00:00:04
[music playing] The patient, Chad Shelton,
is a 74 centimeter long White male infant.
00:00:12
NARRATOR: When an
11-month-old baby died under mysterious circumstances,
the autopsy samples
00:00:18
provided few clues,
but the pathologist noticed something suspicious. The liver is diffusely
yellow, showing
00:00:27
early signs of necrosis,
which is highly unusual for a child of his age. NARRATOR: He had never
seen anything like it.
00:00:34
Tissue samples will be sent
to the lab for further testing. [music playing] NARRATOR: Sally
and Bruce Shelton
00:01:05
lived in the quiet Midwestern
town of Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha had many of
the benefits of life
00:01:12
in a large city with little
of the crime and violence of other cities its size. The Sheltons had been
married for about two years.
00:01:20
Sally worked for an
insurance company, Bruce was a
television repairman. Most of their free
time was spent
00:01:27
with their 11-month-old
son, Chad, whom they adored. He was a big, full baby, big
hands, big feet like his daddy.
00:01:36
He looked a lot like his daddy. But yet, he had some
features of his mama. Never sick.
00:01:41
He was a real healthy baby,
and a very sweet little baby. NARRATOR: On Sunday
morning, September 10, 1978,
00:01:51
Sally and Bruce had
a full day planned, shopping, running
errands, and cleaning the carpets in their home.
00:01:59
TOMAS GUILLEN: They had
already been cleaning the house and preparing it for
some new furniture.
00:02:05
They had money, but
they were trying to buy a piece at a time, just
like any family starting off.
00:02:09
So that day, they were going
to a-- the-- a furniture store to get new lamps to
spiffy up the apartment.
00:02:17
NARRATOR: After
furniture shopping, they visited Sally's sister
at a small family gathering.
00:02:22
GROUP: (SINGING)
Happy birthday-- NARRATOR: Attended
a birthday party, and stopped for tacos at a
drive-thru Mexican restaurant.
00:02:32
Later that night,
11-month-old Chad became ill. He was pale, lethargic, and had
vomiting so severe his parents
00:02:40
said his entire body shook. He was rushed to the
Emmanuel Medical Center. LYNDA DIETRICH:
This is little Chad.
00:02:48
NARRATOR: Lynda Dietrich
was the nurse on duty. Within hours, Chad was
bleeding from every orifice.
00:02:55
I was terribly alarmed. He looked like he was
dying in front of me, like he was just going
to die in front of me.
00:03:03
NARRATOR: Doctors ordered a
full range of blood tests. Chad's platelet
count was 19,000,
00:03:09
far below the norm of 140,000,
and a blood sugar level of 11, an indication of
serious liver failure.
00:03:19
Blood was coming out of
the corner of his eyes, the corner of his nose,
corner of his mouth,
00:03:24
every pore had little bitty
blood just-- just barely seeping out all over him. It was horrible to see
something like that.
00:03:35
NARRATOR: Early the next
morning, Chad Shelton's heart rate dropped to 46
beats per minute,
00:03:40
then dropped even further. Doctors and nurses
work feverishly to revive him without success.
00:03:48
Just 48 hours after being
admitted to the hospital, Chad Shelton died. DOROTHY SHELTON:
It was terrible.
00:03:57
Really pretty baby. That baby just started
life, and God took him. NARRATOR: A few hours
later, another patient
00:04:07
was admitted to the hospital
with the same symptoms. This time, it was a
25-year-old truck driver.
00:04:15
LYNDA DIETRICH: Something is
terribly, terribly wrong here. These are two healthy people,
and now, we have a little baby
00:04:21
that's dead, and we have a
25-year-old man that's dying, and we don't know
what's wrong with them.
00:04:29
NARRATOR: Whatever had
killed Chad Shelton, doctors now feared
it was spreading.
00:04:39
25-year-old Duane
Johnson was painting the exterior of his house when
he first started to feel sick.
00:04:46
He had a headache, muscle pain,
chills, diarrhea, and vomiting. He also developed
a severe nosebleed.
00:04:56
He was taken by
ambulance to Emmanuel Medical Center,
the same hospital that treated Chad Shelton.
00:05:03
He was very sick, and he was
obviously bleeding into many cutaneous surfaces,
i.e., his skin,
00:05:09
and probably bleeding and oozing
into many internal organs. NARRATOR: A few hours
later, Duane Johnson died.
00:05:19
It was Lynda Dietrich,
Chad Shelton's nurse, who first discovered
an alarming coincidence.
00:05:26
Duane Johnson was
Chad Shelton's uncle. My God, what is going on here? What is killing these people?
00:05:34
What do we have here? Do we have an
infectious disease? Is this a new type of virus?
00:05:39
Is this one that we
didn't understand? Was anybody else
going to catch it? NARRATOR: Soon, there
were more cases.
00:05:47
Chad's parents, Bruce and
Sally, also had some vomiting. Duane Johnson's daughter,
Sherry, was also sick and was
00:05:54
admitted to the hospital. Health officials held
an emergency meeting to identify the cause of
the mysterious outbreak,
00:06:02
and they called in the
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Renate Kimbrough
was the CDC toxicologist
00:06:11
assigned to the investigation. She knew from the
autopsy results that whatever killed
these two individuals
00:06:18
did so without leaving a trace,
and affected only the liver. The people didn't have fever.
00:06:25
Normally, if you have
a very rapid onset of an infectious
disease, you usually have fever, often, very
high, and these people
00:06:34
didn't have that. NARRATOR: Health
officials frantically searching for clues.
00:06:39
Was it a chemical in
the shampoo Chad's parents used on their carpets? Or was it the Mexican food
from the drive-in restaurant?
00:06:47
Chad's mother said the
tacos didn't taste right. Duane Johnson had been
painting his house.
00:06:53
Was it something in
the paint or the fumes? During the course of
their investigation,
00:07:02
health officials discovered
that Chad Shelton and Duane Johnson were together one day
about a week before they died.
00:07:10
It was at a family gathering
at Duane Johnson's home. The other family members
who developed symptoms
00:07:16
were there too. Obviously, water
samples were taken, insulation samples were taken,
soil samples were taken,
00:07:25
paint scrapings were taken. We took everything that
could possibly have had an effect on this family.
00:07:32
NARRATOR: A window air
conditioner in Johnson's home was missing its filter
and sat beneath a tree
00:07:38
used by roasting birds. Health officials tested
the soil for histoplasma capsulatum, a
yeast-like fungus caused
00:07:46
by contaminated bird feces. They also discovered
that lemonade had been served at the family
gathering at the Johnson home.
00:07:56
Everyone who drank
the lemonade got sick. The three who did
not stayed well. Unfortunately, the
lemonade was gone,
00:08:07
and the lemonade
picture had been washed. Tests on the tap water,
the lemonade mix, and sugar
00:08:15
used to make the lemonade
were all negative, and the soil outside
the Johnson's home
00:08:20
did not contain the fungus
from contaminated bird feces. Sherry Johnson,
Duane's daughter,
00:08:28
survived her brush with the
mysterious illness thanks to a blood transfusion, but she
suffered serious liver damage.
00:08:37
As Dr. Kimbrough continued to
analyze the autopsy slides, she was baffled. She had never seen such damage
to human liver tissue before.
00:08:47
But when she looked through
her pathology textbooks, she noticed a photograph that
looked surprisingly similar.
00:08:55
It was liver tissue
of an individual who had been poisoned with
a cancer-causing agent,
00:09:02
dimethylnitrosamine, or DMN. DMN is a cancer-causing
agent given to animals in cancer research.
00:09:12
It was water-soluble,
highly toxic, and affects only
the liver, and would leave no trace in an autopsy.
00:09:22
Dr. Kimbrough now
suspected foul play. She told police to look
for some connection
00:09:29
between the family
and someone who worked in a cancer research facility. She suspected Chad
Shelton and Duane
00:09:38
Johnson had been murdered. Dr. Renate Kimbrough suspected
the Chad Shelton and Duane
00:09:48
Johnson had been
poisoned with DMN, a compound used to
cause cancer in animals. She suspected that the
toxin was in the lemonade.
00:09:59
Everyone who consumed
lemonade that day either got sick or died. But there was no proof.
00:10:06
The lemonade was gone,
and the pitcher washed. Things just don't
happen like that to me.
00:10:14
And so I thought,
we oughta look. It just didn't fit. NARRATOR: Burchard interviewed
the surviving family members,
00:10:21
including Duane
Johnson's wife, Sandy, asking if they knew
of anyone who held
00:10:26
a grudge against their family. They all said no. On a hunch, Burchard searched
the police computer database,
00:10:35
entering the name of Duane
Johnson, and when he did, he found a surprise. Three years earlier, when
Duane and Sandy Johnson
00:10:48
were newlyweds, there
was a confrontation outside their home with
an armed assailant.
00:10:59
[gun firing] Sandy's brother was
wounded in the shoulder. Another shot went
through a front window.
00:11:08
Get out of here! Get out! Get out of here! NARRATOR: The shooter
was an old boyfriend
00:11:13
of Sandy's, angry with Duane
for stealing his girlfriend. His name was Steven Roy Harper.
00:11:21
Steven Harper met Sandy
Johnson in high school. Sandy was a popular,
pretty, blue-eyed blonde.
00:11:27
Harper was an honor student,
quiet and the loner who planned to become a veterinarian.
00:11:33
Sandy Johnson was
Harper's first girlfriend. Harper was shy around girls. As a child, he was
severely burned
00:11:41
in a house fire which
left him with scars, both physical and psychological. He always felt self-conscious
about that and he never dated.
00:11:51
So very much, when Sandy comes
along, one love, and that's it. NARRATOR: After
the attack in 1975,
00:12:01
Harper was arrested, pleaded
no contest to the shooting, and was sentenced
to up to five years
00:12:06
in the state penitentiary. But Lieutenant Burchard soon
discovered that Harper served
00:12:12
only one year of that sentence. After Harper was
released from prison, he took a job as
a lab technician
00:12:21
at the Eppley Cancer Institute. I thought, well, maybe
this isn't so far-fetched.
00:12:28
Maybe I'm really right. And it scared me. NARRATOR: Police
obtained a search
00:12:34
warrant for Harper's home. In the garage, they found
evidence of animal experiments.
00:12:41
A local veterinarian told
police that a month before Duane Johnson and Chad
Shelton died, he treated
00:12:48
Steven Harper's dog and cat. They both had
unexplained bleeding, and both animals died.
00:12:56
And it was exactly what
happened to Duane Johnson. And that-- that really convinced
me that this was our boy.
00:13:02
NARRATOR: But police
had a problem. They had plenty of
circumstantial evidence linking Harper to
the poisonings,
00:13:09
but they had no
scientific proof. DMN is rapidly
metabolized in the body and excreted within
hours of ingestion,
00:13:20
so there was no trace of
it in any of the victims. There was, in effect,
no murder weapon.
00:13:27
We had a whole bunch of
theories and suppositions and no evidence is
where we were at.
00:13:32
We had to some-- in some other way, prove
that DMN had been there. NARRATOR: At the University
of California at Irvine,
00:13:42
Dr. Ronald Shank, a
cancer researcher, had been conducting
animal experiments, looking at how
cancer-causing agents,
00:13:50
like DMN, altered the DNA. Dimethylnitrosamine attacks
the DNA of the liver cell
00:13:58
and it leaves a chemical
footprint on the DNA. That footprint will lead to
a mutation which causes--
00:14:06
it starts the cancer process. NARRATOR: Dr. Kimbrough
asked Ronald Shank if you would try
something he had
00:14:13
never done before, to conduct
his first human experiment. She sent eight coded samples
of liver and kidney tissue
00:14:22
in order to conduct
a blind test. One of the samples
belonged to Duane Johnson, although Dr. Shank
had no idea which one.
00:14:31
High performance liquid
chromatography separated the various components of
the DNA and the computer
00:14:38
charted those components
visualized on a graph. DNA from seven of
the eight liver samples
00:14:47
was completely normal. One liver sample had DNA
that gave us two extra peaks in the liquid chromatography.
00:14:56
Those two extra peaks
were identical to what you would see if the
individual had been
00:15:03
exposed to dimethylnitrosamine. NARRATOR: The liver sample
belonged to Duane Johnson.
00:15:11
That's what Shank and
Kimbrough did for us. he proved it beyond
a reasonable doubt
00:15:16
that this was the substance
used to the exclusion of any other known
substance in the world.
00:15:22
NARRATOR: Science provided
the murder weapon. Other evidence would provide
the full picture of Steven
00:15:30
Harper's deranged mind. [music playing] What are you doing here? I wanna talk to Duane.
00:15:44
No. I wanna talk to Duane. No, Steve. [screams] [gun firing] NARRATOR: When Steven Harper
opened fire on the Johnson
00:15:52
family in 1975, he was consumed
with both jealousy and rage over Sandy Johnson's rejection.
00:16:03
With Harper in prison
for the shooting, his bizarre behavior continued. He mailed these pictures
depicting Sandy as a witch
00:16:11
to her home. Initially, Sandy
Johnson couldn't believe that her old boyfriend
was capable of murder,
00:16:18
which explains why
she didn't identify him as a possible suspect. Their unusual relationship
was the focus of Thomas
00:16:26
Guillen's book, "Toxic Love." She had painted the former
boyfriend, Steven Harper,
00:16:32
as a very peaceful person,
as a very loving person, as a very good boyfriend. "He was not prone to
violence," quote unquote.
00:16:41
That sort of portrayal. Very puzzling, very perplexing. Why would she do that? I don't know.
00:16:49
NARRATOR: After prison,
Harper took a job at the Eppley Cancer Institute. Published reports say it
was here where Harper first
00:16:59
learned about the deadly DMN. A newspaper article had
been posted on the company's
00:17:05
bulletin board describing
how a German chemist killed his wife by putting
DMN in her marmalade.
00:17:17
Authorities believe that
Harper confiscated DMN from a locked
refrigerator in the lab
00:17:24
and experimented at home
to find the correct dosage. Harper confided to
a friend that he
00:17:34
broke into Sandy and
Duane's home on a Thursday night when no one was there.
00:17:47
He poured the DMN in
a pitcher of lemonade he found in the refrigerator. [music playing]
00:18:08
The following Sunday
afternoon, the Johnsons, Sheltons, and the grandparents
all gathered for what
00:18:15
would be their last
family get together. Duane had been painting
outside and had
00:18:22
two large glasses of the
lemonade to quench his thirst. 11-month-old Chad had
some lemonade in his cup.
00:18:31
Sandy's parents did
not drink the lemonade and were drinking
coffee instead.
00:18:37
Ironically, the presumed target
of the sabotage, Sandy Johnson, didn't like lemonade and
drank something else.
00:18:49
Duane died because he ingested
two full glasses of lemonade, more than the others.
00:18:56
Chad was simply too small for
his system to handle the toxin. Steven Harper was
convicted of two counts
00:19:04
of first degree murder and
three counts of poisoning with intent to kill. He was sentenced to death
in the electric chair.
00:19:12
But before that
could happen, Harper committed suicide in his cell. Saddest story that
you can ever think of.
00:19:20
It was sad enough that a child
dies, that people get poisoned, but you have this plot
of murder by cancer,
00:19:27
but you have living victims. And his plot to kill with
cancer may still come to pass.
00:19:36
NARRATOR: Sherry
Johnson was two years old when she ingested the DMN. Although a blood
transfusion saved her life,
00:19:44
she suffers chronic liver
problems to this day. Bruce Shelton was so distraught
over the murder of his son,
00:19:52
Chad, and consumed by the fear
that he would develop cancer that he lost his job, descended
into a life of alcoholism,
00:20:02
and died homeless
at the age of 38. He was buried beside the
infant son he mourned.
00:20:11
His wife, Sally, remarried
and reportedly refused to have more children for
fear she would develop cancer
00:20:18
and not be alive to raise them. That was the
most ingenious way to commit the perfect crime,
to commit the perfect murder.
00:20:27
Give somebody something that
nobody will suspect, where they died years later of cancer.
00:20:32
And you can't detect it. NARRATOR: And without
scientific evidence, the case against Steven Harper
might never have been proven.
00:20:42
I've spent my
whole career trying to find out how chemicals
cause cancer and try
00:20:48
to prevent that process. And it bothers me
that there would be people out there who would
take a chemical like that
00:20:57
and use it to-- to try to cause cancer. It's a-- a very sick thing. [music playing]