00:00:06
investigators described it as a one in a
00:00:09
million chance
00:00:11
a tiny manufacturing flaw on an envelope
00:00:15
exposed a murderer who was willing to
00:00:17
kill innocent victims to get at the one
00:00:20
person he wanted dead
00:00:26
[Music]
00:00:33
[Music]
00:00:36
so
00:00:38
[Music]
00:00:51
it was a typical monday morning at the
00:00:53
transamerica title insurance company in
00:00:56
tempe arizona
00:00:58
there were only four employees all
00:01:01
friends who spent their work days
00:01:03
processing paperwork
00:01:06
46 year old julie williams had been
00:01:08
working at transamerica for two months
00:01:11
she had gotten this new job
00:01:13
things were going really well
00:01:15
for her she was happy when i talked to
00:01:17
her on the phone she always expressed
00:01:19
how well things were going and how she
00:01:21
was really starting to feel a sense of
00:01:23
peace and joy in her life
00:01:27
on a monday morning around 9 00 a.m
00:01:30
julie got a drink from the water cooler
00:01:35
after taking a sip
00:01:36
she said that her lips and tongue were
00:01:38
burning and warned her co-workers not to
00:01:40
drink the water
00:01:43
she walks down to the bathroom she goes
00:01:46
into the bathroom the people are kind of
00:01:47
worried about her
00:01:49
the other employees were baffled
00:01:52
they got some water out of the water
00:01:54
cooler and tasted it and it burned their
00:01:57
mouths and they had to spit it out
00:01:59
meanwhile
00:02:00
julie never returned from the bathroom
00:02:04
she's in the stall they can't open the
00:02:06
door because her basically her body is
00:02:09
against the door somebody has to crawl
00:02:11
up over the staller underneath the stall
00:02:13
they found julie unconscious completely
00:02:16
unresponsive
00:02:19
paramedics arrive minutes later and
00:02:21
rushed her to the hospital she was in a
00:02:24
coma and by that time we knew that that
00:02:26
was pretty serious and that the doctors
00:02:28
were telling us we needed to get there
00:02:29
quickly because they really weren't sure
00:02:31
how bad this was
00:02:33
at first doctors thought julie had
00:02:35
suffered a massive stroke
00:02:37
but it was even worse
00:02:40
mri tests and the cat scans and things
00:02:42
like that
00:02:43
were showing basically a flat line which
00:02:46
meant that she was brain dead and we
00:02:48
couldn't understand
00:02:50
doctors told julie's three grown
00:02:52
daughters
00:02:53
she probably wouldn't survive
00:02:56
her heart was fine her liver was fine
00:02:58
her kidneys were fine and she could
00:03:00
basically go on like this for
00:03:02
who knows how long but she was never
00:03:04
going to wake up
00:03:05
the hospital asked police to check on
00:03:07
transamerica's water supply
00:03:10
when i went to the break room there was
00:03:12
an obvious odor that i could smell to
00:03:15
toxicologists
00:03:16
this meant only one thing
00:03:19
cyanide
00:03:21
people say those who can smell it and it
00:03:23
is genetically controlled that it smells
00:03:25
like bitter almonds
00:03:28
about 40 percent of the population can't
00:03:30
smell it
00:03:31
as a precaution everything inside the
00:03:33
water cooler room was sent for testing
00:03:36
on examining all the items that were in
00:03:38
their coffee cups the coffee maker
00:03:40
itself the coffee creamer you know just
00:03:42
everything in there there appeared to be
00:03:43
a crystalline crystalline substance in
00:03:46
all of these
00:03:47
investigators tested the substance with
00:03:49
a chemical strip
00:03:51
and it turned blue
00:03:54
what you're producing is prussian blue
00:03:56
which is one of the forms of cyanide
00:03:58
a gas chromatograph test confirmed the
00:04:01
findings
00:04:03
scientists also found a massive amount
00:04:06
of cyanide in the office coffee pot
00:04:08
well five grams of pure cyanide given
00:04:12
as a as it is in total is enough to kill
00:04:15
probably about 25 people
00:04:18
the water cooler alone had 32 grams of
00:04:22
pure cyanide enough to kill
00:04:25
150 people
00:04:29
but who wanted to kill the employees of
00:04:31
transamerica title company
00:04:33
and
00:04:34
why
00:04:40
48 hours after julie williams ingested a
00:04:42
massive amount of cyanide her three
00:04:45
daughters made the difficult decision to
00:04:48
take her off life support
00:04:50
there was nothing medical science could
00:04:52
do
00:04:53
that's a difficult decision you're not
00:04:55
ready to say goodbye as it is
00:04:57
you know and now suddenly you have to
00:04:59
make the decision
00:05:01
to end someone's life
00:05:03
investigators found the source of the
00:05:05
cyanide julie had ingested
00:05:08
it was in the office coffee pot and
00:05:10
water cooler
00:05:11
it would not have been difficult for all
00:05:13
four people in that office to have been
00:05:15
killed
00:05:16
because cyanide is really a strong
00:05:18
poison i mean you know they could have
00:05:20
died
00:05:21
before anyone figured out what happened
00:05:24
police questioned the three remaining
00:05:27
employees in the transamerica office one
00:05:29
of them
00:05:30
diane harry made a startling admission
00:05:35
she said that she
00:05:37
may have been
00:05:38
the intended target
00:05:42
diane said that a few nights earlier she
00:05:45
was drinking some scotch whiskey at home
00:05:46
with her husband and it made her ill
00:05:51
she also told him that there was
00:05:52
something wrong with the
00:05:53
tea kettle she tried to make coffee and
00:05:55
the when she put the creamer in it
00:05:56
curdled
00:05:58
investigators tested the bottle of
00:06:00
scotch from the harry's home and
00:06:02
confirmed their suspicions the bottle
00:06:04
contained lethal amounts of cyanide
00:06:09
diane's husband louis harry said
00:06:12
he thought he knew who was responsible
00:06:15
he said it was roy fitzpatrick a 43 year
00:06:19
old delivery man
00:06:22
boy fitzpatrick was the ex-boyfriend of
00:06:24
a girl that mr harry was now befriended
00:06:27
that's why he described it
00:06:29
fitzpatrick's ex-girlfriend
00:06:32
was 33 year old sharon jones
00:06:35
well i had dated mr fitzpatrick briefly
00:06:39
and
00:06:40
he would never accept no
00:06:43
he would stalk me he would choke me and
00:06:45
he threatened to kill me if i started
00:06:47
dating anyone else
00:06:49
mr harry was very very persistent that i
00:06:52
go to get a restraining order
00:06:55
against mr fitzpatrick
00:06:57
he even went with me to the courthouse
00:06:59
to get it done
00:07:00
sharon jones and lewis harry then
00:07:03
realized that the restraining order
00:07:05
backfired it infuriated fitzpatrick who
00:07:08
responded by sending threatening letters
00:07:11
to lewis harry and his wife diane
00:07:14
mr harry describing the content of the
00:07:16
letter said that basically roy
00:07:17
fitzpatrick was threatening him and his
00:07:19
wife and that they
00:07:20
were getting increasingly
00:07:22
more sinister
00:07:24
the letters were laced with racial
00:07:26
epithets
00:07:27
this one was sent to diane harry
00:07:31
i am having a hard time overlooking your
00:07:34
husband
00:07:35
i think i will take you away from him so
00:07:37
that he can see how it feels
00:07:39
and he wrote this
00:07:41
to lewis
00:07:43
you won't have to hurt for long because
00:07:45
your ass is mine
00:07:47
investigators asked roy fitzpatrick if
00:07:50
he sent the threatening letters
00:07:52
initially he denied it a day later he
00:07:54
recontacted me and came in and decided
00:07:56
he wanted to tell me the truth and
00:07:58
admitted that he had sent letters to
00:08:00
mr harry but fitzpatrick claimed he was
00:08:03
angry with louis harry not because of
00:08:05
the restraining order
00:08:09
but because he was sexually involved
00:08:11
with his ex-girlfriend sharon jones i
00:08:14
met louis harry in a club i was in love
00:08:17
with mr harry he had asked me to marry
00:08:20
him
00:08:22
as soon as the divorce
00:08:23
was through he had said that we would
00:08:25
get married
00:08:27
roy fitzpatrick discovered this was all
00:08:30
a lie
00:08:31
mr fitzpatrick followed louis harry home
00:08:34
one night from my condo
00:08:36
and he called me within minutes of mr
00:08:39
harry leaving
00:08:40
stating that he was still married the
00:08:42
wife was still in the home
00:08:45
and that he wasn't going through any
00:08:47
divorce
00:08:48
when police confronted lewis harry about
00:08:51
the affair he denied it and roy
00:08:54
fitzpatrick gave police
00:08:56
one last piece of information
00:09:00
he admitted sending louis and diane
00:09:02
harry four threatening letters but
00:09:05
claimed that the three type written
00:09:07
letters the most incriminating
00:09:10
were forgeries
00:09:12
investigators noticed that one of the
00:09:15
typewritten letters was in an envelope
00:09:18
with a distinctive flaw
00:09:20
the spot where the flaps met was offset
00:09:23
they didn't match up the way they were
00:09:25
supposed to
00:09:27
apparently
00:09:28
this was a manufacturing flaw
00:09:31
when you've been in the business for any
00:09:33
length of time you know that this is a
00:09:35
very significant find
00:09:36
and that
00:09:37
especially in a murder case this is
00:09:39
going to be a very important piece of
00:09:40
physical evidence
00:09:42
on an envelope assembly line
00:09:45
blades slice through reams of paper
00:09:48
creating a form with four flaps
00:09:52
when the flaps are glued
00:09:53
the left and right ones are supposed to
00:09:55
meet in the center of the envelope
00:09:59
in this case
00:10:00
the right flap overlapped the left these
00:10:04
were coming down the
00:10:06
assembly line they were moving
00:10:07
further and further out of whack the way
00:10:09
they should be
00:10:10
investigators believed if they could
00:10:13
find out who bought the flawed envelope
00:10:16
they would find the killer
00:10:18
[Music]
00:10:22
police were investigating the sinai
00:10:24
death the 46 year old julie williams and
00:10:27
the attempted poisoning of her co-worker
00:10:30
diane harry
00:10:33
the prime suspect in the case roy
00:10:35
fitzpatrick admitted sending diane harry
00:10:38
and her husband louis for threatening
00:10:40
letters
00:10:41
but fitzpatrick denied sending
00:10:44
the three most incriminating ones
00:10:48
i was skeptical he said that uh he had
00:10:50
done the first four but you know he'd
00:10:51
given me something but now he was just
00:10:53
you know taking away the last three
00:10:54
letters and so it just you know caused
00:10:57
more doubt and created some more issues
00:10:58
that we were going to have to try to
00:11:00
verify or
00:11:01
confirm or not confirm
00:11:03
but if fitzpatrick didn't send these
00:11:05
three type written letters
00:11:08
who did
00:11:10
on a hunch
00:11:11
investigators got a warrant to search
00:11:13
lewis harry's office
00:11:15
he worked in the physical education
00:11:17
department of a local community college
00:11:20
it was interesting that they went to mr
00:11:22
harry's workplace and they took this big
00:11:25
shelf
00:11:26
that was in his office it's like
00:11:29
five or six feet long that ended up
00:11:31
going out to their expert out at asu
00:11:33
arizona state university also in lewis
00:11:36
harry's waste paper basket they found a
00:11:38
receipt from chemonix a local chemical
00:11:41
company
00:11:42
the label had warning information from
00:11:45
with regard to the use of cyanide
00:11:48
but the receipt was signed by someone
00:11:50
who identified himself as charles hawley
00:11:53
he told the clerk he needed the cyanide
00:11:56
for a college chemistry class
00:11:59
forensic document examiner bill flynn
00:12:02
was asked to compare this signature to
00:12:05
lewis harry's known signature
00:12:08
the second letter in the name holly is
00:12:10
an ovate round letter
00:12:12
it is also an ovate round letter in
00:12:14
harry and there's a very distinctive
00:12:16
style that he used to
00:12:19
move from the h into the next ovate
00:12:21
letter
00:12:22
both last names ended with a y
00:12:25
and flynn discovered that they were
00:12:27
virtually identical
00:12:29
as were the h's at the beginning of each
00:12:32
name
00:12:34
for instance the right side of the h
00:12:36
in holly is made with that
00:12:38
rightward curving
00:12:40
clockwise rotation circular movement on
00:12:42
the h
00:12:43
which we saw is the characteristic
00:12:45
that's replicated in harry's own name
00:12:48
investigators went to the chemonix
00:12:50
company and showed the sales clerk a
00:12:52
photo lineup
00:12:54
the clerk identified lewis harry as the
00:12:58
man who purchased the cyanide
00:13:00
so she sold him the
00:13:02
cyanide under the phoenix college
00:13:04
account
00:13:05
and he signed a different name to the
00:13:07
receipt
00:13:08
in lewis harry's office
00:13:10
investigators found an open box of
00:13:13
envelopes
00:13:14
when they looked at the ones left in the
00:13:17
box
00:13:18
they found that three of them had the
00:13:20
same defect as the one with the
00:13:23
threatening letter
00:13:25
in fact it was a progressive and linear
00:13:27
defect meaning that
00:13:29
you could see the progression how the
00:13:32
defect had enlarged as the envelopes had
00:13:34
moved down the manufacturing line
00:13:36
normally
00:13:37
the people in post-production in the
00:13:39
quality control would have culled those
00:13:41
out rather than put them into the box i
00:13:43
was actually just amazed that something
00:13:45
like that would occur it was probably
00:13:47
one in a million that this would have
00:13:48
happened
00:13:51
this proved
00:13:52
that lewis harry sent himself at least
00:13:56
one of the threatening letters perhaps
00:13:58
more
00:14:00
and on the shelf in his office
00:14:03
scientists found trace amounts of
00:14:06
cyanide
00:14:08
but how did lewis harry gain access to
00:14:11
his wife's office building to poison the
00:14:13
water
00:14:14
a key card system is used to gain access
00:14:17
on weekends you have to
00:14:18
use a key a card to scan in to get into
00:14:20
the door
00:14:21
the office security system revealed
00:14:23
someone entered the transamerica office
00:14:25
on the weekend before the poisoning the
00:14:28
card had been used was diane harry's and
00:14:31
had been used at 10 18 on that saturday
00:14:34
but diane insisted
00:14:35
she hadn't gone into the office that
00:14:38
weekend
00:14:39
the information raised the question is
00:14:41
number one who used the card and it
00:14:44
obviously made sense that if someone
00:14:45
used the car
00:14:46
that knew her she also that person would
00:14:48
also have access to the keys to the
00:14:50
office
00:14:51
no one reported seeing a woman entered
00:14:54
the building that weekend
00:14:57
but a workman recalled seeing
00:14:59
a man enter
00:15:01
the subject who had been there as a
00:15:03
workman an outside contractor they've
00:15:04
been there waiting to get inside the
00:15:06
building because it was locked and he
00:15:08
said it was sometime between 10 and 10
00:15:09
30 that african-american subject pulled
00:15:12
up in a blue sports car got out was not
00:15:13
very congenial
00:15:15
opened the door for him
00:15:17
he wasn't able to actually identify him
00:15:19
or pick him out of the lineup but he
00:15:20
remembered that the car had a tennis
00:15:22
racket in the back seat mr harry had had
00:15:25
a tennis racket he played tennis all the
00:15:26
time
00:15:27
lewis harry was arrested and charged
00:15:30
with the murder of julie williams and
00:15:32
the attempted murder of his wife diane
00:15:36
but why
00:15:37
did he do it
00:15:41
[Music]
00:15:43
about a year after julie williams murder
00:15:46
32 year old louis harry went on trial
00:15:48
for murder and the attempted murder of
00:15:51
his wife diane
00:15:55
prosecutors believe lewis was unhappy in
00:15:57
his marriage to diane whom he had been
00:16:00
married to for less than three years
00:16:05
then one night in a bar he met sharon
00:16:07
jones a student at the community college
00:16:10
where he worked
00:16:11
[Music]
00:16:12
initially he misled sharon by telling
00:16:15
her he was separated it became serious
00:16:18
very quickly within three to four weeks
00:16:22
lewis proposed marriage to sharon while
00:16:24
still living with his wife diane
00:16:28
sharon's ex-boyfriend roy fitzpatrick
00:16:30
learned about a relationship with lewis
00:16:32
harry grew angry then mailed the
00:16:36
threatening letters to lewis and his
00:16:38
wife
00:16:39
ironically they weren't fighting over me
00:16:42
i could see that then
00:16:44
i told them both
00:16:45
i said you know what this isn't because
00:16:48
you want me
00:16:49
it's because of your egos
00:16:52
these letters gave lewis what he
00:16:54
believed to be
00:16:55
the perfect alibi
00:16:58
he'd kill his wife with cyanide
00:17:01
pinned the murder on roy fitzpatrick
00:17:03
then
00:17:04
he'd be free to marry sharon
00:17:10
he typed three more letters even more
00:17:12
incriminating than the originals
00:17:15
and mailed them to himself
00:17:18
but lewis used an envelope with a
00:17:20
significant manufacturing flaw that tied
00:17:23
him to those letters
00:17:26
lewis bought the cyanide in a local
00:17:28
supply store using an alias
00:17:31
but forensic handwriting analysis
00:17:33
concluded that lewis signed the receipt
00:17:40
lewis tried killing his wife
00:17:42
by putting cyanide in her alcoholic
00:17:45
beverage but she stopped drinking it
00:17:47
because of its foul odor
00:17:50
he also put cyanide in her tea kettle
00:17:53
this too was unsuccessful
00:17:58
so that's when
00:17:59
lewis decided to use his wife's security
00:18:02
pass to put cyanide in the office water
00:18:06
cooler and coffee pot
00:18:15
on monday morning
00:18:16
julie williams was the first one to
00:18:19
drink from the water cooler and she
00:18:21
ingested a massive dose of cyanide
00:18:25
she was an innocent victim of a marriage
00:18:28
gone horribly wrong
00:18:31
and really glad that he'll never be able
00:18:33
to hurt anybody else again
00:18:35
and really grateful for a system
00:18:37
that protects its members from people
00:18:40
who cannot control their own actions or
00:18:44
who make bad choices in their life
00:18:46
[Music]
00:18:48
at the trial
00:18:49
lewis's wife and his girlfriend sat
00:18:52
together neither one thought he was
00:18:54
capable of murder two girls would sit
00:18:56
back there the two ladies look at me
00:18:58
give me dirty looks
00:19:00
and they were supporters of louis harry
00:19:04
prosecutors presented what they believed
00:19:06
to be a possible financial motive as
00:19:09
well
00:19:10
diane harry had the life insurance
00:19:12
policy
00:19:14
for 75 000
00:19:17
and he was the beneficiary if she died
00:19:19
he was a beneficiary he would have
00:19:21
gotten that money
00:19:22
lewis harry was tried and convicted of
00:19:25
first degree murder and four counts of
00:19:28
attempted murder
00:19:29
he was sentenced to life in prison
00:19:33
after almost two decades his girlfriend
00:19:36
is finally convinced of his guilt
00:19:39
mr harry did a very horrendous thing i
00:19:42
tried to forgive him and i can't
00:19:45
i still can't forgive him
00:19:47
diane harry's brother went into her
00:19:49
attic found more cyanide i think it was
00:19:52
only at that time that she realized that
00:19:54
he'd been had been trying to kill her
00:19:56
lewis harry is now in the arizona state
00:19:58
prison complex
00:20:00
during a recent telephone interview he
00:20:03
still maintains his innocence i'm very
00:20:06
sorry for julian's family you know for
00:20:08
them to have to have gone through this
00:20:10
as far as the actual crime itself i
00:20:12
didn't commit to crime so it's kind of
00:20:13
hard to have remorse for something that
00:20:17
i didn't do
00:20:19
investigators believe the evidence
00:20:21
proves
00:20:22
the exact opposite
00:20:25
the handwriting
00:20:26
the flawed envelopes the eyewitness and
00:20:30
cyanide particles in his office all
00:20:32
indicate that lewis harry was prepared
00:20:35
to do anything to end his marriage
00:20:39
even if it meant killing others to do it
00:20:44
it'd have been much more difficult to
00:20:45
obtain a conviction
00:20:47
without the evidence of the matching
00:20:49
envelopes
00:20:50
and without the handwriting comparison
00:20:52
it was like you know a work of art it
00:20:55
started it grew and then it came to a
00:20:57
completion and it was all there there
00:20:59
was nothing they could dispute i don't
00:21:00
care what defense they brought up we
00:21:02
defeated all
00:21:20
[Music]
00:21:28
[Music]
00:21:35
[Music]
00:21:41
you
