Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 21 - The Big Chill - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 10 months time carol heller went to the hospital 31 times complaining of various ailments that her doctors
thought were all in her head that is until she died this is how a forensic toxicologist and
the middle aged woman in a cheerleader's outfit cracked the only known case of its kind in the history of forensic
science [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] after her divorce carol heller moved to
the small town of perry oklahoma to be closer to her family [Music] with only 5 000 residents and almost no
violent crime perry seemed like a good place to start over carol was fighting a lifelong battle
with manic depression also known as bipolar disorder [Music] although carol became active in the
local church and developed a circle of friends it wasn't enough there are a lot of people who don't feel
fulfilled unless they have a spouse they want someone in their life and she wanted a man in her life
so carol decided to place a personal ad in a local christian newspaper she was looking for
a christian male person who could take charge of household finances and dennis was the one that answered the ad
dennis heller was a 51 year old handyman when the two started dating carol's family made sure dennis was aware of her
past my parents talked to him about it so he was aware that she had had some mental health problems
within a year carol and dennis were married and it wasn't long before some of carol's old demons resurfaced
she'd wander away from her house and and we would go find her and take her back home
sometimes she wound up in the emergency room at the hospital sometimes she was taken to a mental
health facility for evaluation they were trying to get her get her own medications
my dad asked her one time said carol have you ever thought about killing yourself
and she says well yes she said i have thought about it before doctors prescribed lithium a common
medication for bipolar disorder like maybe a lot of people with the bipolar she had a lot of manic phases but as far as
being real depressed she she handled that pretty good the medication caused nausea drowsiness
and slurred speech her doctors reduced her dosage of lithium but her symptoms persisted
to get relief carol sought the advice of other doctors but none were able to help
her she had been in perry still stillwater ponca oklahoma city and denver colorado hospitals in those 10
months i think the doctors and nurses who treated her tended to tune her out after a while
she'd get to the hospital and they'd stabilize her and they'd just determined that they either had
solved the problem or couldn't figure out what the problem was and they'd send her home and a month later it would
start again it would happen again carol's health problems were also causing strains in her new marriage
when i talked to carol she was just so down and out she said i think dennis is getting disgusted with
me she said i have been sick the whole time we have been married carol was convinced that it was the
lithium that was causing these symptoms so against doctor's orders she stopped taking the medication all together
that's when her problems really started [Music] one sunday about a year after her
marriage carol heller was uncharacteristically absent from church her husband dennis told the congregation
that carol's condition had taken a turn for the worse later that night dennis called for an ambulance
carol was in a coma so they transported her by helicopter to a larger hospital in oklahoma city some 60 miles away
about an hour later i got a phone call and when the phone rang i knew what it was
i knew that that she had died carol had never regained consciousness doctors believe carol died of natural
causes the cause of death was congestive heart failure that's what they believed that
she had dying from the medical examiner was overwhelmed with cases from the oklahoma city
bombing which had happened just six weeks earlier many of the 168 victims of that blast
still were unidentified so no autopsy was performed on carol heller in accordance with her wishes carol's
body was cremated that was her wish so my dad said there was no sense of embalming her
in a town as small as perry news of carol's death spread quickly so did word of her husband's
insensitivity paramedics when the ambulance crew arrived at his home dennis was on the couch on the telephone
when they walked in he did not acknowledge them nor would he speak to them they asked him what room she was in
he did not respond and so they went looking through their apartment and found carol unconscious in a coma
on the bed and there was another peculiar incident at carroll's funeral service dennis was sitting back in behind us
about four rows or so and of course we got reports that he had been dozing off to sleep during the memorial
service curious about the situation detective pharaoh went to the heller's apartment
where the building manager told him an even more bizarre story the day before carol's death
she saw huge flames coming from the outdoor grill behind the couple's apartment she thought at first he was cooking
something but then after he had went back in she had looked into the grill and there was
nothing in there but a bunch of burnt pieces of paper so she really wasn't sure what he was doing out there but and
this was all prior to carol's death [Music] and later that same night the apartment
manager saw dennis carrying boxes and boxes of trash to the dumpster pharaoh discovered those boxes were
filled with carol's personal items i found a bible that belonged to carol it was a gift from her father and it was
very old so you could tell it was an heirloom there was documents there was letters oh god there's just i mean just
basic stuff that you would find in someone's uh you know drawers you know like dresser drawers
and stuff that had been tossed in there but why would dennis dispose of carol's belongings on the day before she died
in the heller's apartment investigators found something odd in the kitchen pantry a container of
anti-freeze i've never known anyone to keep antifreeze in a kitchen a garage yes but
not a kitchen but according to dennis it was carol's idea to keep the anti-freeze in the
kitchen he said she had drank a half a gallon of antifreeze back in november and that he had bought a new gallon of
antifreeze and half of it was gone so he thought that she might have drank it again
[Applause] corroborating this unusual story was the fact that dennis told carol's sisters
the same thing shortly before her death he said i found some antifreeze in carol's closet and some of it's gone you
know it just really flew all over me why would somebody mention something like that
yet on the night carol died doctors found absolutely no sign of ethylene glycol in her system which is the
primary ingredient of antifreeze if investigators suspected foul play they had no way to prove it
since there had been no autopsy and carol's body had already been cremated [Music]
homicide detective david farrell joined forces with his colleague buzz busby to look into the suspicious death of 52
year old carol heller almost everyone they talked to told stories about dennis heller's unusual
behavior both before and after carol's death to get to the bottom of the mystery
busby and pharaoh sifted through 4 000 pages of carol heller's medical records to organize the materials they used the
spare courtroom and sorted the records by month each chair represented a different month
in carol's life when all the records were arranged the chair representing march of 1995
was empty this was just three months before her death we can understand that since we hadn't had a chance to go
through the records and read all of them yet why would there not be records when
there was records for every other month they soon discovered a possible explanation
in march of 1995 dennis heller was in jail in oklahoma city for shoplifting district attorney mark gibson responded
to the news with caution well my policy has always been that i will not file charges on a case of any kind until
i'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that i have evidence to show someone beyond a reasonable doubt
that the crime was committed and a little deeper in carol's medical records investigators found another clue
shortly before her death carol went to a hospital 50 miles away in ponca city complaining of slurred
speech and confusion dr danny cassidy treated carol that day and found evidence that the acid levels
in carol's blood were elevated a condition known as metabolic acidosis when he saw the elevated metabolic
acidosis levels he realized that there was only a couple of things that would cause that
in response dr cassidy ordered more tests i was testing for other unusual forms of acidosis things
like methanol or i believe wood alcohol that is highly toxic dr cassidy told carol those test results
would take about a week but carol didn't want to wait for the results she did not want to be in the hospital
and she didn't represent a threat to anyone or to herself and so she could not be forcibly
detained to be in the hospital and so she left willingly with her husband those gas chromatography tests found
ethylene glycol in carroll system six milligrams per deciliter sadly carol was already dead by the time
her personal physician got the results now there was an even bigger question how did the ethylene glycol get into
carol's system we've never found another case in the united states or anywhere for that
matter where someone was gradually being poisoned with antifreeze but investigators had no way of knowing
whether carol ingested it intentionally in a crude suicide attempt or whether her husband had poisoned her
[Music] to find out investigators look for an expert in anti-freeze poisoning we took his book
and we contacted some of the people in there and seemed like everybody we talked to and kind of give them our
story they pointed us to dr pochlas in in virginia noted toxicologist dr alphonse pokeless
is one of the world's foremost authorities on ethylene glycol he reviewed carol heller's medical
records and immediately noticed a discrepancy carol told doctors she had slurred
speech confusion a lack of coordination nausea and dehydration her doctors attributed this to lithium
but the symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning were virtually identical this is almost the greek tragedy
you read the medical records the sicker she gets the more she becomes convinced the medications the physicians
are giving her are making her ill the more she complains about it the more the physicians think that she's becoming
paranoid the six milligrams of ethylene glycol found in carroll's system was about
one-third the lethal dose says this amount is consistent with slow poisoning not suicide
that's a strange way to commit suicide i don't know anybody that's going to poison themselves with ethylene glycol
arsenic or anything and make themselves repeatedly yield for nine or ten months to kill themselves
but there was no scientific evidence to prove dr poclus's hypothesis there had been no autopsy carol's body had been
cremated and there was no ethylene glycol in her blood the night she died it appeared that if dennis heller had
poisoned his wife with antifreeze he was going to get away with it investigators in perry oklahoma faced a
dilemma gas chromatography found six milligrams of ethylene glycol in carol heller's
system just a few weeks before she died at least on 13 different occasions dennis heller would talk to people about
antifreeze and the effects it would have on you if you drank it one of the common things he would say
and it seemed like this was always out of context and i'm not sure what context discussing antifreeze poisoning would be
appropriate but people would say we were talking and dennis just came up with a statement
did you know that one teaspoon of antifreeze taken every day for 10 days will kill
you so investigators tried a different tank they knew that dennis heller spent quite
a bit of time in oklahoma city about 60 miles away he had a girlfriend there for most of
the time he was married her name was karen dawson and she was more than willing to talk to
police after carol died the girlfriend kind of put it all together and was very willing to work with us
to assist us in any way she could he had actually taken carol's wedding rings down to karen to have her trial
them on this is prior to her death had karen to try these things on to see how they fit because they would soon be
hers according to dennis karen told police that dennis was attracted to girls wearing cheerleaders
outfits and he bought one in a second-hand store it's a lemon yellow 1960s cheerleading
outfit with pleats that he gave to her that he had bought for carol to wear at 53 years old
investigators convinced karen to wear that cheerleader's outfit on the couple's next date along with the hidden
microphone the two went to a drive-in restaurant undercover officers listened from a van
across the street karen began by telling dennis that if they were to have any kind of a life
together dennis would have to be completely honest with her then karen asked dennis
if he had anything to do with his wife's death i put it in her food myself and detective pharaoh were listening on a
receiving device he even described how he'd done it with an eyedropper etc he had bragged to her
that he was kind of proud that he had managed to do this and fool everyone that was a huge moment that was a
confession ethylene glycol has a distinctive taste and odor how dennis placed antifreeze in carol's
food without detection will not be revealed in this program surprisingly when investigators arrested
dennis heller he wasn't at all concerned he did say to the investigators that it
only takes one person on a jury with reasonable doubt and slow poisoning is hard to prove
dennis heller thought he had committed the perfect murder he thought he had covered his tracks
medically but there was one thing he hadn't counted on although there hadn't been an autopsy on
carroll due to the oklahoma city bombing the medical examiner took some tissue samples for analysis
when tested he found calcium oxalate crystals in her brain and kidney samples prolonged exposure to ethylene glycol
can cause calcium oxalate crystals to form causing renal failure and death they were getting clogged up
she probably got a pretty good dose two days before she died from what we know he's a cold hearted killer is what he is
and anyone who can sit around and see somebody suffer i couldn't even stand to see an animal
suffer all that time much less your spouse but what was his motive dennis was of even fewer means than
carol she had an apartment she had a car she had a jc penney's life insurance policy or at least dennis believed that
she did he wanted what she had and he wandered out of the way when confronted with this forensic
evidence dennis heller pled guilty to manslaughter in return he was sentenced to life in prison
had it not been for investigators persistence one doctor's suspicions and the cheerleaders outfit
dennis heller might have gotten away with murder in all those visits to doctors none of them had ever discovered
detected the antifreeze poison in her system and [Music] that's one of the most fascinating
things about the case from my perspective is that there is a relatively simple test that will detect
it carol's family credits forensic science for bringing dennis heller to justice
i would like to say to the doctor who finally figured out what was going on thank you very much
from the whole family from the bottom of our hearts and i hope that it saves some
lives and i hope that this program will save more lives and people can be tipped off to symptoms that
what is happening i don't think that there's anything that we can't find or do when we use
forensics and anyone who wants to go out here and commit a crime you know you're going to leave something
you're going to say something we're going to find it one way or the other by using forensics
[Music] [Music] you

For years, a woman suffered from what appeared to be the unpleasant side effects of lithium, a drug prescribed to treat bipolar disorder. When she died, investigators had to determine if her death was due to natural causes, suicide, 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.

#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

Carol Heller's mysterious death reveals a husband's poisoning scheme using antifreeze, leading to his conviction for manslaughter.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Carol Heller. Carol Heller's health issues lead to a tragic end, raising questions about her husband's role.
Confession Caught on Tape. Dennis Heller's shocking admission about his wife's death is captured during a sting operation.
Forensic Breakthrough. A doctor discovers the cause of Carol's death, leading to justice for her family.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Well yes, I have thought about it before.

Carol's admission about suicidal thoughts.

3:03WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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