ray was dying. in the gallery monica wept as her younger sister, kimberly, testified how teresa ended life support for their father without consulting ray s side of the family and the terms she said teresa dictated for releasing ray s body to her. the conditions were that i had to have him cremated and that she wanted to make sure i wouldn t be the beneficiary. it was all part of a pattern, prosecutors argued, that added up to murder. the state contends there was absolutely no evidence that it was all reasonable to conclude that anyone other than the defendant, mrs. kotomski, is the one who provided that antifreeze to her husband. when the defense had its turn, attorney hentemann told the judge the state had no case, not a scrap of evidence. he got the fbi agent who took teresa s initial statement to concede she may have been confused about whether she was
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.
even with ray on the day the state says she poisoned him. she may have been wrong about that, correct? she could have been wrong about that. this was suicide, he argued, not murder, and what practically proved it according to the defense was the fact that ray did nothing to save himself. and one can conclude if someone gave you poison and you became ill, what would be the first thing you would do? you would call the police or you would call a hospital. that never occurred. hentemann then attacked the state s most glaring weakness, a total lack of physical evidence connecting his client to containers of antifreeze. lead detective taylor cleveland was cross-examined about the absence of any forensics. did you find any dna on the part of mrs. kotomski? no, we found no dna of mr. kotomski or otherwise. and you found no fingerprints of mrs. kotomski on the can,
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