00:00:06
in 10 months time carol heller went to the hospital 31 times complaining of various ailments that her doctors
00:00:13
thought were all in her head that is until she died this is how a forensic toxicologist and
00:00:23
the middle aged woman in a cheerleader's outfit cracked the only known case of
00:00:28
its kind in the history of forensic science [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause]
00:00:46
[Music] [Music] after her divorce carol heller moved to the small town of perry oklahoma to be
00:01:06
closer to her family [Music] with only 5 000 residents and almost no violent crime perry seemed like a good
00:01:19
place to start over carol was fighting a lifelong battle with manic depression also known as
00:01:26
bipolar disorder [Music] although carol became active in the local church and developed a circle of
00:01:36
friends it wasn't enough there are a lot of people who don't feel fulfilled unless they have a spouse
00:01:45
they want someone in their life and she wanted a man in her life so carol decided to place a personal ad
00:01:54
in a local christian newspaper she was looking for a christian male person who could take
00:02:02
charge of household finances and dennis was the one that answered the ad dennis heller was a 51 year old handyman
00:02:15
when the two started dating carol's family made sure dennis was aware of her
00:02:20
past my parents talked to him about it so he was aware that she had had some mental health problems
00:02:30
within a year carol and dennis were married and it wasn't long before some of
00:02:36
carol's old demons resurfaced she'd wander away from her house and and we would go find her and take her back
00:02:43
home sometimes she wound up in the emergency room at the hospital sometimes she was taken to a mental
00:02:49
health facility for evaluation they were trying to get her get her own medications
00:02:55
my dad asked her one time said carol have you ever thought about killing yourself
00:03:01
and she says well yes she said i have thought about it before doctors prescribed lithium a common
00:03:10
medication for bipolar disorder like maybe a lot of people with the bipolar she had a lot of manic phases but as far as
00:03:21
being real depressed she she handled that pretty good the medication caused nausea drowsiness
00:03:29
and slurred speech her doctors reduced her dosage of lithium but her symptoms persisted
00:03:36
to get relief carol sought the advice of other doctors but none were able to help
00:03:41
her she had been in perry still stillwater ponca oklahoma city and denver colorado hospitals in those 10
00:03:51
months i think the doctors and nurses who treated her tended to tune her out after a while
00:03:58
she'd get to the hospital and they'd stabilize her and they'd just determined that they either had
00:04:04
solved the problem or couldn't figure out what the problem was and they'd send
00:04:07
her home and a month later it would start again it would happen again carol's health problems were also
00:04:13
causing strains in her new marriage when i talked to carol she was just so down and out she said
00:04:21
i think dennis is getting disgusted with me she said i have been sick the whole time we have been married
00:04:28
carol was convinced that it was the lithium that was causing these symptoms so against doctor's orders she stopped
00:04:36
taking the medication all together that's when her problems really started [Music]
00:04:49
one sunday about a year after her marriage carol heller was uncharacteristically
00:04:54
absent from church her husband dennis told the congregation that carol's condition had taken a turn
00:05:02
for the worse later that night dennis called for an ambulance carol was in a coma so they transported
00:05:11
her by helicopter to a larger hospital in oklahoma city some 60 miles away about an hour later
00:05:20
i got a phone call and when the phone rang i knew what it was i knew that that she had died
00:05:30
carol had never regained consciousness doctors believe carol died of natural causes
00:05:38
the cause of death was congestive heart failure that's what they believed that
00:05:42
she had dying from the medical examiner was overwhelmed with cases from the oklahoma city
00:05:48
bombing which had happened just six weeks earlier many of the 168 victims of that blast
00:05:56
still were unidentified so no autopsy was performed on carol heller in accordance with her wishes carol's
00:06:06
body was cremated that was her wish so my dad said there was no sense of embalming her
00:06:14
in a town as small as perry news of carol's death spread quickly so did word of her husband's
00:06:23
insensitivity paramedics when the ambulance crew arrived at his home dennis was on the couch on the telephone
00:06:34
when they walked in he did not acknowledge them nor would he speak to them they asked him what room she was in
00:06:41
he did not respond and so they went looking through their apartment and found carol unconscious in a coma
00:06:48
on the bed and there was another peculiar incident at carroll's funeral service
00:06:54
dennis was sitting back in behind us about four rows or so and of course we got reports that he had
00:07:05
been dozing off to sleep during the memorial service curious about the situation detective
00:07:14
pharaoh went to the heller's apartment where the building manager told him an even more bizarre story
00:07:22
the day before carol's death she saw huge flames coming from the outdoor grill behind the couple's
00:07:29
apartment she thought at first he was cooking something but then after he had went back in she
00:07:35
had looked into the grill and there was nothing in there but a bunch of burnt pieces of paper so she really wasn't
00:07:40
sure what he was doing out there but and this was all prior to carol's death
00:07:44
[Music] and later that same night the apartment manager saw dennis carrying boxes and
00:07:51
boxes of trash to the dumpster pharaoh discovered those boxes were filled with carol's personal items
00:08:01
i found a bible that belonged to carol it was a gift from her father and it was very old so you could tell it was an
00:08:07
heirloom there was documents there was letters oh god there's just i mean just
00:08:12
basic stuff that you would find in someone's uh you know drawers you know like dresser drawers
00:08:18
and stuff that had been tossed in there but why would dennis dispose of carol's
00:08:24
belongings on the day before she died in the heller's apartment investigators found something odd in the
00:08:33
kitchen pantry a container of anti-freeze i've never known anyone to keep antifreeze in a kitchen a garage yes but
00:08:41
not a kitchen but according to dennis it was carol's idea to keep the anti-freeze in the
00:08:47
kitchen he said she had drank a half a gallon of antifreeze back in november and that he had bought a new gallon of
00:08:54
antifreeze and half of it was gone so he thought that she might have drank it again
00:08:59
[Applause] corroborating this unusual story was the fact that dennis told carol's sisters
00:09:06
the same thing shortly before her death he said i found some antifreeze in carol's closet and some of it's gone you
00:09:15
know it just really flew all over me why would somebody mention something like that
00:09:22
yet on the night carol died doctors found absolutely no sign of ethylene glycol in her system which is the
00:09:29
primary ingredient of antifreeze if investigators suspected foul play they had no way to prove it
00:09:39
since there had been no autopsy and carol's body had already been cremated [Music]
00:09:50
homicide detective david farrell joined forces with his colleague buzz busby to look into the suspicious death of 52
00:09:58
year old carol heller almost everyone they talked to told stories about dennis heller's unusual
00:10:05
behavior both before and after carol's death to get to the bottom of the mystery
00:10:12
busby and pharaoh sifted through 4 000 pages of carol heller's medical records
00:10:19
to organize the materials they used the spare courtroom and sorted the records by month
00:10:26
each chair represented a different month in carol's life when all the records were arranged
00:10:33
the chair representing march of 1995 was empty this was just three months before her
00:10:41
death we can understand that since we hadn't had a chance to go through the records and read all of them
00:10:47
yet why would there not be records when there was records for every other month they soon discovered a possible
00:10:54
explanation in march of 1995 dennis heller was in jail in oklahoma city for shoplifting
00:11:02
district attorney mark gibson responded to the news with caution well my policy has always been that i
00:11:09
will not file charges on a case of any kind until i'm convinced beyond a reasonable doubt
00:11:15
that i have evidence to show someone beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime was committed
00:11:21
and a little deeper in carol's medical records investigators found another clue
00:11:28
shortly before her death carol went to a hospital 50 miles away in ponca city complaining of slurred
00:11:35
speech and confusion dr danny cassidy treated carol that day and found evidence that the acid levels
00:11:44
in carol's blood were elevated a condition known as metabolic acidosis when he saw the elevated metabolic
00:11:53
acidosis levels he realized that there was only a couple of things that would cause that
00:11:59
in response dr cassidy ordered more tests i was testing for other unusual forms of acidosis things
00:12:08
like methanol or i believe wood alcohol that is highly toxic dr cassidy told carol those test results
00:12:20
would take about a week but carol didn't want to wait for the results she did not want to be in the hospital
00:12:27
and she didn't represent a threat to anyone or to herself and so she could not be forcibly
00:12:34
detained to be in the hospital and so she left willingly with her husband those gas chromatography tests found
00:12:45
ethylene glycol in carroll system six milligrams per deciliter sadly carol was already dead by the time
00:12:53
her personal physician got the results now there was an even bigger question how did the ethylene glycol get into
00:13:04
carol's system we've never found another case in the united states or anywhere for that
00:13:10
matter where someone was gradually being poisoned with antifreeze but investigators had no way of knowing
00:13:19
whether carol ingested it intentionally in a crude suicide attempt or whether her husband had poisoned her
00:13:27
[Music] to find out investigators look for an expert in anti-freeze poisoning we took his book
00:13:35
and we contacted some of the people in there and seemed like everybody we talked to and kind of give them our
00:13:39
story they pointed us to dr pochlas in in virginia noted toxicologist dr alphonse pokeless
00:13:48
is one of the world's foremost authorities on ethylene glycol he reviewed carol heller's medical
00:13:54
records and immediately noticed a discrepancy carol told doctors she had slurred
00:14:02
speech confusion a lack of coordination nausea and dehydration her doctors attributed this to lithium
00:14:10
but the symptoms of ethylene glycol poisoning were virtually identical this is almost the greek tragedy
00:14:18
you read the medical records the sicker she gets the more she becomes convinced the medications the physicians
00:14:27
are giving her are making her ill the more she complains about it the more the physicians think that she's becoming
00:14:33
paranoid the six milligrams of ethylene glycol found in carroll's system was about
00:14:40
one-third the lethal dose says this amount is consistent with slow poisoning not suicide
00:14:50
that's a strange way to commit suicide i don't know anybody that's going to
00:14:54
poison themselves with ethylene glycol arsenic or anything and make themselves repeatedly yield for
00:15:02
nine or ten months to kill themselves but there was no scientific evidence to prove dr poclus's hypothesis there had
00:15:09
been no autopsy carol's body had been cremated and there was no ethylene glycol in her blood the night she died
00:15:18
it appeared that if dennis heller had poisoned his wife with antifreeze he was going to get away with it
00:15:29
investigators in perry oklahoma faced a dilemma gas chromatography found six milligrams
00:15:37
of ethylene glycol in carol heller's system just a few weeks before she died
00:15:43
at least on 13 different occasions dennis heller would talk to people about antifreeze
00:15:49
and the effects it would have on you if you drank it one of the common things he would say
00:15:53
and it seemed like this was always out of context and i'm not sure what context
00:15:58
discussing antifreeze poisoning would be appropriate but people would say we were
00:16:03
talking and dennis just came up with a statement did you know that one teaspoon of
00:16:08
antifreeze taken every day for 10 days will kill you so investigators tried a different tank
00:16:16
they knew that dennis heller spent quite a bit of time in oklahoma city about 60
00:16:21
miles away he had a girlfriend there for most of the time he was married her name was karen dawson
00:16:30
and she was more than willing to talk to police after carol died the girlfriend kind of
00:16:36
put it all together and was very willing to work with us to assist us in any way she could
00:16:42
he had actually taken carol's wedding rings down to karen to have her trial them on this is prior to her death had
00:16:49
karen to try these things on to see how they fit because they would soon be hers according to dennis
00:16:56
karen told police that dennis was attracted to girls wearing cheerleaders outfits and he bought one in a
00:17:04
second-hand store it's a lemon yellow 1960s cheerleading outfit with pleats that he gave to her
00:17:11
that he had bought for carol to wear at 53 years old investigators convinced karen to wear
00:17:18
that cheerleader's outfit on the couple's next date along with the hidden
00:17:23
microphone the two went to a drive-in restaurant undercover officers listened from a van
00:17:32
across the street karen began by telling dennis that if they were to have any kind of a life
00:17:39
together dennis would have to be completely honest with her then karen asked dennis
00:17:46
if he had anything to do with his wife's death i put it in her food myself and
00:17:52
detective pharaoh were listening on a receiving device he even described how he'd done it with
00:17:57
an eyedropper etc he had bragged to her that he was kind of proud that he had managed to do
00:18:05
this and fool everyone that was a huge moment that was a confession ethylene glycol
00:18:14
has a distinctive taste and odor how dennis placed antifreeze in carol's food without detection will not be
00:18:22
revealed in this program surprisingly when investigators arrested dennis heller he wasn't at all concerned
00:18:30
he did say to the investigators that it only takes one person on a jury with reasonable doubt
00:18:38
and slow poisoning is hard to prove dennis heller thought he had committed the perfect
00:18:44
murder he thought he had covered his tracks medically but there was one thing he hadn't counted on
00:18:52
although there hadn't been an autopsy on carroll due to the oklahoma city bombing
00:18:57
the medical examiner took some tissue samples for analysis when tested he found calcium oxalate
00:19:05
crystals in her brain and kidney samples prolonged exposure to ethylene glycol can cause calcium oxalate crystals to
00:19:15
form causing renal failure and death they were getting clogged up she probably got a pretty good dose
00:19:26
two days before she died from what we know he's a cold hearted killer is what he is
00:19:33
and anyone who can sit around and see somebody suffer i couldn't even stand to
00:19:38
see an animal suffer all that time much less your spouse but what was his motive
00:19:46
dennis was of even fewer means than carol she had an apartment she had a car she
00:19:52
had a jc penney's life insurance policy or at least dennis believed that she did
00:19:59
he wanted what she had and he wandered out of the way when confronted with this forensic
00:20:05
evidence dennis heller pled guilty to manslaughter in return he was sentenced to life in prison
00:20:13
had it not been for investigators persistence one doctor's suspicions and the
00:20:20
cheerleaders outfit dennis heller might have gotten away with murder in all those visits to
00:20:26
doctors none of them had ever discovered detected the antifreeze poison in her system
00:20:33
and [Music] that's one of the most fascinating things about the case from my perspective
00:20:39
is that there is a relatively simple test that will detect it carol's family credits forensic science
00:20:49
for bringing dennis heller to justice i would like to say to the doctor who finally figured out what was going on
00:20:57
thank you very much from the whole family from the bottom of our hearts and i hope that it saves some
00:21:04
lives and i hope that this program will save more lives and people can be tipped off to symptoms that
00:21:14
what is happening i don't think that there's anything that we can't find or do when we use
00:21:20
forensics and anyone who wants to go out here and commit a crime you know you're going to leave something
00:21:26
you're going to say something we're going to find it one way or the other by
00:21:30
using forensics [Music] [Music] you