entire episode might have been a ploy for pignataro to get his medical license back. he gave debbie poison. she developed gastric symptoms. he then tried to convince her doctors to perform gallbladder surgery that she wouldn t survive. had debbie died during surgery, tony could argue, as he did in sarah smith s case, that people occasionally die in surgery and that he shouldn t have been singled out. and in tony s eyes, that would have vindicated him. see, my own wife died under a doctor s care in a hospital while having surgery, and that s what we felt was his prime motivation. but why didn t she die from the massive dose of arsenic? medical experts say this was miscalculation. when tony gave his wife smaller doses of poison, she developed a tolerance for it, so the higher
arsenic, pesticides and insecticides, anything that may contain arsenic. anything that looked suspicious, powdery was taken to be analyzed at the lab and came back negative. detectives interviewed debbie s daughter, since she, too, had some of the same symptoms as her mother. they asked her what she ate on the day she became ill. there was soup left on the kitchen table, and she ate some of it. that night she was vomiting. debbie then remembered an important detail, that tony made the soup that day. he brought me the bowl. and i remember saying, i can t eat all this. he s like, no, eat it, it s good for you. their daughter found some of that soup left over on the stove and took some. to find out exactly how long debbie had been ingesting arsenic, doctors decided to
study her hair. an arsenic combined to keratin, which is the major protein in hair. so, as the blood circulates through the body and it circulates to the root of the hair follicle, some of the arsenic will become incorporated in the hair follicle. when poison circulates in the body, it comes into contact with the hair follicles. so, traces of the poison will remain in the hair as it grows. since hair grows approximately 1 centimeter per month, a strand of hair can identify exactly when a person was poisoned. first, debbie s hair was divided into pieces, each 1 centimeter long. using atomic absorption spectrophotometry, a beam of light is passed through each hair sample. when the light is absorbed, the amount of light that is hitting the detector on the
doses later had less of an effect. i m sure he was thinking, i can t believe she s still alive. i can t believe i gave her so much and she s still here. i think he just got panicky, and it wasn t working, so i think that s when he just figured, i m just going to give her a massive dose and be over with. apparently, his daughter s ingestion of the arsenic was unintentional. investigators believe tony vandalized his own home to make debbie s illness appear to be retaliation for sarah smith s death. when i asked tony if he tried to kill his wife, he looked down at the table and told me, i can understand why some people might think that. but he never said yes and he never said no. when faced with the scientific evidence, tony pignataro confessed. he pled guilty to attempted first-degree assault and was
the change in intensity of light that s reaching the detector is directly proportional to the amount of arsenic in that sample. the computer-generated results were startling. debbie started receiving small doses of arsenic in may of 1999, and towards the end of july of 1999 she received a large dose, which was approximately 80 times what a normal human being should have in their system of arsenic. this timeline excluded members of sarah smith s family as possible suspects because they had moved to the midwest after sarah s death. investigators had only one other suspect with a possible motive. 73% of americans try. .to cook healthy meals. yet up to 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let s do more. .add one a day 50+. complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports physical energy