when debbie pignataro was diagnosed with arsenic poisoning, doctors also tested her husband, tony, and their two children. their daughter had higher than normal levels of arsenic in her system, but her son and husband were normal. well, our first thoughts were we needed to look at the source of water for that area of west seneca. prior to 1900, arsenic was the primary ingredient in embalming fluid and had caused groundwater contamination near several older cemeteries. tests showed no such problem in the water supply near the pignataros home. investigators began to suspect that debbie may have intentionally poisoned herself. it made me very angry.
far worse. anthony pignataro came from a good family. his father was a well-respected and excellent surgeon in buffalo. his mother was a fine person. after the pignataros reconciliation, debbie started to feel ill. i had thought i had the flu for months, just maybe a little case of the flu, because i would get nauseous and vomit and just not be myself. initially, neither her husband nor her doctors knew what to make of it. i was having trouble walking where i couldn t lift my legs. there was numbness in my legs and my hands. i diagnosed myodisplastic state, and the neurologist diagnosed other things, the gastroenterologist diagnosed pancreatitis. we just we didn t know how to bring it all together. so we were all puzzled.
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 doses later had less of an
tony thought debbie s gallbladder should have been surgically removed, but her doctors disagreed. i was so weak and my condition was so grave that i probably would have died on the table, i was told. but she got better. and when she got better we relaxed and thought, well, this isn t going to happen again. but debbie s symptoms returned again and again. the pain was getting worse. even more disturbing, her daughter started to experience the same symptoms but not nearly as severe. throughout that summer, debbie s condition deteriorated. she had severe memory loss and was relegated to a wheelchair because she was no longer able to walk. once again, she was admitted to the hospital. this time, dr. snyderman analyzed a sample of debbie s
study her hair. 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 that light is absorbed, the amount of light that is hitting the detector on the other end decreases.