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So, Dr. Clark tests for all the usual poison suspects, right? Like arsenic, cyanide. But when those come back
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negative, he works with poison control resources trying to match Mary's symptoms
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to something in their database. And this stretches on all the way through August
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and into September. But finally, nearly 2 months after Mary's death, they figure it out.
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Mary died from an overdose of colchicine. I've never heard of that. >> Most people haven't. I hadn't before
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this case. Colchicine is typically used to treat gout. But Mary didn't have gout. So,
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there is no reason that she should have been taking it at all. Let alone the amount found in her system, which was
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enough to kill her many, many times over. >> And I assume this isn't like an over-the-counter kind of thing.
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>> No, no, no, no. You need a prescription. [music] And it's not like there's like a
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street market for this thing either. >> for gout. >> Right. So, at first, poison control and
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everyone is thinking that there could be basically like accidental ways this got
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into her system. Both of which they need to identify fast because other people could be at risk. And so, the first
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thought they have is, okay, she could have gotten it through contact with plants. [music]
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Mary was this avid gardener and colchicine comes from a plant. So, maybe she ingested something that she [music]
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grew. Okay, I don't know the ins and outs of this drug, but I feel like you'd probably have to ingest a lot of a plant
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to die from it. And I I don't see that happening by accident. >> actually doesn't take that much. The
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lethal dose is remarkably low, but there is a second, even scarier possibility. Mary was known to take a lot of
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supplements, a lot of vitamins, and she even sold them out of her practice. So, they start thinking like, "Oh my god,
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what if something that she was taking got contaminated during manufacturing?" At least if it was her garden, the
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problem would be contained to her household. With this, I mean, they could be looking at a public health crisis.
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So, they have her family go and collect and turn over everything they can find that she took regularly. And even though
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it seems far-fetched, they do go even check her garden. But everything comes back clean.