Friday, February 2, 2001
Friday, February
2, 2001
Rare Poison Tied to Woman's Death
Family had body exhumed in hope of solving medical mystery
Lance Williams,
Chronicle Staff Writer
Fresno -- Linda Adanalian, 37, a vibrant, energetic soccer mom with four small children, a lovely home and a deteriorating marriage, collapsed in the parking lot after taking the kids to see "The Little Mermaid" ice show here.
Gasping for breath, pulse racing, her body shivering with convulsions, she was rushed to the emergency room.
"I'm scared -- what's wrong with me?" she asked in the ambulance.
Last Feb. 11, half an hour after she arrived at Fresno Community Hospital, Adanalian suffered a cardiovascular collapse and died. Doctors tried for more than an hour to revive her. They had no idea why she died.
Despite 11 months, two autopsies, batteries of medical tests and a police investigation, Fresno County Coroner David Hadden has been unable to solve what he has termed the "perplexing" case of Linda Adanalian.
But now, with the aid of some high-powered medical and investigative help, Adanalian's father says he has found evidence that may unravel one of the most baffling and heartbreaking medical mysteries ever seen in this sprawling Central Valley metropolis.
Scientific tests performed at Minnesota's famed Mayo Clinic and reviewed by an expert on exotic toxins show that her death was caused by a fatal dose of an unusual poison: selenium.
It's a trace element used in everything from vitamin supplements to firearms manufacturing, but it's almost never the cause of a person's death, says the Mayo Clinic's Dr. Eric Pfiefer, who supervised the lab tests that led to the discovery late last year.
"It's so rare that a forensic pathologist will hardly ever find this in his or her lifetime," he says.
A lawyer for the victim's husband downplays the findings, saying they conflict with another lab test.
But if the results hold up, they raise profound questions about Linda's death, says veteran homicide investigator Jack Baugh, retired chief of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and a friend of her family.
"She didn't ingest this stuff by herself," he says. To Baugh, the mystery of her death has become a murder mystery, and somebody needs to get on it.
"There is no question in my mind it's a homicide," he says.
Linda Dalition grew up on the Peninsula in a big Armenian American family. She graduated from Notre Dame High School in Belmont, attended Saint Mary's College in Moraga and then transferred to Fresno State.
She graduated and taught school in Fresno. On a blind date arranged by a cousin, she met Mark Adanalian, also a Fresno State alum from an Armenian American family.
They wed in 1987. Mark became a successful salesman of high-quality carpeting. Linda quit teaching to start a big family: three girls and a boy, ranging in age from 2 to 7 when she died.
Mark's business was booming, Linda told her father, a retired airline pilot from San Carlos. In 1999, they moved into her dream home, a 3,500-square-foot house in nearby Clovis, with a pool, a half-acre lot and a dramatically remodeled kitchen.
But by then, Linda had told her family that the marriage was falling apart. There were bitter quarrels, long silences, "extreme marital discord" that sometimes made Linda feel afraid, as her family characterized it on the Web site they set up after her death.
Linda detailed her problems to her family doctor in 1999, medical records show. She said Mark's temper was getting worse and that he was somewhat verbally abusive to her and to the children. The doctor sent them to marriage counseling.
Linda wasn't optimistic, says her sister, but she seemed determined to keep the marriage together for the children's sake.
Mark's attorney, Warren Paboojian, says the problems weren't that bad. Despite stresses, in 13 years of marriage there was never a separation and no domestic violence, he says.
And there were still family events. On the night before Linda's death, they took the kids to an Appleby's restaurant to celebrate their daughter Kiley's second birthday.
The next morning, she awoke with what seemed like bad stomach flu, she told a friend. Still, she pulled herself out of bed to go to the ice show.
Even in the first moments of grief and shock, George Dalition wanted to know what killed his daughter.
His concerns increased after Linda's funeral, when the autopsy was inconclusive. Coroner's aides pointed out that no medical explanation was ever found in as many as 3 percent of all deaths, but that didn't stop Dalition. He called Stanford University, then the Mayo Clinic, looking for medical experts willing to review his daughter's case.
"I was going to find the answer," he says.
And early on, according to court records, Dalition asked the Fresno police to investigate Mark.
Within weeks, Mark's attorney learned of Dalition's suspicions from the Fresno homicide detective who was assigned to the probe.
That worsened Mark's already-frayed relations with his in-laws, according to court records. The Dalitions wanted to take the children away from him, Mark claimed.
In May, the in-laws squared off in Fresno County Superior Court. Linda's father wanted her body exhumed for a second autopsy. Mark said there was no point. Many tests had been performed, nothing suspicious had been uncovered, and the police had closed their investigation, his attorney told the judge. A priest in the Armenian Apostolic Church also opposed the exhumation, saying it violated the Armenian faith.
Nevertheless, a second autopsy was allowed. This one was witnessed by Pfiefer from the Mayo Clinic. Once again, the coroner found no cause of death.
Paboojian, Mark's attorney, says it's likely Linda died of a coronary spasm,
but her parents persist in suggesting that Mark was involved.
"They have accused him of this, but Mark has nothing to hide, and he's done nothing wrong," he says. "He's a victim, too, like the rest of the family."
Back in Minnesota, Pfiefer did his own screens on tissues collected at the autopsy.
He ordered tests for arsenic, lead, pesticides and 1,500 different prescription drugs. All came back negative. Then, the vague memory of a TV program led him to order a screen for selenium.
In nature, selenium is found in soil and in plants and animals that live where it is present in high concentrations. Small amounts are necessary to sustain life, but at high levels, the colorless, tasteless substance can be as poisonous as arsenic, says Henry A. Spiller, director of the Kentucky Regional Poison Center and a national expert on selenium poisoning.
Livestock that graze on ranges with high selenium levels can sicken and die.
In the 1980s, selenium contamination at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in Merced County killed thousands of ducks and caused thousands of others to be born with grotesque deformities.
Today, some health food stores tout it as an antioxidant with cancer- fighting properties; it's often sold mixed with Vitamin E. There are many industrial and agricultural uses: as a catalyst in the petrochemical industry, in insecticides and in gun-blueing, which gives a gun barrel its blue sheen.
But cases of fatal selenium poisoning in humans are rare, Spiller says -- only eight or nine cases in recent medical literature, most of them accidents or suicides.
At least one selenium case was notorious.
In 1995, wealthy Orange County computer consultant Richard Overton was convicted of murdering his wife by putting selenium in her eyeliner and cyanide in her drinks. An ex-wife testified that Overton had once admitted trying to kill her by spiking her coffee with selenium.
The weird case was fictionalized in a popular movie for TV, "Lethal Vows," which was broadcast on the CBS network four months before Linda Adanalian died.
The Discovery Channel also ran a documentary about the case. Pfiefer remembered the program, and it prompted him to run a selenium screen.
When he found more than six times the normal level of selenium in Linda's liver, he brought in Spiller, the expert in Kentucky.
Spiller said he had no doubt that the woman had recently suffered a massive
--and fatal -- exposure to selenium. The level of poison in her system, her symptoms when she collapsed and especially her failure to respond to heroic measures to save her life at the hospital were "classic" signs of selenium poisoning, he wrote to Pfiefer.
On Monday, Linda's father took Spiller's report to the coroner, hoping the mystery was solved. Officials promised to study the report carefully.
But Mark's attorney downplayed it, saying that the coroner last year had tested Linda's blood for selenium and found only normal levels. That undercuts the idea that she had recently ingested a large amount of the poison, he said.
The expert was working for Linda's parents, and "I'm a little suspicious of his findings," Paboojian said.
E-mail Lance Williams at
lmwilliams@sfchronicle.com.
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