quick thinking and amazing recall. >> leave pieces and parts of whatever you can behind, rip clothing, hair, fingernails, dig in, have at it. don't go away and leave us nothing, because what we might find might just be what's left over you. just after opening a car restoration business, phil roush became seriously ill. doctors had difficulty finding the cause. to forensic scientists, it looked like foul play.

phil was a salesman. in 1997 he quit to finally pursue his dream of starting an antique car restoration business. he called it top quality and it was housed in a garage near his home in bartlett, tennessee. >> phil was real excited about going into business. that was his dream. >> to no one's surprise, it was successful from the day it opened. with that success, there was the need to expand. he turned to his friend and next door neighbor, steve white, who was interested in investing in the business for partnership. his good friend also joined the company. >> as a matter of fact, everybody was happy with the way things were going. everybody was happy we got off to a good start. >> it was phil's knowledge, tall

length, and experience that made the company so successful. when phil became ill just two months after the shop opened, it was a serious blow. >> i didn't have any energy and my stomach gave me a lot of trouble. i had trouble with digestion. i had severe chest pains. my hands went numb. >> to make matters worse, medical tests couldn't find the cause. >> i had an ultrasound done, a cat scan and an ultrasound and all those tests came up negative. >> inexplicably, phil's condition continued to get worse. he lost 30 pounds and had difficulty walking and his cognitive abilities were also affected. >> he came home and he said, jill, i think i've got alzheimer's. i'm getting alzheimer's. and i said, what?

he said, i forgot my way to the shop. >> to protect his investment while phil was ill, steve white ran the day-to-day operations of the business. by december phil was convinced he was going to die. >> i was so sick, i was convinced that i was going to die. i thought the cold floor would take the burning out of my stomach. >> restoring old vehicles can require you using chemicals and solvents. phil wondered whether this had been his problem, but his doctors were doubtful since no one else in the shop became ill. then phil became convinced that someone was trying to kill him.

headquarters with an unusual request. he said if he died, he wanted the police to perform an autopsy because he thought someone was poisoning him. the police were skeptical. >> i noticed that the other detectives were walking around. in fact, one of them was kind of doing this. and i got upset. i got -- i got -- i got very aggravated with that. >> phil's family thought he was exaggerating. >> i wanted proof that something was being done to him. and we said, you should have waited. >> nothing in the world could have convinced me i was wrong that night or i wouldn't have never gone to the police station. if you don't think it took some cojones to go to the police station, you are wrong. >> phil was desperate. he was afraid that nothing would be able to save his life.

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just months after opening his vintage car restoration business, phil rouss was so sick, he could no longer run the business on a day-to-day basis. his best friend, next door

neighbor, and business partner, steve white, was now running the business. >> my business partner told me not to worry about it. he said, if you're sick, you stay home. stay home and get well. >> while sitting home, phil rouss heard rumors that his company wasn't paying its bills. >> we were taking money in. but money was never distributed back to our suppliers to pay their bills. >> rouss went to the bank and discovered that ten company checks written by his partner had bounced because of insufficient funds. and he also learned why the company had no money. >> and when i got copies of the checks, i can be honest with you, i was not happy with what i saw. he was paying for his personal cell phone bill. $70, $80 a month. he was paying for his own military insurance. he was making checks to this local wine and spirits company

somewhere close, a store buying booze. >> and phil noticed that steve white had written a check to a company called american national for $127. when he didn't recognize the company, rouss decided to call. >> she said it's life insurance. i says, can you tell me more about it? she said, well, it's for $100,000. and the beneficiary and owner of the policy is steve allen white. >> but the life insurance policy wasn't on steve white's life. it was on phil rouss'. and there was no reciprocal policy on steve white's life naming rouss as the beneficiary. leona white says her husband did nothing wrong. that they were only trying to protect their investment in the event of phil's death. >> steve wasn't into auto restoring. his involvement with the business had been more from a

business management standpoint. >> we kept trying to have business meetings so we could see the checkbook, which we had never seen. every time we go to have a meeting, steve would get up and get angry and storm out of the house. so we were getting a little bit suspicious. >> the final straw came when steve white closed the company's bank accounts without telling phil, who found out through the bank teller. >> she said, well, mr. white came in two days ago, walked out of the bank with $2,943 and closed the account. and she said the reason i mentioned it to you, mr. rouss, is because there were checks outstanding. and he said he didn't care. he just wanted the money. >> rouss believed that as 50% owner of the business, he had the power to halt all such transactions. but he was wrong. when phil's lawyer reviewed the

partnership agreement, he discovered that phil only owned 2% of the business. steve white owned the remaining 98%. >> well, i signed a lot of things in 1997. if steve came over and said, you need to sign this, because this is whatever, we would sign it. >> he was completely duped into signing this contract. >> phil now began to suspect his partner and decided to visit dr. kevin merigian, one of the top forensic toxicologists in the united states. >> he was one of the worst cases that i had seen. so, i mean, he's very, very sick. >> and i said, well, i think i'm being murdered. i don't how. i don't know how, i don't know what's being used on me. >> dr. merigian analyzed phil's urine test which had been done earlier, and he also performed a physical examination.

but before the results were in, phil had more bad news. all of the business assets he brought with him to the company, which included the building and real estate, had been transferred to his partner, steve white, and put up for sale. phil rouss was not only dying, he was now penniless.

phil rouss began to suspect that the improprieties in his business and his suspicions of being poisoned might somehow be related. >> mr. rouss wasn't very functional, if you would say, cognitively. he had a lot of the -- he had inability to concentrate, focus. he was very anxious. >> to find the cause of the illness, phil's urine was sent for a heavy metals test. the test revealed phil had arsenic in his system. a level of 63 is in the high range. but far from lethal. normally, there is no arsenic in one's system unless the person has consumed large amounts of seafood, which phil had not.

>> he said, mr. rouss, do you know anybody that might want you dead? >> dr. merigian suspected phil was being poisoned. phil tried to recall anything suspicious about the time he spent with his partner, steve white. and then he remembered. every time he and steve had a meal or a drink together, phil's health deteriorated. >> i noticed it several times when we ate together. i would get sick afterwards. >> even more alarming, steve white was a chemist by training and taught chemistry at the local high school. as a final forensic test, dr. merigian gave phil rouss very specific instructions. >> i told him, don't cut your hair. and then i would be able to clip it and send it to a laboratory for analysis. >> when someone is exposed to poison, it goes through the body

and is usually excreted. but it also gets deposited in the hair root at the time of the exposure. when the hair grows out, the shaft becomes an historic record of when the exposure took place. when phil's hair grew longer, a strand was sent for an icp test, which tests for 22 different metal components at the same time. the hair was cut into quarter-inch pieces, marked and then each piece was placed in a separate vial, mixed with acidified water and boiled for seven hours. this cocktail was then put through the icp. the test results were startling. when phil was in the hospital, his hair showed no exposure to poison. but prior to that when phil was

living at home, dr. merigian found traces of another poison, mercury. >> i believe that he was ingesting it. i didn't know who or why it would be delivered to him. but i had no doubt he was poisoned with heavy metals. >> state law requires that police be notified when any poison is found in someone's system. when the bartlett police department learned of the poisoning and the financial dispute between phil and his partner, they took out a search warrant to search steve white's home. >> i thought that at that time, well, now we have something to look into. and we were going to investigate it as a criminal matter. >> in white's backyard, in a storage shed, they found a laboratory. >> it kind of looked like a mini science lab, like a chemistry lab. makeshift lab, you know? there were several different jars of unusual-looking powders,

strange looking, like burners and things like that that you would see in a science lab. >> leona white says the reason her husband had the lab was for their children, as a way to interest them in science. >> he would do things like mix baking powder and vinegar to make a volcano. >> but investigators soon discovered items in the shed that were anything but child's play. in a glass jar labeled "baking powder," forensic scientists found traces of mercury and arsenic. the arsenic was a special formulation which won't be identified here except to say it was odorless and tasteless. detective bailey confronted white with the lab results. >> and he had told me, that was crazy, absurd, and ridiculous. he said, there's no way there's arsenic in that. bring it to me and i'll drink every bit of it. a few minutes later, he said if i was going to kill this guy, i

wouldn't use arsenic, i would do it with something much quicker and legal. >> everything in his statement that he gave to the police, a 21-page rambling statement, was false. and i'm not even sure if steve white is his real name. >> a search of the car restoration office produced an envelope hidden behind the electrical panel. analysis of the materials inside revealed arsenic, antimony, mercury, and lead, each a highly toxic metal. a forensic document examiner compared the handwriting on the envelope to known samples of steve white's and concluded they were both similar. steve white was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of phil rouss. but important questions

remained. how did the poisons get into phil rouss' body? al decongestant. is that really a thing? it sounds made up. i can't sleep when i'm all stuffy. i take offense to that. i'm not going to argue with a talking ball of mucus. i think you're being a little hasty... he's not with me. mucinex fast max night time. multi-symptom relief plus nasal decongestant. breathe easy. sleep easy. start the relief. ditch the misery. let's end this. let'at your credit. >>i know i have a 786 fico score, thanks to all the tools and help on experian.com. so how are we going to sweeten this deal? floor mats... clear coats... >>you're getting warmer... leather seats... >>and this... my wife bought me that. get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out

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forensic toxicology proved phil rouss had been poisoned by heavy metals. and similar poisons had been found in the home of his business partner, steve white. but prosecutors didn't have

enough evidence to show how phil rouss was poisoned. >> we were never able to prove conclusively how he got these compounds into mr. rouss' system. we were able to prove that he had ample opportunity. >> phil rouss recalled a number of incidents with steve white marked by unusual behavior. prior to his illness, phil and steve were having dinner at a local restaurant. not long after placing their order, white complained about the poor service. >> i think i'll go see what's going on. >> he got up and went into the kitchen and came back with phil's entree, but not his own. there was another incident involving a bottle of wine. >> mr. white made a bottle of wine, brought it to mr. rouss and insisted he drink all of it and insisting he get the bottle back. because he wanted to give mr. rouss some more. >> and white would often visit

phil at home to share a cup of coffee and talk about work. but phil says steve would frequently ask phil to get something from another room, leaving steve alone with the coffee. phil and kimo coehlo recalled a time when white offered to get them hamburgers for lunch. >> after eating these, they both became very ill. and they actually made a joke about how they're never going to send steve white out to get food again because it's going to make us sick again. >> when confronted with the evidence, steve white denied any involvement with phil's illness. his lawyer claimed that the accusations were circumstantial, and that there was no proof that white was in any way involved. the defense also pointed out that the lab results showed only trace amounts of the various heavy metals in rouss' body, but never a lethal amount.

the prosecution claimed this was intentional, that mr. white wanted phil to die slowly after a prolonged illness, so there would be no suspicions. >> i hate to say ideal, but it actually is the ideal way of trying to harm someone, because if you're not focused or you're not suspicious of it, the physician won't see it. >> the prosecution says the motive was money, that phil rouss' death would have enabled white to get out of debt. white had over $90,000 in credit card debt, a substantial amount for a public schoolteacher. >> $100,000 life insurance policy could pay his way out of debt. if mr. rouss had died, he also would have inherited 100% of a small business. >> after a week-long trial, the jury found steve white guilty of

first-degree attempted murder, theft, and sales tax violations. he was sentenced to 31 years in prison. >> if it hadn't been for the heavy metals test and dr. merigian running all the tests on my husband, he would have been dead. >> his antique automobile restoration business is now closed. to this day, white maintains his innocence. >> these people were our friends for 14 years. i mean, we thought they were our friends. i couldn't believe that he had made that charge against steve. i know steve didn't do it. >> phil still has numbness in his extremities and is unable to walk due to nerve damage. >> this guy that i know, he was my business partner, he's going to jail.

i don't know for how long. i don't know. i may be crippled the rest of my life. i said, two families are devastated. who won today? you tell me. you tell me. tell me who won here today. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com in 1992, there were more than 70 suspicious fires set in seattle, washington, during a six-month period of time. all appeared deliberately set. it was the biggest arson case in american history, solved with behavioral profiling, hypnosis and piece of art. [ sirens blaring ] >> on the night of august 9, 1992, firefighters outside seattle, washington, faced a