Armando Alcaraz
Appearances
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And I was a bit skeptical. I thought it was still going to be enough contamination and at such low levels that we weren't going to be able to see it. And we would then have to sort of pull that needle, you know, out of a haystack.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
Yeah, at that point, you don't know whether it was actually real urine or whether water seepage had gotten into that coffin and there was moisture in it. And that's what you're analyzing.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And the reason is it breaks down real fast. And when it breaks down into the metabolites, those metabolites can be found in the human body anyway. So how could you go into a court of law and say, well, here we found these metabolites? Well, the defense lawyers are going to go, well, and what does that mean? They're normally found in a human body anyway.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
But with Pavalon, there's no reason why a person should have that drug in their system unless they had a procedure or somebody injected them with it.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
spike it, put the chemical in it, and then just allow it to putrefy. And then you take it out and homogenize it. You basically put it in a blender and make milkshake out of it. Your face in this moment.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
There's these two notorious chemicals, putrescine and cadaverine. So just the names themselves kind of give you an indication of what it smells like. Cadaverine?
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
Cadaverine and putrescine.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
It's everything awful you could think of that's rotting. That's what it smells like. And so I have to tell you this story because I spoke to Brian and we would be working late at night, you know, trying to get these samples through. And he would be blending these tissues up with the blender. And even though we were doing all this in the chemical hoods, you could still smell that stuff.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And it would penetrate your clothes. It would get into your clothes. And so it would already be maybe 930 at night. It was late, you know, and he said, I'm going to go and I'd leave, too. And he'd go to the grocery store to go buy some stuff to eat.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And so he would be standing in line and people would start to just move away from him because he had sort of was, you know, that smell of death was just in his clothes and in his hair and everything.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
They had that task force that was just sitting there waiting for the results so they could move forward. So that was putting a lot of pressure on us, and that's why we were working late.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
No, but what the heck's going on? And so the instrument would start leaking on me, the solvents, and I'd be frustrated and just like, oh, pulling my hair out.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
He goes, I think we're there. It was solid. Actually, what the cartridge did was it acted like a magnet where it would just collect the drug or things similar to the drug and sort of it gripped onto it. And then it allowed us to then wash off all of like the tobacco products and other biomaterials that were in the tissue. But the drug stayed attached. But yeah, that was amazing.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
That was a magic cartridge.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
We didn't see anything. I mean, there was no signal. Then the second set of samples for the second patient and there was nothing there. And then, you know, the third one, nothing there. And then I'm thinking, oh, God, what's going on? Is there just nothing in some of these tissues? You start to doubt whether you're going to see anything.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And I was like, I got something here. It's there. And so I ran over to Brian. I pretty much ran over there saying, you got to look at this. We got a hit on this. It's confirmed. It's there. It was that, yes, we did it. So then we were we were on a roll and we started looking at various tissues from that individual.
Serial Killers
Holiday Break: How a Nuclear Lab Helped Catch a Serial Killer
And sure enough, we were getting positives on the kidney, on the bladder tissue, on the brain. So all of these that one patient was hot. Wow.