and i kind of lost it. antifreeze poisoning? that just yeah. the correct phrase for this at the corners report was talking tucked occasion by ethylene glycol. . ethylene glycol, being the active intoxicating ingredient in antifreeze. so, i was saying, what is that? ethylene glycol is antifreeze for chronic? so, it means it happened over a period of time. so once that kind of said in, i was shocked. i was speechless. and that s when something profound happened to mark podolak. maybe not at that moment but the decision snapped into place. from that moment on, when we found out, it was my mission to find to find an answer for. this a mission complicated by the fact that there was one very big question the corner couldn t answer. was matt death the result of some terrible mistake? or suicide? or was it murder? nobody knew. and so, the corner labeled the manner of death, undetermined.
going to die because of kidney stones three months after his death, matt podolak s family gathered for a meeting. matt family arranged. it before, that they told mark that they ve been discussing a wrongful death suit against the hospital where matt died my mom called me over and she said, we re going to talk with a lawyer, tonight we re gonna find out the next steps of what s going to happen. but matt s father wasn t exactly with her son, that was not what was going to happen so, when i got to her house, the whole family was there and i was like, where is the lawyer? and she s like, he s not here. no lawyer. something far more disturbing. the autopsy report matt s mother did not want her surviving son hearing about this over the phone, afraid of how he d react and i felt like it was almost like an intervention it was weird it was so surreal so, she sent me down in the whole family was there as a supporting. and they said, we got the corners report back. and it was antifr
to the hospital, teresa told the doctors to let him go. her son, josh, watched teresa make that agonizing decision. she was devastated, absolutely devastated. i could see it in her face. hard to do? uh-huh. ray s death was referred to dr. eric vey, the medical examiner in the erie county coroner s office. by the time mr. kotomski got to you, antifreeze poisoning was already suspected so you were looking specifically for that? my job at autopsy was just to confirm the presence of the crystals in the kidney which clearly indicated he had ethylene glycol on board. and he had those crystals, there was no question? no question, slam dunk. the medical examiner determined that the cause of death was ethylene glycol poisoning but the manner of death was listed as undetermined. teresa said ray told her he drank something sweet around the time he got sick, and antifreeze had a very sweet taste.
pennsylvania, on august 13th, 2009. there in the icu ray kotomski lay deathly ill. doctors tried to determine what was killing him, and blood work told the story. ray had somehow ingested a toxic dose of ethylene glycol, antifreeze but it looked as if they figured it out too late. even in small amounts, just a few ounces, it is almost always fatal. ray s daughter monica was with her dad. he was just laying in bed. how did he look? horrible. what were you thinking? i didn t know what to think because nothing was making any sense. ray kotomski had missed the narrow window in which antifreeze poisoning can be reversed. end-of-life discussions with doctors began. as his wife, it was teresa s call. three days after he was admitted
ray left it for a friend several hours after the state says teresa poisoned him. i m sorry. i m sorry. i m sorry. on the tape, the prosecution argued, ray sounds drunk. have i told you that i think you re a nice person? please call me back if you can. okay? bye. prosecutors say he was really in the stuperous of antifreeze poisoning. we contend that s when the antifreeze was ingested. and they argued it had to have been teresa who gave it to him because no one else was with ray then, and how did they know that? well, from what she told this fbi agent. she stated that over that week he did not have any visitors and she was the only one there. in addition to their science-based timeline that put teresa in the bullseye, the state wanted judge yost to consider teresa s behavior while