i don t know what california standards are, but you would think that california would be closer to the cutting edge. this was far behind the cutting edge. and those responsibilities made it very difficult to show with any certainty to the insurance company or to a court or anyone else exactly what the cause of death here was. what troubled keeney were the photographs taken of donna shortly before her death. they told a story that was much different from the mcginnises account.
Transcripts for CNN Forensic Files 20140705 06:15:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
even though he and donna were already married to other people. the mcginnises filed a claim to collect on the life insurance policy just one day after donna s death. virginia plopped the insurance policy down on the desk of the agent. he looked up and said you re kidding. she is dead? well, it s a pretty incredible story, but, you know, in the end, you have to pause. surely somebody somewhere bought a life insurance policy and had the bad luck to have the deceased die the next day. it s not proof, but it sure stinks. [ kevin ] this is connolly, cameron, zach, and clementine.
the policies were so low, insurance companies didn t question the settlement. the insurance policy virginia purchased on donna hartman s life was also suspicious. every single piece of that policy was either forged or fake except for the name of the person who would die. donna hartman signed the policy and her signature was witnessed by alice kessain. alice lived next door to the mcginnises but she denied signing the insurance form. as proof she pointed out her name was misspelled on the document. people don t misspell their own names when they sign their names. that s a red flag to the document examiner, to the prosecutor, to anyone involved in the case. alice kessain s signature did not match her own signature samples and it had an unusual backward slant.
professional standards. if i had to object, it would be that it appeared that the possibility that foul play was really not taken into account. so that extra measure perhaps was not done in this case. the doctor who performed the autopsy was not a forensic pathologist, but he did something virtually unheard of at the time. for reasons not entirely clear, he kept a vial of donna s blood in refrigerated storage, and two years after her death, it was sent to the forensic lab for testing. a sample was placed in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. which broke the blood down into its chemical components. traces of a common antidepressant known as elavil were clearly present in donna s blood. in someone who had never taken the drug before, i believe