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a young nurse develops a fatal illness and her doctors wonder if she was infected by one of her patients
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forensic scientists genetic researchers and even the police joined together to solve the mystery
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and they discovered this was no accident [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] in 1994
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janice trojan was a single mother of two young children working as a nurse in the
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small town of lafayette louisiana a few years back she started to develop some unusual symptoms
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and she did what most health professionals do sought the advice of her doctor started with a
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pain in my eyes ocular pain movement of my eyes did seek some medical attention for that
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and was told it was probably my sinuses um not to worry too much about it janice visited several doctors before
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she finally saw her gynecologist for a checkup and then the lymph nodes started to
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appear swollen lymph nodes suspecting she had a virus her gynecologist ordered a full battery of
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tests when she got the results janice was both thrilled and devastated at this checkup not only did she find
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out she was pregnant but she found out that she was hiv positive there were several possible explanations
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for how janice had been infected with hiv janice worked as a hospital nurse she may have been infected from one of
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the aids patients there another possibility was that janice became infected from a previous lover
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janice's primary care physician at the time dr richard schmidt told colleagues his theory as to how
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janus became infected he said janice is a [ __ ] she sleeps around she's in the bars at night
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she goes to bars during the day she goes home with strange men and she's most likely contracted the
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disease from sleeping around knowing her unborn child could be infected with hiv as well
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janice decided to end her pregnancy and she faced the realization of her own personal agony
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my prognosis is i know it's uncertain i know that hiv is a terminal disease and
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there is no cure all of janice's lovers of the last 10 years were asked to undergo hiv testing
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surprisingly none tested positive for hiv but janice had her own theory as to how
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she became infected it was a theory so unbelievable and so fantastic few believed her
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including the lafayette police department [Music] a small town nurse janice trojan learned
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she had been diagnosed hiv positive in january 1995. [Music] five months later she walked into
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district attorney mike harson's office and told an improbable story about her
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own doctor richard schmidt she began relating a story to me how she had had this relationship with dr
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schmidt for a number of years and that she had recently found out that she had aids
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or hiv and she felt that he was responsible for it while harsen was skeptical he told
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lafayette police detective jim kraft to check out her story was she said that s.o.b
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injected me the story was hard to believe he wasn't running some kind of fat farm or
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something he was a real live doctor with credentials and a background richard schmidt was a
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probably one of the best physicians and most respected physicians in this community as far as his medical
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capabilities his patients adored him janna said she first met dr schmidt years earlier when they both worked at
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the same hospital i was a new graduate from licensed practical school and i was going through the
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orientation phase of new employment at the hospital that was the first time that i met him
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janice was married at the time and had a young son dr schmidt was also married with three
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children the two struck up a friendship what attracted me to richard was his intelligence a very brilliant doctor
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i viewed him as very very knowledgeable excellent with his patients eventually they became romantically
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involved and started making plans to be together basically his promise to her at that
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time was that as soon as i'm able i'm going to leave my wife and children and you and i will
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be married and we can be together with that promise janice got a divorce janice did leave her husband for the
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doctor assuming that the doctor was going to leave his wife and family for her she left hers he never left his
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but janice and schmidt continued to see one another in 1991 janice became pregnant and gave birth to
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their son jeffrey schmidt paid child support and continued to promise he'd leave his wife
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but he never did janice told police she tried to end the relationship many times but said schmidt
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made threats against her several times he threatened to put sexually revealing pictures he had taken of her on the
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hospital bulletin board where she worked another time he threatened to tell the dean of the nursing school that janice
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had plagiarized some of her assignments she tried to start seeing other men start dating other guys
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the problem was that each time she attempted to establish a relationship outside of their relationship
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richard would intervene in that he followed her on dates that she had with other men he even threatened
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a couple of the guys that she had dated one he threatened to kill went to his home and threatened to kill him
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and janice feared for her life words to the effect if you leave me i'll fix you i'll fix it so that no man will
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want you or she gave him an ultimatum she told richard either leave your wife and marry me or
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we're through when richard failed to respond janice ended their personal relationship
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and she stopped using him as her doctor schmidt had been treating her with vitamin b12 shots for her lethargy
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according to janice something strange happened on the evening of august 4th janice was fast asleep when the phone
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rang between 10 and 11 o'clock it was dr schmidt saying he was coming over right away
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a few minutes later he was standing over her with a syringe the injection was very painful
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radiated down my arm i never had an injection of that type or to cause that much pain in
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my life unlike other visits janice said dr schmidt didn't stay to talk he left quickly after the injection he
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was nervous rushed just out of the ordinary janice was convinced that that shot that schmidt gave her was
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contaminated with hiv but police weren't so sure my mindset was i don't believe this girl this is just
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her attempt to discredit this guy to embarrass him to get some bucks to get some money out of him
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and even if janice was right how could anyone prove it detective jim kraft wanted to find some
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way to tell whether jenna strawhan's incredible story was true that her former lover dr richard schmidt
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had injected her with deadly hiv janus had donated blood just a few months earlier
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records showed that blood donation was not infected with hiv which meant the infection was recent
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the investigation began by checking dr schmidt's telephone records and just as janice had told them
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dr schmidt had called her at 10 26 p.m on august the 4th but investigators needed proof that the
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injection dr schmidt gave janus contained hiv investigators would discover early on in
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this case that hiv tainted blood is not the easiest thing on earth to obtain uh you do not just walk into a blood
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plasma unit or a clinic and say oh you know give me those three vials of labeled hiv and take them out
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nurses in dr schmidt's medical practice kept meticulous records of every patient
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that had blood drawn for testing but if dr schmidt took blood from one of his hiv patients the virus wouldn't stay
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potent for very long you have about a 12 hour window before you have to inject it
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or the virus won't survive outside the body investigators wanted to see dr schmidt's
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office records for august 4th 1994. the day janus said schmidt gave her the injection
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immediately we look for the 1994 book but we can't find it it's missing in schmidt's desk
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police found the sexually revealing photos he had taken of janus that he had threatened to distribute
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but they still couldn't find his 1994 office records they were about to leave when they
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discovered a locked storage room full of boxes at the very bottom of a pile was a box
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marked 1982 records in the very bottom of that box was a notebook and i thumbed through it real quickly
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and it's only halfway full got i don't know 50 60 pages in it but only about 20
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or 30 of them are full and i look at the last date in the book and wouldn't you know it it's august 4th
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1994 next to nearly every patient's name who had given blood that day was a sticker
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with a tracking number on it for the lab all except one a patient named don mcclellan
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beside his name was a notation that said lavender stopper for dress police went to see don mcclellan and
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they asked him a very important question are you hiv positive the guy stares at me says hiv positive hell i've got full
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blown aids and mcclellan said he never called dr schmidt to make an appointment on august
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4th he said dr schmidt called him to come in for a blood test it was insidious it was beyond
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diabolical it's one of the strangest and cruelest crimes i've ever heard of
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but could forensic scientists match the strain of hiv and janice trojan to dr schmidt's patient
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[Music] prosecutors wanted to know whether dr richard schmidt took hiv-infected blood
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from one of his patients and injected it into his former lover janice trojan would there be a way through traditional
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science or traditional dna testing to compare those two persons and those two samples
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are samples from those two people to determine whether they are in fact the the same virus
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they turned to genetic researcher dr michael metzger at baylor college of medicine in texas one of the world's
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most renowned centers of human genome studies dr metzger told them that dna tests of a
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virus are not the same as comparing dna from individuals that's because viruses change or mutate once they
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entered the body but dr metzker was willing to conduct an experiment to see if the hiv in genesis
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body was similar to dr schmidt's hiv patient don mcclellan the methods that we use are called
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phylogenetic methods that invokes uh it takes advantage of the virus mutability as the virus
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mutates it evolves in different individuals we can use that evolution using mathematical models to actually
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trace back relationships between viruses if they exist dr metzker looked at blood samples from
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30 individuals infected with hiv in lafayette louisiana including the samples from janice trojan and don
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mcclellan he discovered that 28 of those samples had mutated in ways vastly different
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from one another but in two of the samples the viruses were nearly identical and were therefore
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closely related the samples were from janice trojan and don mcclellan when we looked at the viruses the odds
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that we found were one in a million of excluding the patient being the source of janus trojan's virus
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that for us was corroboration of our theory that the book that schmidt had used the virus of one of his
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patients to use to infect jannah stronghold in july of 1996 dr schmidt was charged with attempted
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second-degree murder but prosecutors were faced with another scientific riddle when ultimately janice
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was diagnosed she was also diagnosed not only hiv positive but with hepatitis c the patient whose blood had been drawn
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on august 4th was hiv positive but not did not have hepatitis c when investigators looked again at dr
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schmidt's medical records they noticed one more patient listed with no lab sticker next to her name
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that patient had blood drawn two days before janice's nighttime injection but
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her blood was never sent to the lab that patient's medical record showed she had hepatitis c
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the doctor not only appears to have infected his lover with hiv but combined it with hepatitis c from a yet
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another patient to create this this even more lethal cocktail that he injected with that night
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dr schmidt maintained his innocence he said he had an alibi for the night of august 4th
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he said he was home with his wife except for 20 minutes when she was taking a bath
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but a police officer drove from dr schmidt's home to genesis and back in about 17 minutes even allowing time for
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the injection and there's another question why did dr schmidt keep his medical
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records from 1994 rather than throw them away detective craft thinks he knows the
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answer he kept something as a trophy he has something from that crime that he can look at that he can touch
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that he can see that reminds him that he got away with this along with the scientific and
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circumstantial evidence it was the words of janus trohan that echoed in the jury's mind during dr
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schmidt's trial richard made a lot of promises to me that he did not keep but
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he did keep one and that would be that he would kill me and i feel like that's
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a death sentence that i have prosecutors believe that dr schmidt fulfilled that promise when janus ended
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their relationship [Music] did it by injecting the hiv and hepatitis c tainted blood into janus's
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arm and did it on the same day he took the hiv sample making sure it maintained its potency
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despite his medical degree dr schmidt never realized that forensic dna testing could compare the mutations
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of the hiv and his patient don mcclellan and match them to the hiv in janus to me what he did was something that's
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really atrocious when you think about it i mean here's a man who took an oath to
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preserve people's lives and to do everything he could to to preserve people's lives
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and in this fashion he basically did everything just the opposite on october 23 1998 he was convicted of
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attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years hard labor most people carry out
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these attacks with a gun or a knife or a club but here was a guy who had to think about what he was going to do
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how he was going to do it what means was he going to use to affect her death and
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it was just so diabolical and so evil jurors like to see be able to see a smoking gun or the
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knife or the baseball bat or whatever it is that that's used to commit the act and in this case we
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really didn't have it we didn't have that tangible item but the scientific
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evidence gave us that chance because what essentially boils down to it unfortunately is that these two
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individuals from whom these samples were drawn were out smoking guns janice trojan is remarried and lives
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with her two sons in the same house where she was infected that august night i just try to put things in the past and
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just keep moving forward and my outlook on life i think is is very good i appreciate life more you know stop and
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look at the flowers and treasure each day that i do have with my family and my husband
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it's much more meaningful this case made forensic history it was the first time in the united states that
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two hiv cases had been linked using dna testing in a criminal case the significance of the dna testing is
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that we we attempted to use something that had not been done before and attempted to
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strike out in our jobs as prosecutors to find a way to prove the elements of a crime
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we use the most advanced tools for understanding the relationship between the dna sequences from hiv
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but they're pretty standard the impact and the contribution was to bring this
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new methodology into the judicial system and to use it as a tool for an investigation of alleged crimes
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[Music] so [Music] [Music] you