Forensic Files - Season 7, Episode 8 - Bio-Attack - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in a small town in oregon in 1984 the first biological attack was launched against the united states
for over a decade the details of this nearly catastrophic event were withheld from the public
this is how forensic science unearthed the biological trail [Music] this small town in oregon is called the
dales and is perched high above the columbia river about 80 miles due east of portland
it seems like you've driven back in the 50s and it seems in the physical appearance
it seems frozen frozen in time in that way dave and sandy lutkins are among the 11
000 residents who find the dales the perfect place to raise a family a half an hour or an hour from skiing a
lot of water sports a lot of hiking it has pretty decent schools we have pretty low crime
on september 25 1984 david and sandy both became violently ill with cramps diarrhea and vomiting
their dehydration caused delirium but i've never felt that bad in my life the room was spinning and you just
didn't care about anything well let's put it this way i would never want to be that sick again
when david and his wife went to the hospital they weren't the only ones seriously ill
and then suddenly there were so many people we had people laying on the floor we had people leaning up against the
wall there were people in the lobby they all had the same symptoms microbiologists identified the cause
salmonella salmonella is a bacteria commonly found in eggs meat poultry unpasteurized milk
water and an animal feces especially that of reptiles it is rarely fatal but sometimes death occurs in infants
and the elderly ten days after the first outbreak a second wave hit the number of patients exploded from
dozens to hundreds every hospital bed was filled by the time dave lutkins emerged from
four days of delirium he encountered a disaster lutkins owned a small restaurant 13 of
his employees were sick along with hundreds of his customers we had virtually no business i mean it
just disappeared it was tough i mean that was i was in the process of building another
facility in hood river and i was going to have it all paid for and opening up debt-free and it didn't work
out that way but what was the source of the outbreak food handlers who don't properly wash
their hands after using the bathroom sometimes transmits salmonella but hundreds of people were sick
and they hadn't eaten in the same restaurant or even the same restaurant chain tests of the water supply revealed
nothing the centers for disease control in atlanta georgia was asked to investigate
whether it was some type of accidental outbreak or was it intentional [Music] solving the riddle of the salmonella
outbreak in oregon is the job of epidemiologists scientists who study how disease moves
through large populations they seem to be unrelated events complicated things greatly it was almost
like doing multiple simultaneous investigations there seemed to be no common link among
the hundreds of residents who had gotten sick dave and sandy ludkins both remembered
eating a salad in their restaurant before getting ill i think we were too sick to worry that
much about it at that time it was later that we started you know wondering if it was gonna
close us down hundreds of their customers and most of their employees became ill too
at the county health department nurse diane kerr contacted everyone who fell ill and discovered they had all eaten a
salad from one of ten local restaurants most of the people seem to have eaten potato salad
at another restaurant most of the people seem to have eaten a green salad and so what was going on they looked at
common suppliers of food they looked you know where did everybody get their lettuce where did everybody get this
where'd everybody get that we couldn't find one source of cucumbers or lettuce or
meat or of anything that that would explain all those restaurants being contaminated at once
dr michael skeels runs the laboratory that processed samples from the dale salmonella outbreak
microbiologists discovered that all of the victims had the same strain of salmonella one that was exceptionally
rare it was dulcitol negative which means it didn't biochemically break down a sugar
called dulcetal and that's only the case for two percent of salmonellas of this type
this salmonella had another odd characteristic unlike most bacteria this one was not
resistant to antibiotics when all the cases were tallied there had been 751 cases of salmonella poisoning
10 were restaurant workers and these people became ill before outbreaks among the outbreak was noticed among customers
nevertheless two months after the outbreak the state of oregon reported that poor hygiene of
restaurant workers and cross-contamination were the most likely causes of the outbreak
in other words they didn't know the oregon health department basically hung us out and said well it
was dirty employees it was you know it was unsafe practices unsafe handling the food officials found no salmonella in
dave lutkin's restaurant but they did find traces of it in some of the other restaurants
if you've worked in public health long enough you'll figure out that lots of times you really can't pinpoint where
things front come from the health officials said this is the best we can tell you it wasn't a very satisfying
explanation for them or for the public or for the press but at that time there was no other
explanation local officials now began to suspect a religious cult outside of town
the rajnishi's as the rajnishi's expanded their compound there had been growing tension
between cult leaders and local politicians just a year earlier one of the cult's
leaders sheila hinted at potential violence she said quote we are here in oregon to
stay at whatever the cost if that means some blood is spilled then this is the price we are prepared
to pay a guru from india bhagwan shri rashnesh started the farming commune in 1981.
after two years and 30 million dollars the 64 000 acre organic farming and meditation compound had its own post
office school hospital and shopping mall with housing for over a thousand followers
they're doctors and lawyers and accountants who've given up everything to drive tractors and plant potatoes and
and have you know daily chance as he drove through the compound each day in one of his 80 rolls-royce
automobiles the guru preached the benefits of meditation and free love published reports say that the bhagwan
claimed to have had more sex partners than anyone in history in 1982 the rajnishis took over the
nearby town of antelope and with it the majority of seats on the city council and school board which
horrified long-time residents of the small town before the outbreak the rajnishi's had
set their sights on control of the larger town of the dales and had put up their own slate of candidates running in
the november election in the absence of a scientific explanation some thought the rashnesses
might have intentionally poisoned the community in some way so there was suspicion but there was no
evidence why would they do this and the other thought was was maybe there was somebody some hot head trying to
incriminate the raj niche one year later the rajnishi's behavior grew even more bizarre revealing evidence that would
eventually solve the mystery since health officials could not find the source of the salmonella outbreak in
the dales oregon suspicion among local officials continued to be the rosh nishis a religious cult living
on a farm outside of town leaders of the cult and town officials were often at odds
the cult was founded by bhagwan sri rajneesh but today today operations were run by
his associate ma anand sheila they met each other's needs sheila provided for him whatever he wanted you
want 60 rules for isis we'll get you 60 rolls royces you want a new disciple tonight we'll get you new disciples you
want to fly in a jet we'll get you to what you know whatever to make you happy and and the trade-off was that the black
one would say okay you're number one you're in control you take care of all the details i don't
care how you do it the raj nishis were becoming paranoid for many reasons they were being investigated for
possible immigration fraud and there was growing internal conflict between sheila and other commune leaders
nonsense you better believe me i'm a tigress she and her group were in a power struggle with
another group which we always kind of called the hollywood faction they were rich members of the cult headed up by a
lady who was the ex-wife of a hollywood producer they had money they had access to rajneesh
and sheila and her group were very paranoid about these people the struggle was for control of the guru
the cult and its finances former cult members told of plans to assassinate several local politicians
rival cult members a united states attorney and journalist les zeits in retaliation for some investigative
pieces he had written about the group in the local newspaper to be told that you're on a hit list and
for a group that i believe is the time they were capable of that they're just purely evil folks
by that time uh it was really quite a chilling chilling way to start the day one year after the salmonella outbreak
without warning sheila and the head of the rashnesh medical clinic a nurse named puja fled
to europe rajneesh disowned them they had turned it into a passive concentration camp
prosecutors heard that puja had been experimenting with biological poisons at the clinic including
salmonella but there was no hard evidence with the increasing scrutiny the bhagwan
stepped up the level of personal security [Music] there were times when he would move from
one end of the town to the other where he would be in a bulletproof limousine he would have a lead suv with armed
guards in it he would have a trailing suv with arm guards and then he'd have a jet ranger helicopter in the air
[Applause] we felt we could be confronted by a 45 person private army with fully automatic
weapons in october of 1985 a federal grand jury issued a 35-page indictment charging the bhagwan with
lying on his visa application and arranging sham marriages so his followers could remain in the united
states when officials planned to search the compound they asked epidemiologist dr
mike skeels to come along because of fears of biological retaliation and as we were going up that road i was
thinking you know for a microbiologist this is going to be a pretty interesting day
no shots were fired in the commune's licensed medical center skills found samples of various bacteria
standard testing material for a small clinic one of these vials contains salmonella
typhy muriel and i remember at the time thinking well they told me to look for salmonella if i
find any i'm supposed to seize it as evidence well there it is so i'll seize it but i wasn't thinking at all that this
was related to the outbreak shortly after the raid rashnesh left on one of his private jets
he was arrested in north carolina on the immigration charges meanwhile the cdc tested the salmonella
found in the commune's lab using a technique called plasmid profiling plasmids are sections of free-floating
genetic material outside the bacterial chromosome bacteria can exchange plasmids allowing
a colony to genetically adapt and you would then use the size of the plasmid and
some other characteristics of it to see whether it matched the plasmids from other bacteria mostly the size and so if
you found that you had the same plasmid type you could assume that these were related or similar strains
the salmonella from the rashnesses clinic had a plasmid profile similar to the organism from the
dales and it could be killed by all antibiotics just like the strain used in the epidemic
that really was a smoking gun that showed us that the isolate that i found in their clinic and the isolates
that we were getting from the people in this outbreak really were the same bacterial strain
the question remained why would the rashnesses poison the residents of this small town
inside the rashnishi commune investigators found evidence connecting the group to the mass salmonella
poisonings and they discovered other bizarre activities sheila had installed surveillance
devices everywhere in the commune every pay phone in the town was tapped and almost every building this is the
largest incident of wiretapping in the history of the united states they wired this whole town
they were illegal interceptions there were thousands of them they had banks of tape recorders running all the time
it's indescribable [Music] most rashinishi's didn't know they were being monitored
it was kept quiet by sheila and her inner circle which held their meetings on her round bed a bookcase concealed a
metal door opening onto a tunnel or in secret rooms complete with escape tunnels
the fbi also found a number of manuals for making bombs and doing dirty tricks and they found a
number of articles about bioterrorism or biowarfare the salmonella was the weapon chosen for
a power struggle but not an internal one did i understand you correctly yesterday
when you said that you were in fact now going to attempt to take over wasco county that's correct you understood
right when the rajinishis put up their own candidates to run for election for the
local county commission they wanted to make sure their candidates won to do that they wanted to make the local
voters sick enough so they couldn't get to the polling places to vote the russian issues would have enough
people in antelope and other nearby places that they would all vote 100 turnout among the russian issues enough
that they would install their own candidates on the county commission but why had the outbreak happened in
september informants say it was a rehearsal and it wasn't their first at sheila's direction
the rajnishi's took off their red robes and put on regular clothing and went through the town with spray containers
filled with salmonella in august their first experiment was spraying the door handles in the county
courthouse and produce in the local supermarkets [Music] but no one got sick their second experiment in september was
to spray salmonella on salad bars in 10 local restaurants which worked contaminating over 700 residents
just before election day the rajnishi's made plans to contaminate the city's water supply
apparently they were unsuccessful there was evidence that someone had gotten to the reservoir for the city of
the dallas and gotten into it but no evidence that they actually ever contaminated
all of the rajonishi candidates lost in the november elections armed with the forensic biological
evidence sheila and puja were extradited from europe and charged with tampering with consumer products
they both pled guilty served less than three years in federal prison were released and fled to switzerland before
state charges could be filed last we knew sheila was in europe running at the equivalent of a nursing home which
is sort of chilling to think about turning grandma over to sheila in her final days
there was no proof rashnesh himself ever knew anything about the salmonella plot
he pleaded guilty to immigration violations was deported and died in india in 1990
most of the restaurants targeted in the attack never recovered from the economic
blow and went out of business that's what happened to dave lutkin's restaurant we never regained the position we had in
the community afterwards i had people that would tell me that you know i know it wasn't your
fault but i just can't eat there anymore he now runs a catering service [Music] the scientists who investigated the
outbreak wrote a paper about it but the centers for disease control asked that it not be published fearing
copycat crimes in 1997 13 years after the outbreak when bioterrorism had become a growing
concern the paper was finally published in the journal of the american medical association
evidence discovered in the rashneshi's health clinic revealed they had even more potent biological
weapons in their possession had they been used the results would have been catastrophic
neither the epidemiology alone nor a criminal investigation alone would have would have cracked this it took
both to put it together [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack: investigators uncover a plot to overthrow the government after a unique strain of salmonella makes people ill.

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 1984 salmonella outbreak in Oregon was linked to the Rajneesh cult's election sabotage plan.

Key points

The Salmonella Outbreak. In September 1984, a mysterious salmonella outbreak sickened hundreds in a small Oregon town.
Cult Suspicions. Local officials suspect a nearby cult, the Rajneesh, may be involved in the outbreak.
The Aftermath. The economic impact of the outbreak led to the closure of many local restaurants.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I would never want to be that sick again.

Dave Lutkins recalls his illness during the outbreak.

1:51WatchDec 10, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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