Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 26 - Letter Perfect - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: When an otherwise healthy young man died mysteriously in his sleep, investigators
assumed the suicide note explained why. It told the tale of heartbreak, deception, and jealousy.
But it told an experts in forensic linguistics something entirely different. [music playing]
[siren wailing] Early one morning in 1992, an emergency medical team responded to a call from a Raleigh, North Carolina
apartment. There, they discovered a young man unconscious in bed. A closer look revealed he was dead.
JOHN D. BUTTS, MD: This man had no evidence of head trauma, chest trauma, any other injury that
might explain why he was dead. He was otherwise a seemingly healthy young man. NARRATOR: The victim was 23-year-old Michael Hunter,
a recent college graduates with a successful career as a computer programmer. His roommate told police he found Michael unconscious
when he tried to wake him up to go to work. The emergency medical team report stated that he appeared to have gone to sleep
and never woke up. PAT KARNES: When I found out Michael had died, that was very devastating.
He was just my sunshine, because we had been through a lot together, Michael and I. And, um,
so when I found that out, uh, I didn't know how I could go on. NARRATOR: The official autopsy was conducted two days later.
JOHN D. BUTTS, MD: The Initial examination revealed no intrinsic medical condition that would explain
his death and no evidence of any injuries that might have any bearing on his death.
-At that point, a conversation was made with the chief medical examiner for the state of North
Carolina, which determined that perhaps there should be some additional, um, toxicology studies done.
NARRATOR: Toxicology tests of the victim's blood told a different story. Michael had traces of two different cold medicines
in his system, diphenhydramine and hydroxyzine. He also had a lethal dose of lidocaine.
JUDGE EVELYN HILL: This is a substance that is injected. This is not a substance that you take over the counter.
You hear about people accidentally taking ant poison or children accidentally taking medication.
This is not. NARRATOR: Lidocaine is an anesthetic and is sometimes used in emergency medical situations
to stabilize heartbeat. BRENT MYERS, MD: It works very rapidly such that those irregular heartbeats can become normal again very
quickly, even before you arrive at the hospital, for example, if you're in an ambulance.
NARRATOR: It was a problem. The emergency personnel were certain that they did not inject anything
into Michael in their resuscitation efforts. PAT KARNES: They said that they did not administer
any lidocaine because Michael was gone and they knew that there was no need to-- to try to do that.
-I would find it very unusual for there to be lidocaine in the system of someone that
was not undertaken for resuscitation. NARRATOR: Investigators wondered how lidocaine entered Michael's system.
Then, Michael's family learned about their son's secret, a secret that started to bring everything into focus.
Michael Hunter's death devastated his family. And it wasn't until his funeral that his parents learned
the secret their son had been hiding the truth about Michael's sexual orientation.
PAT KARNES: I had no idea. I guess I was real naive or something, but I had no idea that, uh, Michael was gay.
NARRATOR: Sadly, these revelations on top of Michael's death proved too great for his father Jim.
PAT KARNES: He could not accept the fact that somebody could kill his son and then he could do nothing about it.
And so this just put him in a depression that he could not and did not come out of.
And he killed himself. NARRATOR: And now Michael's mother mourned the loss of both the son and the husband.
PAT KARNES: It was just-- just devastating. But because of the support, I mean, we just pulled together.
And that's-- the support is what got us through. NARRATOR: Michael had two roommates, Garry Walston,
a landscape architect, and 26-year-old Joseph Mannino. SARAH AVERY: He was a medical student at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had completed his fourth year of medical school,
but had not yet taken the licensing exam in North Carolina to be licensed as a physician.
-Well, it was an unconventional relationship because, I think, in any sense of a relationship,
there are typically only two people involved. And having a third person involved, I think,
brought in a dynamic that was very different and maybe in some ways very exciting.
But it also created problems that I don't think any of us would have anticipated.
NARRATOR: In almost every sense of the word, the three roommates considered themselves to be life partners.
SARAH AVERY: All three men had a homosexual love triangle as-- as they describe it.
They actually exchanged rings and promised to, um, remain faithful to each other, and, uh, that
was their-- that was their living arrangement. NARRATOR: But it wasn't long before problems
developed among the three. The main problem was that Michael Hunter hadn't been getting along with Joseph Mannino.
GARRY WALSTON: Mike and Joe started not getting along with each other, which was difficult for me
because I didn't have a problem with either one of them. NARRATOR: Eventually, Garry and Michael
decided Joseph Mannino had to go. GARRY WALSTON: We told Joe basically that he was gonna have to move out.
That was I think like a week before Mike was killed. NARRATOR: Previously, all three shared the same bed.
Now Joseph Mannino was relegated to sleep on the living room sofa until he found another place to live.
SARAH AVERY: Garry and Michael had formed a duo that they did not want Joe involved in.
And so things basically fell apart, and Joe found himself the odd man out. NARRATOR: Since Gary was out of town when Michael died,
Joe Mannino became the prime suspect. As a medical student, Mannino would have had easy access to lidocaine.
And he certainly knew how to give an injection. Investigators wondered whether the breakup of the love
triangle might have given him a reason to kill. W. ALLISON BLACKMAN: No one knows
what happened in the apartment that night except Joe Mannino and Michael Hunter.
And Michael's dead so he can't tell us. NARRATOR: When questioned, Joe Mannino gave police
an unexpected piece of information. He admitted that on the night Michael died, he had given him an injection of antihistamines
for his migraine headache. Antihistamines are an accepted but not common treatment for migraine pain.
These were the same drugs found in the toxicological test. W. ALLISON BLACKMAN: He says that, I
did give him a shot to relax him. I didn't give him any other shots. I asked him directly did he give him a shot of lidocaine.
He said no. Maybe he did have a migraine. I don't-- I don't know. And, um, Joe did give him something to put him to sleep,
make him sleep sounder. NARRATOR: It was a violation of medical ethics, as well as North Carolina law, for a medical student
to administer drugs without a licensed doctor present. This admission immediately put Mannino's career at risk.
SARAH AVERY: He would have completely thrown away his efforts to become a doctor.
He would never have been licensed. NARRATOR: And investigators discovered another possible clue, a typed letter on the computer desk
among Michael Hunter's things. GARRY WALSTON: I started reading them, and they were what can best be described
as drafts of suicide letters. NARRATOR: The letter, allegedly written by Michael
before his death, said that he suspected that he was HIV positive and was going to kill himself.
REENACTED VOICE OF MICHAEL: I will use some medications I found in Joe's black bag.
Please don't blame him. Forgive me. NARRATOR: All investigators had to do now was confirm that Michael Hunter
had actually written the letter. And for that, they turned to forensic linguistics.
Suspicions about Michael Hunter's death grew even darker when the suicide note surfaced.
It was unsigned, found on the floppy disk among Michael's belongings. Investigators wanted to confirm that Michael had indeed written
the note and turned to Dr. Carole Chaski, an experts in the field of forensic linguistics.
CAROLE E. CHASKI: Here was a document, which was purely electronic. It was simply a computer file left on a diskette.
There was nothing, uh, physical in the sense of ink or handwriting or paper that was available.
It was almost in a-- in a sense pure language. NARRATOR: Linguistics is not so much the study of what
a person says, but how they say it. How people combine words to make phrases and sentences
is known as syntax. CAROLE E. CHASKI: We think what makes individuals' use of language distinctive
is the pattern of simple and complex phrases which one individual uses versus the pattern
of simple versus complex that another individual uses. NARRATOR: Dr. Chaski was given known writing samples
from Michael Hunter and asked to compare them with the suicide note. Using the new computer program called ALIAS,
or Automated Linguistic Identification of Authorship System, Dr. Chaski reduced each document
to its most basic component, the individual words. The program then rebuilt each phrase from scratch
and analyzed how the words were used in relation to each other. CAROLE E. CHASKI: We can get frequencies of how many simple
versus how many complex phrases of each type, noun, verb, adjective, and so forth, are in the document.
NARRATOR: In the suicide note, Dr. Chaski found a distinctive use of conjunctions, words
like "and" or "but." These were used not to combine phrases, but used in large sentences.
CAROLE E. CHASKI: That pattern is the conjoining for sentences and not for smaller things.
NARRATOR: The note also contained a distinctive use of adverbs. Instead of using just one adverb,
the writer had a habit of combining them. This pattern was not found in Michael's known writing
samples. CAROLE E. CHASKI: So given the situation of how the statistical results turned out,
I can conclude that Michael Hunter definitely did not write those suicide notes.
NARRATOR: She then analyzed known writing samples from Joe Mannino. CAROLE E. CHASKI: In the suicide notes,
we see more complicated adverbs than simple ones. And that's the pattern that we find in Joseph Mannino's
writing, more complicated adverbs than simple ones. The suicide notes were not written by Michael Hunter
and most likely were written by Joseph Mannino. I think the family could conclude that not only were--
were the suicide notes phony and concocted, but that the claims within them were also spurious.
NARRATOR: Michael's family never believed their son committed suicide. PAT KARNES: I knew Michael didn't write the letters.
I knew Michael didn't-- didn't commit suicide. And so I was very thankful for the, uh, linguistic forensics
for proving what I knew all along, that Michael did not write it. -I think the letters were probably one of the first real
red lights for me that said, you know, you're-- none of this is making sense anymore.
The theory that Michael Hunter killed himself was further discredited when a blood test
revealed he was not HIV positive. In addition, the amount of lidocaine in Michael's body
would have incapacitated him within seconds and would have killed him within two minutes.
This made the possibility of suicide even more unlikely. BRENT MYERS, MD: This is not a take a handful of pills,
lay down on the bed, wait 30 or 45 minutes for an effect type of drug. This is very rapid onset.
So it would be very unusual for someone to have enough time to clean up, if you will,
after this type of injection. -The needle would have remained in his arm. And if for some reason it didn't, it
would have fallen to the floor. NARRATOR: No needle was ever found in Michael Hunter's bedroom.
When confronted with the forensic linguistics, Joe Mannino changed his story. He admitted writing the suicide note.
And he also said that Michael had complained of a migraine headache the night before he died.
So he injected him with lidocaine to ease the pain. Mannino claimed the overdose was an accident.
W. ALLISON BLACKMAN: Joe was very calm. He would be talking to you and then cry for a second.
And then he'd talk to you again, which is very suspicious to me. If I was mourning over somebody, I'd be mourning the whole time,
not just in spurts. NARRATOR: Now, it would be up to a jury to decide what really
happened the night Michael Hunter died. In 1993, Joe Mannino was charged with first degree murder
in the death of his former partner Michael Hunter. SARAH AVERY: Joe Mannino had everything to live for.
Had a bright future in front of him. He was a couple of weeks away from graduating
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a medical degree. Um, he was on his way to a residency
and just had a very bright future ahead of him. NARRATOR: Prosecutors believed Mannino was a spurned lover
in a love triangle And killed Michael Hunter with a lethal injection of lidocaine
so he alone would be with Garry Walston. Mannino claimed Hunter asked him for an injection
to help him with this migraine headache and that he accidentally gave him too much lidocaine.
Garry Walston, the former partner of both the victim and the accused, didn't believe it.
GARRY WALSTON: Mike had a history of migraines. And they were pretty bad at times.
And Joe would occasionally offer to give him something that would help him. And Mike always refused.
NARRATOR: There were medical cases where lidocaine had been used in small amounts to treat migraines.
Mannino claimed he only meant to administer enough of the drug to ease his friend's pain.
But prosecutors said Mannino killed Michael Hunter and then concocted the suicide note
to make it look like Hunter killed himself. When that didn't work, Mannino had no choice but to say it was an accident.
JUDGE EVELYN HILL: He might have been smart as far as his learning was, but people who commit crimes,
especially like this, normally don't think ahead. NARRATOR: Prosecutors said Hunter's
death was premeditated murder. They argued that Joe Mannino had planned the killing for weeks.
They said he waited until the third roommate, Garry Walston, was out of town on business.
Then, after Michael Hunter was asleep, snuck into his room and injected him with a lethal concoction
of cold medicine and lidocaine. JUDGE EVELYN HILL: Joe went in there, filled up a syringe with lidocaine,
and very slowly and carefully inserted it into Mike's arm, and he pushed the syringe.
And then he removes the syringe, and before he walked out of the room, Mike was dead.
NARRATOR: Investigators naturally asked if Michael would have felt the injection if he was asleep.
BRENT MYERS, MD: It is certainly conceivable that a well-trained hand could place that needle
and not awaken you from sleep. And then slowly administer the drug , and you may never wake up from that.
NARRATOR: But was Joe Mannino capable of murder? GARRY WALSTON: It was hard for me
to believe that he would have done something like that. But there were undeniable facts involved.
I mean, Mike was dead. He was there with him. He was the only person there with him.
He was the only person with the means. So there were undeniable facts that pointed to him that I couldn't ignore.
NARRATOR: After a three-week trial, Joseph Mannino was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
He was sentenced to seven years in prison and will never be able to practice medicine.
Some of the jurors believed it was possible that Michael Hunter agreed to the lidocaine injection.
JUDGE EVELYN HILL: The issue the jury struggled with was, did Mike consent or not?
Joe said he consented. All of Mike's friends said he didn't. He would never have.
And of course, Mike couldn't tell us. -I was a little surprised, um, a little angry, you know.
A lot angry. Um, I mean, because it-- it was like this single act had left a path of destruction a mile wide for so many people's
lives, my family, Mike's family, Joe's family. And I just felt like the punishment
didn't fit the crime. -It was over. Uh, nothing that they could do to Joe would bring Michael back.
And, um, I just-- I just wanted to get on with our lives. NARRATOR: Though questions remain about the verdict,
forensic examination of the suicide letter was invaluable. GARRY WALSTON: I think the forensic linguistics helped set
the groundwork for proving that Joe was involved in Mike's death and was covering it up.
-The linguistics in this case was the first time I've known it's ever been used in any kind of a police
investigation to assist in making an arrest. I think it was a great tool that should
be used on a daily basis. [music playing]

A healthy young man dies mysteriously in his sleep, and toxicology tests reveal a lethal dose of lidocaine in his blood. Investigators find a suicide note, and presume he killed himself until a forensic linguist examines the note.

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

Michael Hunter's death led to a murder investigation involving forensic linguistics and his roommate Joseph Mannino's questionable actions.

Key points

The Mysterious Death of Michael Hunter. Michael Hunter, a healthy young man, mysteriously dies in his sleep, leading to a complex investigation.
The Secret Revealed. Michael's family discovers his hidden sexual orientation after his tragic death.
Forensic Linguistics Uncovers Truth. Forensic linguistics reveals that the suicide note was likely written by Joe Mannino, not Michael.
The Verdict. Joe Mannino is convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Hunter.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was just my sunshine.

Pat Karnes reflects on Michael's impact on his life.

1:55WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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