MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries - Ep. 15 | The Philly Killer

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Throughout the United States, the summer of 1976 is a celebration of two hundred years as a nation. That is, until attendees of a veterans’ conference in Philadelphia start dying of a frightening new disease. As the CDC scrambles to stop the outbreak, the country’s joy turns to terror. Will they stop the spread before a new pandemic emerges? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge episodes 49 to 56 right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. On the morning of July 30th, 1976, a young doctor examined an elderly veteran at Bloomsburg Hospital in Pennsylvania, desperately looking for a way to keep this man alive. His lungs were filling up with fluid, but no matter how many times the doctor drained them, the fluid just kept coming back. The man suddenly began to spasm in his bed, coughing up a bloody pink froth.

Dr. Ernest Campbell tried to stay calm, but he knew he was running out of options. He'd seen people die from respiratory failure before, but this had progressed faster and more suddenly than anything he'd ever experienced. And this patient was only one of several in the hospital with the same disturbing symptoms. In fact, Dr. Campbell had heard about similar cases appearing across the entire state, and so he was terrified that this was the onset of a deadly epidemic. And if it was, there might be no way to stop it. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love,

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fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballin, and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. If you liked today's story, please gift the follow button and all expenses paid vacation, but be sure you book them in a hotel that is known for having bed bugs. Today's episode is called The Philly Killer.

The temperature was closing in on a hot 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as Ray Brennan pulled open the heavy glass door of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel on July 21st, 1976. But the heat outside was the last thing on Ray's mind. He was just excited to be here at the Pennsylvania Convention of the American Legion, the nation's biggest veterans group. Ray, a retired Air Force captain, was now back among his people. Ray was 61 years old, and he had never married, but in some ways he was married to the Air Force. His career spanned more than two decades from the eve of World War II until 1960 when heart troubles forced him to

retire. He never saw combat, but he helped save lives by running hospitals for wounded airmen in the Korean War. Ray walked a little taller when he was at these conventions. He knew that to an outsider, this gathering of more than 4,000 legionnaires might look like a bunch of older men and women with graying hair, a lot of them wearing uniforms that didn't fit quite as well as they used to. But Ray knew that the people in the huge marble lobby in front of him were the everyday heroes who had risked their lives serving their country from World War II to the Vietnam War. And Ray was one of them. To all these veterans, he was Captain Ray Brennan, bookkeeper for American Legion Post No. 42 in Tawanda, Pennsylvania. As Ray straightened his shoulders and began his first round of handshakes with old friends,

he felt a twinge of regret. Ray knew that if he had not had that second heart attack in 1960, he'd still be on active military duty until mandatory retirement at 64 years old. Still trim and fit, Ray was sure he still had what it took to wear the uniform. But Ray gave himself a shake to snap out of it. He knew he had a good life. Even his years out of the military were not so bad. A passionate seashell collector, Ray had been asked by the Smithsonian Institution to help organize the National Shell Collection.

He even got a seashell named after him. And anyway, Ray had been looking forward to this convention for months. And now that he was actually here, he didn't want to waste time regretting the past. For the next three days, Ray had a great time, telling stories, listening to speeches, and catching up with people he loved over dinner and drinks. Then, on July 24th, he made the 180-mile drive back home to Tawanda, a town of 3,000 people near the New York border. Two days after he had returned from the convention, Ray was sitting in his kitchen, still talking about the convention to his sister, Maisie Travis, when suddenly Ray stopped talking mid-sentence and clutched his chest. He had the shooting pain that felt almost like it was burning and it left Ray breathless and struggling to keep from falling out of his chair. His sister, Maisie, dropped her newspaper and grabbed her

brother by the arm to steady him, and she said she would call Ray's doctor right away. But Ray really didn't want the help. He was terrified of having another heart attack, but this pain, it just felt different. It felt like his heart was just racing. He was sure it would just pass. Shuffling slowly into the living room, Ray collapsed into his favorite armchair, and he told his sister that he was just worn out from all the socializing and eating too much rich food and staying up too late swapping war stories, and that he really just needed to close his eyes and let this thing pass. And before long, Ray fell asleep.

But when he woke up from his nap, Maisie could tell that Ray was worse, not better. His face was pale and it was getting harder for him to breathe. By the afternoon, he was literally gasping for breath, which really frightened Maisie. So Maisie sat down next to him in his armchair and insisted that he go to a hospital. Ray still hated the idea, but his breathing was getting so labored that he was getting scared too, and so he reluctantly agreed. They slowly walked out to her car, and then after getting inside, Maisie drove him to a hospital in the next town over. When they arrived, a nurse immediately placed an oxygen mask over Ray's nose and mouth. Then she took his temperature and saw that he was running a fever of 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

The nurse helped Ray onto a gurney and wheeled him into the emergency room for more tests, which would include chest x-rays. Ray felt grateful that he could just lie down. A little while later, Maisie stood at Ray's bedside and held his hand as an emergency room doctor walked in with a very concerned look on his face. The x-ray they had taken showed that Ray had a dangerous buildup of fluid in his lungs. That's why Ray was gasping for breath. The doctor asked Maisie to please step out for a moment, and then once she had, the doctor told Ray that he was going to drain the fluid in his lungs himself. The doctor helped Ray sit up and lowered his gown to expose his ribcage, and then the doctor grabbed a long hollow needle from a nearby instrument tray. Ray winced in pain as the doctor inserted that long needle between Ray's ribs and into the space

around his lungs, and then soon the doctor was using that needle to suction out some of the fluid, relieving the pressure Ray was feeling. And for a few minutes after this procedure, Ray breathed a lot easier. But it didn't last. Within a half hour, Ray was gasping again and spitting up pinkish foam from deep inside of his lungs. The doctor drained the fluid again and again, but each time the liquid came right back. The doctor had never seen anything like it.

It was almost like Ray was drowning in his own fluids. The doctor explained to Maisie that her brother's heart condition had already weakened him, and now his respiratory system was crashing and there was little doctors could do if they couldn't remove the fluid. His condition would only get worse. And so the doctor told Maisie that he did not think Ray would live much longer. Maisie choked back tears as the thought of losing her sweet-natured brother sunk in. Ray had always been so careful of his health ever since his heart problems forced him to retire young.

How could he now be at death's door? Less than a week later and 80 miles away, Dr. Ernest Campbell stood in an examination room in Bloomsburg Hospital. His patient, a 48-year-old World War II veteran named Sam Morris, was running a high fever and having difficulty swallowing. Dr. Campbell feared that Sam might have typhoid fever, a brutal and extremely rare disease that often comes from swallowing sewage-contaminated water. Campbell had seen a lot of this disease when he was working for the Peace Corps in Kenya, but it was almost unheard of in the United States. The doctor asked Sam what he'd been doing prior to getting sick, and Sam would say that he had attended a convention in Philadelphia, and while he was there, he suffered a terrible headache and decided to come home early.

As he spoke, Sam mentioned that two other veterans who'd attended the same convention had also been admitted to Bloomsburg Hospital. In fact, he'd seen one of them being wheeled past his room. Maybe they should be checked out too, Sam suggested. Dr. Campbell paused for a moment, wondering if there might be a link between the three men's illnesses. After he finished examining Sam, the doctor looked up the other two veterans. He found that they all had very similar symptoms, and one of the men, an 82-year-old widower named Bill Baird, was even sicker than Sam. It was all but impossible for all three men to have typhoid fever.

Campbell knew something else, maybe something doctors had never even seen before, was preying on these men. Dr. Campbell consulted with the other men's doctors and ordered the same tests for all three veterans. The lab promised they would get the results back as soon as possible. But before the results came back, the elderly veteran, Bill, got worse. No matter what Dr. Campbell tried, Bill's lungs kept filling up with bloody foam. Dr. Campbell felt powerless as he watched his patient's life drain away.

And then early on the morning of Friday, July 30th, Bill died. He'd only been in the hospital for a couple of days. Later that day, Dr. Campbell was back in his office, trying to figure out how to treat the two remaining veterans in his care. He was just thankful that the two patients were younger and stronger than Bill had been. He hoped their bodies would be able to fight off the disease on their own. While Dr. Campbell looked over their charts, a nurse knocked on his door. She had the veteran's test results. Dr. Campbell eagerly grabbed them from her, desperate for any indication of what he was fighting. But as he looked the results over, Dr. Campbell's hope drained away. The results were

inconclusive. There was nothing telling him how he could treat this mystery disease. Dr. Campbell realized he was not capable of tackling this disease on his own. Whatever had infected the veterans was extremely deadly. If it was contagious, it could be the start of a massive epidemic. He put down the test results, then picked up the phone and quickly dialed the number for the federal health authorities. He knew he had to get through and tell someone before this situation got even worse. Dr. Campbell had barely put the phone down before the news media began to hear rumors about a mysterious disease that seemed to be striking veterans who attended this American Legion conference in Philadelphia. The COVID pandemic was decades in the future, but even then the public was anxious about the possibility of a disease that could spread

wildly, potentially killing millions of people. The Chicago Tribune newspaper compared this Philadelphia outbreak to a popular movie at the time, The Andromeda Strain, that imagines a disease from outer space that comes to a small town on earth and sets off a tidal wave of sickness and death. And so after that news story broke, doctors all across the country started getting all these calls from patients reporting respiratory symptoms and wondering if they too had the mystery disease. Many did not. They just had chest colds. But their panicky calls jammed up the emergency lines from coast to coast. Three days after Dr. Campbell called for help, Dr. David Sensor rushed through the front doors

of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC was home to the world's foremost disease detectives with a mission to prevent outbreaks both in the United States and also abroad. The 51-year-old head of the agency, Dr. Sensor, had gotten word over the weekend of an emerging health crisis in Pennsylvania. Dr. Campbell at Bloomsburg Hospital was one of the first people who had called it in. The CDC took Campbell's call very seriously, especially as a flood of other calls about sick veterans around the state poured in. Despite the early hour, the building was buzzing with activity. Phones were ringing off the hook and staff were running around passing documents to each other.

Dr. Sensor reached his office where several senior officials were waiting for him. He sat down at his desk and they briefed him on everything they had learned. Over the weekend, a mysterious epidemic had spread like wildfire. So far, the agency knew that a total of 37 people throughout Pennsylvania had been hospitalized with headaches, chest pains, fever, and lung congestion. Thirteen of them had died. Dr. Sensor rubbed his forehead and let the information sink in. He asked if they'd made any progress on identifying the cause of the disease, but everyone in the room just shook their heads. They didn't even know if this disease was caused by a bacteria, a virus, or something

else. The only thing they knew was that almost everyone who got sick had attended that veterans conference at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel from July 21st to the 24th. But this clue only raised more questions. Not everyone who was sick had actually been inside of that hotel. A bus driver from western Pennsylvania who had simply dropped passengers off in front of the hotel, and a female from western Pennsylvania who had simply dropped passengers off in front of the hotel and a female bank teller who worked across the street from the hotel had both died that morning. Neither of them had entered the hotel or participated in the conference,

but they both shared the exact same symptoms as the veterans. Dr. Sensor frowned. He knew there was no way this was a coincidence. If other people had contracted the disease by just being near this hotel, it meant that whatever was infecting people was highly contagious. An outbreak like this could be catastrophic. His thoughts of a worst-case scenario were interrupted when another health officer walked into his office. This officer had just talked to a representative from the veterans group that had hosted this now infamous convention. Another man had apparently just died. Now, 14 people were dead from this mystery illness. The officer handed Dr. Sensor several autopsy reports, and as he read them, Dr. Sensor's face

drained of color. The reports described the victim's lungs as being covered in a thick, bacteria-filled layer that looked like brillo pads. This layer prevented some antibiotics from penetrating the lungs, which made it very difficult to treat this infection. And so, with medicine basically unable to help fight this disease, the victim's only slim hope was for their own bodies to somehow overcome the attack on their own. Dr. Sensor looked up at all the people gathered in his office and he wasted no time telling them what to do. They had to get a team of scientists to Philadelphia as soon as possible and find out what was killing so many people. That evening, one of the CDC's senior investigators, a 32-year-old man named Dr. Fraser,

broke through a gauntlet of reporters posted in front of the CDC headquarters. They shouted questions at him, but Dr. Fraser kept his head down and walked past all of them. He didn't have any answers yet, and he didn't want to give out any wrong information. But he hoped that would change soon. Dr. Fraser was going to lead 20 members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service to investigate this outbreak. This would be one of the most intensive searches for the cause of a mass outbreak in world history. Whatever the disease was, it was moving fast. In the few hours since Dr. Sensor had ordered Dr. Fraser to assemble a team, 10 more people had died and 39 more were seriously ill. Dr. Fraser met Dr. Sensor in a quickly

assembled war room filled with photos and maps of the area and victims, nearly all of them being military veterans. After Dr. Sensor gave him an update, Dr. Fraser outlined his plan for the investigation. He would lead one team in Philadelphia, collecting samples from the hotel, while another team would travel throughout Pennsylvania interviewing patients who had been hospitalized with this disease. He was confident that they would be able to figure out any common patterns between the various patients and find whatever was causing this. Dr. Sensor agreed that this was the best approach and so he shook Dr. Fraser's hand, wished him luck, and sent him home to pack. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most

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If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself. The next day, Dr. Fraser and his team of investigators wore gloves and protective masks as they entered the grand lobby of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. Just two weeks earlier, it had been packed with veterans and their families.

Today, it was nearly empty, except for a few startled-looking staff members. Dr. Fraser figured that nobody wanted to stay at this hotel until the cause of the outbreak was identified. The investigators' footsteps rang out on the marble floor as they walked to the reception desk and explained their mission, to gather physical evidence inside of this hotel that could be tested for the disease. The team went to work. Dr. Fraser instructed them to gather samples from every surface and object in the hotel. Then he reached into his satchel and pulled out a small plastic test tube. He unscrewed the top, which held a cotton swab soaked in a special solution. He carefully rubbed the swab on the reception desk

and then placed it back into the test tube and labeled it. He wasn't going to overlook anything. Throughout the lobby, the EIS investigators were doing the same thing. One of them was on his hands and knees painstakingly swabbing different sections of carpet. Another woman pulled off air conditioning grates to check the vents. Once they were done in the lobby, Dr. Fraser and his team went through every location in the hotel that had been used by the veterans during this convention. They swapped door handles, elevator buttons, and furniture. They moved through the hotel's kitchens and bars, swiping the insides of water pitchers, coffee pots, and silverware. They collected bits of food and the ashes from the bottom of ashtrays, and then

several hours later, Dr. Fraser led a team up to the roof of the hotel 20 stories above the city. The hot August sun beat down on all of them as they scraped up bird droppings next to a large cooling tank. Dr. Fraser thought that sick pigeons might have carried the virus and maybe somehow transmitted it to the veterans, and so that's why they had to check the droppings. A little while later, the team was relieved to return to the cool lobby of the hotel. They sealed their samples in a container to be sent back to the laboratory for examination. The answer to what caused the deadly disease had to be somewhere inside one of those test tubes. Once the samples were collected, they were sent straight to the CDC's lab in Atlanta. Dr. Sensor had assembled some of the country's best scientists to test

them for every disease imaginable. One of those scientists was a young microbiologist named Joseph McDade. Dr. McDade specialized in animal-borne illnesses, and it was his job to test for rare diseases such as Q fever, which could be transmitted from farm animals like goats, sheep, and cattle. So far, there wasn't any evidence that the veterans had interacted with any of those animals, but Dr. Sensor didn't want to take any chances. Unfortunately, Dr. McDade couldn't just look at the samples under a microscope and see if the bacteria that caused Q fever was present. There would be too many other microscopic organisms present. Instead, he had to isolate the bacteria and get a big enough sample to examine. It was an absurdly drawn-out process. First, Dr. McDade had to take lung tissue from someone who died from the mystery disease, inject it into the

abdomen of a guinea pig, and then wait for two weeks. If the animal developed a fever, that likely meant it had Q fever. Dr. McDade thought Q fever was a long shot, but he agreed with Dr. Sensor that it was important to rule out every possible disease. So he went ahead and started the testing process. And much to his surprise, the guinea pig did come down with a fever, but it came down with it after only two days. Which meant this disease wasn't Q fever, it was something worse. But when he looked at the samples under the microscope, Dr. McDade saw nothing. Except for a few scattered bacteria, the sample was completely clean. Just to be sure, he repeated the process, testing for other types of bacteria, but nothing

showed up. Dr. McDade assumed that whatever was causing the guinea pig's fever was not a bacteria, but figuring out what it really was landed outside of his expertise. And so he passed along his results to Dr. Sensor, hoping someone else could make more sense of it. If they didn't, he wasn't sure how they'd solve the deadly infection. But over the next few weeks, no answer emerged. On August 20th, 1976, so almost three weeks after the first cases of this mystery disease were reported, CDC head Dr. Sensor sat in his office in Atlanta. He looked at the inconclusive test results that were spread across his desk. Despite the CDC's best efforts, they weren't any closer to solving this mystery.

Dr. Sensor had other teams scour over Dr. McDade's guinea pig's bacteria samples, but nothing out of the ordinary had appeared. David Fraser's samples from the Bellevue Stratford Hotel had also revealed nothing, and they had conducted extensive interviews with patients to check for commonalities, but those interviews had not offered any new clues either. Although they'd been able to rule out certain diseases like typhoid, the plague, and miscellaneous viruses, they were no closer to figuring out what was causing this outbreak. Aside from a few bacteria that naturally occurred in the environment,

they had found no evidence of anything unusual. And in the meantime, people kept getting sick. All told, 226 people had been infected by this mystery disease, and the death toll had now climbed to 34. The public was getting more scared by the day. An assistant brought in a stack of newspapers and magazines. Dr. Sensor groaned when he saw the headlines. An article from Time magazine called the disease, quote, the Philadelphia killer, end quote. The CDC's inability to provide an answer to the terrifying illness only fueled people's fears, and some began to turn to conspiracy theories.

Dr. Sensor eyed the thick stack of pink messages on his desk. The CDC had been flooded with calls ever since the investigation began. People from all over the country phoned in with questions, tips, and general panic. Some wondered if it was an attack from a foreign adversary. Even the FBI had called. While there was no sign it was an act of bioterrorism, it couldn't be completely ruled out either, and that made people nervous. Dr. Sensor couldn't blame them.

But after launching the largest medical field investigation in its history, they had hit a brick wall. There were no more samples to test, either from the hotel or from sick patients. David Fraser's team in Philadelphia had done everything they could to investigate the outbreak. The only silver lining was that the number of people becoming ill had abruptly stopped, which meant this mystery illness was not transmissible from person to person, and so the general population was not in any danger of a massive pandemic. But Dr. Sensor didn't take much comfort from that. Without knowing what was behind this disease, there'd be no way to stop it if it happened again. Still, he was out of ideas. Dr. Sensor let out a deep breath and picked up the phone to call Dr. Fraser.

It was now, unfortunately, time to call off the investigation. Five months later, in December of 1976, Joseph McDade, the microbiologist who had conducted the Q fever tests, poured himself a drink at a holiday party in Atlanta. Dr. McDade was ready for the year to end. The past few months had been deeply frustrating. Ever since the investigation had been called off in August, Dr. McDade and his colleagues at the CDC had been under severe scrutiny. The head of the CDC, Dr. David Sensor, had even been accused by Congress of running a sloppy investigation. Public confidence in the health organization was at an all-time low and Dr. McDade didn't know

how they could get anyone to trust them again. As Dr. McDade chatted with some friends, someone tapped him so hard on the shoulder that he almost spilled his drink. Dr. McDade turned around and saw that it was one of his neighbors. The man was red in the face and he was holding a glass of whiskey in his hand, and so Dr. McDade could tell, you know, this guy was drunk. But before he could say anything, the neighbor jabbed Dr. McDade in the chest with his other finger and said he knew Dr. McDade worked for the CDC. Then the neighbor ranted about how badly the CDC had failed the American people and that people like him, Dr. McDade, were why the Philly killer had claimed so many lives. Dr. McDade took a step back, totally stunned, and then before he could respond, the neighbor had turned and walked away.

Dr. McDade turned back around to his friends, but he couldn't focus on the conversation anymore. He wasn't angry at the confrontation. The man had been harsh, but he was right. Dr. McDade felt an overwhelming sense of failure for not being able to help crack the case. For the rest of the week, that feeling of failure stayed with Dr. McDade until he couldn't take it anymore. One day during the week between Christmas and New Year's, Dr. McDade headed to his lab at the CDC. No one else was there. Dr. McDade stood alone in a dark room surrounded by lab tables and microscopes. A string of blinking lights on the ceiling and a half-empty gift basket were the only reminders that it was the holidays. Dr. McDade wanted to

look at the tissue samples again from Philadelphia just to kind of clear his conscience and make sure he didn't miss anything. So he pulled out the samples that he'd tested back in August and he slid them one by one under the lens of his microscope. And once again, they were completely clean, except for a few stray bacteria shaped like little rods. Over the summer, he'd assumed these stray bacteria had accidentally gotten mixed into the samples. It was impossible to avoid some level of contamination. Now, Dr. McDade wasn't so sure and wondered if there was more to them. He grabbed a few more slides from deep storage that he hadn't examined before, but they all looked the same.

There were just a few rod-shaped bacteria floating around in each sample. But then, Dr. McDade examined one last slide from the lung tissue of a deceased veteran, and when he looked at it, he saw something that shocked him to his core. There weren't just a few of the rod-shaped bacteria. There was a giant cluster of them, far too many to be random contaminants. The answer had been in front of him the entire time. These little rod-shaped bacteria that he had written off had caused the outbreak. But before he could tell anyone, he had to be 100% sure he was right. So Dr. McDade grabbed more slides from the freezer, and started running more tests. Two weeks later, in January of 1977, Dr. Sensor sat in his office, eager to hear what Joseph McDade had apparently discovered during the holiday break. And Dr. McDade would announce

that he had identified the actual organism responsible for the outbreak. He described his findings to Dr. Sensor, who was totally stunned. They had tested for every disease they could think of, but even the CDC's top minds could never have guessed it would be something like this. Dr. Sensor agreed that Dr. McDade's discovery was a significant breakthrough, but they needed to gather more samples from the Bellevue Stratford Hotel just to be certain. And so, a few days later, Dr. Sensor sent out one more team of medical detectives to Philadelphia.

And during this search, the crew went straight to the roof of the hotel, and there they took a sample from a very specific area. And there, on a cold winter day six months after it first started, the mystery was finally solved. The Veterans Convention had taken place in July, a hot and sticky month in Philadelphia. The hotel's cooling system ran full blast for the three days of the convention. The cooling towers up on the roof were old and hadn't been maintained recently, allowing the water inside that was used for air conditioning to grow warm and stagnant. It had created the perfect environment for new bacteria to thrive, in a thin coating of slime commonly known as pond scum. Normally, the bacteria in pond scum doesn't make people sick, because people don't inhale it. That's why you can usually swim in lakes, ponds, and other

freshwater sources without coming down with this particular deadly disease. It's why you can usually swim in lakes, ponds, and other freshwater sources without coming down with this particular deadly disease. It's only deadly if it becomes aerosolized, which means being turned into a spray. And in the summer of 1976, that's exactly what happened. When the hotel's air conditioning system kicked on, the bacteria, which had grown in the cooling tower's warm water, was transported down through the system's pipes. It was then sprayed out as cooled air all over the thousands of veterans inside the hotel. Everyone who inhaled the air at the convention was breathing in bacteria-ridden water droplets. That included people like the bus driver and bank teller who had both died. They hadn't

even gone into the hotel, but they had been exposed to the infected mist that had come off the cooling tower and fell onto the sidewalk below. Not everyone who inhaled the mist got sick, including most of the hotel's employees and other guests. This was likely because they were younger or did not have any other health risks that made them more susceptible to this bacteria. Now, nobody knew about this deadly mist because right after the convention, the air conditioning filters at the hotel had been cleaned. That's why the team of EIS investigators didn't find bacteria when they scoured the hotel for samples. But after Joseph McDade's discovery, they finally tested the cooling tank's interior, which had been missed before when they were doing all those samples. In the slime coating

on the inside of the tower, they found the deadly bacteria that Dr. McDade had originally seen under his microscope. This bacteria was named Legionella in reference to the convention's attendees, the mostly male veterans who were all members of the American Legion. The condition they developed is now known as Legionnaire's disease, and while there are still occasional outbreaks today, thanks to the efforts of the CDC, Joseph McDade, and even the angry neighbor at the holiday party, this disease is now treatable and much less fatal. But that all came too late for Captain Ray Brennan, the conference attendee who had to retire early from the service because of his heart issues.

Surrounded by his two brothers and four sisters, including Maisie, Ray died just before sunrise on July 27, 1976, holding one of his beloved seashells in his right hand. The official cause of death was listed as a heart attack, but he went down in history as the first of the 29 victims of Legionnaire's disease. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, hosted by me, Mr. Ballin. A quick note about our stories. We use aliases sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story. And also, in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on a lot of research. And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This episode was written by Lauren

DeLille. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Andre Pluss. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Andrew Rosenblum. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing is by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our coordinating producer is Matub Zare. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert.

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