The Prussian Blue Mystery

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Speaker 4 Hi, I'm Natalie Morales. Brigitte Oyuto was a young mom in the prime of her life who showed up nearly dead in an emergency room.
Her hair was falling out and her vital signs were fading.

Speaker 4 It was a race against time for toxicologists and the FBI to solve not just this medical mystery, but a horrific crime.

Speaker 4 This is also a story about the bonds of a mother and child and her will to survive and fight. And my time with Brigitte at the very end, nothing short of inspirational.

Speaker 4 But first, the mystery, the Prussian blue mystery.

Speaker 4 From the moment the ambulance arrived at the San Diego emergency room in March 2018, the situation was frightening and desperate.

Speaker 4 Triage nurse Laura Comstock took one look at the young woman on the gurney and knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. She was losing her vision.

Speaker 4 She couldn't feel her extremities, her feet and her hands. She couldn't even see the water that I was giving her.
The patient's name was Brigitta Uto.

Speaker 4 She had just turned 28, yet she seemed to be near death. At that point, I mean, she was very, very sick.

Speaker 6 She was probably the sickest patient in the ER at that time.

Speaker 4 I had told my coworkers that, you know, she might code on me.

Speaker 4 Whatever was killing Brigitta wasn't evident. There were no bruises, no wounds, no obvious signs of infection.
And yet, when Dr. Jeff Lapointe examined her,

Speaker 6 she was critically ill. She was very ill.

Speaker 4 So began an unusual detective story. First, the doctors had to unravel a medical mystery.
And soon enough, real detectives would be on the case, too. But at that moment...

Speaker 6 We saw someone who was almost... almost apathetic, didn't have a personality.
I mean, she could barely talk and tell us anything. It was really hard to to get a history.

Speaker 4 Looking for clues, Dr. Lapointe dove into her medical records, and they were extensive.
Brigitta had been suffering for months, nausea, fatigue, excruciating pain.

Speaker 4 She had been in and out of doctors' offices and ERs repeatedly. Her sister Olga says Brigitta's illness would come on suddenly.

Speaker 8 She was all of a sudden violently sick.

Speaker 8 Had to call out from work and just sick for days.

Speaker 4 Various doctors had come up with theories from fibroids to cancer.

Speaker 8 There was one doctor that actually told her that, oh, you just have really bad menstrual cramps because she felt like one of her symptoms, she felt that her ovaries were about to fall out of her body.

Speaker 8 And she called me and she told me this and she was crying and she was upset. She's like, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 8 And I'm frustrated because no one can tell us what is wrong with her.

Speaker 4 Brigitta had wondered if stress could be making her sick. She had a toddler to chase around, a husband in the Navy who was trying to find a new career, and a new job teaching special ed.

Speaker 3 It was thrilling but overwhelming.

Speaker 4 So doctors put her on medication for depression. But then she got sick again.

Speaker 3 Then she kept going to the doctors

Speaker 3 and she kept feeling worse and worse and worse. And then she started losing a lot of weight.

Speaker 4 Brigitta's mom, also named Olga, felt helpless as her daughter's illness progressed. Were you getting more and more worried seeing your daughter waste away? Oh, yes.

Speaker 3 I guess she was getting tired of going to the doctors and then finding nothing.

Speaker 3 She says, Mom, I give up. I'm not going to go to the doctor's anymore.

Speaker 3 I said, no, you can't. You have to go back.
You can't give up. She was not even walking normally anymore.

Speaker 4 Just when it seemed things couldn't get worse, a disturbing new symptom.

Speaker 8 I went next door to see her,

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 8 we ended up on her kitchen floor, and she was crying to me, and she said she had pulled out a chunk of her hair, like just in the shower. It came out.

Speaker 4 Brigitta's beautiful dark brown locks started falling out by the fistful.

Speaker 4 When you're seeing her lose her hair, she felt that that was her most beautiful trait.

Speaker 4 How concerned were you?

Speaker 3 We were very concerned. I think March 5th is when she called me in the morning and said, Mom, I need to go to the hospital because I can hardly breathe.

Speaker 4 Brigitta lived in the country in a house right next to her parents. And yet that morning, she couldn't really see her way to their place.

Speaker 4 And the pain in her legs was so bad, she could barely get into her mother's SUV.

Speaker 3 So I tried to help her by raising her leg, but even the touch was painful. She screamed.

Speaker 4 Her mom raced her to the naval hospital in San Diego.

Speaker 3 She said, Mom, just drop me off as close as you can to the entrance. And

Speaker 3 I still remember.

Speaker 3 I saw her walking. Did she walk? Look at that.

Speaker 3 You know, the walking dead.

Speaker 5 Like a zombie. Like a zombie.

Speaker 3 It was horrible.

Speaker 4 But the Navy doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong either. Brigitta's husband took her back to their family doctor, who called an ambulance when he saw how sick she was.

Speaker 4 Now, at Kaiser Hospital, she was Dr. Lapointe's mystery patient.

Speaker 6 One of the emergency physicians who was working, he saw her and said, it's just not right. And from there, our team was called.

Speaker 4 Dr. Lapointe has board certification in medical toxicology, a rare thing in an ER.

Speaker 4 As it happened, his expertise would prove critical.

Speaker 6 As a medical toxicologist, a little bit more in the detective

Speaker 6 role.

Speaker 4 So what was causing Brigitte's hair to fall out? Not to mention the severe pain, vision loss, and weakness. The doctors, when they first saw her, said, oh, it could be, you know, lupus.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 She had like this chronic kind of withering, slow course. And so autoimmune stuff was on the list.

Speaker 6 malignancies on the list although not cancer doesn't make you lose your hair it's the chemotherapy that makes you lose your hair dr.

Speaker 8 Lapointe knew he had to solve this mystery fast Brigitta was fading the clock was ticking when I saw her and I knew she was dying she was in a lot of pain she was in excruciating pain and I remember being in the hospital room and she's like I want to be close to my sister.

Speaker 8 And she like put herself through insane amount of pain just to turn her body so she could look at me.

Speaker 5 How close was she to dying?

Speaker 4 I watched my sister almost die.

Speaker 7 I knew she was gone.

Speaker 7 Coming up,

Speaker 4 a race to unravel this mystery. Your daughter's getting weaker and weaker.

Speaker 4 She was losing her vision.

Speaker 3 She was losing everything.

Speaker 4 Were her husband and young son in danger too?

Speaker 6 I have a child in the equation now. I have a spouse.
Let's make sure the child's safe. Make sure that they haven't been exposed.

Speaker 4 Here at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Diego, Brigitta Uto was so weak, she couldn't even conjure up the energy to care about what was happening to her.

Speaker 4 Doctors have a term for patients in this apathetic state, la belle indifference.

Speaker 6 You've lost your hair and you can't walk and you're wasting away. You're so sick, you don't have the insight to go, oh my gosh, I'm really sick.
It's almost just like, oh, it's fine.

Speaker 4 And that tells you right there, like, she was as sick as she could get and possibly was near death.

Speaker 6 I think so, yeah.

Speaker 4 Dr. Jeff LePoint didn't know for sure what was making Brigitta sick, but to his toxicologist's mind, her symptoms indicated she might have been exposed to a toxic chemical.

Speaker 4 And he realized she might not be the only one.

Speaker 6 There's so many moving pieces. I have a child in the equation now.
I have a spouse and let's make sure that we're observing them, make sure the child's safe, make sure that they haven't been exposed.

Speaker 4 He had Brigitta's husband and son admitted to a separate hospital for testing. And for safety's sake, he banned all visitors from Brigitta's hospital room, even immediate family.

Speaker 4 And there was a time where you didn't know what was happening with your sister.

Speaker 5 Did you think, this is it?

Speaker 4 She might be gone already and nobody's telling us? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 8 I was like a zombie, a walking zombie, just going through the motions and hoping that she's okay.

Speaker 8 Knowing that if they hadn't called me to tell me that she's gone, it's because she's still here.

Speaker 4 Olga is two years younger than Brigitta. They've always been close.

Speaker 8 We shared a bedroom when we were little. So of course we had like, every night was like a sleepover.
We did everything together.

Speaker 8 We literally were there for each other for everything that happened through our childhood, teenage years, adult life. You know, she was my go-to person.

Speaker 4 Their dad, John McInvale, had worked for U.S. Customs at the border.
They had grown up in rural San Diego County. There's no real dangers.
It's a safe, idyllic upbringing for your daughters.

Speaker 10 It's safe. Every place has its dangers.
I mean, over the years, we've had, you know, a rattlesnake here or there, or, you know, somebody came through and stole the pickup truck.

Speaker 10 There's dangers, but that goes with anywhere, you know. You can't protect them from everything.

Speaker 4 From their dad, the girls learned caution. From their mom, they learned the importance of faith.

Speaker 3 I put them in a Catholic school. They teach you a lot of moral values and things that are important in life.

Speaker 5 And Brigitte would beg to go to church during the week.

Speaker 3 Is that true? During the week, yes.

Speaker 4 The little girl who begged to go to church grew into an accomplished young woman who ran cross-country and excelled in school. Did she put a lot of pressure on herself then? Oh, yes.
To be perfect.

Speaker 3 She's always been that way. Even in kindergarten, they used to get a lot of homework.

Speaker 3 And she's the type of girl that if she made a little mistake, she didn't want to have her pages show that she had erased something. She would start all over.

Speaker 4 Near the end of her senior year in high school, Regida met a young man named Race Udo, a runner like she was, a grade behind her, but ambitious and determined to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Speaker 4 When did you first hear about Race?

Speaker 8 I was 16 years old. I remember she met him at a car show.
She was there doing the event for her graduating class. He didn't go to her high school, but he was there.

Speaker 8 And I just remember her saying something afterwards, like, I met this guy, basically.

Speaker 3 And I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 8 I didn't think much of it because my sister didn't really like date that much.

Speaker 4 But as Olga got to know him better, she thought Race might just be the guy Brigitta needed.

Speaker 8 She was always very like into her books, very like she stuck to the rules. He took her to that adventurous part of her life.

Speaker 4 Kind of got her out of her shell. Oh, definitely got her out of her shell.

Speaker 8 I saw a different side of her when she was with him.

Speaker 4 Race made it to the Naval Academy like he wanted, but he suffered a hernia that never healed properly. And eventually, he had to withdraw without graduating.
He did join the Navy, though.

Speaker 4 Then in 2014, Brigitta and Race married. And very soon, she was pregnant with their son.
Everyone was thrilled when the baby came.

Speaker 8 We were all excited, really.

Speaker 8 We could sit there like when we were little and we had a little doll and we'd hold my nephew and we'd take turns and like, you know, like I'd take care of him while she's sleeping or trying to rest and watching her learn and like experience being a mom for the first time how she wanted to be.

Speaker 8 It was beautiful.

Speaker 4 Then just before her son turned two, Brigitta got sick. Soon she could barely pick up her child.
And your daughter's getting weaker and weaker.

Speaker 4 And she can barely walk.

Speaker 4 She was losing her vision.

Speaker 3 She was losing everything.

Speaker 4 Now, in the hospital, toxicologist Jeff Lapointe developed a chilling suspicion about what was wrong with Brigitta.

Speaker 6 We're all just like, you think, oh, my God.

Speaker 12 Coming up,

Speaker 4 a rare and devastating diagnosis. Highly toxic.
Highly toxic. This is your very first case.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Growing danger at the hospital and a sudden alert at the FBI.

Speaker 11 We're notified immediately. That's something that we're very concerned about.

Speaker 5 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 5 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 5 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

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Speaker 4 Like any good detective, Dr. Jeff Lapointe was keeping his mind open, letting the clues lead him to a theory about what might be killing Brigitte.

Speaker 6 I just got to figure out what's wrong and get the treatment started.

Speaker 4 Most of her symptoms could have been caused by a range of toxic chemicals like arsenic, cadmium, or cesium. But to Dr.
Lapointe, one particular symptom stood out, sudden hair loss.

Speaker 6 That's the telltale sign.

Speaker 6 I mean, I think that any medical toxicologist, if you tell them that you have a young woman who has lost her hair and now can't walk because her feet hurt so bad, thallium is going to be on our list.

Speaker 6 It's like straight out of the books.

Speaker 4 Thallium is a heavy metal, atomic number 81 on the periodic table of elements.

Speaker 6 It was discovered late 1800s and then quickly began being used medically in the early 1900s as like a depilatory agent.

Speaker 6 If you had lice or something, you wanted a child to lose their hair, they would give them thallium. Oh my gosh.
Right.

Speaker 4 Dr. Lapointe also knew that for decades, thallium had another use as an ingredient in rat poison.

Speaker 6 And it was really, really good as a rap denticide. And so it was, that was outlawed in the 1970s.
It's really good at killing things

Speaker 4 at the end of the day. Highly toxic.

Speaker 6 Highly toxic.

Speaker 4 Yet there was no quick way to confirm his suspicion. Hospitals rarely see patients with thallium poisoning and don't have a way to test for it.

Speaker 6 So no hospital is just going to put a drop of blood in and have it come back. Yes, thallium, right? So you have to send these things away.
So now I'm looking at a two to three, maybe day delay.

Speaker 4 Days that he knew Brigitta might not have.

Speaker 6 We have like a really scary situation where I have a test that's infrequently ordered that I need now

Speaker 6 that is a send out, right? And it's scary, it's serious, it's infrequently done, and it's exotic.

Speaker 4 You're in a race against time when it comes to trying to save her life.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so I'm like trying to advocate to all these different people lots of hours on the phone, just trying to get someone on the phone and be like, this woman's going to die.

Speaker 6 So as soon as we sent the test, we said, how do I get the antidote?

Speaker 4 He wanted it ready to give her as soon as results came in. What is the antidote?

Speaker 6 So the antidote is called Prussian Blue.

Speaker 4 You've probably seen Prussian blue in paint. Yes, paint.
It's been used as a pigment since the 1700s. You can see it here in Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone.

Speaker 4 But it wasn't until 1965 that scientists discovered Prussian blue could be used as an antidote. It works by speeding up elimination of certain poisons, such as thallium.

Speaker 4 But while you can buy blue paint in any art shop, pharmaceutical-grade Prussian blue is nearly impossible to find.

Speaker 6 And so we started calling pharmacies around town at different places. We started calling the Navy or, you know, we called our local public health people.

Speaker 6 We got in touch with the CDC and we finally found a storage.

Speaker 6 You know, kind of, they're all like confidential storage sites, but we found one up in Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 Prussian blue is so hard to get because it's also an antidote for radiation poisoning. The U.S.
government keeps it under close guard, stockpiled in case of a nuclear attack.

Speaker 6 So no one really wants to give me an antidote before I've proven it, right? Because we don't just throw around Prussian Blue, but keep them in stores in case there's a dirty bomb.

Speaker 11 We have several tripwires set up. In this case, the patient was here in San Diego, and we were notified immediately of the Prussian order.

Speaker 4 John Gill is a special agent with the FBI in San Diego. His focus is weapons of mass destruction.
A request for the antidote to thallium poisoning put his office on alert.

Speaker 11 In the past several decades, there's been instances where thallium has been used as an assassination weapon against former spies and former dissidents.

Speaker 4 So that's what you're thinking when you get this call first is, uh-oh, what is happening here in San Diego, right?

Speaker 11 Right. That's something that we're very concerned about in the United States.

Speaker 4 All this just as President Trump was days away from a trip to San Diego to talk about the border wall. You triggered all kinds of alarm bells.

Speaker 6 I triggered all kinds of alarm bells, yes.

Speaker 12 Coming up.

Speaker 4 So when you're saying this, more like, oh my gosh, a deadly substance in Brigitta's system. But how?

Speaker 6 I think I have a poisoning case, and I'm proceeding like this is an intentional poisoning until proven otherwise.

Speaker 4 Brigitta's mom couldn't visit her daughter in the hospital. No visitors were allowed.
So she waited and she prayed. That's all she could do.

Speaker 4 30 miles away at Kaiser Hospital, Dr. Lapointe was waiting too.

Speaker 4 Three days had passed since he sent out Brigitta's samples, Brigitta in pain the whole time. Finally, the lab results came back.
Just as he suspected, it was thallium, a lot of it.

Speaker 4 Brigitta's husband and young son seemed to be clear of the toxic metal, but she was in serious danger. Her levels were off the charts.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they're really high.

Speaker 4 More than a thousand times the acceptable level. Wow, that's unbelievable.
A hospital staffer had driven through the night to get hold of Prussian blue pills. Dr.

Speaker 4 Lapointe started Brigitta on them immediately. But with so much thallium in Brigitte's system, Dr.
Lapointe worried Prussian blue would not be enough to save her.

Speaker 4 He also put her on dialysis to filter her blood. It was a slow process.
When FBI Special Agent John Gill arrived to question her, Brigitta was still desperately ill.

Speaker 4 How would you describe her condition at that point in time?

Speaker 11 It was a very serious condition. She struggled with answering simple questions.

Speaker 4 Sick as she was, he knew he couldn't wait.

Speaker 11 She looked very bad and is concerning because at that point we didn't know if she was going to make it.

Speaker 4 He needed to figure out quickly how she'd been exposed to thallium. Brigitta did her best to help.

Speaker 11 She brought up several points where she thought she could have been exposed to thallium. She had received holistic medical treatments in Mexico.

Speaker 4 Or maybe she said she could have been exposed at the school where she worked. It was an old army base.
There might be traces of old rat poison there.

Speaker 11 So some of these older school structures, they were used during World War II, and that's the time when they used value-based lodenticides.

Speaker 4 Investigators followed Brigitta's leads. The holistic treatment, nothing there.
San Diego Sheriff's Detective Brad Farr checked out the school.

Speaker 14 And I talked to some other teachers that work in the same area as she worked. There had been some rumors that the previous year there were some teachers that went out sick a lot.

Speaker 14 So I had to look into that. It turned out to be not in any way, shape, or form involved with this.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, a hazmat team searched the Udo house, but found no thallium. And they considered another possibility.

Speaker 11 We also had to explore the fact that sometimes in these cases, a person may try to poison themselves if they're struggling with depression or crying out for attention.

Speaker 4 Brigitta had been depressed around the time she first started getting sick. But Brigitta and everyone who knew her told him no way was she suicidal.

Speaker 8 I told the detective, I know my sister more than anybody.

Speaker 8 She always wanted to be a mother. She always wanted to have a family.
She wouldn't throw it away like that.

Speaker 4 As they eliminated all the other possibilities, the detectives, along with Dr. Lapointe, came to a sinister conclusion.

Speaker 6 I'm proceeding like this is an intentional poisoning until proven otherwise.

Speaker 4 Why would somebody choose thallium?

Speaker 6 Someone would choose thallium because it looks like a medical mystery. It presents as someone just having a slow decline and withering away and dying that you would associate with a chronic illness.

Speaker 6 It's poison to get away with it.

Speaker 4 The next step to solving this mystery was figuring out how Brigitta had been poisoned. Dr.
Lapointe did his own kind of detective work.

Speaker 6 And you see this kind of really bright spots everywhere, like all throughout.

Speaker 4 Those little white flecks.

Speaker 6 Yeah, those little white flecks.

Speaker 4 The little white flecks are thallium in brigitta's digestive tract so when you're seeing this in the context of what we're seeing we're like oh my gosh telltale sign if it's in her gut what does that tell you about how she was getting yeah i mean it's i mean food is right somebody's feeding it to her yeah she's eating it someone's giving it to her yeah

Speaker 4 it was what dr lapointe had feared when he took that unusual precaution that left brigitta's family in the dark I cleared everyone out of the room because everyone was bringing gifts and food, everything out, everyone out.

Speaker 6 A lot of people get poisoned, come to the hospital, and get worse

Speaker 6 if someone else is bringing them more poison. So I just want all the variables off the table.

Speaker 4 So far, Dr. Lapointe had done a lot of things right, but he knew against thallium, that might not be enough.

Speaker 6 In a lot of these cases, people don't recover. A lot of these cases, people can't feel their legs again, or they never grow their hair back.

Speaker 4 Even if Brigitta survived, there was no telling if her life would ever be the same.

Speaker 12 Coming up,

Speaker 4 who could be behind this? Your circle is narrowing. You're looking at her family.
You're looking at her sister. And of course, you're looking at her husband.
Absolutely.

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Speaker 12 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

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Speaker 12 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 4 Dr. Jeff Lapointe believed someone was determined to commit the perfect murder by feeding bits of the highly toxic metal thallium to his patient, Brigitte Yudo.

Speaker 4 For tense hours and days, the doctor and his team fought to save Brigitta's life. She'd consumed more than enough thallium to kill her.
And yet.

Speaker 7 I don't know why I'm here.

Speaker 7 I don't know why I'm still alive.

Speaker 4 And that's scary.

Speaker 4 Meet Brigitta. She's still with us.

Speaker 4 Did you feel like you were dying?

Speaker 7 I did. I did, but I was too afraid to admit it to myself.

Speaker 4 What kept you alive in that time?

Speaker 7 My son. Wanting to see my son.

Speaker 4 As the antidote took effect, Brigitta, in essence, woke up. She found herself in a hospital bed with only wisps of hair on her head, but she couldn't walk or really see.

Speaker 4 and doctors couldn't really tell her what to expect.

Speaker 7 They pretty much

Speaker 3 were

Speaker 11 very

Speaker 7 open about not knowing what was going to happen.

Speaker 4 But then, one day, her cell phone came into focus. Days later, she caught sight of something else.

Speaker 7 I was really excited because I could see the TV, like what brand the TV was,

Speaker 11 across the room.

Speaker 4 While Brigitta continued to make a slow physical recovery in the hospital, she also had to face the hard truth that someone had plotted against her.

Speaker 11 We asked her, is there anyone that has an agenda against you or anything? And she vehemently stated that, no, I don't think there's anyone in my life that would attempt to poison me.

Speaker 4 But Agent Gill knew that intentional poisoning was usually personal.

Speaker 11 Statistically and historically speaking, when you do have a poisoning, it's either a close family member or a close friend.

Speaker 4 Sitting alone in her hospital room, Brigitta found herself terrified at the thought of doctors lifting their ban on visitors.

Speaker 4 Did you start to become more fearful as you started to then realize that this was intentional poisoning?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I started

Speaker 7 getting fearful.

Speaker 7 I started thinking about

Speaker 7 what would happen when I got out of the hospital,

Speaker 7 if I got out of the hospital, and who would I have to protect myself from.

Speaker 4 And I imagine at this point, your circle is narrowing as to who could have done this. You're looking at her family, you're looking at her sister, and of course, you're looking at her husband.

Speaker 11 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 They talked to everyone, including Brigitta's husband, Race Udo.

Speaker 14 He was a very friendly, very cooperative individual throughout the entire investigation.

Speaker 4 Was he at all concerned about his wife?

Speaker 14 When we first talked to him in the hospital, he did have some tears

Speaker 14 and he kept saying, I just wish I could do something to help her.

Speaker 4 He said the right things to detectives, but Special Agent Gill learned quickly that something about Race Udo seemed off.

Speaker 11 Some of the medical staff had expressed some concern over

Speaker 11 Mr. Udo's behavior at the time.
It came out that he wasn't acting as a concerned husband should be acting. He was asking the wrong kind of questions.

Speaker 11 He didn't seem concerned about what was happening to her.

Speaker 4 Suspicious as detectives were, Brigitta couldn't go there. At this point, are you suspecting your husband at all?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 7 Anybody who had suggested that idea had started, why would you think that?

Speaker 7 that my husband would do something like that.

Speaker 7 Like, I don't know.

Speaker 7 He's the one that brought me here. How does that make any sense?

Speaker 4 It was true. Race was the one who took Brigitta to the doctors that day she was transferred to the hospital.
To Brigitta, that was an act of an innocent man.

Speaker 4 She also remembered how Race cared for her as she fell ill. As you were getting more and more sick, did he show that he was concerned by bringing you food?

Speaker 4 Was that part of his way of taking care of you?

Speaker 7 That was his way of taking care of me. When When I started staying home, he would bring me breakfast sandwiches.

Speaker 7 In bed, he would make sure that I had food.

Speaker 4 And you're thinking, wow, he's showing a side. He's taking care of me.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he's taking care of me. He really loves me.
He really cares about what happens at this point.

Speaker 4 But Brigitta also told the detectives something else about her husband. It turned out Race had a very strange hobby, collecting the types of plant seeds that are used to make poisons.

Speaker 4 And when you hear this, are alarm bells going off? Absolutely.

Speaker 11 This isn't a normal amateur hobby to have.

Speaker 11 So obviously it's very concerning for us.

Speaker 4 16 days into Brigitte's stay at the hospital, detectives had enough evidence to get a search warrant for the Udo home. Race was there to greet them.

Speaker 11 He was wearing these dark sunglasses. No reason for anyone to wear sunglasses, especially inside your residence.

Speaker 4 He was fidgety, but seemingly candid.

Speaker 11 We asked him, well, if we image your phone, is there anything in your search history that is going to be kind of any concern to us? And he said, no, not at all.

Speaker 11 By the way, I'd recently erased all the search history of all my electronic devices.

Speaker 4 That made the detectives even more suspicious. They took his electronics.
They scoured the house, the garage, and then they got to his car.

Speaker 11 And then within the hole for the spare tire, we find an odd mix of materials, a canister of acetone,

Speaker 11 packets of exotic seeds.

Speaker 4 Still barred from visiting, Brigitta's family was at home. Sister Olga called the detectives over.
Earlier that day, her mother had seen Race toss out a black trash bag.

Speaker 3 I was like, okay, I'll go get it.

Speaker 11 She's a great junior agent. She actually went dumpster diving.

Speaker 4 What'd you find in that black bag?

Speaker 11 Some of the more serious things. So we found receipts for some of the exotic seeds that he had ordered.
We saw some of

Speaker 11 the crude filtering mechanisms that he had. We found solutions in which to purify and refine some of the poisons.

Speaker 4 Agent Gill says they found evidence Race had tried to grind up castor beans beans to make the poison ricin.

Speaker 4 He says they also found rosary peas like these, a seed that makes another deadly poison, and seeds like these from something called the suicide tree of India.

Speaker 4 And on Race's electronic devices that he thought he'd wiped clean, they found two books, Criminal Poisoning and the Poisoner's Handbook.

Speaker 4 As bad as it all looked, there was one thing they didn't find, thallium. Not a trace of it.
Without that, detectives felt there wasn't enough evidence to make an arrest.

Speaker 4 At the end of the search, Race Udo remained a free man. But Detective Farr knew he needed to warn Brigitta.

Speaker 14 So I went to the hospital and we had a very long talk and I showed her some of the stuff that we found and basically lay it all out for her that if you get out, you need to not go back to your husband.

Speaker 4 Coming up, would investigators get the proof they need?

Speaker 16 Were you involved in poisoning your wife?

Speaker 16 Did you poison your wife? No.

Speaker 9 I think he thought he had a beat.

Speaker 4 And a haunting, terrifying moment.

Speaker 7 He had made a breakfast sandwich for me, and my son climbed up and wanted a piece.

Speaker 4 By now, the doctors and nurses and law enforcement all believed they had to protect Brigitta from her husband, even if Brigitta still couldn't wrap her mind around it.

Speaker 7 I finally had gotten to the point where I told investigators, fine, you know, I'll continue with the investigation, but I need proof.

Speaker 4 So did law enforcement. They kept digging and learned Race Yudo had a secret life.
There was a girlfriend who thought his wife was dead.

Speaker 11 He had taken his son with him on so many of their dates that the son was actually calling her mom. Mr.
Udo painted this picture like he was a former Navy SEAL.

Speaker 11 And he specifically mentioned he wanted to work for the FBI in the Poisons Department.

Speaker 4 Kind of like what you do.

Speaker 3 That's very ironic.

Speaker 4 Then they found another girlfriend.

Speaker 11 He specifically told that girlfriend that he wanted his wife to get hit by a bus and for her to die so he can get sole custody.

Speaker 4 Investigators decided it was time to confront Race. They asked Race to take a polygraph.

Speaker 11 He said, absolutely. He's the person that seems to have gone through life by talking himself out of situations.

Speaker 4 It started off easy.

Speaker 4 Almost a casual chat.

Speaker 16 And what are your hobbies? When you're here for fun, when you're not working, I like to spend time with your son. Spend time with him.
I like to, well, when I could, surf.

Speaker 4 Then he got more serious.

Speaker 16 Can you pass this test by asking if you poisoned her? Yep. Is that when you heard her?

Speaker 4 The sensors were strapped on.

Speaker 16 All right, so I'm going to get started.

Speaker 9 His demeanor during the first half was confident. I think he thought he had a beat.

Speaker 4 Paul Risen was the prosecutor on the case.

Speaker 9 It almost looked like, all right, I got this. I'm getting through this.

Speaker 3 We're good.

Speaker 16 Please remain still. The test is about to begin.
Are the lights on in this room? Yes. Regarding poisoning your wife, do you intend to answer truthfully? Yes.

Speaker 16 Were you involved in poisoning your wife? No.

Speaker 16 Did you poison your wife? No.

Speaker 16 Please remain still. The test is about to end.

Speaker 4 Nine times the investigator asked the same questions. And every time, Race Uto assured him he did not poison his wife.
And he seemed sure he passed.

Speaker 9 As continued testing went on, the polygrapher eventually stopped, let him take a break, came back in.

Speaker 16 You had a seat in the lady, Lucy, that's me.

Speaker 9 Confronted him and said, I don't believe anything you're saying.

Speaker 14 So you failed your test.

Speaker 16 Not only did you fail the test, you failed miserably.

Speaker 9 And that's when he confessed? Right then and there. Right after the polygraph.

Speaker 4 Race broke. The details of how he tried to kill his wife began tumbling out.

Speaker 16 When are you circumless up to?

Speaker 16 I can't really remember. It wasn't from Lauren.

Speaker 4 Race told the investigator that the first time he fed thallium to Brigitte, it was in a sandwich.

Speaker 3 It was an egg, cheese.

Speaker 16 Is that the first time you think?

Speaker 11 Yeah, that was the first time.

Speaker 16 And the second time, walk me through what you did.

Speaker 16 Just threw it in with a

Speaker 16 soup.

Speaker 4 Race told law enforcement he doled out the poison based on Brigitta's weight, starting with one gram of thallium in late summer 2017.

Speaker 16 You thought that based off her weight and what you read, one gram would kill her the first two times,

Speaker 16 like a lethality kind of level?

Speaker 9 Brigitta got sick, but she obviously didn't die. So he upped it the last time.
He upped it up to five grams. He thought that was going to do it.

Speaker 4 It should have been a lethal dose, but race didn't factor in his wife's will to live. All the doctors, the nurses, the detectives say it's your quiet strength that allowed you to pull through.

Speaker 4 You believe that too?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I struggle with that. Don't be humble.

Speaker 3 Don't be humble.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 7 I mean, I would hope so. I would hope that I have that to give to my son.
But I think it's all the work that they did together

Speaker 4 that has helped me be here now.

Speaker 11 You are going to be arrested today.

Speaker 4 Police arrested Race immediately after his confession.

Speaker 16 You have anything informed himself?

Speaker 4 Eight months later, Race Udo pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted murder. He's serving 21 years to life.

Speaker 8 My parents saw him as their son at one point. I saw him as a brother.
And he took advantage of us wanting to be open and caring with him.

Speaker 3 It was upsetting and I couldn't believe it for a while. I was like, how can this be?

Speaker 3 Right under a nose, he was doing all this to our daughter. And I thank God that they're right next door because I think if they had been living someplace else, she would have died.

Speaker 5 I'm sure of that.

Speaker 4 So then you start going back in your head and you're replying all the times he brought you food, made you food. Was there an instance that stands out in your mind?

Speaker 7 He had made a breakfast sandwich and taken it to the bedroom for me

Speaker 7 and my son climbed up and wanted a piece and immediately his reaction is no don't give him any of it

Speaker 7 I think about that all the time

Speaker 4 that sandwich Race mentioned in his confession could have killed their son

Speaker 4 Emotionally, how are you doing?

Speaker 7 It's rough. It's still hard to stop and think about what happened, the amount of deception.
I can't really trust people, and what I've discovered is, you know, trusting myself is difficult too.

Speaker 4 Before they were married, Brigitta told Race that as a Catholic, she believed marriage was forever.

Speaker 5 How do you feel about divorce now?

Speaker 3 Um, yeah,

Speaker 7 I love the idea.

Speaker 4 This strong woman who once couldn't walk is now running again.

Speaker 4 It's been hard when at first

Speaker 4 I couldn't even walk without a walker. So it's been a very slow,

Speaker 4 slow progress. Physicier therapy though?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I remember being in the hospital and finding everything out and being so angry that I couldn't get up to go for a run.

Speaker 4 Right now though, Brigitta's focus is on embracing life and all its thrills.

Speaker 7 I've gone skydiving.

Speaker 7 I mean I've done different things.

Speaker 4 You're living life to the fullest now. Absolutely.

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