The Body Of Anna Fritz Netflix

[Oswalda Shutte]

Inthe early 20th century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would-be poisoner's treasure chest, with radioactive radium, thallium, and morphine in everyday products. The pace of industrial innovation increased, but the scientific knowledge to detect and prevent crimes committed with these materials lagged behind until 1918. New York City's first scientifically trained medical examiner, Charles Norris, and his chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science and set the standards for the rest of the country.

Marcella Fierro, Forensic Pathologist: This is a multiple death. The multiple deaths -- they're a different class of death. When you look at multiple deaths, they're not usually accidents and they're not usually natural.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: It's kind of a classic lock-door mystery. People are dead on the floor with what they think is a poison exposure. But there's absolutely no poison in the apartment. Nothing.

Narrator: As New York's Chief Medical Examiner, Norris was responsible for investigating every violent or suspicious death in the city. And he was taking a radical approach to the job. For four years now, Norris had been studying the bodies of victims to find out how they died. This was a far cry from the way New York City had dealt with suspicious deaths in the past. Traditionally, they had been handled by city coroners. Even in an era of rampant corruption, New York coroners stood out. The job was handed out by the mayor like any other political plum. Painters, milkmen, undertakers, musicians; anyone could be a coroner. And because they were paid by the body, coroners liked to process as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: Coroners also had an incentive to make money from the families of the dead. So you could find coroners who wouldn't release the body to a family unless they went to a funeral home that was giving them kickbacks. At the same time, you could also make money by selling cause of death. "I don't want my best friend to be found guilty of murder." "I don't want my husband to have committed suicide."

Narrator: If you had the right connections you could get away with murder. Even if you didn't, the coroners' incompetence meant that science played virtually no part in law enforcement. "Numerous homicides have undoubtedly failed of detection," a study had concluded, "and skillful poisoning can be carried out almost with impunity." Charles Norris had been an unlikely candidate to reform this wretched system. He came from one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia. He could have lived a life of idle luxury, but chose instead to study medicine at Columbia University.

David J. Krajicek, Writer: After finishing his medical training, Norris went to Europe, studied in Berlin and Vienna. And he was quite smitten by the developing European use of scientific evidence in the criminal justice system. And he brought that idea back to the United States.

Narrator: When Norris returned home, he joined an alliance of civic groups, newspaper editors, and state officials that was trying to do away with the coroners. They wanted a medical examiner's office, staffed by professionals, employing the latest techniques in forensic science. In 1918, over the bitter opposition of the mayor, they succeeded. Norris was chosen to lead the new department. But from day one, it was clear that he had made a powerful enemy.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: The Mayor of New York was Red Mike Hylan. He was forced really, literally forced to hire Norris. He wanted a medical examiner's department that would do favors for him. You know, "My friend got in trouble with this. I'd like you to help me cover up that." But Norris was too much of a purist to ever play those games.

David J. Krajicek, Writer: Norris was driven by the desire to create what he called a, a medical-legal justice system in America that was science based, where convictions and acquittals weren't based upon who you knew but were based upon science and fact. That was his mission. That was his personal mission.

Narrator: Hylan was looking for any opportunity to undermine this well-heeled reformer. Norris couldn't afford any mistakes, especially when the whole country was watching. Norris needed answers. He turned to Alexander Gettler, the brilliant young chemist who ran his toxicology lab: the first of its kind in the country.

Michael M. Baden, Forensic Pathologist: When I first met Dr. Gettler as a medical student coming over to see autopsies, he was very nice. A small man compared to Norris, for example. Very polite, but very shy in a way.

Alexander Gettler (Chris Bowers): Ok. Set up a steam distillation for cyanide. Good morning Alice. Tartaric acid, sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid. And I think we're out of ferric chloride -- you'll need to make some up.

Michael M. Baden, Forensic Pathologist: I never heard him speak about anything else in his life, other than toxicology. Not family, not friends. I had the impression that he was a guy who was thinking of chemical formulas all the time.

Narrator: Norris had hired Alexander Gettler as soon as he took office, and the young man had become his closest ally. Gettler had built the toxicology lab from scratch, and trained his staff in the emerging science. In this case, Gettler's first challenge was deciding which poison to look for.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: There were signs that this was possibly a cyanide poisoning. There's this weird reddening of the skin because of the way it chemically interacts with the blood stream. There's bluing around the lips, which would which would normally say to you, "Someone was having a problem getting oxygen." Cyanide interferes with your body's ability to process oxygen, so that you have a chemical suffocation.

Marcella Fierro, Forensic Pathologist: The police report said they went down like a shot. Now very few things drop people like a shot -- heart, rarely brain, and some toxins. Now of the toxins that will drop you like a shot, cyanide has to be right up there.

Gettler's life work boiled down to one fiendishly difficult task: finding trace amounts of poison in an overwhelming matrix of human tissue. He started by grinding a chunk of the stomach wall. He then slowly distilled the resulting sludge. Any cyanide in the Jacksons' stomachs would be concentrated in the distillate collected at the end of the process.

Nothing had ever come easily to Alexander Gettler. He had grown up poor, one of the multitude of immigrants struggling to free themselves from the troubles of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Even then he had been obsessed with chemistry. He had put himself through school by working the graveyard shift at the Brooklyn/Battery ferry, doing homework through the night and attending classes during the day. He understood then that chemistry could unravel the mysteries of nature. Now he hoped that it could illuminate the messy and confusing circumstances that all too often separated life from death.

Narrator: The hunt was almost over. The last step was to unmask the poison in the distillate. All poisons have indelible signatures -- the trick is to reveal them. Cyanide can be unmasked by adding chemicals to turn it a deep, Prussian blue.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: There was nothing. There was not a trace of cyanide in the stomach. And so now you have this impossible problem. You've got people who look like they died of cyanide poisoning, you've run all of your tests, and there's nothing there.

Marcella Fierro, Forensic Pathologist: Gettler examined the stomach wall. Didn't find it. Examined the gastric contents. Didn't find it. The police brought in substances, every substance they could find apparently from the apartment. Gettler dutifully tested all of them. Negative. Well by this time he knows what? Since the stomach is empty, the gastric contents is negative, then it has to be an inhalation.

Deborah Blum, Author The Poisoner's Handbook: Cyanide was a very popular rat killer of the time. And the gas they used to use to fumigate then was hydrogen cyanide, which is a phenomenally poisonous gas.

Colin Evans, Writer: They then contacted the hotel manager and asked him if there had been any fumigation of the hotel to get rid of pests. And he assured them that "No, there had been no such fumigation." And he was as much in the dark as to how the couple had died as the examiners.

Marcella Fierro, Forensic Pathologist: So then they have to go back and they, they do what all good policemen do. They start talking to people, and they talk to people, and they talk to people. There's no substitute for a good homicide detective. Believe me, there isn't. And they find a maid who finally, she fesses up and says yes she knows that they were fumigating.

Narrator: The mystery was beginning to unfold. The next step was to determine how cyanide gas could have seeped into the Jacksons' apartment. The police came up with a simple test, setting off smoke bombs in the hotel's basement rooms, where the fumigation had taken place.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. But there was still no proof that the Jacksons had inhaled the cyanide gas. For that, Gettler would have to examine their lungs. Unfortunately, those were six feet underground in a New Jersey cemetery. The D.A. reluctantly gave permission to exhume Fremont Jackson's body, a request that would have been unthinkable when coroners were in charge.

The hotel manager had lied to the police, and the fumigator had been negligent. Both men were charged with first-degree manslaughter. The penalty was 10 years. As Norris and Gettler made their way into court, they were apprehensive. Judges, juries, and lawyers were unacquainted with forensic science, and furthermore, anyone resembling a coroner was assumed to be a political hack.

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