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a man died in his home after a long history of heart disease it was assumed that this was the cause of his death
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a few weeks after the funeral rumors surfaced that the death was no accident when the body was exhumed scientists
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needed to know whether the dead could tell tales [Music] oh a january night in 1990 a woman
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called for an ambulance saying her boyfriend was unconscious and barely breathing
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emergency personnel were at the home in westport massachusetts within minutes we
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arrived on scene went into the house we found a male sitting in chair he was just kind of
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slumped forward unresponsive the man's girlfriend said he had a long history of heart trouble
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as soon as i took his robe apart i saw that he had a scar from a past cardiac surgery
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which he indicated that he had a bypass surgery at some point in time and we began cpr
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but the cpr brought no response 61 year old richard alfredo was pronounced dead an hour later at a
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nearby hospital because of his heart disease the local medical examiner decided not to perform
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an autopsy mr alfredo had a long history of severe heart disease which necessitated a
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surgical correction of his block coronary arteries in the heart a coronary bypass procedure
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so at the time of his death he had every reason to die from his heart disease richard alfredo was buried four days
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after his death all of his assets worth about twenty five thousand dollars went to his
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estranged wife and children alfredo's girlfriend 39 year old christina martin continued to live in
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the house the couple shared along with her two children from a previous marriage
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nothing seemed out of the ordinary until westport police officer mike roussell started hearing rumors
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we heard rumors that mr alfredo's death was due to poisoning and this was just facts that we couldn't
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prove at that time was just information and as a police department we had the obligation to start looking into this
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the rumors emanated from some students at a nearby high school richard alfredo's girlfriend christina
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martin had a 14 year old daughter tisha who attended westport high school tisha allegedly told school friends that
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alfredo had made sexual advances towards her on numerous occasions and she admitted
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that she and her mother were angry about it the teenagers were telling us miss martin was trying to locate
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anything that would take the life of mr alfredo investigators now wondered whether they
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made a mistake burying the body without an autopsy [Music] four weeks after richard alfredo's death
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rumors circulated that his death was no accident the daughter of alfredo's girlfriend
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tasha allegedly told friends that alfredo had made sexual advances towards her [Music]
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and she also said that her mother put the drug lsd in alfredo's gelatin dessert
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in an effort to kill him they made the jello they made it two separate dishes they ate jello but his dish was kept to
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the side at that time they fed him the jello and then they went out of the house and they
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came back and he was basically dead at that time they called rescue and he was transported to
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saint luke's hospital where he's pronounced dead is a powerful hallucinogen known on the
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street as acid a dose or hit usually comes in tablets or in liquids soaked into paper
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a single drop can cause hallucinations for six to ten hours we've been told by people that have
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taken lsd it's you're seeing all kinds of different things uh animals running
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across the room at you things crawling up the wall things crawling on you so you know it
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would have put him in a position where he had no idea what was going on and lsd can also cause a rapid increase
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in heart rate a local drug dealer admitted selling 30 doses of lsd to a small group which
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included alfredo's girlfriend christina and her daughter tisha [Music] they identified miss martin is sitting
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in the vehicle and they brought the drugs to her and they left the area at that time
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during police questioning christina denied buying lsd or giving richard alfredo any harmful substances
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miss martin was trying to locate anything that would um take the life of mr alfredo um no matter
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whether it was some type of a medication or pills or um she even tried to get some of the
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teenagers to if he would they would take him out with a weapon being uh she was going to provide the gun for them which
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was mr alfredo's guns to see if lsd had caused alfredo's death the medical examiner exhumed his body
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six weeks after the funeral in a living person lsd leaves the body within 36 hours of
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use but in a dead person the drug can stay indefinitely although the embalming process can
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complicate matters the process of embalming is such that all the blood in the body
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is removed and replaced with embalming fluid a preservative so that any attempt at trying to find poisons is
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hampered because there is no blood left in the body but they found some other tissue samples
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to test there was some urine there was some intestinal contents there were some stomach contents
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the samples were sent to two different labs for testing the state crime lab and another private laboratory
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[Music] dr louis amoruso performed the testing at the private lab and used what is
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called a radio immunoassay test or ria it's similar to the test used at sporting events to screen athletes for
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the presence of performance-enhancing drugs [Music] dr amoruso took a sample of lsd then
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mixed it with a radioactive compound then added samples from alfredo's body if lsd were present in alfredo's body
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he would have formed antibodies to fight it those antibodies will bind to the radioactive lsd sample producing a
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positive result both the private lab and the police lab found two drugs present in alfredo's
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system one was diphenhydramine a common over-the-counter cold medication the other
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was lsd the more important compound as far as we were concerned was lsd because there are
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no prescriptions for lsd and that would indicate something that would not be found except under illicit
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conditions lsd causes the heart to beat more vigorously the stresses placed on the very diseased heart
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caused a fatal heart attack thereby the cause of death heart disease and lsd poisoning
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richard alfredo's death was no longer considered an accident it was now murder
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a heart attack brought on by acute lsd intoxication when police went to arrest christina
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martin and her daughter tasha they found that they had both fled the country miss martin leaving town led us to
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believe that she definitely had some involvement in his death that's what made us look even more
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closely to her even though we were on that track anyway telephone records indicated they fled to
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montreal where they were apprehended christina martin was charged with first degree murder
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no charges were filed against her daughter tisha at the trial prosecutors presented the toxicological
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evidence of lsd in richard alfredo's system and a drug dealer testified that
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christina was present when he sold lsd to tisha's high school friends [Music]
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that was all the prosecution needed christina martin was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to
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life in prison and that's where the case stood for seven long years that is until it came up for a routine appeal
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where christina's lawyer found something in the case file he wasn't supposed to see
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[Music] christina martin had served seven years in prison for the murder of her boyfriend richard alfredo before her
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case came up for a routine appeal christina's new lawyer was a public defender kevin mahoney
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his first task was to go to the courthouse to pick up the case file while i was standing at the counter
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waiting for the evidence to be brought to me by the clerk i struck up a conversation with the
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gentleman next to me wound up being an assistant d.a he turns to me and he says council
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you're representing miss martin i said yes the assistant d.a told mahoney to look
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very closely at richard alfredo's official cause of death well i was stunned that a prosecutor
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would make such an admission to me i definitely took it as a red flag and this is something i should follow
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through with this was the first murder case mahoney ever handled and he read every page of transcript of
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christina's first trial paying particular attention to anything related to how richard alfredo had died
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[Music] the transcripts were so fascinating i couldn't put it down it was like a great
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novel at first blush it seemed that the evidence was overwhelming because these toxicologists these chemists are getting
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in there and they're testifying that there's massive amounts of lsd jesus
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that didn't sound good but then he came across this document richard alfredo's death certificate
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stating the cause of death as acute lsd intoxication mahoney made a telephone call to dr
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david benjamin a highly respected clinical pharmacologist there had never been a case reported
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where a person had died from the direct effects of lsd so right away that allegation
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was inconsistent with a whole body of scientific information dating back to the mid 60s that's a 30-year period of
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time and dr benjamin noticed another potential discrepancy [Music] the ria test was designed to work only
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on fresh urine samples which the medical examiner didn't have after the body was
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autopsied the labs tested tissue samples and degraded blood all of which had been embalmed
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i called the manufacturer and i asked do you have any experience with using this
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test in samples other than fresh urine in particular forensic samples obtained from exhumed bodies or from dead people
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and they said absolutely not [Music] and even if the urine tests positive for lsd
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the riaa test is only for screening any positive results must then be retested to confirm the results
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on the ria test kit outer box the manufacturer makes this clear it states that all ria results are
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preliminary and that a specific alternative must be used to get a confirmed analytical
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result even the scientists who conducted the original ria test for the prosecution
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agreed with that assessment in order to say with 100 certainty that it was lsd that was present in the body
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one would have to go to a confirmatory test the gold standard or the test that is considered to be
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the most dependable is the one that's called gas chromatography mass spectrometry
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for whatever reason christina martin's first lawyer never questioned the test results
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the defense attorney at the trial was so incompetent and his performance was so bad that the
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judge called him up to sidebar and asked him you're not doing very much examination
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of these witnesses is is that is that intentional is that deliberate and the attorney tried to reassure the
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judge and tell them oh don't worry in law come out in my defense case but it
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never did if the scientific tests were only preliminary why wasn't a confirmatory test ever
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performed kevin mahoney found the answer to that question in the evidence file information
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prosecutors never presented at the first trial information prosecutors thought would remain a secret
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when kevin mahoney examined the case file from christina martin's first trial
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he found an important piece of evidence it was evidence that prosecutors never presented at the first trial
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prosecutors had commissioned the confirmatory test on alfredo's tissue samples using a gas chromatograph mass
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spectrometer it's a test that can identify every substance in the sample that test detected no lsd in any of the
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samples even though they tested and retested and retested they were desperate to confirm
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the what they had learned from the radio and osa test but they weren't able to do that
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mahoney discovered that this exculpatory forensic evidence was not given to christina martin's defense attorney
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before the trial this violated a legal provision known as the brady doctrine the brady doctrine says that
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the prosecution has a duty to turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defense without even being asked for it
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in this case the prosecutor played hide the ball with the exculpatory evidence the gas chromatography mass spectrometry
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evidence should have been disclosed to the defense attorney it never was this may explain why an assistant d.a
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told mahoney to look carefully at the official cause of richard alfredo's death
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[Music] and this new forensic evidence was put before an appeals court judge who was
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unusually qualified for this particular case 99 out of 100 judges eyes were just glazed over when they
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started hearing gc mass back and all this other stuff the judge in this case judge gordon
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dorffer was a chemistry major in college how lucky were we in his decision judge dorffer cited defects in the
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scientific evidence and the prosecution's failure to disclose critical exculpatory evidence as grounds
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for a new trial but prosecutors decided not to retry the case christina martin agreed to plead guilty
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to manslaughter in exchange for a sentence of time served in other words christina martin was a free woman
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moments after leaving the courtroom christina martin told the press that despite the plea bargain she had nothing
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to do with her boyfriend's death i pleaded guilty because of the plea bargain and the chance that i might go
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back to jail i didn't want that i would have liked to have had this woman found
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not guilty but this is not the first person in massachusetts to say they did something in order to get out of being
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prosecuted when your feet are being held to the fire you're going to do things
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you really don't want to do but if christina martin was innocent why did she flee to canada shortly after
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alfredo's death she may have had a guilty conscience about some of the things that she was
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thinking about doing and maybe some of the things that she had done plus there was also the possibility with
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her daughter involved that her daughter might have done some things to this gentleman without her knowledge
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but while science rules out lsd it reveals another possibility when alfredo's body was exhumed
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the medical examiner found groundwater in the casket the water mixed with the embalming fluid
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may have contaminated the tissue samples basically lsd has a chemical structure and that chemical structure is not
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unique to lsd there are many substances in the body and in nature in general that possess
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similar chemical structures two of them that we would find in the body would be the amino acid tryptophan and the
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neurotransmitter serotonin there are also ergot derivatives that are in the the grass and the ground and in uh fungi
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and fungal material that could have been washed into the coffin when all of the water
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seeped into the coffin and the preliminary drug test was supposed to be used on fresh urine
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samples not tissue samples dr benjamin also believes it may have been the cold medicine diphenhydramine
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that alfredo was taking for his cold that caused his death since it can increase one's heart rate
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i will tell you what reasonable doubt arose for me and that was first of all nobody dies from lsd they commit suicide
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but they don't have direct toxic effects that lead to death the original prosecutor in this case
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refused all requests for an interview officially prosecutors still maintain that christina martin killed richard
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alfredo defense experts say lsd has never killed anyone [Music] today richard alfredo's tombstone is not
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engraved with the date of his death perhaps a metaphor for the uncertainty that still exists in this case
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bad science and bad ethics resulted in miss martin being sent to a prison cell it was good ethics and good science that
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got her out of the prison cell so bad science put her in and good science got her out
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[Music] [Music] so [Music] you