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NARRATOR: When an otherwise
healthy young man died mysteriously in his
sleep, investigators
00:00:10
assumed the suicide
note explained why. It told the tale of heartbreak,
deception, and jealousy.
00:00:21
But it told an experts
in forensic linguistics something entirely different. [music playing]
00:00:54
[siren wailing] Early one morning in 1992,
an emergency medical team responded to a call from
a Raleigh, North Carolina
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apartment. There, they discovered a
young man unconscious in bed. A closer look
revealed he was dead.
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JOHN D. BUTTS, MD: This man
had no evidence of head trauma, chest trauma, any
other injury that
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might explain why he was dead. He was otherwise a
seemingly healthy young man. NARRATOR: The victim was
23-year-old Michael Hunter,
00:01:29
a recent college graduates
with a successful career as a computer programmer. His roommate told police he
found Michael unconscious
00:01:38
when he tried to wake
him up to go to work. The emergency
medical team report stated that he appeared
to have gone to sleep
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and never woke up. PAT KARNES: When I found
out Michael had died, that was very devastating.
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He was just my sunshine, because
we had been through a lot together, Michael
and I. And, um,
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so when I found that out, uh, I
didn't know how I could go on. NARRATOR: The official autopsy
was conducted two days later.
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JOHN D. BUTTS, MD: The
Initial examination revealed no intrinsic medical
condition that would explain
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his death and no
evidence of any injuries that might have any
bearing on his death.
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-At that point, a
conversation was made with the chief medical
examiner for the state of North
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Carolina, which determined
that perhaps there should be some additional, um,
toxicology studies done.
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NARRATOR: Toxicology tests
of the victim's blood told a different story. Michael had traces of two
different cold medicines
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in his system, diphenhydramine
and hydroxyzine. He also had a lethal
dose of lidocaine.
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JUDGE EVELYN HILL: This is a
substance that is injected. This is not a substance that
you take over the counter.
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You hear about people
accidentally taking ant poison or children accidentally
taking medication.
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This is not. NARRATOR: Lidocaine
is an anesthetic and is sometimes used in
emergency medical situations
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to stabilize heartbeat. BRENT MYERS, MD: It
works very rapidly such that those irregular heartbeats
can become normal again very
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quickly, even before you
arrive at the hospital, for example, if you're
in an ambulance.
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NARRATOR: It was a problem. The emergency
personnel were certain that they did not
inject anything
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into Michael in their
resuscitation efforts. PAT KARNES: They said that
they did not administer
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any lidocaine because
Michael was gone and they knew that there was
no need to-- to try to do that.
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-I would find it very
unusual for there to be lidocaine in the
system of someone that
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was not undertaken
for resuscitation. NARRATOR: Investigators
wondered how lidocaine entered
Michael's system.
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Then, Michael's family learned
about their son's secret, a secret that started to
bring everything into focus.
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Michael Hunter's death
devastated his family. And it wasn't until his funeral
that his parents learned
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the secret their
son had been hiding the truth about Michael's
sexual orientation.
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PAT KARNES: I had no idea. I guess I was real
naive or something, but I had no idea that,
uh, Michael was gay.
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NARRATOR: Sadly,
these revelations on top of Michael's death proved
too great for his father Jim.
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PAT KARNES: He could not accept
the fact that somebody could kill his son and then he
could do nothing about it.
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And so this just put
him in a depression that he could not and
did not come out of.
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And he killed himself. NARRATOR: And now Michael's
mother mourned the loss of both the son and the husband.
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PAT KARNES: It was
just-- just devastating. But because of the support, I
mean, we just pulled together.
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And that's-- the support
is what got us through. NARRATOR: Michael had two
roommates, Garry Walston,
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a landscape architect, and
26-year-old Joseph Mannino. SARAH AVERY: He was a medical
student at the University
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of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, had completed his fourth
year of medical school,
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but had not yet taken the
licensing exam in North Carolina to be licensed
as a physician.
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-Well, it was an
unconventional relationship because, I think, in any
sense of a relationship,
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there are typically only
two people involved. And having a third
person involved, I think,
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brought in a dynamic
that was very different and maybe in some
ways very exciting.
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But it also created problems
that I don't think any of us would have anticipated.
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NARRATOR: In almost
every sense of the word, the three roommates considered
themselves to be life partners.
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SARAH AVERY: All three
men had a homosexual love triangle as-- as
they describe it.
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They actually exchanged
rings and promised to, um, remain faithful to each
other, and, uh, that
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was their-- that was
their living arrangement. NARRATOR: But it wasn't
long before problems
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developed among the three. The main problem was that
Michael Hunter hadn't been getting along with
Joseph Mannino.
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GARRY WALSTON: Mike and Joe
started not getting along with each other, which
was difficult for me
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because I didn't have a problem
with either one of them. NARRATOR: Eventually,
Garry and Michael
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decided Joseph
Mannino had to go. GARRY WALSTON: We
told Joe basically that he was gonna
have to move out.
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That was I think like a
week before Mike was killed. NARRATOR: Previously, all
three shared the same bed.
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Now Joseph Mannino was relegated
to sleep on the living room sofa until he found
another place to live.
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SARAH AVERY: Garry and
Michael had formed a duo that they did not
want Joe involved in.
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And so things
basically fell apart, and Joe found himself
the odd man out. NARRATOR: Since Gary was out
of town when Michael died,
00:07:40
Joe Mannino became
the prime suspect. As a medical student,
Mannino would have had easy
access to lidocaine.
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And he certainly knew
how to give an injection. Investigators wondered whether
the breakup of the love
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triangle might have given
him a reason to kill. W. ALLISON BLACKMAN:
No one knows
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what happened in the
apartment that night except Joe Mannino
and Michael Hunter.
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And Michael's dead
so he can't tell us. NARRATOR: When questioned,
Joe Mannino gave police
00:08:12
an unexpected piece
of information. He admitted that on
the night Michael died, he had given him an
injection of antihistamines
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for his migraine headache. Antihistamines are
an accepted but not common treatment
for migraine pain.
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These were the same drugs found
in the toxicological test. W. ALLISON BLACKMAN:
He says that, I
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did give him a
shot to relax him. I didn't give him
any other shots. I asked him directly did he
give him a shot of lidocaine.
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He said no. Maybe he did have a migraine. I don't-- I don't know. And, um, Joe did give him
something to put him to sleep,
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make him sleep sounder. NARRATOR: It was a
violation of medical ethics, as well as North Carolina
law, for a medical student
00:09:01
to administer drugs without
a licensed doctor present. This admission immediately
put Mannino's career at risk.
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SARAH AVERY: He would have
completely thrown away his efforts to become a doctor.
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He would never
have been licensed. NARRATOR: And
investigators discovered another possible clue, a typed
letter on the computer desk
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among Michael Hunter's things. GARRY WALSTON: I
started reading them, and they were what
can best be described
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as drafts of suicide letters. NARRATOR: The letter,
allegedly written by Michael
00:09:39
before his death, said that
he suspected that he was HIV positive and was
going to kill himself.
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REENACTED VOICE
OF MICHAEL: I will use some medications I
found in Joe's black bag.
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Please don't blame him. Forgive me. NARRATOR: All
investigators had to do now was confirm
that Michael Hunter
00:10:01
had actually written the letter. And for that, they turned
to forensic linguistics.
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Suspicions about
Michael Hunter's death grew even darker when the
suicide note surfaced.
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It was unsigned, found
on the floppy disk among Michael's belongings. Investigators wanted to confirm
that Michael had indeed written
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the note and turned to Dr.
Carole Chaski, an experts in the field of
forensic linguistics.
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CAROLE E. CHASKI:
Here was a document, which was purely electronic. It was simply a computer
file left on a diskette.
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There was nothing, uh,
physical in the sense of ink or handwriting or
paper that was available.
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It was almost in a-- in
a sense pure language. NARRATOR: Linguistics is not
so much the study of what
00:11:01
a person says, but
how they say it. How people combine words to
make phrases and sentences
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is known as syntax. CAROLE E. CHASKI:
We think what makes individuals' use of
language distinctive
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is the pattern of simple
and complex phrases which one individual
uses versus the pattern
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of simple versus complex
that another individual uses. NARRATOR: Dr. Chaski was
given known writing samples
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from Michael Hunter
and asked to compare them with the suicide note. Using the new computer
program called ALIAS,
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or Automated Linguistic
Identification of Authorship System, Dr. Chaski
reduced each document
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to its most basic component,
the individual words. The program then rebuilt
each phrase from scratch
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and analyzed how the words were
used in relation to each other. CAROLE E. CHASKI: We can get
frequencies of how many simple
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versus how many complex phrases
of each type, noun, verb, adjective, and so forth,
are in the document.
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NARRATOR: In the
suicide note, Dr. Chaski found a distinctive use
of conjunctions, words
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like "and" or "but." These were used not
to combine phrases, but used in large sentences.
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CAROLE E. CHASKI: That
pattern is the conjoining for sentences and not
for smaller things.
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NARRATOR: The note
also contained a distinctive use of adverbs. Instead of using
just one adverb,
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the writer had a habit
of combining them. This pattern was not found
in Michael's known writing
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samples. CAROLE E. CHASKI: So
given the situation of how the statistical
results turned out,
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I can conclude that
Michael Hunter definitely did not write those
suicide notes.
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NARRATOR: She then
analyzed known writing samples
from Joe Mannino. CAROLE E. CHASKI: In
the suicide notes,
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we see more complicated
adverbs than simple ones. And that's the pattern that
we find in Joseph Mannino's
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writing, more complicated
adverbs than simple ones. The suicide notes were not
written by Michael Hunter
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and most likely were
written by Joseph Mannino. I think the family could
conclude that not only were--
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were the suicide notes
phony and concocted, but that the claims within
them were also spurious.
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NARRATOR: Michael's
family never believed their son committed suicide. PAT KARNES: I knew Michael
didn't write the letters.
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I knew Michael didn't--
didn't commit suicide. And so I was very thankful for
the, uh, linguistic forensics
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for proving what
I knew all along, that Michael did not write it. -I think the letters were
probably one of the first real
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red lights for me
that said, you know, you're-- none of this
is making sense anymore.
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The theory that Michael
Hunter killed himself was further discredited
when a blood test
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revealed he was
not HIV positive. In addition, the amount of
lidocaine in Michael's body
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would have incapacitated
him within seconds and would have killed
him within two minutes.
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This made the possibility of
suicide even more unlikely. BRENT MYERS, MD: This is not
a take a handful of pills,
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lay down on the
bed, wait 30 or 45 minutes for an
effect type of drug. This is very rapid onset.
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So it would be very
unusual for someone to have enough time to
clean up, if you will,
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after this type of injection. -The needle would have
remained in his arm. And if for some
reason it didn't, it
00:15:08
would have fallen to the floor. NARRATOR: No needle
was ever found in Michael Hunter's bedroom.
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When confronted with the
forensic linguistics, Joe Mannino changed his story. He admitted writing
the suicide note.
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And he also said that
Michael had complained of a migraine headache
the night before he died.
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So he injected him with
lidocaine to ease the pain. Mannino claimed the
overdose was an accident.
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W. ALLISON BLACKMAN:
Joe was very calm. He would be talking to you
and then cry for a second.
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And then he'd talk to you again,
which is very suspicious to me. If I was mourning over somebody,
I'd be mourning the whole time,
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not just in spurts. NARRATOR: Now, it would be up
to a jury to decide what really
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happened the night
Michael Hunter died. In 1993, Joe Mannino was
charged with first degree murder
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in the death of his former
partner Michael Hunter. SARAH AVERY: Joe Mannino
had everything to live for.
00:16:18
Had a bright future
in front of him. He was a couple of weeks
away from graduating
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from the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with
a medical degree. Um, he was on his
way to a residency
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and just had a very bright
future ahead of him. NARRATOR: Prosecutors believed
Mannino was a spurned lover
00:16:37
in a love triangle And
killed Michael Hunter with a lethal
injection of lidocaine
00:16:44
so he alone would be
with Garry Walston. Mannino claimed Hunter
asked him for an injection
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to help him with this
migraine headache and that he accidentally
gave him too much lidocaine.
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Garry Walston, the former
partner of both the victim and the accused,
didn't believe it.
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GARRY WALSTON: Mike had
a history of migraines. And they were
pretty bad at times.
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And Joe would
occasionally offer to give him something that
would help him. And Mike always refused.
00:17:20
NARRATOR: There were medical
cases where lidocaine had been used in small amounts
to treat migraines.
00:17:27
Mannino claimed he only
meant to administer enough of the drug to ease
his friend's pain.
00:17:34
But prosecutors said Mannino
killed Michael Hunter and then concocted
the suicide note
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to make it look like
Hunter killed himself. When that didn't
work, Mannino had no choice but to say
it was an accident.
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JUDGE EVELYN HILL: He
might have been smart as far as his learning was,
but people who commit crimes,
00:17:58
especially like this,
normally don't think ahead. NARRATOR: Prosecutors
said Hunter's
00:18:02
death was premeditated murder. They argued that Joe Mannino had
planned the killing for weeks.
00:18:11
They said he waited until the
third roommate, Garry Walston, was out of town on business.
00:18:19
Then, after Michael Hunter was
asleep, snuck into his room and injected him with
a lethal concoction
00:18:29
of cold medicine and lidocaine. JUDGE EVELYN HILL:
Joe went in there, filled up a syringe
with lidocaine,
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and very slowly and carefully
inserted it into Mike's arm, and he pushed the syringe.
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And then he removes the
syringe, and before he walked out of the
room, Mike was dead.
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NARRATOR:
Investigators naturally asked if Michael would have felt
the injection if he was asleep.
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BRENT MYERS, MD: It is
certainly conceivable that a well-trained hand
could place that needle
00:19:00
and not awaken you from sleep. And then slowly
administer the drug , and you may never
wake up from that.
00:19:07
NARRATOR: But was Joe
Mannino capable of murder? GARRY WALSTON: It
was hard for me
00:19:12
to believe that he would have
done something like that. But there were undeniable
facts involved.
00:19:17
I mean, Mike was dead. He was there with him. He was the only
person there with him.
00:19:22
He was the only
person with the means. So there were
undeniable facts that pointed to him that
I couldn't ignore.
00:19:31
NARRATOR: After a
three-week trial, Joseph Mannino was convicted
of involuntary manslaughter.
00:19:38
He was sentenced to
seven years in prison and will never be able
to practice medicine.
00:19:44
Some of the jurors
believed it was possible that Michael Hunter agreed
to the lidocaine injection.
00:19:50
JUDGE EVELYN HILL: The issue
the jury struggled with was, did Mike consent or not?
00:19:56
Joe said he consented. All of Mike's friends
said he didn't. He would never have.
00:20:06
And of course, Mike
couldn't tell us. -I was a little surprised,
um, a little angry, you know.
00:20:16
A lot angry. Um, I mean, because it--
it was like this single act had left a path of destruction
a mile wide for so many people's
00:20:29
lives, my family, Mike's
family, Joe's family. And I just felt
like the punishment
00:20:38
didn't fit the crime. -It was over. Uh, nothing that
they could do to Joe would bring Michael back.
00:20:47
And, um, I just-- I just wanted
to get on with our lives. NARRATOR: Though questions
remain about the verdict,
00:21:03
forensic examination of the
suicide letter was invaluable. GARRY WALSTON: I think the
forensic linguistics helped set
00:21:10
the groundwork for proving
that Joe was involved in Mike's death and
was covering it up.
00:21:21
-The linguistics in this
case was the first time I've known it's ever been
used in any kind of a police
00:21:27
investigation to assist
in making an arrest. I think it was a
great tool that should
00:21:33
be used on a daily basis. [music playing]