juice the profiles were identical scientific proof that the odwalla juice
was the source being able to identify the same genetic strain of e coli in a bottle of unopened
odwalla juice given that an estimated 40 thousand of these bottles it's not finding a needle in a haystack
it's finding a needle out of about a hundred haystacks spread across most of western united states
the label revealed the juice had been bottled on october 7 1996 three weeks before the outbreak
company records identified the orchard whose apples were used to make the juice that day
dr sarah cody an epidemic intelligence officer with the california department of health went to the orchard to
investigate we were wandering in the orchard and what we noticed was along the edge
of the orchard there were a number of uh deer prints in the sand and near the deer prince were deer
droppings a potential source of e coli o157 dr cody wondered whether some of the
apples had fallen to the ground had come into contact with the deer droppings and
then were picked up and sent to the juice processing plant dr cody collected samples which were
sent to the lab for testing the e coli from the deer droppings was then sent for dna testing but it did not
match the e coli strain that infected the 13 children it's possible that there could have been
one deer or a number of deer that were shedding one strain or more than one strain so perhaps we just isolated the
wrong strain or perhaps we got the wrong deer perhaps we've got the wrong orchard
the odwalla company says that it's against their policy to purchase apples that were picked up from the ground even
though oddballah claimed to have documents signed documents from their suppliers that they did not use ground
apples or apples from the ground we found that it's virtually impossible to verify that or to enforce it
especially when workers are paid by the bin in 1996 the u.s army considered serving
odewala juice to military personnel but after an inspection of the odwalla processing plant military investigators
stated that odwalla's plant sanitation program does not adequately assure product wholesomeness for military
consumers the army rated the bacteria levels in the juice as too high a copy of the us army report found its
way into the hands of the attorney representing the victims of the e coli outbreak
william marler adwala was trying to sell adwala jews to the u.s army no not as a
bacteriological weapon but the amount of bacteria that were that was in the finished product samples were in the
millions where any possible responsible company would have had it in the the tens
the united states attorney general's office took the unprecedented step of indicting odwalla in a criminal
prosecution the charge delivering adulterated food products for interstate commerce
and when we find a company that has knowingly placed contaminated food into the stream of commerce we're going to
prosecute that company and we're going to put the individuals in jail and that's a very strong lesson and it's
one that that the people that manufacture food in this country ought to take to heart
in july of 1998 odwala pleaded guilty and was fined one and a half million dollars the largest penalty ever imposed
in a food poisoning case odwala products are now pasteurized and carry warning labels
but for the family of 16 month old and against dad that was too little too late there's no amount of monetary penalty or
jail time that is ever going to bring back little anna or make the other dozen or so children that
were severely injured whole again so from that standpoint i don't think that there
was a possible settlement that would have been satisfactory e coli 0157 can cause serious diseases
there's other food borne pathogens out there that can cause serious diseases we have the technology to prevent many
of these problems this the consumption of unpasteurized apple juice in the 1996 outbreak was a dramatic
example of how a safe effective technology was not employed to the detriment of children in the
northwest the families of the victims filed suit against odwalla and settled with the
company before going to trial the terms of that settlement were not disclosed michael beverly now appears to be in
good health but he and the other children still face the possibility of future medical complications from their
e coli 0157 infection what was it that almost killed michael it was e coli it was the effects of e coli toxin in
his body eating up his his system that's what almost killed him unfortunately i see it a little
different i see it i see it as what almost killed him was a company's negligence and
irresponsibility and this shouldn't have happened the smoking gun in this case was the
science it was what the forensics gave us odwalla had no wiggle room it was conclusive it was a matter of
scientific principle that ode wallace product had e coli o157 h7 in it and that that was the same exact
bacteria which was in the victims [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

In 1996, more than a dozen children in Seattle, Washington, were fighting for their lives. Each one of them had contracted a serious unknown illness. After one died, investigators knew the clock was ticking.

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

The episode covers the 1996 E. coli outbreak linked to Odwalla juice, highlighting severe health impacts and legal consequences.

Key points

The Mysterious Illness. In 1996, a mysterious illness struck children in Seattle, leading to serious health crises.
The E. Coli Outbreak. Medical detectives raced to find the source of a deadly e coli outbreak affecting children.
Odwalla's Negligence. Odwalla faced severe consequences after their unpasteurized juice was linked to a deadly outbreak.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's like a serial murderer potentially loose in the population.

Describing the danger of e coli o157.

3:14WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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