MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries - Ep. 28 | Dead Tired

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

A mother in Fresno, California races her young son to the emergency room after he goes limp and his eyes roll back in his head. It turns out, the boy was poisoned. And the true culprit was something no one ever saw coming.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. In October of 1961, a young mother hit the gas as she tore down a dusty road in Fresno, California. She gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white. She glanced into the rearview mirror at her eight-year-old son in the back seat. His skin looked gray and sweat was dripping down his face. His chest rose and fell quickly as he struggled to catch his breath. Suddenly, his eyes rolled back in his head and his entire body went limp. The woman floored the accelerator. They were still several miles from the doctor's office,

and her little guy was getting sicker by the minute. She urged him to please hang on as she raced down the road, desperate to get him help before it was too late. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Explore themes of friendship, loss, and hope with remarkably bright creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Find what piques your imagination.

Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Now streaming. Welcome to Buy It Now, where aspiring entrepreneurs get 90 seconds to pitch to an audience of potential customers. If the audience liked the product, it gets them in front of our panel of experts. Gwyneth Paltrow. Anthony Anderson. Tabitha Brown.

Tony Hawk. Oh, my God. Buy It Now. Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. 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 like today's story, please tell the follow button you'll take care of their garden while they're on vacation,

but the second they leave, proceed to release 1,000 feral rabbits into their fenced-in yard. This episode is called Dead Tired. On the morning of October 4th, 1961, Andrea Russo hurried down the hallway of her home in Fresno, California. She rounded the corner into her eight-year-old son Tommy's room and there was Tommy on the floor surrounded by toys. As Andrea expected, her son had not gotten dressed for school yet. Andrea couldn't help but smile, but at the same time they were running late and there was no time to play right now. So she grabbed some clothes from his dresser and then dropped down onto the floor next to him. She slipped his favorite red and white striped t-shirt over his head and then unfolded a new pair of blue jeans for him to step into. Then she handed

him some sneakers and said put those on. Andrea jumped to her feet and ran back to the kitchen. There she grabbed two slices of bread and stuck them in the toaster, and when the toast popped back up, Andrea put the slices on a plate and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, her son's favorite breakfast. With her son's breakfast in one hand,

Andrea grabbed Tommy and led him out to the car, his shoes still untied. She helped her son climb into the back seat and then handed him his toast. As Andrea drove her son to school, she passed by huge fields of lush farmland where tomatoes, barley, and almonds were growing. She saw a small helicopter hovering over one farm, raining clear liquid down onto the crops below. Andrea knew the plane must be spraying the field with pesticides. For her, this was a familiar scene. Fresno was an agricultural town.

But when Andrea turned around and looked into the back seat to check on Tommy, she saw him staring at the helicopter with wide eyes, shoving the last bites of cinnamon sugar toast into his mouth. He'd seen large industrial spraying machines before, but this helicopter was new and interesting. Andrea continued down the road away from the farm. She pulled up outside Tommy's elementary school just as the bell was ringing. She helped him out of the back seat, gave him a hug, and told him to have a good day.

She watched him run inside, nearly tripping over his shoelaces. Then Andrea got back in her car and headed home. A few hours later, Andrea was in the laundry room folding Tommy's clothes when the telephone rang. She ran to the living room and picked up the call, and it was Tommy's teacher. The teacher sounded very concerned. She said that something seemed very off about Tommy. Normally, he was always smiling and paying attention in class, but today he'd been acting totally lethargic all morning. Instead of being involved in the lessons, he just kind of stared

into space with his eyes glazed over. And when it was time for recess, he didn't even want to go outside. Andrea was surprised. Her son had seemed perfectly fine that morning, and he would never skip recess, even if he had a cold or a stomach ache. So she knew he must be feeling really sick. She told the teacher she'd be there to pick him up soon. Andrea hung up the phone, grabbed her keys, and drove straight to the elementary school. As soon as she pulled up to the curb, she saw Tommy trudge out the front door. He dragged his feet with each step. He hadn't even bothered to put his backpack onto his shoulders.

He just pulled it on the ground right behind him. When Tommy made it to the car, he crawled into the back seat and closed his eyes without saying a word. Andrea asked if he was okay, but all Tommy did was shake his head no. Andrea had never seen her son like this before. Andrea worried that Tommy was more than just tired, so she called Tommy's pediatrician as soon as she got home. Luckily, the doctor could see them right away. At the pediatrician's office, a receptionist led them into an examination room and said the pediatrician would be there soon. Andrea helped her son up onto an exam table covered with a thin sheet of paper. She held his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

They were glassy and unfocused. As soon as she let go of his shoulders, he laid down sideways on the exam table and shut his eyes. Andrea didn't know if she should wake him up or let him rest, but before she could decide, the doctor knocked softly on the door and then came into the room. The doctor was an older man with dark hair, the same pediatrician Tommy had had since he was a baby. Andrea was relieved to see a familiar face. She told the doctor about her son's sudden

exhaustion that day and how his teachers were very concerned about him. Then she gently shook Tommy's shoulder and gradually he sat up. The pediatrician gave Tommy a quick examination. He checked the eight-year-old's pulse, his blood pressure and temperature. He looked down the boy's throat and shined a light in his eyes. Then he turned to Andrea and said that all of Tommy's vital signs seemed normal. He didn't think there was anything to worry about. Tommy was probably just tired, so she should take him home and let him rest. Andrea hesitated.

Tommy had never acted like this when he was just tired, so she had a nagging suspicion that something else might be going on here. But at the same time, she wanted to believe this doctor, so she ultimately just followed his advice. Andrea brought Tommy back out to the car and drove home. About 20 minutes later, she pulled into their driveway and walked around the car to help her son out of the back seat. However, when she opened the back door of the car, Tommy didn't even open his eyes. Andrea asked Tommy if he was okay, but he seemed confused, like he could barely form a thought. He was even more out of it than he had been earlier.

Very concerned, Andrea got into the front seat and sped right back to the doctor's office. She parked her car, grabbed Tommy out of the back seat, and carried him inside. It had been less than an hour since they'd left, and the receptionist looked confused to see them again. But Andrea told her that they needed to see the doctor again right now. This was an emergency. The receptionist nodded and ran to get the doctor. But then suddenly, Tommy blurted out that he had to use the bathroom, and he got up and ran to the restroom so quickly that Andrea couldn't keep up.

Tommy flung open the door and slammed it shut. From outside in the hall, Andrea could hear her son retching. Tommy vomited, and then he had diarrhea. When he came out of the bathroom, he looked absolutely miserable. By this point, the doctor had come out into the waiting area. He and Andrea helped Tommy walk to the exam room, and as soon as they got inside, Tommy collapsed onto the table, barely conscious. The doctor's eyes went wide. He raced over to Tommy and checked his vitals again. Then he turned to Andrea and told her Tommy's heart rate was

extremely high. She asked him what was wrong, and he just shook his head. He had never seen anything like this before. But the doctor did say he knew someone who might be able to help. His name was Dr. John Conrad, and he was the leading pediatrician in the Fresno area, and he specialized in pediatric allergies. If anyone could identify what was causing Tommy's rapid decline, it was him. The doctor rushed out of the room to call Dr. Conrad, leaving Andrea alone with Tommy. Andrea felt so helpless. Her son was becoming desperately ill and she couldn't do anything except watch as his eyelids fluttered and he struggled to breathe. Across town, Dr. John Conrad held the phone against his ear and jotted down the symptoms

Tommy's pediatrician described. Dr. Conrad was an older man with white hair and clear-rimmed glasses. He'd spent many years practicing pediatric medicine and felt like he'd seen it all already. And as he eyed the list of symptoms he had just jotted down, he actually immediately came up with a theory about Tommy's illness. He suspected that the eight-year-old might have type 1 diabetes and could be on the verge of falling into a diabetic coma. Type 1 diabetes usually shows up during adolescence, but it can strike younger children too, and the symptoms can arise very suddenly. People with diabetes can't properly digest sugar, and so something as simple as eating a sugary breakfast or going too long without a snack can send them spiraling toward a diabetic coma.

Dr. Conrad told the pediatrician to send Andrea and Tommy to the Valley Children's Hospital in Fresno, and he would meet them there. Dr. Conrad then immediately called that hospital and asked the staff to be ready to test Tommy for diabetes as soon as he and his mother arrived. Then Dr. Conrad ran out to his car and made his way to the hospital. Valley Children's Hospital was a single-story brick building that was lined with trees. When Dr. Conrad walked inside, a nurse with a long ponytail and blue scrubs approached him. The nurse told him that Andrea and Tommy were already there and the diabetes test that Dr. Conrad had requested had come back. The results were negative, meaning whatever was happening to Tommy was not type 1 diabetes. And that wasn't all. As they walked towards Tommy's

room, the nurse said they'd run other blood tests in addition to checking for diabetes. Now, most had come back normal, but Tommy's white blood cell count was extremely high, which meant his body was clearly fighting off something. Dr. Conrad thought about this. Most likely, Tommy was fighting off an infection, maybe in his intestinal tract, that would explain the vomiting and diarrhea. Dr. Conrad felt like he might be onto something, but he would need to examine Tommy himself to figure out more. Tommy was curled up in the hospital bed when Dr. Conrad came in. His mother hovered over him looking totally exhausted and terrified. When she saw Dr. Conrad come in,

she ran over, clasped his hand, and said how happy she was to see him. The doctor could feel the young mother's fear in her handshake and it made him even more determined to get to the bottom of Tommy's illness as quickly as possible. Tommy almost looked like he was sleeping, except that his hands and feet were twitching. Dr. Conrad checked his pulse, and Tommy's heart was still racing. The doctor asked Tommy how he was feeling, but Tommy seemed too confused to even speak. In fact, he could barely even open his eyes. And when he did, Dr. Conrad saw that Tommy's pupils had constricted into two tiny black dots. The doctor wasn't sure what to make of the muscle twitches and the constricted pupils, but he still thought that Tommy might have an intestinal infection, so he wanted to examine the eight-year-old's abdomen. Dr. Conrad

moved the blankets out of the way and very lightly pressed on the boy's belly, and immediately Tommy screamed in agony. The doctor pulled his hand away reflexively. The severity of Tommy's reaction really surprised him, but it also made an intestinal infection seem much more likely. Dr. Conrad wondered if maybe Tommy had consumed a relatively common bacteria called Shigella that often spreads in places like elementary schools. Thinking this could be the answer, Dr. Conrad asked hospital staff to run a test for Shigella because as soon as they got confirmation that that was what it was, they could begin treating Tommy.

But two hours later, Dr. Conrad sat in the hallway outside of Tommy's room and read over the test results. Tommy had tested negative for Shigella infection. Dr. Conrad shook his head as he reviewed Tommy's symptoms. The boy was pale and feverish with extremely small pupils. His heart rate was abnormally high, his muscles were twitching, and his white blood cell count was elevated. The boy was experiencing confusion and extreme stomach pain. He seemed to be floating in and out of consciousness. Dr. Conrad put all these details together, and then he had a deeply unsettling thought.

What if this boy has been poisoned? Dr. Conrad took a deep breath. Tommy's symptoms actually reminded him of a patient he'd once treated, a farmer who'd come down with sudden exhaustion, muscle twitches, and vomiting. That sounded a lot like what Tommy was going through. It turned out the farmer had been poisoned by the organic phosphates in the pesticides he applied to his crops. He had accidentally inhaled some of the chemicals in the process. Dr. Conrad wondered if maybe something similar could have happened to Tommy.

Fresno was, after all, an agricultural community, so it was possible that the eight-year-old could have, in theory, inhaled pesticide by accident. Even a tiny amount would be enough to cause extreme symptoms within just a few hours. Dr. Conrad realized that he needed to act fast. Organic phosphates were powerful poisons. If he didn't give Tommy an antidote quickly, this little boy could die. Five minutes later, Dr. Conrad rushed back into Tommy's room carrying a syringe that contained a medicine called atropine. The doctor carefully injected this drug into Tommy's arm as the boy lay completely still, except for the twitching in his hands and feet.

It was the same medication that Dr. Conrad had used with that farmer, and he prayed this would work for Tommy too. While they monitored the boy's condition, Dr. Conrad asked hospital staff to run a blood test for organic phosphate poisoning. A few hours later, around 8.30pm, the results of that test came back. Dr. Conrad's hunch was correct. Tommy was suffering from organic phosphate poisoning. The doctor broke the news to Tommy's mother. He was still wondering where exactly the poison had come from, so he asked Andrea if she'd taken her son around

any of the local farms recently. Andrea thought for a moment. She said she always drove by some fields while taking Tommy to school. That very morning, they'd passed a helicopter that was spraying a farm with pesticides, but she and Tommy had been inside the car with all the windows up. She told Dr. Conrad that she didn't understand how that could have made Tommy so sick. The doctor wasn't sure either. Whatever had happened, it seemed like a freak accident. Pesticide poisonings were actually very rare. What mattered was that Dr. Conrad had acted quickly and the atropine worked perfectly.

By 10 p.m., Tommy was sitting up in his hospital bed. His color had come back. His muscles had stopped twitching. He was able to have a full conversation with the doctor. Tommy said his stomach pain was gone too, but he still felt really tired. Dr. Conrad told Andrea it would take a few days in the hospital for Tommy to make a full recovery, but her son would be okay. Then he asked her to schedule a follow-up appointment with him one week after Tommy was discharged, and then Dr. Conrad said goodnight and headed for home, satisfied that he'd solved the mystery. Six days later, there was no

trace of poison left in Tommy's system, and so he was finally healthy enough to go home from the hospital. Andrea packed up their belongings and led Tommy to the parking lot. He skipped along beside her, and instead of talking about his illness or his time in the hospital, he just chatted about his Tonka trucks. When they got in the car, Tommy jumped into the back seat without her help. He was so excited to go home. But, despite how energetic her son seemed, Andrea still felt nervous. She was happy that Tommy was coming home,

but she wouldn't feel at ease until the checkup with Dr. Conrad the following week. For the next six days, Andrea did not take any chances. She kept her son at home and resting in bed. She wouldn't let him go to school, play outside, or even leave the house. It actually wasn't until the day of his doctor's appointment the week after that Tommy finally swapped out his PJs for real clothes and finally walked outside. Andrea helped him into the back seat and drove to Dr. Conrad's office. The white-haired doctor greeted Tommy with a smile. He gave the boy a thorough examination and assured Andrea that her son was doing just fine. When Tommy heard that, he hopped up and tugged on Andrea's arm. She looked down at her son, who had a huge smile spread across his face,

and he said he couldn't wait to go back to school and see his friends again. Relieved, Andrea thanked Dr. Conrad and headed back out to the parking lot. Tommy sprinted ahead of her, anxious to get back home. As Andrea drove through Fresno on the way home, she felt like she could finally breathe. Her son had never been that sick before. Seeing him suffer like that had been terrifying, and she hadn't been able to relax until just now, when Dr. Conrad promised that really everything was alright. And so now they could finally get back to their normal lives.

Andrea turned into her neighborhood, looking forward to a weekend at home before Tommy went back to school. But then her son called out to her from the back seat. He said his stomach was starting to hurt again. When Andrea turned to look at him, she saw him breathing rapidly, and there were beads of sweat dripping down his forehead. All of Andrea's dread came rushing back. She immediately turned around and sped back to Dr. Conrad's office. As she drove, Andrea repeatedly checked on Tommy in the rearview mirror, watching his condition get worse and worse

by the second. When they were about 10 minutes away, all the color suddenly drained out of Tommy's face. Then his whole body kind of went slack and he slumped over and collapsed onto his side. Andrea slammed on the gas pedal. She could not get to Dr. Conrad's office fast enough. By the time she finally skidded into the parking lot, she was in a complete panic. She didn't even bother to bring her son inside with her. She just got out of the car and sprinted into the doctor's office alone. A few moments later, Andrea rushed back outside with the doctor and they went to her car and they found Tommy still laying in the back seat, completely still and silent. To Andrea's surprise, Dr. Conrad actually flung open the passenger side door and got inside.

And then he told Andrea to get in and drive us to the Valley Children's Hospital. They had no time to waste. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us.

I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that defined their journey, and the ideas that

transformed the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, form the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. 20 minutes later, Andrea carried her semi-conscious son through the sliding doors of the hospital emergency room. Tommy's head lolled on her shoulder. Dr. Conrad ran beside her and yelled for the nurses to hook the eight-year-old up to an IV.

A hospital staff member grabbed Tommy from Andrea's arms and placed him on a gurney. As nurses swarmed around them, Andrea felt her throat tighten with fear. The nurses pushed Tommy's gurney down the hallway and Andrea chased after them, following them into a hospital room. Suddenly, she heard her son screaming. His face contorted in pain as the nurses worked to connect an IV. Andrea watched, helpless, while her son began to gag. He tried to lift his head, but he couldn't sit up, and so he vomited just onto the bed. Then Tommy stopped moving altogether as tears filled his eyes. Andrea didn't understand how or why this was happening again. All she knew was that Tommy's

symptoms were even worse than the first time. Andrea was terrified, but she had never been more thankful for Dr. Conrad. He told hospital staff to make sure they administer more atropine. Andrea stood next to her son's bed and just prayed the atropine would work the way it did the first time. Sure enough, a few hours later, Tommy was awake and his stomach pain had subsided. He asked for a glass of water and when a nurse brought it in, he was able to reach out and grab it. Tommy wasn't confused anymore, he could move his limbs, so clearly the atropine had saved his life again. Andrea was obviously extremely relieved that her son had pulled through, but as she sat beside his hospital bed, she couldn't help but feel sick to her stomach.

Clearly, something was poisoning her son, but if she didn't know what it was, how could she protect him? How could she make sure this did not happen a third time or more? Andrea noticed Dr. Conrad packing up his black bag to leave. Before he left, she pulled him aside and asked him for his help. She needed to know where this chemical poisoning was coming from. If it really was from a local farm like Dr. Conrad thought, then Andrea wanted to know exactly which one. That way, they could tell the farmer to please contain the poison and put a stop to this nightmare. When Dr. Conrad got home that evening, he sat down on his couch and made a list of every farm in the area. He picked up the phone off the side table and started calling them one by one.

He asked if they'd recently sprayed any organic phosphate pesticides on their crops. They all told Dr. Conrad the same thing, no. There was not a single farmer in Fresno who had sprayed organic phosphates in the last few weeks. Dr. Conrad crossed the last farm off his list and hung up the phone. He was baffled. If the poison wasn't from a farm, where else could Tommy have come in contact with it? The doctor spent the entire evening pacing in his living room, racking his brain for another answer. He eventually went to bed, hoping he'd be able to come up with a plausible theory in the morning.

But he woke up just as confused. As he crawled out of bed and started a pot of coffee, he had to admit that he needed help. Dr. Conrad sat back down on the couch and placed his coffee mug on the side table right next to the telephone. Then he picked up that telephone and he called the Fresno County Public Health Department and told them the whole story. There was a little boy suffering from repeated pesticide poisonings for no clear answer as to how he was being exposed to the deadly chemicals. The health department official asked some follow-up questions like what Tommy had been doing before he became ill

and Dr. Conrad didn't really have all the answers, but he explained that the previous afternoon, he had examined Tommy and given him a clean bill of health. Then, before the boy even made it back to his home, he became gravely ill again. His symptoms had appeared in less than an hour, and all Tommy had done was ride in the back seat of his mother's car. But that little detail of the boy riding in his mother's car caught the health department representative's attention. They assured Dr. Conrad they would get to the bottom of this, beginning with a thorough inspection of Andrea's vehicle. Later that morning, a man and a woman from the Fresno County Public Health Department

knocked on Andrea's front door. Andrea shook their hands and welcomed them inside, but before she could say how happy she was to see them, they started asking questions. Did she keep any kind of chemical poisons in the house? Had she ever used ant or roach poison inside? Did she have a garden, and if so, did she treat her plants with pesticides? Andrea just shook her head. She didn't know of anything in her home or her car

that could possibly be poisoning her son. She led the health department employees into her garage where her car was parked, and she watched them search every inch of her vehicle. After a few minutes, they came up empty-handed. Then they combed through the rest of her garage, but again, they didn't find anything. That only left one other option, the inside of Andrea's house.

So Andrea opened the door for the investigators and told them to go ahead. As they searched, Andrea sat on the living room couch and called the hospital to check in on Tommy, who had been admitted to that hospital. The nurse would tell her that her son was stable and improving steadily. Andrea felt very relieved and placed the phone back on the hook. For the next hour, Andrea listened as the man and woman from the health department combed her entire house looking for the poison. But when they came into the living room where Andrea was, she asked them, what have you found? And they would tell her, nothing. There wasn't anything in her home, in her car, her garage, her garden, anywhere that could explain her son's poisoning.

Andrea was totally crushed. But the two health department employees said they did have one more idea. They asked Andrea what her son had been wearing when he got sick. Andrea thought about it for a moment. The first time Tommy got sick, he had been wearing when he got sick. Andrea thought about it for a moment. The first time Tommy got sick, he had been wearing his favorite red and white striped t-shirt and a new pair of blue jeans and sneakers. The second time, he'd been wearing a different shirt, different shoes, but the same pair of blue jeans. They were actually in the laundry room in a pile of dirty clothes. She'd brought them home from the hospital, but she hadn't had a chance to wash them yet. When she said that, the investigators' eyes lit up. They told Andrea they needed those jeans right now. Those pants just might hold the answers to her son's illness.

Later that afternoon, Dr. Conrad stood in a white-walled lab at the Fresno County Health Department Laboratory wearing gloves and a face mask. Next to him, the health department investigators who had just searched Andrea's home gazed into a rectangular glass tank full of hundreds of buzzing mosquitoes. Dr. Conrad held Tommy's blue jeans in his gloved hand. When the investigators gave him the okay, he lifted the lid on the tank and quickly put the jeans inside and then shut the lid before any mosquitoes could escape. Fifteen minutes later, the buzzing had stopped. The lab was silent. Dr. Conrad looked over and saw the two investigators grinning. That's when he realized this was the breakthrough they needed.

Every single mosquito inside of that glass tank was now dead And Tommy's pants had killed them It would turn out Tommy's own genes were the things that were poisoning him They were loaded with toxic organophosphates Now Dr. Conrad had new questions Where had these genes come from? And how did they become laced with pesticide? He used the health department laboratory's phone to call Andrea and explain the results of the experiment. He could tell by her voice that she was both very surprised and also very relieved, and luckily she was actually able

to explain the genes. She said she'd bought those genes about a month earlier in September. A trucking company was having a salvage sale for damaged goods and happened to have some nice jeans in Tommy's size. The pants were so cheap that Andrea actually bought five pairs of them, although Tommy had only worn one pair so far. Dr. Conrad told Andrea that it was highly likely that all of the jeans she had purchased were poisoned, so Tommy should obviously never wear them again. That's when Andrea pointed out that she actually did not buy every pair of jeans at the salvage sale. She said there had still been an entire stack of them after she had left with her five pairs.

Dr. Conrad suddenly felt his heart start to race. The story wasn't over. There were more poison jeans out there right now, and so more children might get sick. Dr. Conrad hung up the phone and rushed back over to the investigators so they could try to figure out what to do next. Over the following weeks, Dr. Conrad and the Fresno County Public Health Department learned that the poison genes had been shipped eight months earlier in early 1961.

They were put in a truck alongside various chemicals, including a highly toxic organic phosphate pesticide called phosdrin. During a trip from Fresno to Los Angeles, a container of phosdrin had broken open, and over a gallon of the poison spilled onto a stack of jeans. Enough poison to kill 9,000 kids. When the truck finally got to Los Angeles, an employee brought the jeans to a store where they were supposed to be sold.

But the manager of that store had noticed the pants were covered in oily-looking stains, so they sent them back to Fresno. The poisoned jeans were stored in a warehouse for the next eight months until it was time for the trucking company's annual salvage sale. By then, the stains on the jeans had faded enough that customers didn't notice them. When Dr. Conrad and the health department contacted this trucking company, it was too late. The remaining pairs of the poison jeans had all been sold.

The health department immediately went out and alerted the public to this crisis. And soon, they received 11 more pairs of jeans that had all been bought at the salvage sale. So that made 16 pairs, including the jeans Andrea had bought. In total, one other boy was hospitalized from these poisonous jeans, and four other children also fell ill. But luckily, like Tommy, all the children who were affected by these poisonous jeans made full recoveries. One month later, California lawmakers introduced a bill to ban the shipment of dangerous chemicals alongside food or clothing. Tighter legal restrictions and higher industry standards have since made accidents like the one that poisoned Tommy much less common. To be continued... 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 Karis Allen Pash Cooper. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cilelli. 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 Sheila Patterson.

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. Thank you. Senior Managing Producer is Ryan Lohr. Our Executive Producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses,

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