00:00:06
a little girl died and investigators
00:00:08
didn't know why or how
00:00:11
was it an accident was it an unexplained
00:00:14
illness
00:00:15
or
00:00:16
was she murdered
00:00:18
scientists would go halfway around the
00:00:20
world before finding the answer in two
00:00:24
unlikely places
00:00:26
a shredded legal document
00:00:28
and her mother's signature
00:00:30
[Music]
00:00:39
[Music]
00:00:58
in the spring of 2000 a two and a half
00:01:00
year old girl was in the intensive care
00:01:02
unit of a new hampshire hospital
00:01:05
fighting for her life
00:01:07
in the very beginning no one knew that
00:01:08
she had anything more than a bad cold
00:01:10
but then she went downhill so
00:01:12
dramatically
00:01:13
her name was sunday abec
00:01:15
and her story was unlike any other in
00:01:18
the hospital
00:01:19
[Applause]
00:01:22
sunday was from the sudan where a bloody
00:01:24
civil war was claiming thousands of
00:01:26
lives
00:01:28
she and her family were lucky to be
00:01:29
alive
00:01:31
she had to flee because of violence in
00:01:33
her area her father was a political
00:01:35
prisoner in sudan and that
00:01:38
may have been more dangerous for her
00:01:40
family to remain in the sudan because of
00:01:42
that my yeah people were being killed
00:01:45
didn't matter what side you were on we
00:01:47
had to leave
00:01:51
shortly after sunday was born the family
00:01:53
fled to a refugee camp in egypt
00:01:57
after two years a missionary group was
00:01:59
able to get them to a small apartment in
00:02:01
manchester new hampshire
00:02:04
no one in the family spoke english the
00:02:07
change from their life in africa was
00:02:09
enormous it must have been a culture
00:02:11
shock this is an old mill city in new
00:02:13
hampshire big mill buildings and whatnot
00:02:15
much colder weather but this family
00:02:17
moved in and started to prepare a better
00:02:19
life a safer life
00:02:21
they thought at least their kids could
00:02:22
be raised without getting shot at
00:02:25
the family had been in the u.s for just
00:02:27
a little more than a month when one day
00:02:29
for no apparent reason
00:02:31
sunday started vomiting she ran a high
00:02:34
fever and she became delirious
00:02:37
her mother was sleeping on the hospital
00:02:39
floor in sunday's room she would sit and
00:02:42
hold the child in her arms and that was
00:02:45
her
00:02:46
main concern was that sunday was sick
00:02:49
and she had to get her better
00:02:52
at first doctors thought sunday had
00:02:54
contracted a bad case of the flu
00:02:57
but none of their treatments worked
00:02:59
and they were unsure what was wrong with
00:03:02
her
00:03:03
sunday's initial symptoms were high
00:03:04
fever and vomiting and that could be
00:03:07
anything that could be virus that could
00:03:09
be
00:03:10
all kinds of problems
00:03:13
i didn't know what the problem was the
00:03:14
doctors didn't know
00:03:16
they couldn't tell me what happened
00:03:21
despite a battery of tests the cause of
00:03:23
sunday's illness couldn't be determined
00:03:27
none of her siblings or her mother had
00:03:29
gotten sick
00:03:31
three days after she was admitted to the
00:03:33
hospital sunday's temperature soared
00:03:36
and her brain swelled uncontrollably
00:03:39
she went into a coma
00:03:41
and died
00:03:46
when you have children god gives them to
00:03:48
you and he can take them
00:03:50
when sunday died i tried to remember
00:03:51
that god gave her to us and now he
00:03:53
wanted her back
00:03:56
for sunday's family the promise of a
00:03:58
peaceful life in america had turned into
00:04:01
an unspeakable tragedy
00:04:03
the mother's lawyer said that she had
00:04:06
told him that she had any idea this
00:04:07
could have happened she never would have
00:04:09
moved her family to the united states
00:04:11
but of course she she couldn't have
00:04:12
known she knew she was moving them away
00:04:14
from a danger she just had no way of
00:04:16
knowing she was moving them into another
00:04:17
danger
00:04:19
soon an investigation was mounted to
00:04:22
find out how it happened
00:04:25
and what it uncovered was not an illness
00:04:28
but a crime
00:04:33
during a spring snowstorm in 2000 two
00:04:36
and a half year old sunday abec was laid
00:04:39
to rest thousands of miles from her
00:04:41
native sudan
00:04:43
i'll never forget the women in the group
00:04:45
wearing their african clothes and wool
00:04:48
hats and gloves and they were singing
00:04:49
african prayers
00:04:51
as the snow came down they probably
00:04:52
never saw snow before and the whole
00:04:54
scene to me was just one of the saddest
00:04:56
things
00:04:57
after two years on the run the family
00:05:00
thought they had finally found a safe
00:05:02
haven in america but they were wrong
00:05:06
they had come here trying to have a
00:05:07
better life for their daughter and they
00:05:08
end up burying her in the snowstorm in
00:05:10
new hampshire
00:05:12
and that led to
00:05:13
an intriguing story how did this come to
00:05:15
pass
00:05:17
investigators thought poisoning might be
00:05:19
a possibility
00:05:21
whenever there's an unexplained death of
00:05:23
a child i think the police first suspect
00:05:26
is always a family member
00:05:28
sandy's mother was questioned but she
00:05:31
had no apparent motive she was asked if
00:05:33
one of the siblings could have done it
00:05:36
hello
00:05:37
[Music]
00:05:41
in africa a child cannot poison her
00:05:43
sister or her brother or even me they
00:05:45
wouldn't know how
00:05:46
did not come from the family
00:05:50
africa
00:05:52
was it possible one of the neighbors
00:05:55
perhaps resentful over the influx of
00:05:57
refugees into the neighborhood was
00:05:59
responsible
00:06:03
and our apartment complex was another
00:06:05
family from sudan before my child got
00:06:08
sick so did theirs but he recovered he
00:06:10
didn't die
00:06:14
but a severe flu caused that child's
00:06:17
illness
00:06:18
new hampshire officials couldn't
00:06:20
determine how sunday died
00:06:23
and this raised alarms
00:06:25
one of their initial concerns was to
00:06:27
make sure there was not the importation
00:06:29
in the u.s of some exotic disease that
00:06:32
could have been transmitted by sunday or
00:06:35
her family into the u.s
00:06:38
all members of the family were
00:06:40
thoroughly tested everyone was perfectly
00:06:43
healthy
00:06:44
but then results came back from an
00:06:46
extensive test
00:06:48
on sunday's blood
00:06:51
analysts were shocked by what they found
00:06:53
her blood contained unusually large
00:06:56
amounts of lead
00:06:58
392 micrograms per deciliter 40 times
00:07:03
the lethal level for a child
00:07:05
high level for us might be 50 or 60. i
00:07:08
think we may have even had a 70 or an 80
00:07:10
over the years that have done
00:07:11
inspections but a 392 was just
00:07:14
absolutely off the charts for us
00:07:17
lead kills by attaching itself to red
00:07:19
blood cells this takes oxygen out of the
00:07:22
blood and starves the brain
00:07:25
sunday's official cause of death was
00:07:28
lead poisoning the first such case in
00:07:31
the u.s in more than a decade
00:07:34
the family seemed to be having trouble
00:07:35
grasping what had happened
00:07:37
one of them said to me you know we don't
00:07:39
have lead in africa and africa led us
00:07:41
bullets they're getting shot at
00:07:43
investigators now checked the rest of
00:07:45
the family to see if they'd also been
00:07:48
exposed to lead
00:07:50
the tests showed they were all within
00:07:52
normal levels
00:07:54
there was something unique to sunday it
00:07:56
wasn't something that they had commonly
00:07:57
all been exposed to that created this
00:08:00
horrific problem for all of the family
00:08:03
how could a killer dose of lead have
00:08:05
gotten into sunday's system
00:08:08
while the rest of the family was
00:08:10
unaffected
00:08:12
their apartment building was locked down
00:08:15
in a search for answers
00:08:16
[Music]
00:08:18
paint the most common source of lead
00:08:20
poisoning was tested with a portable
00:08:23
x-ray analyzer it uses a radiation
00:08:26
source to basically excite the lead
00:08:29
atoms in the paint and then it actually
00:08:32
sends x-rays back into the machine
00:08:37
minor amounts of lead were found in the
00:08:39
paint not unusual in an old building and
00:08:42
not nearly enough to kill someone
00:08:45
now investigators moved on to the water
00:08:48
the air the cooking utensils and toys
00:08:52
everything in the apartment was tested
00:08:55
we select an area of the home and mark
00:08:58
off a square foot and actually wipe it
00:09:00
with a sterile wipe and collect the dust
00:09:02
and put it in a sterile container and
00:09:04
that's analyzed to see what the dust
00:09:05
level in the home
00:09:07
the contents of the wipes were dissolved
00:09:09
in hydrochloric acid
00:09:11
[Music]
00:09:12
in a process called atomic absorption
00:09:16
the solution was exposed to temperatures
00:09:18
of more than 3000 degrees fahrenheit it
00:09:21
burns the sample in the flame much like
00:09:23
an acetylene torch
00:09:25
and the instrument is set up to see only
00:09:27
lead
00:09:28
no abnormal levels were found
00:09:31
nothing in the building could produce a
00:09:34
dose of lead large enough to kill
00:09:36
and i walked back to the office and said
00:09:39
i don't think it's the house or
00:09:40
something else going on
00:09:44
extensive testing provided no clues as
00:09:48
to how little sunday abec was exposed to
00:09:51
a lethal dose of lead
00:09:53
lead has been known as a hazard for 2000
00:09:56
years lead was one of the
00:09:57
uh first
00:09:59
occupational diseases identified by the
00:10:01
romans and even the greeks many many
00:10:03
years ago so it's not a new issue
00:10:06
while investigators couldn't rule out an
00:10:08
intentional poisoning by someone in the
00:10:11
u.s
00:10:12
they had to consider the possibility
00:10:14
that sunday was poisoned before she got
00:10:17
to america
00:10:21
perhaps in the refugee camp
00:10:24
they even brought in the health
00:10:25
department in egypt and they sampled the
00:10:28
formula that the little children were
00:10:29
giving because if something was
00:10:30
contaminated in the formula that could
00:10:32
affect thousands of kids
00:10:34
food air water and soil in the camp were
00:10:37
tested everything was negative
00:10:40
it seemed the question of how sunday had
00:10:43
been killed might never be answered
00:10:46
there was this mystery what had happened
00:10:48
to her and why
00:10:50
investigators now turn back to sunday
00:10:53
herself
00:10:55
since lead is a poison the body goes to
00:10:58
great lengths to expel it
00:11:01
deposits build up in the nails and hair
00:11:04
the average person's hair grows about a
00:11:06
half inch per month
00:11:08
sunday's hair was an inch long
00:11:11
and provided a wealth of information
00:11:14
she had spent a month in the united
00:11:16
states and before that she had been in
00:11:18
egypt so by taking her hair and looking
00:11:21
at it specifically for lead content
00:11:24
and dividing it in half so that we had
00:11:26
the half inch that grew in the united
00:11:28
states and the half inch that grew
00:11:29
before that
00:11:31
we were able to make a comparison and
00:11:33
time her exposure
00:11:35
the hair was bombarded with radioactive
00:11:38
[Music]
00:11:40
neutrons this caused different elements
00:11:43
in the sample to react in unique ways
00:11:46
the tip of sandy's hair had trace
00:11:49
amounts of lead but the base the part
00:11:52
closest to the scalp showed massive
00:11:55
amounts
00:11:57
what that tells me is in the united
00:11:58
states she got exposed to a pretty
00:12:00
significant amount of lead
00:12:02
and that her level before that wasn't
00:12:04
abnormal so her exposure was in this
00:12:07
country it wasn't back in egypt
00:12:10
investigators must have overlooked
00:12:12
something
00:12:13
but they didn't know what
00:12:15
they went full circle they went back to
00:12:17
manchester and they started saying what
00:12:18
did we miss
00:12:20
they questioned sunday's mother again
00:12:22
and were told something
00:12:24
they had not heard before
00:12:28
sunday spent a lot of time on the front
00:12:31
porch of their apartment building
00:12:36
i knew always that the cause of sunday's
00:12:38
sickness had something to do with the
00:12:39
apartment
00:12:43
they were able to ascertain that the
00:12:45
child did in fact spend time playing on
00:12:47
the porch and the mother had seen the
00:12:49
child pick up pick at the paint on the
00:12:52
porch
00:12:54
the porch of the apartment was in bad
00:12:56
shape the paint was old and peeling
00:13:00
suddenly investigators thought they'd
00:13:03
solved the mystery it looked to be a
00:13:06
phenomenon called pica the word comes
00:13:09
from the latin name for magpie
00:13:11
a bird that eats almost anything
00:13:14
pica is a condition particularly of
00:13:16
children but not always of children it's
00:13:18
sort of a
00:13:19
craving for food items to eat
00:13:21
lead paint often tastes sweet so here's
00:13:24
a little malnourished girl who's never
00:13:25
had enough food and it became pretty
00:13:27
clear she was probably picking up chips
00:13:29
of paint and sucking on them or chewing
00:13:31
on them
00:13:33
samples of paint from the porch showed
00:13:36
levels of lead 37 times the legal limit
00:13:41
to see if it was this paint that killed
00:13:45
sunday
00:13:46
investigators brought in the centers for
00:13:49
disease control
00:13:51
the samples were dissolved in nitric
00:13:53
acid and then heated
00:13:56
so the isotopes or chemical signature of
00:13:59
the lead would be exposed
00:14:01
we can run the sample of analysis for
00:14:04
the child's blood
00:14:05
and compare that to the different
00:14:07
potential sources that she was exposed
00:14:09
to
00:14:10
and then plot that out and we can either
00:14:12
identify or exclude various sources the
00:14:16
isotopes from the paint on the porch and
00:14:18
from sunday's blood were identical
00:14:22
this test left no doubt
00:14:25
sandy avec got a lethal dose of lead by
00:14:27
eating the paint on the front porch of
00:14:30
her apartment building
00:14:32
but the case was far from over
00:14:35
investigators soon found evidence that
00:14:38
someone knew sunday was in danger all
00:14:40
along
00:14:42
and mounted an elaborate cover-up to
00:14:44
keep that knowledge from her family and
00:14:47
police
00:14:51
a year-long forensic investigation
00:14:53
proved without a doubt what killed
00:14:56
little sunday abec we concluded that
00:14:59
lead paint and dust in the environment
00:15:02
of her apartment in manchester
00:15:04
was the principal source of her lead
00:15:07
poisoning
00:15:08
property records showed the rental agent
00:15:10
for the apartment building james annex
00:15:13
dean had been informed that his building
00:15:15
did not meet current standards for lead
00:15:17
safety by law he had to let his tenants
00:15:20
know this
00:15:22
landlords and property managers who
00:15:23
lease buildings constructed prior to
00:15:26
1977 they are required to provide
00:15:29
general lead paint warning notices
00:15:32
to prove that they had been informed
00:15:35
tenants must sign these disclosure
00:15:38
documents
00:15:40
the landlord provided photocopies of
00:15:42
these documents and signed an affidavit
00:15:45
saying they were legitimate
00:15:48
investigators weren't so sure
00:15:51
the tenants advised us that they had not
00:15:53
signed those documents we looked at the
00:15:55
signatures on those documents and
00:15:58
were actually looking at them to see if
00:16:00
they were forged
00:16:02
document experts compared signatures
00:16:05
from the documents to known signatures
00:16:07
of the tenants
00:16:09
the signatures
00:16:10
were exact matches
00:16:12
he was too good at it actually because
00:16:14
the signatures were too much alike if he
00:16:17
had varied them in some way it would
00:16:18
have been a much more difficult case to
00:16:21
resolve
00:16:24
the signatures weren't forgeries
00:16:27
they were duplicates of signatures from
00:16:29
other documents the tenants had signed
00:16:32
the signatures are what we determined to
00:16:34
be a layover they were an exact replica
00:16:37
of an authentic signature which
00:16:38
indicates to us that it was placed there
00:16:40
by some other means and was fraudulent
00:16:43
one of these signatures stood out it was
00:16:47
from sunday's mother mary allaroot
00:16:50
in the document provided by the landlord
00:16:52
her name was spelled out but at the time
00:16:56
mary could barely write english she was
00:17:00
still signing her name with an ex though
00:17:02
she was undergoing training by a
00:17:04
church-sponsored teacher to learn how to
00:17:07
read and write and speak the english
00:17:09
language it was readily apparent
00:17:12
to non-handwriting forensic examiners
00:17:15
that this was indeed not her signature
00:17:19
investigators raided the landlord's
00:17:21
office
00:17:22
in the bottom of a trash can they found
00:17:24
more than 60 torn scraps of paper the
00:17:27
secret service reconstructed that
00:17:29
document for is finding all but one of
00:17:32
the 60-something pieces
00:17:35
when the pieces were reassembled
00:17:37
investigators found the original forgery
00:17:40
of mary allaroot signature
00:17:42
identical to the one on the lead
00:17:45
disclosure notice
00:17:47
he forged the signature of sunday abec's
00:17:49
mother on the lead paint disclosure form
00:17:53
he copied it and produced copies to
00:17:56
the environmental protection agency and
00:17:58
the grand jury
00:18:00
the landlord's fingerprints were on the
00:18:03
document
00:18:04
mary allaroots were not
00:18:06
it's very unlikely that she had handled
00:18:08
or had anything to do with that
00:18:09
particular document
00:18:11
investigators say that when annex dean
00:18:14
found out about sunday's death he knew
00:18:17
he was potentially liable
00:18:21
so he took his tenant signatures copied
00:18:24
them from other documents and then
00:18:26
placed them back onto the lead
00:18:29
disclosure agreements
00:18:34
[Music]
00:18:40
his biggest mistake was forging the
00:18:42
signature of sunday's mother apparently
00:18:44
he was unaware how she signed her name
00:18:48
so it was clear this was not her
00:18:51
signature
00:18:53
if i were to grade his attempts here at
00:18:55
forgery he'd probably be about about a d
00:19:00
when faced with the evidence
00:19:02
james annex dean pleaded guilty to
00:19:05
obstruction of justice and failing to
00:19:08
notify his tenants that they were living
00:19:10
in unsafe conditions what motivated him
00:19:13
and what motivates all of our criminals
00:19:15
in this arena it's all about money i
00:19:17
want to save it and at what cost i think
00:19:19
the cost in this one was real high
00:19:21
not to him to her
00:19:23
repainting the porch would have cost
00:19:25
just a few hundred dollars
00:19:27
and would have saved sandy's life
00:19:30
her family won a 700 000 civil award
00:19:34
against annex dean and his real estate
00:19:36
company he was sentenced to 15 months in
00:19:40
prison and fined 40 000
00:19:44
his was the first ever conviction in the
00:19:47
u.s for failure to notify about the
00:19:49
presence of lead he dug himself a real
00:19:52
deep hole and got hit with a big penalty
00:19:54
and i think the epa hoped that sent an
00:19:56
alarm across the country so other
00:19:58
landlords don't take part in similar
00:19:59
activities
00:20:02
i was happy he got punished he was lying
00:20:05
i never signed those papers he lied and
00:20:07
it was right that he was punished
00:20:13
sandy's family has relocated to
00:20:15
tennessee
00:20:16
they're still adjusting to life in
00:20:18
america and the aftermath of sunday's
00:20:22
death
00:20:24
meanwhile sunday lies in an unmarked
00:20:26
grave in a new hampshire cemetery
00:20:28
hundreds of miles from her family
00:20:31
thousands of miles from home her death
00:20:34
could easily have been avoided
00:20:37
but thanks to the forensic analysis
00:20:39
it's far less likely
00:20:42
another family will suffer the same
00:20:44
tragedy
00:20:46
her death couldn't have been solved
00:20:47
without forensics
00:20:48
the work in the lab is what solved this
00:20:50
case
00:20:51
and uh
00:20:53
and it happened at the federal state and
00:20:54
local level took a lot of technicians to
00:20:57
study this material and figure out
00:20:59
exactly what happened and they did which
00:21:01
is gratifying i'm sure
00:21:03
[Music]
00:21:14
[Music]
00:21:32
[Music]
00:21:41
you
