Forensic Files - Season 4, Episode 12 - With Every Breath - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] in 1993 on an indian reservation in the southwestern united states young navajo indians were dying at an
alarming rate more than 20 people would die from the mysterious disease one that health officials had never seen
before but the navajo medicine men provided a critical piece of information which led
investigators around the world to a most unlikely killer [Music] covering 25 000 square miles of high
desert in four states utah colorado new mexico and arizona is a navajo indian reservation in an area known as the four
corners it's the largest navajo community in america with some 1200 members of the
tribe living throughout the desert hills the scenery brings thousands of tourists
each year a vital source of revenue for the navajo who have inhabited the area for
centuries but poverty is endemic and was a fact of life for people like nineteen-year-old meryl bahi
but meryl bahi had something that set him apart merle was a very phenomenal person but
where he stood out was his running ability and i think if you talk to anybody that saw
him run you know they would tell you that it was a gift that he had in running and he loved to run
meryl bahi was so fast he won a full scholarship to the santa fe indian school a boarding school that was miles
away from his home both physically and culturally he didn't really know how to put a sheet on a bla on a bed or
you know it was like he threw the blanket on and that was this that numeral you um
you put this down first so i i had to show him how to to make up a bed bahi slowly adjusted to his new life he
did well in school but the transition to life in the city was difficult until he met florina woody
something magical happened he met another navajo girl at a pueblo school and they fell in love so intensely that
the track coach decided to make florina the manager of the track team to hand out the towels so that
merrill would keep his mind on his running not long afterwards they had a son maurice and planned to get married but
shortly after the baby was born florina woke up one morning with what she thought was the flu
she was all cold she kept you know having these chills and it was it was something like
you're getting a cold or getting sick from a common cold their lungs were white out meaning they
were just solid they should usually be dark from from the air and they obviously had something in there fluid
in there doctors raced to find out what was wrong they administered oxygen to help florina
breathe but she went into shock i saw one of the nurses coming out of her room all disturbed and she was crying
and i i knew there that something was happening none of the standard procedures worked
and florina's heart stopped beating the pressure on her lungs was simply too much for her body to bear
the cause of death acute respiratory failure florina woody died on mother's day she was just 21 years old
and they told us that she was gone then they allowed us to go to our room i just couldn't believe that my my baby
has gone i didn't want to leave her i just want to hang out right there doctors had no idea what had caused
florina's sudden death and they feared that whatever kill florina woody might be contagious
florina's death was a particularly cruel blow to merrell bahi the mother of his infant son was dead
as bahi prepared flo farina's funeral he too started to develop similar symptoms
meryl bahi was beside himself he wasn't feeling well but it didn't occur to him that
that it could possibly be the same thing that affected florina merrill's physical
condition quickly deteriorated and he was rushed to the crown point hospital the same hospital that treated florina
after an initial consultation merrill did not want to be treated where florina died so his family drove him to the
indian medical center in gallup an hour away shortly before arrival merrill lost
consciousness as doctors rushed him into the emergency room he died the cause of death
acute respiratory failure meryl bahi was only 19 years old ironically merrill died during florina's
funeral service which was taking place directly across the street from the hospital
the freedom was going on and there we had a meeting with our medical investigator
and meryl's family were coming in for a flow's journal and they were told there and everything just started happening
here and there and that's when i went to shock health authorities had no explanation
for what killed the young couple the only way they could determine the cause was to perform a complete autopsy but
autopsies are not permitted in the navajo community it's forbidden in among traditional napos to have
autopsies done and the napa tribal government can forbid that if they want to and i don't think
the government people really understood that we have that sovereign power to do that even if it's a medical emergency
but with her daughter and future son-in-law dead beta begay wanted answers she took the unusual step of defying
tradition and the tribal elders by giving doctors permission to perform the autopsies
the autopsy findings took on a new importance when merrill and florina's infant child maurice also fell ill
he was rushed to the hospital and quarantined what is it where did it come from or
what is is it gonna is it gonna be here or how you know i asked i had that i had those questions
and i wanted to find out as authorities awaited the autopsy results the disease continued its deadly
rampage within a week of florina and meryl's deaths the number of dead had risen to
six and each day more people were being hospitalized with symptoms new mexico officials feared
they had an epidemic on their hands and panic gripped the region we were getting calls from concerned
citizens and concerned physicians and concerned school administrators and concerned everybody
and that always will happen when something as dramatic as this and as frightening as this is occurring and
when you do really don't have any good answers the autopsies on merrell bahi and
florina woody answered few questions the mystery illness could not be identified
and until it was more people were destined to die doctors in the four corners area are on
alert to a deadly respiratory illness may 1993 navajo radio stations in the four
corners indian reservation broadcast an alert young navajo were dying at an alarming
rate and new cases were being reported every day so little was known that health
officials were not able to tell listeners what precautions to take against the disease
it was frightening for people who came down with a fever and cough and headache at the time as a physician we're sending
people home who we had to accept the possibility that they could drop dead within hours of leaving the hospital
the outbreak was now national news and since it appeared that only navajo were affected it was dubbed the navajo
flew there was pandemonium it's impossible to keep a string of deaths like this a secret for very long
one possibility was bubonic plague the dreaded black death that killed millions during the middle ages and still strikes
more than a thousand people worldwide every year plague symptoms particularly the high
fever muscle pain and fluid buildup bore similarities to the four corners disease
bubonic plague still crops up in new mexico from time to time and so the state is very well equipped
to do that test and much to the to the uh chagrin of the investigators um the test
was negative it was chagrin because they still didn't know what had killed this young couple
another possibility was pneumonic plague a highly contagious disease it attacks the lungs and kills quickly which is
what happened to the four corners victims since it could be treated with large doses of antibiotics doctors actually
hoped that this was what they'd find but the autopsies turned up something different the capillaries of the victims
had collapsed leaving the lungs wet like large sponges this was not consistent with pneumonic
plague and it did not resemble anything medical investigators had ever seen before
and it was very puzzling and it was it was frustrating because you felt like how come we're not smart
enough to figure this out you know this shouldn't be that hard so i haven't had i haven't had that many
cases at one time but i didn't understand local health officials called in the centers for disease control in
atlanta georgia the cdc special pathogens team was sent in to look for possible causes
and they started their investigation in the trailer that meryl bahi and florina woody once called home
we had no idea what this was we didn't know whether it was contagious we didn't know whether working with the tissues
was going to be dangerous we didn't know whether you could get this in the laboratory or from somebody outside in
the field the outbreak was considered a bio safety level for hazard the most lethal
designation dressed in specially designed suits to keep them free from any contagion
cdc specialists searched the trailer and the surrounding area they wore something like that you know
the astronauts that they're they're sending off to outer space and you know how they dress they were
dressed like that when they came to our place and that was even scarier that there was fear
they they scared us while the medical community turned to their scientific experts the navajo
turned to their own specialists the traditional healers or medicine men who were responsible for the health of the
reservation they said they were familiar with this disease and that it had struck
before they were saying that this outbreak had occurred in this century in 1933 and 1918 when
it was preceded by two years of plentiful rains and heavy winter snows in the mountains
the tribal healers said the heavy rains had resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of mice on the reservation
and they suspected there was some connection between the large number of mice and these deaths but they could not
say what it was there was an old naval saying that i learned as a child that if a mouse ever runs over your clothing
you should burn it and nobody ever knew what that whole thing meant records indicated that there were heavy
rains in 1991 and 92 the two years preceding the current outbreak but health officials could not find any
link between the rain the growing deer mice population and the outbreak meanwhile in what's known as the maximum
containment section of the cdc labs an area reserved for the study of the world's most dangerous germs and viruses
investigators performed an elisa test or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay on the tissue samples from the victims
when a disease strikes the body reacts by producing antibodies which are unique to that disease
the elisa test can isolate those antibodies in order to compare them to the thousands of samples in the cdc
files comparison after comparison was made and no matches were found until the investigation took an unexpected turn
one that would take medical detectives back in time and halfway around the world
[Music] within six weeks of florina woody and merrell bahi's deaths more than 12 other
young people had also died of the same mysterious disease investigators got a break in the case
when a tourist from iceland after visiting the reservation developed symptoms of the disease
investigators now realized the outbreak was probably environmental and was not confined to the navajo
unfortunately somebody sort of identified this as a navajo disease which it very obviously wasn't
because we were seeing there there were other cases occurring in in navajos but but that that was
particularly offensive i think to people when cdc investigators compared the antibodies from the outbreak victims to
those in their vast file of known diseases they made a surprising discovery the only sample that was in any way
similar was one that was 40 years old it was a sample taken from a soldier stationed in korea in 1950
during the korean war more than 3 000 troops developed high fevers and kidney failure about 400 died
doctors called it hantavirus because it was traced back to korea's han tan river
that region was home to large numbers of striped field mice feces and urine from infected mice
carried the virus when it dried out it became airborne and was then inhaled by the soldiers
from there the virus attacked the kidneys but investigators were uncertain whether this was the same as the four
corners virus there had never been a hantavirus reported in north america and the four
corners disease attacked the lungs not the kidneys i had no idea what honda virus was
and look looked in you know my textbook which had a very short section on it and of course it describes a disease
that occurs in asia which which sounded nothing like what we were dealing with was this the same disease
and if so how did it travel from korea to a north american indian reservation cdc investigators then remembered what
they'd been told by the navajo traditional healers the medicine men had said when a
remarkably wet winter was followed by the masting of the the pinyon trees when the penum trees put out
an abundant supply of nuts the rodent populations in the state began to to grow and when that happened young navajo died
investigators caught and tested deer mice from the four corners area they found the mice were shedding a
virus with the same dna profile as the virus found in florina woody and merrell bahi
but the dna profile of this virus was not identical to the korean hanta virus although the dna profiles were similar
the strain from the navajo reservation was a new one unique to north america what we found when we did the comparison
was that this was a new honda virus that is the sequence was far enough from any other known hanovers
that we were convinced that it was a new virus it wasn't just a minor variant on one of the old viruses cdc
scientists and navajo medicine men suspected the north american hantavirus had been around for centuries but since
the cases were so isolated it had always been misdiagnosed the navajo made up a greater percentage
of the victims only because they lived in more rural areas with large deer mice populations
in the two years before the outbreak heavy spring rains created a bumper crop of pinyon nuts a rich source of food for
the growing mice population authorities believe that merrell bahi and florina woody inhaled the dried
urine and fecal matter from the infected deer mice when they were house cleaning
or digging in their garden in my heart i think it's it was god's will that this is what was supposed to happen to
both of them and they were meant for each other and they were meant to go together
health officials recommend that masks and gloves be worn when cleaning rodent droppings
and that people do everything possible to keep rodents out of their homes they also point out that the four
corners outbreak was identified through the wisdom of the navajo medicine men and the scientists who were smart enough
to listen we were discovering a an old disease that the traditional healers had discovered long ago and that was the i
think to me that was the most exciting thing about this whole investigation the navajo using an entirely different
approach looking at the balance of nature were able to identify factors that led them
to the same conclusion that when rodent populations explode the way they did in the four
corners in the spring of 1993 young navajo died these two very different sets of people
set out on very different paths and arrived in the same place [Music] [Music] [Applause]
[Music] you

Young Navajos in the Southwest were dying at an alarming rate. The tribe's medicine men provided investigators with a critical clue that would lead halfway around the world to a most unlikely killer.

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

A mysterious hantavirus outbreak in 1993 claimed young Navajo lives, leading to a unique collaboration between traditional healers and medical investigators.

Key points

Mysterious Disease Outbreak. In 1993, a mysterious disease struck young Navajo Indians, leading to alarming death rates.
Tragic Loss of Young Couple. Meryl Bahi and Florina Woody both succumbed to a mysterious illness, leaving their infant son behind.
Discovery of Hantavirus. Investigators linked the outbreak to a new strain of hantavirus, previously unknown in North America.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just couldn’t believe that my baby has gone.

Meryl Bahi's reaction to Florina's death.

4:37WatchNov 4, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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