[music playing]
NARRATOR A young father dies under mysterious circumstances.
He hasn't been feeling well for the past week.
And now he's dead.
My god, wake up!
What is going on?
NARRATOR But before the autopsy even begins,
Dr. G's astonished by what she sees.
I am shocked at his appearance.
There is something wrong with this picture.
NARRATOR Then a man is found dead
in his home, covered in blood.
The son's story is that for no reason
his father starts stabbing himself.
But police and Dr. G immediately question
the son's bizarre story.
Police are not buying the son's story.
They are very suspicious that maybe this kid stabbed his dad.
NARRATOR Altered lives, baffling medical mysteries,
shocking revelations.
These are the everyday cases of Dr. G, Medical Examiner.
OK.
Let's see.
Wow.
That's a lot of trauma.
These two must have been really going fast.
A lot of people think sudden unexpected death is always
some big catastrophic event, a car accident,
a sudden big heart att*ck.
But often times, the cause of death
is things going on in your body that are subtle.
And over time, eventually k*ll you.
Oh, my God.
No.
That's why you've got to listen to your own body.
Woof, woof, woof, woof.
This guy looks like he's a heart att*ck waiting to happen.
I understand some people don't like going to the doctor.
I don't particularly like going to the doctor.
But you have to take control of your health.
Because if you don't, you may end up on my table
like this next case.
[zipping]
NARRATOR It's a blistering hot afternoon
in Kissimmee, Florida.
But -year-old Donald Finch is spending it in bed.
And his sister, Kate, is concerned.
The sister said he hasn't been feeling
well for the past week--
severe fatigue, stomach pains, chills, and possibly fever.
She went to bring him a little bit of fluid.
NARRATOR But when Kate returns, she comes face-to-face
with her worst nightmare.
She sees him on the floor collapsed.
Donald?
Donald?
NARRATOR Horrified, she immediately calls .
And within minutes, paramedics arrive on the scene.
But it was too late.
He was dead.
[crying]
The sister's just flabbergasted.
She's been letting him live in her house for a year.
And she's been taking care of him.
She can't believe that he d*ed.
She would like answers.
It's not that busy a day today.
But it looks like it's, um--
they're starting to pile up.
NARRATOR Dr. G reviews the case file, hoping it will shed
some light on Donald's death.
Let's see.
NARRATOR But instead, what she gets is a heartbreaking
glimpse into his life.
About a year ago, he lost his job.
He separated from his wife.
They had a child together.
But she moved away.
And he didn't think he'd ever see her.
And he had to move in with his sister.
And now, he's dead.
Sounds like terrible luck.
NARRATOR Dr. G's urgent priority now
is to get to the bottom of this medical mystery.
And they don't have any diagnosis.
And he really has no history that we know of for sure.
I can't get any medical records, because he
doesn't go see a doctor.
NARRATOR With no medical records to go on,
Dr. G must rely solely on what Donald's
sister told her investigators.
According to his sister, he does smoke one and a half
to two packs a day.
That's a lot of smoking.
Smoking can cause everything from heart disease and heart
att*ck, to multiple different cancers,
to chronic lung disease, and many things in between.
So that was one concern.
But I don't know what the body is going to tell me yet.
OK.
[ … ]
A week of not feeling well could
be a lot of different things.
Oh, here it is.
Let's see if we can start undressing him.
Wow.
Things are not looking good.
I am shocked at his appearance.
He looks like death warmed over.
He's awfully thin, too.
He's thin.
He's debilitated and wasted.
Oh, my God.
That's tense.
And his belly is sticking out.
It is quite a shocking, disturbing look.
Yeah.
This guy's not looking good.
Something is clearly wrong with him.
I can't believe that the sister didn't mention this.
I need the head.
I need a head sh*t.
NARRATOR Donald's alarming appearance opens
up a host of new possibilities.
Now that I see him, it's a whole different ball game.
I'm immediately thinking, AIDS--
maybe that's why he's wasted and in bed.
NARRATOR AIDS is a disease caused by HIV, a virus
that att*cks the immune system.
And some of its symptoms are the same as Donald's.
OK.
Yeah, we need to get the other side.
Yeah.
You know, nowadays, I don't see HIV cases very frequently.
It is a treatable illness now.
NARRATOR And if this diagnosis proves
true it could have serious implications for the loved
ones Donald left behind.
If he has AIDS, does the family know?
Did his wife know?
Did anybody know any of this?
Did you get the sides of the neck, too?
Did you get this?
NARRATOR Dr. G checked Donald's body for telltale signs
of the disease.
I look in his mouth to see if he has kind
of these white pillar lines on the side
of his tongue, which is called hairy leukoplakia,
a sure sign of AIDS.
I don't see any.
But there's nothing there.
NARRATOR But AIDS will remain a possibility
until she gets the results of Donald's blood work.
All righty.
NARRATOR For now, she's keeping all her options open.
I'm thinking cancer, maybe even a chronic disease
like a TB or a diabetes.
NARRATOR But as Dr. G's undressing Donald,
she stumbles across something so unexpected--
What is this?
--it stops her dead in her tracks.
There's something wrong here.
It's quite disturbing.
He doesn't have underwear on.
He's got an adult diaper on.
And it's soiled.
This is about as bad as it gets.
There's something wrong with this picture.
I got it.
I got it.
I've seen disposable diapers on adults.
But they've had some chronic illness
that makes them incontinent.
I've never really come across someone that just nonchalantly
starts wearing them.
Could I see his back real quick?
NARRATOR And when Dr. G turns his body over,
she gets another surprise.
Yuck!
Look at this!
NARRATOR A bed sore on his backside.
Well, a bed sore we see not with just somebody in bed,
but we see somebody not moving in bed.
That makes me worry.
Why is he not moving around?
We're going to have to see what is inside of him that's
causing him to look like this.
What else we got cooking over here?
NARRATOR Next, Dr. G performs a y incision,
opening up Donald's abdominal cavity from his neck
to his waist.
And at that moment, she realizes--
Oh!
--that something is horribly wrong.
Oh, my gosh.
That's, like, gross.
As soon as you open that abdomen,
there is a hideous smell that comes out.
It does smell bad.
It just so happens that there is a decomposed body
in the room at the same time.
[ … ]
That didn't smell half as bad as my guy.
Yuck!
What is going on?
I hate that smell.
NARRATOR Dr. G's still reeling from the overwhelming stench
emanating from -year-old Donald Finch's open body.
Oh!
It smells like vomit!
I hate vomit!
Nah, you just aren't used to it.
I deal with a lot of different smells.
But that smell is one of the worst I'd ever encountered.
It's not nice.
Now I'm really wondering what's going on.
NARRATOR But first, Dr. G must collect blood for a variety
of test and cultures.
I will, of course, do an HIV test on him.
And I will take blood cultures, see if there's any bacteria
growing in his blood.
NARRATOR With the samples drawn,
she cuts deeply into Donald's abdominal cavity,
trying to locate the source of the odor.
And immediately, Dr. G realizes that something is
terribly wrong with his bowel.
Wow.
Look at that.
Something funky is going on up here.
His bowel is huge.
Nothing else could get your attention.
NARRATOR The bowel is a muscular tube that forms part
of the body's digestive system.
So a normal bowel is maybe that big around.
His is the size of a basketball.
Oh, my God.
And then, the bowel wall looks like a balloon ready to burst.
Oh, my gosh.
I hate it.
It's thin, and it's under pressure.
Something's wrong here!
He's clearly got a bowel obstruction.
NARRATOR In a healthy individual,
solid waste material, or feces, passes
through the bowel on its way to being eliminated from the body.
But in Donald's case, something is
preventing this from happening.
The fecal material can't get out of the bowel.
That's gross.
So he's clearly-- something else is going on.
NARRATOR Dr. G is now determined to figure out
what's blocking Donald's bowel.
I'm not doing anything till we figure this out.
NARRATOR She wonders if he could have been suffering
from a condition called volvulus,
in which a loop of the bowel becomes abnormally twisted.
Maybe the bowels have turned on itself.
This is if you kink a hose and the water can't get through.
NARRATOR To find out, Dr. G inspects the bowel all the way
to Donald's rectum.
It is the glamorous part of the job.
NARRATOR But to her surprise, she comes up empty-handed.
There was no volvulus.
The bowel wasn't kinked.
This might just be a cancer.
NARRATOR If Donald has cancer of the bowel,
he could have developed malignant tumors large enough
to cause an obstruction.
I don't see anything.
But there was no tumor anywhere.
There's just no cancer in his abdomen at all.
NARRATOR Finally, Dr. G cuts into the bowel itself
so she can examine it from the inside.
I knew this was not going to be pleasant.
This would keep a lot of people out of this profession.
Wow.
NARRATOR And what she finds there is unlike she's
ever seen before.
When I open up the bowel, I get my answer.
Oh, gross.
I see what it is.
He's got a fecal impaction.
NARRATOR A fecal impaction is an unusual and painful
condition in which a solid mass of hardened feces, or stool,
builds up in the bowel, causing a blockage.
That is really bizarre.
In his case, the fecal material
has gotten so large that it's blocked
up the bowel to the point where it kind of just causes a jam.
And the rest of the stool just started building up behind it.
Oh, this is just disgusting.
The biggest fecal ball was about the size of a football.
, , , , , .
And then there were multiple other hard balls
the size of a baseball.
We got or big wads of something.
It was quite the sight.
Nothing could get through it except some liquid stool,
which is why he had to wear the disposable diaper.
That had to be a lot of pain.
I find a lot of this unbelievable.
Did he not have a sense of what was
[ … ]
going on inside of his bowel?
What is it that's causing him to live with this pain?
I'm afraid to touch it.
It was slipping all over the place.
In my years as a medical examiner,
I had never seen that before.
At this point, I don't know what to think.
NARRATOR The case of -year-old Donald Finch
has just taken an unexpected turn.
His bowel is jam-packed with fecal matter.
And in more than two decades of performing autopsies,
Dr. G has never seen anything like it.
That's disgusting.
It was really quite remarkable to see that much stool
in a human body.
Oh, my gosh.
You can't live like that.
Basically, I know that that fecal impaction
is to blame for his death.
But I don't know really what's causing
him to have a fecal impaction.
I'll get those out.
And then you can get the rest out.
The only people I've seen fecal impactions in
are usually debilitated people, old people who are bedridden.
We know he has a bed sore.
So he's clearly not getting out of bed.
The real question is, what is making him bedridden?
What's causing this in a -year-old man?
NARRATOR Thinking back to the external exam
Dr. G now wonders if her earlier theory about AIDS
might be correct.
That could have made him debilitated
enough to stay in bed.
NARRATOR But to find out, she must wait for Donald's blood
work to come back from the lab.
We're going to pin this case.
LAB ASSISTANT [inaudible].
NARRATOR One week later, Donald's blood cultures
are delivered to the District morgue.
And they immediately reveal one thing.
Yeah.
There we go.
He's clearly got a lot of E. coli.
NARRATOR E. coli is a common type of bacteria that is
usually contained in the bowel.
But in Donald's case, the pressure
from the build up of feces has allowed
the bacteria to seep into the bloodstream,
causing a deadly infection.
The bacteria getting into his bloodstream
caused his final illness.
But that's just the mechanism of how he finally d*ed.
That's still not giving me the answer.
We want what caused the bowel obstruction in the first place.
NARRATOR Now she is more anxious than ever
to examine Donald's blood tests.
I'm really thinking he's got AIDS,
and this is what's going to cause all of his problems.
NARRATOR Unfortunately, the report proves to be a dead end.
His HIV test was negative.
It's frustrating.
I don't know what happened to him.
That doesn't make any sense.
NARRATOR And there's only one tool left in Dr. G's arsenal--
the microscopics.
One by one, she reviews the slides of Donald's nerves
and spinal cord, searching for any signs
of infection that could have caused him to be bedridden.
But I don't see any evidence of infection.
So I really need, at this point, to call the sister.
She needs to give me more answers.
KATE (ON TELEPHONE) Hi, I have a question for you.
NARRATOR Over the phone, Dr. G describes
for Kate the circumstances that led to her brother's death.
Then she probes for more clues.
I asked her, why didn't you tell me he was bedridden?
She said he wasn't.
He would get up when he wanted to.
But for months, he'd lay in bed and not want to move.
NARRATOR Now Dr. G is truly stumped.
I told her I don't have a medical reason that
would have caused all this.
NARRATOR But finally, Kate reveals a surprising detail
about her brother's past.
She told me a really important piece
of the puzzle that I wish I'd have known at the beginning.
NARRATOR On the afternoon of his death,
-year-old Donald Finch is trapped
in bed, fighting what appears to be a bad case of the flu.
But Dr. G now knows he's suffering from something far
more insidious and devastating.
According to the sister, he was severely depressed.
It all started about a year ago when he broke up with his wife.
They had a child together.
And it became clear to him that he
was never going to be able to get into that little girl's
life again.
And that was devastating for him.
He sank into a deeper and deeper depression.
[ … ]
NARRATOR Soon Donald stops eating
and slowly begins to waste away.
He laid in bed and didn't move for long periods of time.
That's how severe his depression was.
NARRATOR And his prolonged immobility
eventually causes a bed sore to form on his backside.
He didn't care.
I just think he lost the will to live.
But Dr. G believes that Donald's depression
also set into motion a deadly chain reaction inside his body.
Our bodies are meant to move.
When we don't move, bad things happen.
His bowels became sluggish to the point where
firm, hard stools started developing,
to the point where it became obstructed,
to the point where no stool could get through.
He must have had tremendous abdominal pain.
But I don't think that was matching
the pain that he was feeling for the loss of his daughter.
NARRATOR As Donald's stool continues to build up,
his bowel becomes stretched to the breaking point,
with disastrous consequences.
The bacteria which had been confined in his bowel
gets translocated into his blood vessels.
NARRATOR With E. coli bacteria loose in his bloodstream,
Donald developed a massive infection that overwhelms
his already weakened body.
He gets out of bed.
His blood pressure drops.
He collapses.
And it doesn't take long before he dies.
That's really sad.
Because he's a really young guy.
He comes from a good family.
It's just a tragedy.
NARRATOR After a four week investigation,
Dr. G is finally able to give Kate some conclusive answers
about her brother's death.
She was a little surprised.
She didn't think that depression could k*ll you.
We have people who are depressed that come through our morgue
all the time.
Depression is a serious medical illness
that ultimately can k*ll.
If you have major depression, if you
know somebody with major depression, seek help.
Things can be done for depression.
It's a treatable illness.
NARRATOR The case of Donald Finch
is yet another example of a death that
could have been prevented if only he would
have listened to his body.
But sometimes a death is so sudden,
there are no signs at all.
I just find it odd that he starts stabbing
himself out of the blue.
What's leading up to this?
This is a case that is somewhat bizarre.
We have a -year-old male that lives with his -year-old son.
And the son's story is that for no reason,
his father starts stabbing himself.
NARRATOR It's just before AM on Saturday morning
when the Orange County emergency dispatch
center receives a frantic call from -year-old Damian Harper.
He calls and says my dad stabbed himself.
NARRATOR Moments later, paramedics
arrive to a grisly scene.
[interposing voices]
They tried resuscitation, take him to the hospital,
but there's nothing I can do.
He's pretty much dead on arrival.
[siren blaring]
NARRATOR Now it's up to Sgt. Brennan of the Orlando Police
Department to get to the bottom of this strange and disturbing
set of circumstances.
It appeared to be a very violent scene.
We found signs of a struggle, a lot of blood.
The son's story is that, for no reason,
his father grabs a kitchen Kn*fe and starts stabbing himself.
But Damian's story is so bizarre that police
are immediately suspicious.
The fact that the father had multiple s*ab wounds
was so out of the ordinary that it led you to believe
that it was a homicide.
We oftentimes see suicides with cutting instruments.
It's rare to see stabbings.
Typically, it's more of a slashing
or a slicing or a cutting rather than a stabbing.
NARRATOR And it isn't long before police notice something
else that makes them even more suspicious.
The son had injuries to his hand
that made us believe that he was possibly
involved in an altercation with his father.
NARRATOR Now Sgt. Brennan is counting on Dr. G
to help determine if Damien k*lled
his own father in cold blood.
You know, the police don't know really
what to believe at this point.
But they suspect that kid.
So they want to know my opinion on what I think happened.
[ … ]
Is it a su1c1de?
Is it a homicide?
NARRATOR The next morning, the body of Jack Harper
arrives at the District Morgue.
All right.
Let's see here.
Let's see here.
NARRATOR As a first step, Dr. G reviews
the investigators' report.
We don't know anything about his medical history
or social history.
We really don't know what his life was like.
Where does one begin here?
All I have is that this is a person that's multiply stabbed.
He's got some really significant wounds
to his neck and some s*ab wounds to the chest.
Now everybody always wonders, why
do we bother doing an autopsy?
By golly, this person's stabbed.
Why bother?
We all know why this person d*ed.
Well, no!
There's more to it.
What can we gather from this autopsy that could help
explain what happened that day?
Because the only person that's talking is the son,
and he's a suspect.
Can we confirm or deny this story that he's telling?
NARRATOR In fact, this particular scenario
is so troubling, Sgt. Brennan decides to sit in
on the actual autopsy.
We were hoping that the examination would reveal just
exactly how the father incurred his injuries,
whether or not they were self-inflicted,
as the son had alleged, or whether or not they
were possibly from a homicide.
Sometimes the nature of the wounds
internally help us decide whether it's
a su1c1de or a homicide.
NARRATOR For instance, if Jack was stabbing himself,
Dr. G would expect to see only one fatal wound.
Typically with the suicides, we have
one wound that's really bad.
And we don't see a lot of wounds that are really bad.
He'd be losing consciousness too fast to keep going.
So does he have multiple wounds that
would have caused his death?
If that's true, we know that he's probably
not doing it to himself.
If that's the case, it really looks bad for that kid's story.
But we want to see what the forensics tell us.
Even though the police don't believe the son's story,
I have to keep an open mind.
I'm going to let the body speak for itself.
Yeah.
So the first thing I look at is just the general appearance
of the body.
And he's got a tremendous amount of blood on him.
NARRATOR Morgue technician Carlo Gonzalez
carefully washes away the dried blood
covering Jack's upper torso.
Then, wound by wound, Dr. G begins a painstaking
examination of the injuries.
Well, the first thing you see is these five s*ab wounds
that just catch your eye.
They go across the chest.
They're all angled, all about the same size.
The next thing I do is turn my attention to the neck.
I was told there was really quite severe incised wounds.
All righty.
An incised wound is longer than it is deep.
And he's got two of them.
He's got one that's seven inches long.
But that one's fairly superficial.
Then he's got one that's gaping, that's about four inches.
That actually goes into and through
the subcutaneous tissue.
NARRATOR But surprisingly, neither of these wounds
appear severe enough to be fatal.
Next, Dr. G cleans the remaining dried blood from Jack's neck.
And what lies underneath could turn
the entire case upside down.
It was interesting.
When we removed that blood, something else showed up.
Oh, my.
[inaudible]?
NARRATOR Dr. G has just made a shocking discovery
in the external exam of -year-old Jack Harper.
These two are [inaudible].
Oh, look at that.
After I wash him off, I notice that he's
got five hesitation marks on the left side of the neck.
NARRATOR Hesitation marks are small,
superficial, self-inflicted cuts.
This discovery is the first piece of concrete evidence
that could suggest Damien is telling the truth.
These marks on the side of his neck
are classic for the father thinking
about committing su1c1de.
NARRATOR And as Dr. G examines these cuts more closely,
[ … ]
she finds yet another clue that points towards su1c1de.
There's kind of a curvilinear pattern to some of those
and suggests that he might have been holding the Kn*fe.
If a son is standing from behind,
the natural tendency would be to have them diagonal.
And if a father and son are having an altercation,
that's going to be a rough and tumble, quick kind of action.
I don't think the -year-old son is sitting
there torturing the father.
Now I'm kind of wondering, hm, maybe he did this to himself.
NARRATOR But many questions remain.
What about the cuts on Damien's hands?
And if it is su1c1de, why?
In over two decades on the job, she's never
seen anything quite like it.
I can't imagine who would do this to themselves.
NARRATOR Still, the only way to know for sure
if Jack took his own life is to examine the severity
of his other injuries.
I need to see what's going on with those s*ab
wounds of the chest.
NARRATOR With scalpel in hand, Dr. G
makes her standard Y-shaped incision down Jack's torso.
When you have all these wounds,
you still gotta do your normal procedure
or you're going to forget something.
So you still gotta do your tox and your panels.
NARRATOR She carefully collect samples of Jack's blood
and sends them off to the lab for analysis.
Is he under the influence of dr*gs?
Is that what caused him to possibly k*ll himself?
We don't know yet.
But you always take tox.
NARRATOR Then Dr. G begins charting the path of each wound
to determine if more than one of them
could be potentially fatal.
Where are these s*ab wounds going?
Got something to measure it?
Two of the s*ab wounds go downward.
And they go through the diaphragm and into the liver.
One of them goes pretty deep in the liver.
Not a lot of blood has accumulated
in that abdominal cavity from those liver wounds,
maybe about cc's that I can kind of gather up.
You've got the rest [inaudible]..
NARRATOR This tells Dr. G that the injuries to Jack's liver
were not fatal.
He probably could have survived
those s*ab wounds to the liver.
NARRATOR She then turns her attention to the injuries
in Jack's chest cavity, and with just one glance,
she can see that they're the most severe.
Oh, my gosh.
Look at that.
When I opened that floor cavity up,
it has cc's which has spilled
into each pleural cavity.
NARRATOR Dr. G ladles out the blood so she can get a better
look at Jack's heart sac.
His pericardial sac has a s*ab wound through it.
And there is a slice through that heart.
He's not going to survive that s*ab wound to the heart.
That really is the one that got him.
NARRATOR At this point, Dr. G is
determined that even though Jack had five s*ab wounds,
only one was fatal.
We've got hesitation marks, as if he's holding the Kn*fe.
We have no defensive wounds on him.
And there's only one true major wound.
And so if you put that all together,
it really is making homicide go down on our radar and su1c1de
go up.
NARRATOR But these findings raise an even
more perplexing question.
What could have caused Jack to take his own life in such
a brutal and bizarre way?
The question is not the cause of death.
The question is the manner of death.
Is it truly just a totally impulsive act?
Or is it some psychiatric problem?
Is it some medical problem?
NARRATOR And there's only one place left
to look for clues, the brain.
Believe it or not, there are many things in the brain that
may precipitate some type of abnormal, acute change
in behavior.
NARRATOR As a first step, Dr. G cuts across the top
of Jack's head, slicing from ear-to-ear
and reflecting the scalp.
He does have a contusion or bruise to the scalp,
but it looks like when he must have
collapsed, because there's really no underlying
bleeding over the skull.
There's no skull fracture.
NARRATOR She then extracts the brain
and carries it to the dissecting table for a closer inspection.
And I section the brain.
I don't see anything that suggests any natural disease.
I don't see anything there, either.
The brain looks completely normal except pale.
[ … ]
But you will see that with a bleeding out.
NARRATOR With this, the autopsy comes to a close.
At the end of this autopsy, it really looks like it's
going to be a su1c1de.
But we still need some information.
My job will be getting the medical records
and I'm going to have Sgt. Brennan
to ask the son more about the father's behavior
prior to this.
Is it truly out of the blue?
We may never know why he did this,
but we won't know unless we start asking some questions.
NARRATOR Dr. G had just completed the autopsy
of -year-old Jack Harper, whose
bizarre death appears to be a su1c1de due
to self-inflicted s*ab wounds.
So at this point, we're kind of looking
at this more as a su1c1de.
But if it's a su1c1de, I just find it odd that it
would be out of the blue.
What's leading up to this?
I need to get his medical records.
NARRATOR Several days later, the records arrive
at the District morgue.
And they immediately reveal one thing.
The father does have a history of depression,
had been seeing a psychiatrist.
But what's troubling is, on the last visit,
he complained to the psychiatrist
that he really started to think people were after him.
He really started to have some kind of paranoid thoughts.
NARRATOR Jack's son Damien confirms that his father had
been exhibiting some odd behavior in the days leading up
to his death.
And the son is saying that the father's acting really strange.
He's hearing these voices.
And then the next thing he knows,
the father picks up a Kn*fe and starts stabbing himself.
NARRATOR While it's extremely unusual
Dr. G must now consider the possibility
that Jack's underlying depression somehow
led to feelings of paranoia, and ultimately, a full on psychotic"], index ,…}
break.
So possibly, his depression, maybe, was getting so bad
that he did become psychotic.
People can have these brief psychotic episodes
and may never have one again.
Maybe that's what it is.
And unfortunately, he committed su1c1de because of it.
But that's really, really rare.
The only last piece of the puzzle is the toxicology.
When I get the toxicology report,
I'm actually quite surprised at what I found.
Because I do think it adds another piece to the puzzle.
And I really didn't think it would.
He had cyclobenzaprine in him.
NARRATOR Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant that
is commonly prescribed to help relieve
the pain of a muscle spasm.
A lot of people are on cyclobenzaprine.
But interesting, his level is very high,
really high enough to be toxic.
Does that explain what happened?
It certainly could have.
NARRATOR It's a lazy Saturday morning at the Harper
home in Orange County, Florida.
-year-old Damien is trying to enjoy his breakfast, even
though his dad Jack has been acting
a little strange as of late.
He's had kind of a rocky road with his depression
and anxiety.
He also felt that people were starting to follow him.
He's really starting to get a little bit paranoid.
At some point, probably a week, a day prior to this incident,
he must've sprained his back or sprained a muscle.
[inaudible].
Then he gets a prescription for cyclobenzaprine.
NARRATOR But as the toxicology results
reveal, Jack's cyclobenzaprine level was exceptionally high.
Now the question is why is it that high?
Was he maybe having some more muscle spasm and just took,
you know, one's good, , , may be better.
NARRATOR Although Dr. G can't be certain,
she believes the elevated level caused
a very rare but extremely dangerous
side effect of the drug.
When cyclobenzaprine gets at that toxic level,
the known side effect of that is to become psychotic,
start hearing voices.
And probably, that is what then led him to pick up that Kn*fe
and started stabbing himself.
He first starts hesitating, he cuts his throat.
NARRATOR At some point, Damien tries to step in.
He attempts to grab the Kn*fe from his dad
and gets cut in the process.
Dad!
[inaudible]
The father's able to fend him off
and continue stabbing himself.
He stabs his liver.
[ … ]
He cuts his heart, loses blood pressure.
He collapses on the ground.
His son is finally able to call .
[phone dialing]
Ambulance gets there, rushes him to the hospital.
[siren blaring]
But it's too late.
They can't save him.
NARRATOR With this, Dr. G reaches out to Sgt. Brennan
to share her final ruling on what
is perhaps the strangest su1c1de she's ever come across.
Dr. G's findings close this case as a su1c1de.
And as a result, the son was no longer a suspect
in his father's death.
Even though we've relieved any suspicion on his son,
I'm sure the son is devastated with the death of his father.
It was terribly traumatizing to have his dad act in that way.
If that father was in his right mind,
I'm sure he wouldn't have done that.
Unfortunately he was not in his right mind.
And the person that really pays the price is the son.
07x01 - Wounded
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The unexplained deaths that Dr. G investigates can be attributed to various causes, such as undiagnosed medical conditions, accidents, or foul play.
The unexplained deaths that Dr. G investigates can be attributed to various causes, such as undiagnosed medical conditions, accidents, or foul play.