that's, you can plan, you can calculate, you can try to manipulate the circumstances or the surroundings, but you will always leave a piece of trace evidence behind. a young fireman's untimely death raised suspicions. when a young policeman died the same way, it was no coincidence. scientists wondered if these tiny crystals were the cause. a fireman's job is exceptionally dangerous and for randy thompson, the year 2000 was particularly troublesome. first, he fell off a fire truck in georgia and broke his nose. when he had surgery to repair the damage, he developed a life

threatening staph infection. >> the doctors told him this is a very, very serious situation. you can die from this very easily. >> randy survived that but his health problems continued. one of his friends found him sprawled on his kitchen floor vomiting and incoherent. >> he started hallucinating. he looked at me and said get back in your damn cage. i said what are you talking about, randy? i said get in your cage. then i realized he thought he was talking to his bird. >> this was diagnosed as a severe stomach virus. but gradually he improved thanks to help from his common law wife, lynn. >> he said i'm stronger and stronger. lynn made me grilled cheese with sweet tea. i held it down. didn't throw it up. i said good, randy. that's good. maybe you're on the uphill side of this. >> two days later his condition

deteriorated and randy thompson died. >> horrible. a daddy taken from his children for no reason. a man taken from a career that he loved for no reason. >> at randy's autopsy, toxicology tests found no trace of drugs or alcohol in his system but the medical examiner found evidence of heart trouble. >> he did have an enlarged heart and he did have significant coronary artery disease so as a consequence i described this gentleman's sudden unexpected death with his heart disease. >> that was hard for us to swallow because he had never had any heart problems before. i was devastated. it was an experience i don't ever want to have again. >> randy left behind his common law wife, lynn, and their two young children. he was just 32 years old. >> the very last thing he asked me was do you think i'm going to

die? >> as time passed, randy thompson's friends and family gradually came to terms with his untimely death until a few weeks later when randy's mother got a letter from a total stranger, the mother of a dead policeman from the next town over. the contents of the letter were shocking. >> i want to share my sorrow in the loss of your son, randy. my son, glen, died six years ago mysteriously. >> i didn't really know what to think. everything she told me was exactly what happened to randy. ♪

♪ fill their bowl with the meaty tastes they're looking for, with friskies grillers. tender meaty pieces and crunchy bites. in delicious chicken, beef, turkey, and garden veggie flavors. friskies grillers. that, my friends, is everything. and with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase. not just "everything at the hardware store." not "everything, until you hit your cash back limit."

quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. say it with me -- everything. one more time, everything! and with that in mind... what's in your wallet?

a few weeks after randy thompson's death, his mother got a letter. >> i want to share my sorrow in the loss of your son, randy. >> it was from a woman who claimed her son died under similar circumstances and suggested the two deaths were somehow related. >> i was shocked. her son and my son died the

exact same way. the report from the hospital, the autopsy reports, everything was just the same. >> thompson did not believe me. that can't be true. that can't be true. >> six years earlier, glen turner, a police officer, had the same symptoms as randy thompson. >> he was so sick i could hear his voice shaking when he talked to me. he said he had an unbelievable stomach virus. he couldn't get rid of it. he was vomiting. couldn't stop vomiting. he had diarrhea and said i've never been this sick. >> he was also incoherent and hallucinating. >> his wife said he had a really bad night. in the middle of the night he got up and began hallucinating and running around the house and pulled out his weapon and thought there were intruders trying to get inside the house. >> glen's wife coaxed him back into bed.

the next morning he appeared to be better. but a few hours later, glen turner died. >> the medical examiner made the statement in the autopsy that he died with a irregular heartbeat. that was nothing that he ever had a problem with. >> glen's mother immediately suspected foul play. she asked his friends in law enforcement to investigate his death but she got nowhere. >> they kept telling me that he died of natural causes and there was no reason to go any further because it costs too much money and there was no foul play in his life. >> i still had strong suspicions there was something else involved in it but the m.e. stated that's what it was. i'm not a medical examiner so i pretty much had to accept it. >> and that's how it stood until six years later when the turner family learned that randy

thompson died the same way. it was difficult to fathom how two civil servants in two neighboring towns, both in their early 30s, died so suddenly until both families realized they had something else in common. the two men were both living with the same woman when they died. lynn turner. >> i couldn't turn to get on the phone quick enough. i called the lead investigator and i just basically said you need to go out there and seal off the apartment. do what you need to do. i'm telling you there's no way you could have two young guys like this pass away. >> when questioned, lynn turner claimed it was just a tragic coincidence. and local prosecutors found no evidence the two deaths were connected. after all, lynn turner had no

criminal history. >> i actually just thought that it was really bad luck that lynn had been involved with two men who died that way. >> and friends pointed out that lynn's common law husband randy thompson had very little life insurance. just $35,000. hardly enough to kill for. and toxicology tests on both randy thompson and glen turner found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in their systems. >> we still had strong suspicions that something she had done to him that caused his death. i'm not an m.e. i couldn't prove it. >> then investigators made a startling discovery. even though randy thompson had only $35,000 worth of life insurance, lynn was in a big hurry to collect it. >> we were able to determine through cell phone records that on the day of randy's funeral, between the time of the service

and the church and the service that was held at the cemetery, lynn was on her cell phone trying to contact the insurance company. >> maybe there was more to the death of these two men than first appeared.

what are the chances that two civil servants both in their early 30s would die under mysterious circumstances from heart disease? >> the southeast part of the country leads the nation in cardiovascular disease and in our office it is not uncommon that we see young men, men of mr. thompson's age, that have heart disease. >> toxicology tests on the first victim, policeman glen turner showed no signs of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system. but during randy thompson's autopsy, the medical examiner found calcium crystals in his kidneys. these could be the result of prescription medications or it could be a sign of poisoning. >> the first thing i did was reach across my desk and pick up the phone and call the toxicology department and ask

that a test be performed. >> it's the chemical name for antifreeze. >> when we ran the sample from randy thompson and analyzed it, the results came back negative for a significant quantity. >> but the medical examiner had a hard time believing that. >> i thought that was very strange and bizarre. >> then the doctor learned what happened to lynn turner's first husband, glen, six years earlier. on a hunch, he reviewed glen turner's autopsy report. >> i looked at all of the tissues and polarized the kidney as i do in all my cases and to my surprise there were crystals in glen turner's kidneys. >> so the doctor went back to the toxicology lab and asked them to recheck the test results on randy thompson's tissue samples.

and the lab discovered they made a mathematical error. >> i immediately realized i made an error in calculating the initial concentration in randy thompson's blood and it was off by a factor of ten. when we made the appropriate correction for the mathematical error that i made, it suddenly became a lethal level. >> i've been doing this for almost 20 years now. this is the first time that such a mistake has ever been brought to my attention. >> the medical examiner now knew that randy thompson's death was a homicide. >> based on the corrected toxicology report, it was quite obvious that mr. thompson died as a consequence of an acute intoxication or poisoning. >> when i found out randy died from antifreeze poisoning, i knew when they exhumed glen's

body and they took those tissues, i knew they would find he died from the exact same causes. >> and that's precisely what happened. officials exhumed glen turner's body, retested his tissue samples and confirmed there was a lethal amount of antifreeze in his system. >> it's a mixed feeling. you're happy that you got something happening but you're not happy to hear what you hear. >> investigators did some digging into lynn turner's background and uncovered more incriminating evidence. first, was her visit to an animal shelter shortly before randy thompson's murder. >> lynn had inquired about what the animal shelter uses to euthanize animals. what chemical they use. >> she had claimed she had a stray cat problem and was

wondering what it was that she could do about them. >> the manager of lynn turner's bank told investigators lynn had serious financial problems. >> she had a lot of debts outstanding. a lot of credit cards where she was being charged for insufficient funds or late charges adding up to several thousands of dollars monthly. >> lynn had a middle class income but she spent like she was a millionaire. she lived well beyond her means. >> that wasn't all. >> lynn had gone to the bank a few weeks before randy died and told one of the bank officials that she would have everything taken care of, all her payments, mortgages, everything, et cetera, taken care of in just a few weeks. >> prosecutors believed the motive for both murders was money. lynn turner was the beneficiary of her first husband's $150,000 life insurance policy and also

received his pension payments of $750 a month. she was all set to collect $200,000 from randy thompson's life insurance policy, but investigators found evidence that randy double-crossed her. >> this also raised the possibility that randy might have suspected lynn was trying to harm him. investigators also learned that a container of anti-freeze had been found in the home lynn shared with her husband glen turner. although, at the time, no one found this suspicious. so lynn turner was arrested on two counts of first-degree murder.

she insisted she was innocent. and was sure there wasn't enough evidence to convict her. >> lynn was smart. lynn wanted to be a police officer. she knew a lot. she knew how to commit the crime, she knew what they'd look for, and she knew how to create an alibi. [ female announcer ] there's a gap out there. that's keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. at humana, we believe if healthcare changes, if it becomes simpler... if frustration and paperwork decrease... if grandparents get to live at home instead of in a home... the gap begins to close. so let's simplify things. let's close the gap between people and care. ♪

you know that dream... on my count. the one where you step up and save the day? make it happen. (crowd) oh no... introducing verizon xlte. hey guys, i got it right here! we've doubled our 4g lte bandwidth in cities coast to coast. so take on more. with xlte. for best results, use verizon.

lynn turner met her first husband, glen, while working as a 911 operator. less than two years later, glen told friends, the marge was in trouble. >> he said that they only had sex twice after they were married. that she had some kind of female problem and wasn't able to have sex. we're all thinking to ourselves, i could name three or four other guys she's seeing that she's having sex with. of course, i couldn't say anything to him. >> he also told friends lynn was spending money faster than he could earn it. >> he said, here i am working all these jobs, here she just run them all back up again. she had a stack of credit cards and just spend, spent. >> while lynn was married to glen, she met randy thompson, a fireman from a nearby town. randy's family says lynn lied

about her marital status. >> she told us that she had bp married but she was divorced. she told us that. we assumed she was divorced. >> her primary motive for murdering glen was for the money. i think a secondary motive was to be with randy thompson. >> the forensic evidence suggests lynn put anti-freeze in glen's food, possibly in gelatin. since this was found in his stomach during autopsy. glen fell violently ill and died. lynn collected $150,000 from his life insurance along with his pension of $750 a month. >> i knew she didn't love him. i figure she'd use him and spit him back out. but i never thought that she'd kill him. >> just a few weeks after glen's

funeral, lynn moved in with randy thompson. although they had two children together, they were never legally married. probably because lynn would have had to forfeit glen turner's pension. >> i believe that's why she didn't marry randy. she'd have lost glen's pension by remaring. so she didn't marry. she's smart. she knew that money was out. >> it wasn't long before randy thompson told friends just as glen turner had that he was unhappy with lynn. >> it was almost comical the way they fought, cat and dog, back and forth. i asked, why do you even take phone calls. well, she's the mom of my kids and my -- well, okay. whatever. >> an employee of a local animal shelter said that lynn wanted to buy the chemicals they used to euthanize cats.

but they refused to sell them to her. >> she didn't want to use anti-freeze again. she checked around. she wanted to use something different to kill randy. but she wasn't confident enough to use anything else, so she went back to what she used before. >> randy told friends lynn prepared his lunch shortly before he became violently ill. a gliled cheese sandwich and sweet tea. within a day, randy was dead. it was only after his death that lynn learned that randy allowed his $200,000 life insurance policy to lapse just 11 days earlier. when these murders happened, anti-freeze had a taste that could easily be masked with sweet-tasting foods. the industry has since modified anti-freeze so that it is now unpalatable.

>> we the jury, find the defendant, guilty of malice murder. >> in may of 2004, lynn turner was convicted for killing her husband, glen. three years later, in 2007, lynn was also convicted of randy thompson's murder. she is currently serving a life sentence with no chance for parole. >> you hear the guilty verdict was very difficult. you don't like to hear that your daughter-in-law has done something like this to anybody. >> despite the mathematical misstep by the toxicology lab, scientists eventually discovered the truth about what happened to both randy thompson and glen turner. >> it was a challenging case to get it all out there even though it really was quite simple in that you had two men who had been involved with her and both had died the exact same way.

>> forensic evidence, without it, we had nothing. it would have been just a bunch of hearsay and rumors. but the forensic evidence it was all the nails in the coffin. it was the hammer that put everything away. it was one of the strangest cases in canadian history. a squashed piece of fruit and a tiny pinpoint reflection in a picture was the only evidence. but was it enough to catch a killer? on june 19th, 1989, there was a thunderstorm in callingwood, ontario. but the rain didn't stop 33 year debbie tinlock from venturing out that night. >> she was a pretty vivacious woman that loved to ski and had a sailboat in the harbor.