Dateline NBC - Deadly Obsession

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

In this Dateline classic, no one could figure out why a college student died in her bed – until a tiny spot launched an epic investigation. Hoda Kotb reports. Originally aired on August 21, 2009.

College attracts the best and the brightest, idealistic kids full of fire, ready to change the world. But there's idealism, and there's Michelle Herndon. She gave to the World Wildlife Fund, to the animal relief. She had a fascination with apes. She worked at the primate sanctuary. She went to St. Francis House and volunteered, which is a homeless shelter. I've actually seen her get out of her vehicle in the middle of a Target parking lot because someone threw a cup in the parking lot. And she was so irate.

She told him it was a young man, college student, just like her. There's a trash right there. Would it have killed you? And that's just what she said. For Michelle, it was a young man college student just like her. There's a trash right there. Would it have killed you? And that's just what she said. For Michelle, it was simple. We are all custodians of our planet and of everything on it. She was a caretaker. Yes.

Of people, of things, of animals. Yeah, of everything. She's called me on her way to work. I'm going to be late for work. I'm going to get in trouble. I'm like, why? A squirrel. I found it in my road.

It has a broke leg. I have to take it to UF, to the veterinary clinic. I'm thinking, oh, Michelle. Just 24 years old, Michelle Herndon wanted to join the Peace Corps and spend time doing charity work in Africa. She even donated money every month to sponsor a needy child. She had the photo of the boy in her day planner and ran up to me, Jessica, look at this boy I just adopted. She had the world by the tail and was riding it. My child has never been happier. She had everything she ever wanted. But her life would take an unexpected turn in early November 2005, becoming the center of a mystery that would baffle detectives and forensic experts and take more than two years to resolve.

Michelle Herndon dreamed of traveling the globe, but she got her start on the two-lane county roads of Live Oak, Florida, a sleepy, tight-knit community just south of the Georgia border. She was our everything. Her brother used to always say that we all lived vicariously through Michelle, through her eyes. Athletic and tall with long blonde hair, Michelle loved attention.

She was comfortable at the center of any crowd and knew how to work a room. She usually made a grand entrance. Her smile could light up the darkest night. And she had the bluest eyes. She reminded me of a butterfly, the way she would just kind of float around. When she left the cocoon of Live Oak to attend college in Gainesville, Michelle's parents knew their social butterfly would land on her feet. Michelle lived by herself off campus and bounced around from house to house, sometimes not in the best neighborhoods. She had had a little Christmas get-together, and one of the girls said,

you know, if my mother knew I was over in this area of town, she would not be very happy. But like Michelle said, who's going to rob me knew I was over in this area of town, she would not be very happy. But like Michelle said, who's going to rob me? They all think we're as poor as each other. To make some extra money, Michelle, a health nut, worked part-time as a personal trainer at Gainesville Health and Fitness. She started a recycling program almost immediately. She was a breath of fresh air. Jessica Seipel also worked the early morning shift at the gym. She and Michelle became inseparable, and pretty soon you could always

find Michelle at Jessica's house, giggling, talking, and co-hosting dinners and barbecues in Jessica's big backyard. Once a week, we tried to have what we called family dinners, where we would all sit around and have a nice home-cooked meal and it would you know it would be myself, Oliver, Sonia, my girlfriend Skye and also Michelle and whoever else we could just invite over. The dinners were mostly girlfriends but occasionally Jessica's roommate Oliver would join them. He was shy, a bit awkward around women but Michelle always did all she could to make him feel at home. I really don't have very many friends. He said I'm so much smarter than most people that I have a hard time relating to him. Michelle's like, yeah, he's kind of full of himself. She says,

but I feel bad. She said he's the kid that got picked on in school. It also seems to me that she was one of those people who sort of took in the strays a little bit. Animals and people, like people-wise, it seemed like everybody who needed a little bit of encouragement or a little bit of help, she was always right there to get their back. Michelle had a very full social life, but she was ready to make as much room as possible for one particular guy, Jason Deering. She actually tried to fix him up with her cousin at a family reunion in 2001. And she said, I realized at that moment when Kim kind of looked at him like, oh, she said, I wanted him all to myself. You can pretty much tell that they were

in love with each other from the get-go. Now, after four years of on and off off and on they decided they wanted to be on for good. She looked like a little school girl oh my gosh you have to hear about this conversation I just had with Jason. They just really decided okay let's go for it let's you know 100% we're gonna have a real committed relationship let's go for it. Michelle Herndon was the happiest she had ever been, practically yelling from the rooftops. But then, silence. She stopped calling her mom, her boyfriend. She missed work, and even her best friend said she couldn't reach her. I called her probably 10 times just to see what was going on. I thought, gee, she must really be working or classes or something's going on. Then finally, at 3.30 in the morning on November 10th,

Michelle's mom, Belinda Herndon, received a phone call. It was Jason. After not being able to reach Michelle for two days, he had driven back to Gainesville from his house in Miami and was standing outside her house sick with worry. Inside, he could hear her dog barking, her cell phone ringing, but there was no sign of Michelle. He said, I'm at her house and her car's here. She's left her cell phone and she's left Duke. And Duke was her baby. All I could think of was maybe Jessica got sick, so she went over there. Belinda roused herself out of her sleep and tried to call Jessica. Michelle's mom called that she couldn't get a hold of her.

So I just jumped right out of bed and got dressed and called Michelle's mom and said, I'm going to drive her to Michelle's house right now. So Belinda Herndon waited. She waited for Jason, Jessica, anyone to tell her what was going on. But her phone didn't ring, wouldn't ring. So there was nothing left to do. I'm going to start driving. Yes. When did it hit you? I knew going down there, something wasn't right. I just, I knew. And I passed people. I went in the parking lanes in the middle of Gainesville. And I kept thinking, please, God, please let a policeman pull me over,

because then they'll be able to get me there quicker. It was the longest drive of my life. It took Belinda an hour to get from her home to Michelle's. And when she finally arrived, she was greeted by the very last thing any parent wants to see. Yellow police tape, squad cars, and the grim faces of detectives already at work. The detective walked up to me and he said that our daughter had been found dead in her home. And I can remember dropping to the ground and telling him if he didn't find the man that did this, her father would and this family would suffer another tragedy. Her daughter was a healthy and vibrant young woman who never suffered anything worse than a migraine. So right away, Belinda thought, foul play.

But Gainesville Police Detective Michael Douglas wasn't so sure. Did you see any signs of trauma or any blood or anything like that? None whatsoever. Nothing? Nothing. I was perplexed. So the detective had to consider the idea that Michelle had done this to herself. There were so many things, so many different thoughts that were tossed around. I remember somebody saying maybe it was suicide, and I just wanted to choke them.

Obviously, you've never met her. You have no idea what you're talking about. Based on accounts of Michelle's demeanor in the previous days and the absence of a note, that theory was ruled out pretty quickly. This girl, you know, didn't appear to be suicidal at all. She had too much. She was looking forward to the future. Next, Detective Douglas thought perhaps she was a drug user who overdosed by accident. You can usually tell a lot about a person's personality as you go through their belongings. I went through everything in her house. What did that tell you about Michelle? She seemed like a very neat, conscientious, health-conscious individual.

How could you tell she was health-conscious? By what's in her refrigerator. Milk, water, some yogurt, fruit, things like that. Not like beer or pizza and stuff that college kids would have. So just so I'm clear, you didn't see any signs of drugs, no signs of alcohol? None. In a matter of hours, they'd pretty much ruled out an intruder, suicide, an accidental overdose. There was only one other explanation. Michelle Herndon had died of natural causes. It happens, but not very often. I've had work deaths where a seemingly healthy person had a seizure disorder and died.

I had one since Michelle's death. This girl was 19 years old. No medical history. Found dead in her bed. So it does happen. It does. So Detective Douglas began wrapping up the investigation. But before he could close out her file,

procedure dictated that he send Michelle's body to the medical examiner for a routine autopsy. It just didn't make a lot of sense why a young healthy girl would be dead. She wasn't known to use drugs. She wasn't known to hang out with a rough crowd. She didn't have any of the warning signs of somebody who was in danger. When Michelle Herndon was found dead in her home on November 10, 2005, the cause of death was a mystery. Within a few hours of being called to her home, Gainesville police had ruled out an intruder, suicide, a drug overdose. At that moment I thought, how ironic. The person that takes care of themselves, that gripes at the rest of us,

had either an aneurysm, just whatever it was. Michelle's family and friends were devastated, but they took some small comfort in the belief that Michelle's death was perhaps part of God's plan. They quickly went to work planning a memorial. People told story after story about Michelle's passion for people, for animals, for the planet, and they pledged to do their part to continue her good works in her memory. Gorgeous day, little breeze, kids running around playing. The day was all Michelle. Then we all had a big cookout and then her two uncles that had never recycled a day in their life proceeded to go through three barrels of trash and recycle everything.

After coming to grips with the idea that Michelle had died of some unseen ailment, Belinda Herndon did not want to pursue a post-mortem exam. I asked them, please, not to do an autopsy. Why was that? I knew Michelle didn't want to be cut on. I couldn't bear the thought to think my child was dead, but now somebody's going to cut on her. Medical examiner Dr. Martha Bird understood, but knew it was necessary. We try to explain to the families that even though it's not something that they would like their loved one to go through, it does give us very good information that would be usually as helpful to them.

The autopsy of Michelle's body revealed what everyone already knew, that Michelle was in great physical shape with no diseases. But it also revealed a huge clue wrapped in a tiny new detail. A detail that would blow the nearly closed case back open wide. On Michelle's left arm, there was a dot. Though smaller than a freckle, Dr. Burt decided to take a closer look. Detective Douglas remembers the bombshell that followed. I get a phone call from the medical examiner.

Saying? Saying I found a needle puncture in Michelle Herndon's arm, in her left arm. And in my medical opinion, it appears to be administered by someone with a level of skill. A level of skill? A level of skill. And what did that tell you as a detective? I thought, this is very unusual. I said my first questions are there any other needle marks? Could Michelle be a closet junkie? You know and Dr. Burt said no. Just the one? That's it. Just

the one. So it was one single pinprick? That's it. So that was going to end up being the key to the case this single pinprick? Yes. Dr. Burt said she was also bothered by the position of Michelle's body when they found her. The other thing that was also very unusual was the pattern of lividity, which is the settling of blood after a person dies. And her pattern of lividity indicated that she had been placed face down relatively soon after she died. To her, it looked like Michelle's body had been placed with her face in the pillow, not the way she would land if she had fallen ill and collapsed. Suddenly, Michelle Herndon's death was not looking so natural after all. Armed with this new information, Detective Mike Douglas returned to her house. Searched her vehicle, looked in the tall grass,

looked everywhere we possibly could. And this is after scouring the house the previous day. So there was a point where you discovered a crucial piece of evidence. You say discovered, I would say stumbled. Stumbled? I would say stumbled more accurately. Tell me about that. Laying on the ground is a clear plastic grocery bag from Publix.

It was a stray garbage bag inadvertently left behind when the trash was collected earlier that day. We poked around, picked it up, looked at it, and lo and behold, inside it, we found several bottles of pharmaceuticals and needles and a catheter. Did you just think jackpot we found it? I didn't know what I had, but of course I drew the connection. To me, this is wonderful, and it was also just dumb luck. Detective Douglas went on the Internet to look up propofol, the name of the drug on the vials in Michelle's trash.

He learned that it was a fast-acting sedative that would render a person unconscious within seconds. Propofol is the same drug that would later be at the center of the investigation into Michael Jackson's death. Now, just 24 hours after finding Michelle Herndon dead in her home, it seemed like Gainesville police had stumbled into a full-blown murder mystery. They had a body, they had a pinprick, and they had needles and some empty vials of a powerful hospital-grade anesthetic only available to medical professionals. All they needed to find was what the medical examiner called the skilled hand that had delivered the injection.

Detective Douglas began re-interviewing everyone in Michelle's life. He had to figure out why anyone would want to harm Michelle Herndon, the cheerful do-gooder who seemed to have a kind word for everyone. While looking for anyone who had access to the hospital and Michelle's house, he got a description from one of Michelle's neighbors of a man seen at her house a day or two before. He said that somebody had spotted a small-framed, you know, Caucasian person wearing glasses. Do you know anybody like that? And I was like, yeah, my roommate fits that description. What was the first thing you thought right then?

No way. No way. I mean, that only happens in the movies. The sudden and unexplained death of 24-year-old Michelle Herndon left her family overwhelmed with grief. But the news they received from Detective Mike Douglas a few weeks later left them positively dumbstruck. He said, I really need to talk to you. And I said, well, okay. And he said, we think Michelle was murdered. And I said, you what? And he said, did Michelle know anyone that worked at a hospital? And I said, yes. She knew a young man who lived with her best friend, rented a room. That young man was Oliver O'Quinn,

the shy, awkward guy who lived with her best friend Jessica. Turns out he was a nurse at nearby Shands Hospital. It's a person that you trusted. He was in my house. If I didn't trust him, I wouldn't have been sleeping in the same house as him. It seemed unlikely. Oliver didn't have a criminal background. He was a divorced father who still spent time with his child, and he made a professional

pledge to do no harm. But now the question hovered. Could Oliver, the guy Michelle felt so sorry for, the guy who she befriended, could he have been involved in her murder? At that point, nothing was conclusive, but evidence was mounting. And as Michelle's friends and family began telling the police everything they knew about him, a complicated portrait began to emerge. He told me that he was an EMT paramedic and a firefighter. He also told me a story about him being a captain in the Air Force. He said he was a paratrooper and a firefighter. He also told me a story about him being a captain in the Air Force. He said he was a paratrooper and he had jumped into Afghanistan. He was the very first crew to jump in after 9-11. It sounds like he sort of painted himself as this sort of hero. And I

think that's why we always excused it, because he was a small guy, so he wanted to paint himself a big picture. Looking back, Jessica and Michelle's mom say there were signs that Oliver was becoming increasingly fixated on Michelle. Did you notice anything that he was paying special attention to her early on? I would say probably within the first couple months. She just kind of brushed it off. She wasn't gonna not talk to him just because he had a crush on her. Even play dates with Michelle's dog, Duke, took on a new meaning. He would meet her. He actually borrowed somebody else's dog a couple of times to meet her, so Duke would have somebody to play with.

They continued to be friends, but there were signs he was getting possessive. That was a birthday party for one of our girlfriends, and it was at my house. We had a campfire out back that we sat around. And she kept moving her chair, and every time she moved her chair, he proceeded to move his. She told me that she sat up right next to one of the other girls. She said as close as she could get, and he kind of worked his way in there. We knew that she kind of didn't enjoy him following her around quite so much,

so we kind of made a game out of it, and Michelle would get up and move to one chair, and Oliver would get up and move next to her, and then she'd kind of wink at one of us and get up and move to a few chairs over, and he'd get up and move to the chair next to her. There were times that he and Michelle had, you know, hung out together. He would say, my friend, I'm going to have coffee with my friend. And I would say, oh yeah, you know, your new friend, who's your new friend? It's my friend. And then I would talk to Michelle the next day and say, you know, what'd you do yesterday? Oh, yeah, Oliver and I went and had coffee. So it kind of seemed like he was keeping it a secret. Her mother remembered that about three weeks before her death,

Michelle began to worry Oliver had gotten a little bit too attached. She said, you know, he's calling constantly, he's dropping by unexpectedly, and she said it just kind of creeped me out. He would follow her around like a little puppy dog. In fact, I later learned that he called her 43 times in 30 days. And finally, Belinda gave Detective Douglas a potential motive. She believes that in her excitement, Michelle probably told Oliver that things between her and her boyfriend Jason were getting serious, causing him to get jealous. I think he got mad. You know, why not me? I've been going to the dog park with you. I've been meeting you at Maud's for coffee. I've been helping you on your college papers. Why not me? Why not me?

The only thing left for Detective Mike Douglas to do was talk to the man himself. Easier said than done. Two weeks after Michelle Herndon's sudden death, it was beginning to look like she had become a victim of her own kindness. The police believe that Oliver O'Quinn, a loner with an unrequited crush, went to her house and somehow managed to inject her with a toxic cocktail of propofol and other drugs stolen from the hospital where he worked. I put a full court press trying to find this guy. How many times did you call?

Five or six times. So a police detective called him five or six times and he never responded? That's right. Red flags must have been flapping. Yeah, I have a problem with that. Next, he tried the hospital. So I went in there and spoke to the charge nurse and she goes, I just let him go yesterday. Let him go? Yeah. Fired him? Fired him. Worried that the trail would get cold, Detective Douglas checked another hospital where Oliver freelanced. Lo and behold, there's his car in the parking lot.

So I go in the emergency room and I walk up to him. I said, hello, Oliver. I'm Detective Douglas. Aren't you even curious why a detective is calling you five or six times saying, look, I want to talk to you right away. Aren't you even curious? And he looked at me and goes, oh yeah, why? I said, I want to talk to you about the death of Michelle Herndon. And he just looked at me and said, yeah, I read about that. I said, well, you come see me tomorrow. He goes, oh, okay. In his gut, the police veteran was now sure that Oliver was responsible for Michelle's death. But without any concrete evidence to take to the district attorney, his hands were tied. He wasn't surprised when the following day came and went with no Oliver. Desperate for leads, Detective Douglas went to Oliver's hometown in Tennessee to speak to his father. But his prime

target had already come and gone. I asked him about his son's attitude when he came home. Was he happy? Was he sad? Dad says, well, he just struck me as being a little depressed. And I said, really, why would he be depressed? Well, he told me a girlfriend of his had died of a drug overdose in Gainesville. And I had him repeat that. I couldn't believe what I'd heard. So nothing had been out in the media about the pinprick?

Nobody knew. Nobody knew anything? The toxicology had not heard. So nothing had been out in the media about the pinprick? Nobody knew. Nobody knew anything? The toxicology had not returned. So right then... Bang. Bang. Yeah. You knew.

Yeah. I called the FBI and said, look, I got a problem. I got a guy who may have left the country. And they flagged his passport. And I found out that he landed in the Republic of Ireland on November 29th. Oliver O'Quinn, the leading suspect in Michelle Herndon's murder, had slipped away beyond the reach of Gainesville police and into a country that had repeatedly refused to extradite fugitives back to the United States in protest of the death penalty.

They would not send him back, but Irish police were more than willing to provide surveillance of the death penalty. They would not send him back, but Irish police were more than willing to provide surveillance of the suspect. Detective Douglas learned that as soon as he hit the ground, Oliver started planning for a new life, renting a room at a hostel in Dublin, getting a local cell phone, and applying for jobs with the Irish Nursing Board. He just thought he was the center of the universe and smarter than everybody else, and he was going to pull off a perfect crime and get away with it. You must have been out of your mind.

I was. I bought a ticket. I have a ticket in our safety deposit box. It cost us $3,100. You bought a ticket to Ireland? Yes, one way. There was no need for me to come back. I went through a very bad period. But then Belinda and Detective Douglas hatched a plan. They released details of the case to the Irish media, hoping the glare of the spotlight would

force Oliver to move again, perhaps into a country more willing to send him back home. So finally, in June of 2006, after every flicker of hope had been extinguished, a break from the other side of the world. He pops up at the American embassy in Mauritania. In Mauritania? Yes, to receive a money order. Now, how did that flag you? Because he identified himself with his passport to the personnel there, they saw that his passport was flagged, but they didn't know for what. They notified the Marshal Service. So they stalled him.

They said, can you come back later for it? That spooked him, and he fled across the border into the neighboring country of Senegal. Oliver O'Quinn didn't get far. Authorities in Senegal captured him and had no problem sending him back to the United States. He left Ireland, ran to Africa, which is so ironic because that's where Michelle wanted to go. I actually, when they called and told me they caught him in Africa, I actually got sick on my stomach. And then after I let it soak in, I actually started laughing, and I thought, what a fool. Michelle was all over Africa.

You know, he had to have known that. He had to have known that. She wanted to join the Peace Corps. She wanted to work with AIDS victims. I mean. That was her place. Yeah, that was stupid. So he ran to her place. He did. He did. And he was caught pretty shortly after he ran to her place. Within a week. May 20, 2008, it was the day Michelle Herndon's family and friends had been waiting for. More than two years since 24-year-old Michelle Herndon was discovered dead in her home.

More than two years since they realized the harmless guy who had a crush on Michelle was anything but. Oliver O'Quinn, who had evaded police by fleeing to Europe and Africa, was finally back in Florida in a courtroom facing trial for murder in the first degree. Prosecutors James Kolaw and Tim Browning set out to paint a picture of a man obsessed, spurned, then driven to murderous, calculating rage. He called the victim 43 times. He spoke to her every single day for nine straight days preceding her death. He never calls her on the 9th. He never calls her on the 10th. He never calls her on the 10th.

He never calls her on the 11th or the 12th because he knows there's no one there to answer. They called Michelle's friends to the stand to show how Oliver zeroed in on her. Jessica Seipel was first. Did you ever meet any woman that he was dating? No. Had he ever introduced you to anyone who he characterized as his friend? No. What do you recall him saying about Michelle Herndon? I recall him saying that he found her very interesting and that he had never met anybody like her before. When Jason Deering, Michelle's boyfriend, took the stand, he told the jury how they had decided to officially take their relationship to the next level, a sort of pre-engagement. We decided that I would move up closer to Gainesville and we would make an attempt at a more serious, stable, committed relationship from there.

Michelle's tearful mother, Belinda, said her daughter couldn't wait to tell everyone. She was crazy about him. She was on top of the world. Prosecutors allege that when Michelle shared this news the next day with Oliver, who had grown dangerously infatuated with her, he snapped and delivered the fatal injection with pinpoint accuracy. Did you examine the tissue beneath that puncture wound? Yes. Underneath was a very minimal amount of hemorrhage. The person who created that puncture wound would have been someone with some skill or precision in knowing

how to do so? It is very suggestive of that. Next, the prosecution called Oliver O'Quinn's own father to the stand. Mr. O'Quinn, do you know Oliver O'Quinn? Yes, sir, I do. How do you know him? He's my son. In the early days of the investigation, Beecher O'Quinn told Detective Douglas that Oliver told him a girlfriend of his had died of a drug overdose. But at that point, the toxicology reports were not back yet, so no one knew that key detail.

Not Detective Douglas, not even medical examiner Martha Burt. I don't remember. Best of my knowledge, that could have been what was said. I don't know. But now, when asked to testify against his son, he denied his previous on-the-record statements. You do remember talking to them that day? Yes, sir.

Do you recall what you told them that day? No, sir, I don't. I was upset. I might have said something about, I heard about a lady friend that passed on or something. I didn't say anything about him having a girlfriend. Okay. And I did not say anything about her dying with an overdose. All right. But you do understand that you're under oath?

I understand that. Let me ask you this specific question. Is it your testimony then today that you did not tell Detective Douglas that when Oliver visited you on Thanksgiving, he told you that a girlfriend of his in Gainesville had died of a drug overdose. No, sir. He did not tell me a girlfriend had died of overdose. If he'd have told me anything about this, I would have contacted our local authorities. Prosecutors could not get Beecher O'Quinn to incriminate his own son, but they didn't take the stunning reversal lying down.

The whole truth is not the truth. Yes. but they didn't take the stunning reversal lying down. They followed up with Oliver's half-sister, who said not only did Beecher O'Quinn tell her the overdose story, he also asked her not to cooperate with investigators. Did he say anything to you about what you should do if law enforcement contacted you? Don't tell them anything. What was your response to that? That I always tell the truth.

With Oliver's feelings for Michelle, his motives, and his premature knowledge of the cause of death documented, it was time to show he had the know-how. Did you find him to be proficient at administering IVs to patients? Yes. Was he tested on the dosage calculations for all these drugs, but specifically including the drug propofol? Yes, sir. It's in the test questions. Did he pass that test? Yes, he did. Next, prosecutors focused on Oliver's sudden trip to Ireland

two weeks after Michelle's death. They said it was a desperate, last-ditch effort of a guilty man. When he starts to find out on November 21st that there must be something, because law enforcement is now persistent in seeing me and speaking to me, things change, and he begins to go about saying his goodbyes. How do you know Mr. O'Quinn? He's my ex-husband. Oliver's ex-wife, Stacey, testified that Oliver came to see her and their daughter at the end of November 2005.

He said he was going away for two weeks, but promised to take a special trip when he returned. Did the defendant ever come back for President's Day or Martin Luther King Day to take your daughter to Disney? No, sir. Did he ever come back and take her to Disney? No. Now all that was left was the proverbial smoking gun. Back in 2005, when Detective Douglas and his team found the plastic grocery bag behind Michelle's house filled with empty drug vials and needles, they knew it could be an important clue. But they didn't know how important. I gave it to my crime lab guy. Well, his wife happened to be a nurse. And he says, you know, I've seen my wife give shots. And when she does, she puts the needle

in her mouth and bites the plastic tip off so she can use her hands. And he says, I think this would be a really good place to look for DNA. I said, please do it by all means. And when those results came back from the lab, the state's experts said the DNA left behind on those needle covers and the syringes found in the trash at Michelle's house could only belong to one person. The DNA profile I obtained from my Exhibit 8, the 3cc syringe, matched the profile obtained from the cheek swabs represented as being from Mr. O'Quinn had both motive and opportunity to kill Michelle Herndon. They even had DNA evidence that proved he handled the needles that delivered the fatal shot. Public defender Drew McGill did not call a single witness. It was a risky strategy,

one that would require him to use the closing argument to do all of the heavy lifting. The state attorney said that they were going to show you that he was infatuated with her, that he adored her, but they didn't show you that. First, he asked the jury to flat out reject the notion that Oliver O'Quinn was obsessed with Michelle Herndon. He tried to recast the story of the birthday party at Jessica's house where Oliver kept sitting next to Michelle in a different light. I mean, is that terribly unusual? Does that seem like such a stretch of the imagination

that somebody's in a big social setting. They don't know any of these people, but they know one person, so, you know, they're hanging close to them. You saw her. She's attractive. And he argued that there were other women in Oliver O'Quinn's life who he had perfectly normal relationships with. So Oliver O'Quinn is attracted to attractive young ladies. He was attracted to Michelle Hernon. He was attracted to his ex-wife, we can presume, since they got married. When it came to the investigation, the defense tried to show that Detective Mike Douglas targeted O'Quinn not based on facts, but on convenience. Oliver's a nurse.

Ooh, we've got a pinprick. Ooh. Anything that doesn't fit with that, though, we're just going to completely disregard. Then McGill pointed out what he called one state witness blatantly contradicting another. The state attorney at times portrayed him throughout this trial as this person of great skill, this great skilled person, he can make this very small injection here. A few minutes later, they're telling you he's getting a boot because he's incompetent and his skills aren't up to par. Finally, the defense attacked the DNA evidence, the only non-circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution. He said the analyst had mistakes in her report. And she said, well, yes, it was a typographical error,

but she didn't catch it when she was proofreading it. Three reviews didn't catch it either. So if nobody caught that, what else might they not have caught? With that, it was up to the jury to decide. One question never answered in the trial, how did Oliver manage to inject Michelle without a struggle? Investigators believe that Oliver may have pretended he was going to give her some medication to treat her persistent migraine headaches, but instead gave her propofol, the same powerful sedative that played a role in pop superstar Michael Jackson's death. So she trusted him, and this guy gave her four times the lethal dose, knowing, knowing that it was going to kill her. It's sinister. This guy planned it.

The verdict would take just two and a half hours. We, the jury, find as follows. Defendant is guilty of first-degree murder as charged in the indictment. More than two years after Michelle Herndon's death, Oliver O'Quinn was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life without parole. It was a moment Belinda Herndon thought would never come. When you heard the words relief, I wanted to stand up and point at him and say like gotcha or something. Just that these people saw the truth, I was like I have won the lottery.

Before Oliver O'Quinn was taken away to begin serving the rest of his life behind bars, Belinda Herndon spoke directly to him. I think about what you did to yourself and Michelle would have been your friend for life. She could have been your friend 10 years from now, but you took that. You chose to take that. What you took from us, you will never know. I almost let you take everything from me because I almost didn't survive this. Did you look at him when you were doing it? Very much so. And did he look back?

He looked at me. I don't think he saw me. I think he looked right through me. Expressionless is how they describe it. Yes. Dead. Dead eyes. That's what I thought whenever I looked at him. I thought, I've never seen such lifeless eyes in my life. How do you feel now? Like I have to do something that Michelle expects it. I don't think the Peace Corps wants me. I think I'm a little over their age limit.

But I have to do something. I have to do something. I have to. Belinda Herndon says her daughter is still with her every day. I see Michelle on the street here. I see Michelle in the way chimes blow in the wind. And she takes comfort in knowing Michelle's brief life will have a lasting impact. The people that have come forward and said Michelle's made me be a better environmentalist, Michelle's made me be a better person because she makes me be conscientious.

And I think she died not knowing how many lives she had touched.