Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 1 - Dessert Served Cold - Full Episode | Forensic Files

a man died in his home after a long history of heart disease it was assumed that this was the cause of his death
a few weeks after the funeral rumors surfaced that the death was no accident when the body was exhumed scientists
needed to know whether the dead could tell tales [Music] oh a january night in 1990 a woman
called for an ambulance saying her boyfriend was unconscious and barely breathing
emergency personnel were at the home in westport massachusetts within minutes we
arrived on scene went into the house we found a male sitting in chair he was just kind of
slumped forward unresponsive the man's girlfriend said he had a long history of heart trouble
as soon as i took his robe apart i saw that he had a scar from a past cardiac surgery
which he indicated that he had a bypass surgery at some point in time and we began cpr
but the cpr brought no response 61 year old richard alfredo was pronounced dead an hour later at a
nearby hospital because of his heart disease the local medical examiner decided not to perform
an autopsy mr alfredo had a long history of severe heart disease which necessitated a
surgical correction of his block coronary arteries in the heart a coronary bypass procedure
so at the time of his death he had every reason to die from his heart disease richard alfredo was buried four days
after his death all of his assets worth about twenty five thousand dollars went to his
estranged wife and children alfredo's girlfriend 39 year old christina martin continued to live in
the house the couple shared along with her two children from a previous marriage
nothing seemed out of the ordinary until westport police officer mike roussell started hearing rumors
we heard rumors that mr alfredo's death was due to poisoning and this was just facts that we couldn't
prove at that time was just information and as a police department we had the obligation to start looking into this
the rumors emanated from some students at a nearby high school richard alfredo's girlfriend christina
martin had a 14 year old daughter tisha who attended westport high school tisha allegedly told school friends that
alfredo had made sexual advances towards her on numerous occasions and she admitted
that she and her mother were angry about it the teenagers were telling us miss martin was trying to locate
anything that would take the life of mr alfredo investigators now wondered whether they
made a mistake burying the body without an autopsy [Music] four weeks after richard alfredo's death
rumors circulated that his death was no accident the daughter of alfredo's girlfriend
tasha allegedly told friends that alfredo had made sexual advances towards her [Music]
and she also said that her mother put the drug lsd in alfredo's gelatin dessert in an effort to kill him
they made the jello they made it two separate dishes they ate jello but his dish was kept to
the side at that time they fed him the jello and then they went out of the house and they
came back and he was basically dead at that time they called rescue and he was transported to
saint luke's hospital where he's pronounced dead is a powerful hallucinogen known on the
street as acid a dose or hit usually comes in tablets or in liquids soaked into paper
a single drop can cause hallucinations for six to ten hours we've been told by people that have
taken lsd it's you're seeing all kinds of different things uh animals running across the room at you
things crawling up the wall things crawling on you so you know it would have put him in a position where
he had no idea what was going on and lsd can also cause a rapid increase in heart rate
a local drug dealer admitted selling 30 doses of lsd to a small group which included alfredo's girlfriend christina
and her daughter tisha [Music] they identified miss martin is sitting in the vehicle and they brought the
drugs to her and they left the area at that time during police questioning christina
denied buying lsd or giving richard alfredo any harmful substances miss martin was trying to locate
anything that would um take the life of mr alfredo um no matter whether it was some type of a medication
or pills or um she even tried to get some of the teenagers to if he would they would take
him out with a weapon being uh she was going to provide the gun for them which was mr alfredo's guns
to see if lsd had caused alfredo's death the medical examiner exhumed his body six weeks after the funeral
in a living person lsd leaves the body within 36 hours of use but in a dead person the drug can stay
indefinitely although the embalming process can complicate matters the process of embalming
is such that all the blood in the body is removed and replaced with embalming fluid a
preservative so that any attempt at trying to find poisons is hampered because there is no blood left
in the body but they found some other tissue samples to test there was some urine
there was some intestinal contents there were some stomach contents the samples were sent to two different
labs for testing the state crime lab and another private laboratory [Music] dr louis amoruso performed the testing
at the private lab and used what is called a radio immunoassay test or ria it's similar to the test used at
sporting events to screen athletes for the presence of performance-enhancing drugs
[Music] dr amoruso took a sample of lsd then mixed it with a radioactive compound
then added samples from alfredo's body if lsd were present in alfredo's body he would have formed antibodies to fight
it those antibodies will bind to the radioactive lsd sample producing a positive result
both the private lab and the police lab found two drugs present in alfredo's system
one was diphenhydramine a common over-the-counter cold medication the other was lsd
the more important compound as far as we were concerned was lsd because there are
no prescriptions for lsd and that would indicate something that would not be found except under illicit
conditions lsd causes the heart to beat more vigorously the stresses placed on the very diseased heart
caused a fatal heart attack thereby the cause of death heart disease and lsd poisoning
richard alfredo's death was no longer considered an accident it was now murder a heart attack brought on by acute lsd
intoxication when police went to arrest christina martin and her daughter tasha they found that they had both fled the
country miss martin leaving town led us to believe that she definitely had some involvement in his death
that's what made us look even more closely to her even though we were on that track anyway
telephone records indicated they fled to montreal where they were apprehended christina martin was charged with first
degree murder no charges were filed against her daughter tisha at the trial prosecutors presented the toxicological
evidence of lsd in richard alfredo's system and a drug dealer testified that christina was present when he sold lsd
to tisha's high school friends [Music] that was all the prosecution needed christina martin was convicted of
first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison and that's where the case stood
for seven long years that is until it came up for a routine appeal where christina's lawyer found something
in the case file he wasn't supposed to see [Music] christina martin had served seven years
in prison for the murder of her boyfriend richard alfredo before her case came up for a routine appeal
christina's new lawyer was a public defender kevin mahoney his first task was to go to the
courthouse to pick up the case file while i was standing at the counter waiting for the evidence to be brought
to me by the clerk i struck up a conversation with the gentleman next to me wound up being an
assistant d.a he turns to me and he says council you're representing miss martin i said
yes the assistant d.a told mahoney to look very closely at richard alfredo's official cause of death
well i was stunned that a prosecutor would make such an admission to me i definitely took it as a red flag and
this is something i should follow through with this was the first murder case mahoney
ever handled and he read every page of transcript of christina's first trial paying
particular attention to anything related to how richard alfredo had died [Music]
the transcripts were so fascinating i couldn't put it down it was like a great novel at first blush it seemed that the
evidence was overwhelming because these toxicologists these chemists are getting
in there and they're testifying that there's massive amounts of lsd jesus that didn't sound good
but then he came across this document richard alfredo's death certificate stating the cause of death as
acute lsd intoxication mahoney made a telephone call to dr david benjamin a highly respected
clinical pharmacologist there had never been a case reported where a person had died from the direct
effects of lsd so right away that allegation was inconsistent with a whole body of
scientific information dating back to the mid 60s that's a 30-year period of time
and dr benjamin noticed another potential discrepancy [Music] the ria test was designed to work only
on fresh urine samples which the medical examiner didn't have after the body was
autopsied the labs tested tissue samples and degraded blood all of which had been embalmed
i called the manufacturer and i asked do you have any experience with using this
test in samples other than fresh urine in particular forensic samples obtained from exhumed bodies or from dead people
and they said absolutely not [Music] and even if the urine tests positive for lsd
the riaa test is only for screening any positive results must then be retested to confirm the results
on the ria test kit outer box the manufacturer makes this clear it states that all ria results are
preliminary and that a specific alternative must be used to get a confirmed analytical
result even the scientists who conducted the original ria test for the prosecution
agreed with that assessment in order to say with 100 certainty that it was lsd that was present in the body
one would have to go to a confirmatory test the gold standard or the test that is considered to be
the most dependable is the one that's called gas chromatography mass spectrometry
for whatever reason christina martin's first lawyer never questioned the test results
the defense attorney at the trial was so incompetent and his performance was so bad that the
judge called him up to sidebar and asked him you're not doing very much examination
of these witnesses is is that is that intentional is that deliberate and the attorney tried to reassure the
judge and tell them oh don't worry in law come out in my defense case but it never did
if the scientific tests were only preliminary why wasn't a confirmatory test ever
performed kevin mahoney found the answer to that question in the evidence file information
prosecutors never presented at the first trial information prosecutors thought would remain a secret
when kevin mahoney examined the case file from christina martin's first trial he found an important piece of evidence
it was evidence that prosecutors never presented at the first trial prosecutors had commissioned the
confirmatory test on alfredo's tissue samples using a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer it's a test that can
identify every substance in the sample that test detected no lsd in any of the samples
even though they tested and retested and retested they were desperate to confirm
the what they had learned from the radio and osa test but they weren't able to do that
mahoney discovered that this exculpatory forensic evidence was not given to christina martin's defense attorney
before the trial this violated a legal provision known as the brady doctrine the brady doctrine says that
the prosecution has a duty to turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defense without even being asked for it
in this case the prosecutor played hide the ball with the exculpatory evidence the gas chromatography mass spectrometry
evidence should have been disclosed to the defense attorney it never was this may explain why an assistant d.a
told mahoney to look carefully at the official cause of richard alfredo's death [Music]
and this new forensic evidence was put before an appeals court judge who was unusually qualified for this particular
case 99 out of 100 judges eyes were just glazed over when they started hearing gc mass back and all
this other stuff the judge in this case judge gordon dorffer was a chemistry major in college
how lucky were we in his decision judge dorffer cited defects in the scientific evidence and the
prosecution's failure to disclose critical exculpatory evidence as grounds for a new trial
but prosecutors decided not to retry the case christina martin agreed to plead guilty
to manslaughter in exchange for a sentence of time served in other words christina martin was a free woman
moments after leaving the courtroom christina martin told the press that despite the plea bargain she had nothing
to do with her boyfriend's death i pleaded guilty because of the plea bargain and the chance that i might go
back to jail i didn't want that i would have liked to have had this woman found not guilty but this is not the first
person in massachusetts to say they did something in order to get out of being prosecuted when your feet are being held
to the fire you're going to do things you really don't want to do but if christina martin was innocent
why did she flee to canada shortly after alfredo's death she may have had a guilty conscience
about some of the things that she was thinking about doing and maybe some of the things that she had done
plus there was also the possibility with her daughter involved that her daughter
might have done some things to this gentleman without her knowledge but while science rules out lsd
it reveals another possibility when alfredo's body was exhumed the medical examiner found groundwater
in the casket the water mixed with the embalming fluid may have contaminated the tissue samples
basically lsd has a chemical structure and that chemical structure is not unique to lsd there are many substances
in the body and in nature in general that possess similar chemical structures two of them
that we would find in the body would be the amino acid tryptophan and the neurotransmitter serotonin there are
also ergot derivatives that are in the the grass and the ground and in uh fungi and fungal material that could have been
washed into the coffin when all of the water seeped into the coffin and the preliminary drug test was
supposed to be used on fresh urine samples not tissue samples dr benjamin also believes it may have
been the cold medicine diphenhydramine that alfredo was taking for his cold that caused his death since it can
increase one's heart rate i will tell you what reasonable doubt arose for me and that was first of all
nobody dies from lsd they commit suicide but they don't have direct toxic effects
that lead to death the original prosecutor in this case refused all requests for an interview
officially prosecutors still maintain that christina martin killed richard alfredo
defense experts say lsd has never killed anyone [Music] today richard alfredo's tombstone is not
engraved with the date of his death perhaps a metaphor for the uncertainty that still exists in this case
bad science and bad ethics resulted in miss martin being sent to a prison cell it was good ethics and good science that
got her out of the prison cell so bad science put her in and good science got her out
[Music] [Music] so [Music] you

A man died in his home after a long history of heart disease. It was assumed that this was the cause of his death. A few weeks after the funeral, rumors surfaced that the death was no accident.

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.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 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

Richard Alfredo's death was initially ruled an accident, but evidence of LSD and a flawed trial led to his girlfriend's wrongful conviction for murder.

Key points

Richard Alfredo's Mysterious Death. Richard Alfredo's death was initially ruled an accident due to heart disease, but rumors of foul play emerged.
The Role of LSD. Investigators discovered LSD in Alfredo's system, leading to a murder charge against his girlfriend.
Christina Martin's Conviction. Christina Martin was convicted of first-degree murder based on toxicological evidence linking her to Alfredo's death.
New Evidence Emerges. Seven years later, new evidence prompted an appeal, revealing critical flaws in the original trial.
The Plea Bargain. Christina Martin agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter, becoming a free woman after time served.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was the first murder case Mahoney ever handled.

Mahoney's first case as a defense attorney.

11:42WatchDec 17, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Forensic Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.