Up next, a career sailor dies,
but not in the line of duty.
To me, it's a waste
of a human life.
Teams of doctors can't
determine what k*lled this man.
It could be bacterial,
like salmonella or cholera,
something of that sort.
Or could it be
something entirely unnatural,
like m*rder?
What kind of person does that?
How do you do that?
Could you?
No.
I couldn't either.
In 1982, the Cold w*r
was as frigid as ever.
U.S. troops were deployed
all over the globe.
The Navy was perhaps the most
visible branch of the service.
The Navy, when they
deploy ships during peacetime,
it's to just show
the United States' presence
and interest in various
locations where foreign policy
is being carried out
by the United States.
was a Navy lieutenant
aboard the USS Forrestal,
America's first supercarrier,
and at the time one of the most
formidable warships in the w*r.
Capable of staying at sea
for months,
it provided cramped quarters
for the lieutenant
and more than
In its day, the Forrestal was
a big, modern aircraft carrier.
Lieutenant Hartley was
a career Navy man,
had risen up steadily
through the ranks,
and loved the work.
One month into
a standard deployment
in the Mediterranean,
he fell ill.
He's vomiting.
He has diarrhea.
He has severe stomach cramps.
He goes to the clinic
onboard the ship.
Doctors onboard
diagnosed a stomach ailment,
and soon Lieutenant Hartley
was feeling better,
but not for long.
They couldn't
figure out the cause.
They ruled out
all infectious causes,
other types of tumors
and things of that sort,
but they couldn't pin it down.
Lieutenant Hartley's
condition stabilized,
and then he took
another turn for the worse.
He would be sick and then
he'd get a little bit better
and then be sick again,
and meanwhile,
the doctors are trying
to figure out what's going on.
Things got so bad
that he was taken off the ship
by helicopter
and ended up
at a Navy hospital in Florida.
Under the care of his wife, Pamela,
Lieutenant Hartley
continued to improve.
But only briefly.
He's developing huge open sores
in his mouth and his esophagus.
He's in extreme discomfort.
On November the 17th
at 4:00 in the morning,
he basically flatlines.
The next day, he d*ed.
An autopsy showed almost every
vital organ in his body
had sustained
significant damage.
Doctor said,
"You need to look at
heavy metal poisoning
on this person."
And so they took samples,
sent them
to SmithKline laboratory.
Six days later, they get
the positive results back
that they find arsenic
in Lee's system.
Arsenic is one of the
oldest poisons known to man.
It's a metals-based toxin
found in all sorts of minerals.
Arsenic is a naturally
occurring element
in our world.
It's found in the ground,
from geological formations,
and it also is found
in water systems.
In high, high levels
of arsenic exposure,
you have acute poisoning.
In healthy people,
the liver filters out
the trace amounts of arsenic
all of us encounter.
But in concentrated doses,
it wreaks havoc on the body.
It's basically tasteless, odorless,
and it's soluble in liquids,
and so it's easy to hide.
And it's readily available.
Arsenic is commonly found
in rat poison.
An analysis
of Lee Hartley's organs
showed his arsenic levels
were over 400 times
what's found
in a healthy person.
It's hard to ingest that
much arsenic by accident,
which raised all sorts
of uncomfortable questions
for people trying to determine
exactly how Lee Hartley d*ed.
Who has arsenic in their body
of that level
unless it's a poisoning
of some sort?
Upon learning that
Lieutenant Lee Hartley
had been k*lled
by a massive dose of arsenic,
the Navy sprang into action.
If his death was an accident,
USS Forrestal were in danger.
If it was a m*rder, one of
those 4,000 could be a k*ller.
We're trying to figure out,
in the early stage now,
where in the world
did the arsenic come from?
His bunkmate
was examined, as was the ship...
all 60,000 tons of it.
They did an
exhaustive search of the ship,
and they could not identify
any type of arsenic
on board the ship.
That meant someone got
the arsenic on board,
dosed Lieutenant Hartley,
and successfully destroyed
all signs of it.
Not an easy thing to do.
Don't forget,
we had no idea at the time
where this stuff came from.
You know, we knew it didn't fall
to earth from heaven,
but we had no idea
how it got where it was.
The immediate question
was simple...
Was there anyone on board
who might want
to k*ll Lieutenant Hartley?
The answer
was an unequivocal yes.
There was a report
that somebody had written
"Hartley's a dead man"
or "Lieutenant's a dead man"
or something of that sort
on the ship.
Lieutenant Hartley was
in a unique position
on the Forrestal.
His job was to report
all infractions of discipline.
It was a thankless task,
and potentially dangerous.
As much as I hate to say it,
if you are the disciplinary
officer on board,
it's totally conceivable that
somebody might wish you harm,
and I'm sure that Lee,
like myself and others,
probably avoided going out
on the weather decks at night.
Lee Hartley told
friends he was reluctant
to go out
on this latest deployment.
Why?
He'd only been married
to Pamela for a year,
and many of his shipmates said
he desperately missed her.
That was my singular
recollection of him at the time,
was that he really,
really wanted to be home
and really missed being home
with his wife.
In fact, when he initially
fell ill,
doctors,
who had no idea at the time
that he'd ingested
a lethal dose of arsenic,
wondered if he might
be suicidal.
They had actually
asked him in the hospital
whether or not he was trying
to k*ll himself,
and he was telling them,
no, he doesn't want to die.
And if he did want
to k*ll himself,
why do it in one of the slowest,
most painful ways possible?
But the possibility of self-harm
led to another theory.
I was of the opinion
initially that perhaps,
in an effort to have himself
sent home early from the ship,
that he might have started
to take something
that contained arsenic
that would make him sufficiently
sick to be able to go home.
But again,
his suffering was so extreme
that investigators
were skeptical
about the possibility
of self-harm.
With no sign of the source
of arsenic on the ship,
they were stumped.
The investigation
had basically gone cold.
That is, until they
heard a story about Lieutenant Hartley
and another shipmate
getting violently ill
while on shore leave in Spain
just three months
before the lieutenant's death.
That's one of the first things
that you do,
of course, is you start to...
you look at the universe
of possibilities.
Later on, the universe
of possibilities
becomes smaller
and smaller and smaller.
As Navy lieutenant Lee Hartley
lay dying in a Florida hospital,
one of his doctors thought
he might have been poisoned.
As a result,
at the lieutenant's autopsy,
doctors specifically tested
for toxins,
and they saved samples
for later analysis.
They'll take specific samples,
like brain tissue, liver tissue,
kidney tissue,
lungs, stomach contents.
Arsenic is retained longer
in the fingernails and hair
than in any other part
of the body.
Arsenic is bound
in organic matter
differently than it is
in our body,
to where it goes
to inorganic stuff.
It goes to our keratin.
It goes to our nails
and our hair,
because that's where
the high-keratin cells are.
And since the arsenic
will stay there indefinitely,
it can provide a record
of exactly when
a person ingests arsenic.
Your hair on your head
grows about a half an inch
a month.
So when they do testing,
they say
take a lock of your hair.
You want to take, like,
a pencil's width of hair,
three inches long.
That could give you information
for about six months.
If you test it out
at the three inch,
that's six months
from the initial exposure.
To create a forensic timeline
for when Lieutenant Hartley
ingested the arsenic,
his hair samples were subjected
to a process called
atomic absorption spectroscopy.
The hair is liquefied
in a neutral solution.
A radioactive beam is then
sent through the samples.
How much of this light
is able to pass through
reveals how much arsenic
is present,
allowing analysts to trace
the rate of ingestion.
This showed
that Lieutenant Hartley
got an initial dose of arsenic
while he was one month
out to sea,
and there was a massive spike
one month later,
around the time
he was on shore leave
with the rest of
the Forrestal crew in Spain.
While there, he finally reunited
with his wife, Pam.
Pam would have come over
with a hundred other wives, probably.
typically go from port to port,
if they can afford
the flight over,
then they can reunite
with their husband for a week,
if we're in port that long.
During this time in Spain,
Pam cooked breakfast
for Lieutenant Hartley
and another shipmate.
Soon, both were sick.
Lee and his crewmate
get violently ill,
complaining of diarrhea
and vomiting.
Lee is noted by Pamela
to be ashen gray in color.
She stays eight days
before returning home
from visiting her husband.
Both men return to the ship.
Lee Hartley's
crewmate recovered.
Lieutenant Hartley did not...
at least not completely.
Doctors and investigators wondered
if there might be
some connection
between the lieutenant's wife
and his death.
The couple had been married
for little more than a year.
They met in the Navy.
Lee Hartley, who'd been
previously married for 16 years
and had a young daughter,
was Pamela's superior.
I know that he was her boss.
She was his secretary
at his office.
That's how I found out.
My mom told me
that was his secretary.
Adultery is not permissible
in the Navy,
so Lee and Pam's affair
created a problem.
He basically paved the way
for her to get out of the Navy
after only being in there
for two years.
And once she left the Navy
they could then date,
even though he was married.
He went and eventually
divorced his wife
and then married Pamela.
By all accounts
Lieutenant Hartley was besotted
with his new wife,
who was 10 years his junior.
She was very soft-spoken.
It was different from my moms,
you know, the way she would
talk to me and stuff,
and I think that's why
I liked her more.
The postmortem analysis of the
lieutenant's hair left no doubt
he got a big dose of arsenic
while in Spain with his wife.
Could Pam be involved?
It was an open question.
After all, Lieutenant Hartley
suffered his first bout
of sickness
one month after he was at sea,
and Pam clearly
wasn't on the ship.
Even stranger, he had
subsequent bouts of illness
long after
he was with Pam in Spain.
And then, once the lieutenant
got back to the U.S.
and was in Pam's care,
hair analysis showed his arsenic
levels had nearly quadrupled.
This is the crux of the case.
This is where it turns from,
okay, maybe she's not
the grieving widow.
Pam was identified
as a logical suspect
because she had the most access
and the opportunity.
Forensic analysis
of Lieutenant Hartley's hair
made it clear
he got a large dose of arsenic
while visiting his wife, Pam,
in Spain.
Investigators learned
that the lieutenant's shipmate,
the one who became ill after
eating a breakfast
prepared by Pam Hartley,
was now in good health.
So much time had passed
that he had cut his hair
and fingernails, eliminating
any potential evidence.
One of the obstacles that we had
to overcome very rapidly is,
we don't have a crime scene.
If Pam Hartley
poisoned her husband
before she met him in Spain
and again after they left,
how did she do it?
After all, she was
thousands of miles away.
The answer was hiding
in plain sight.
Lo and behold, she had sent
care packages to Lee,
maybe some baked goods.
Little things that people
can't find on the ship,
or whatever, is sent to them.
Sailors received these
so-called care packages
from family members
during ports of call.
When she's sending him
something on the ship,
he's ingesting it enough
that he's getting sick.
Early in the investigation,
Pam Hartley had been brought in
for questioning
and denied any involvement.
She even consented
to a polygraph and passed.
It does tend
to throw a monkey wrench
into a homicide investigation
if your primary suspect
passes a polygraph.
Everything pointed to Pam,
but there wasn't enough
to charge her.
There's no statute
of limitations on m*rder,
and nearly 13 years later,
in 1995,
investigators prepare
to reinterview Pam Hartley
and other people with even
a remote connection to the case.
They went back and
interviewed some of the people,
including her brother, who told
a different version of the story
what he initially told back
in the '80s.
Pam's brother, Fred,
dropped a bombshell.
Pretty quickly he gave her up
and said
that she had approached him
about k*lling Lee Hartley,
and of course he refused.
Investigators could
finally make a case.
Also they knew that
Lieutenant Hartley's body...
he had been buried,
not cremated...
could be a rich source
of evidence.
Arsenic should still be
in his hair and fingernails.
All they had to do
was exhume him.
It was time to confront Pam.
It seems to me that there
would have been
nothing to lose at that point
to go ahead and have
a serious "come to Jesus" -type
interrogation with her.
Eventually we do
what we call a showdown,
when we sit down
with the most likely suspect.
We want it to be a surprise.
Pam, who was short on money
and fighting
a substance-abuse problem,
was told her brother
had given her up.
Even worse for her,
the evidence,
six feet under the ground,
was just waiting to be tested.
Faced with an almost certain
conviction, she confessed.
Sometimes,
people want to confess
and they got the feeling that
that was true with Pam Hartley.
As for motive,
investigators were stunned.
Pam said she knew Lee
was madly in love with her.
He was also jealous
and controlling.
She wanted out of the marriage
but didn't want to break
his heart by getting a divorce.
It's kind of ironic.
She said, "I loved him so much,
I didn't want to divorce him."
So she kills him.
This was cold-blooded m*rder,
planned and ex*cuted
over months.
I was numb.
I was numb when I found out
that my dad had been m*rder*d.
I was numb.
The forensic timeline
shows Lieutenant Hartley
got a care package
only weeks into his deployment.
He got sick and recovered.
Then Pam met him in Spain
and dosed him again.
He fell ill and recovered.
She gave him a care package
before he reboarded the ship.
He ate the contents,
and the pattern repeated.
Another care package
arrived in September,
and Lieutenant Hartley's
condition deteriorated.
He was medevacked from the ship
and hospitalized in Florida,
where Pam continued
poisoning him until he d*ed.
I mean, you can't imagine.
Here's somebody that you
cared enough about to marry,
and they are willing, over time,
to watch you slowly deteriorate
to the extent
you're slowly
wasting away and dying.
I mean, what kind of malevolence
causes that in a person?
I mean, where's that come from?
In 1996, Pam Hartley,
pled guilty
to second-degree m*rder
and was sentenced
to 40 years in prison.
She was released after 16 years.
She declined to participate
in this production.
The senselessness of this crime
is the one thing
all the investigators
can agree upon,
and they're grateful science
finally solved the mystery
of what k*lled
Lieutenant Lee Hartley.
It's hard to dispute
the science.
The manner of death in this
would be homicide.
So that toxicology played
a significant role
in establishing that timeline.
The forensics were so important
in this case.
It wasn't until, you know,
one doctor came in
and looked at everything that
was going on that identified
that they needed to start
looking for this poison.
People probably wonder,
"Well, why didn't she just get
a divorce?"