presentation for cize, brought presentation for cize, brought to you by beachbody. she was a rare gem to have as a friend and we were lucky to have been with her. >> a bright and beautiful teen invites a friend to sleep over. the next morning, she's dead. >> oh, my god. i don't feel a pulse. >> what in the world happened sfwlrvelgts how could this be. >> turned out, this was no ordinary slumber party. >> we know from their phones this was a planned event. they had discussed it, they took pictu pictures. >> stories surfacing of a dangerous experiment. >> the main purpose of having the sleep over was to try it. >> an experiment that just might tempt other teens. >> we know it's entered our high

school s. >> why the clues in this mystery would save a life in your family. >> you have a lot of people watching "dateline." they need to talk to their kids. >> i'm lester holt and this is "dateline." here's kate snow with "one small dose." >> they're killing our kids and we need to do something about it. >> it's a new threat. >> she said, erin, your best friend died and kept yelling it over and over. >> these teens found out about it the hard way. >> one of those you're not going to see it in your life kind of dr drugs. >> they're called synthetic drugs, they are cheap, dangerous, easy to get and often marketed specifically to young people. >> something this deadly in this small of a dose had entered our high school. not just our community but our kids. >> you may not have heard of

them but law enforcement agencies across the country have and they're sounding the alarm. >> it is a gamble, every time a kid gets ahold of one of these things they're gambling with their life. >> there's no better way to understand that life-threatening gamble than the story of 17-year-old fitzgerald. >> my god, her lips are blue. and i don't -- i don't feel a pulse. i don't feel a pulse. >> it's a story no parent wants to hear but this mom and dad feel compared to share. >> it seemed surreal, unbelievable, unnew jersimagina. >> tara fitzgerald was no typical teenager, at least that's what her closest friends say. >> she looked at the world so much deeper and with so much more meaning than any i have met. >> most people were worried

about prom dresses and she was worried about what kinds of things? >> she was very philosophical. she wanted to know how the world worked and the university worked and how god worked. >> i'd consider her an old soul. >> tara also had a lighter more care-free side. >> quirky is the word when it comes to tara, she had a different sense of humor. >> she knew how to make everyone laugh. >> she liked to make faces and her and her friends would act goofy sometimes and they enjoyed that. >> she lived with her parent, tom and mai, and her little sister not far from the twin ci cities. >> tara was a really energetic kid from a very young age. >> according to her dad, she was a bit of a daredevil. >> yes! i did! >> she liked to do skateboarding and climbing walls.

she'd do the tubing. go on the water tube on the back of the boat because we had the cabin and she would be a daredevil on that. >> she liked going and taking risks and stuff. ♪ >> but her family and friends agreed, tara's greatest passions were drawing and music. >> she had a pretty decent sized basement so she would play music down there a lot and she and i would go down there and jam. >> i just did it. i just did it. ♪ >> she was playing guitar a lot and getting into music. a lot of the classic '70s stuff, beatles, linard skynyrd, a huge huge oasis fan. >> yet none of that got in the way of school. her mother says tara was a bright honor roll student who loved to learn. >> she would read books, four or five books at once and she would sit at dinner and, you know, reading book at the same time. >> you haven't to tell her to

take the book away from te table? >> yeah. right. a lot of times, how could you yell at a kid when they'd read a book. >> smart kid. >> she was a smart kid. science came lies for her. >> when she aced her act college admissions examine, teara was over the moon. >> i'm pretty sure she texted me in all capital letter, like what i got! i didn't even study. >> it was january 10th, 2014. to celebrate her score and good grazed, tara asked if she could have a friday night sleepover. >> at that time, i was so happy i can't turn her down, i said, sure. >> the girl that came over was somebody you knew? >> we didn't know her as well as her close core of girlfriends, tara knew her pretty well and they would sit there and watch scary movies or whatever and chat and talk. >> and eat junk food. >> it made me feel very secure

knowing they were in the lower level of our home hanging out together where they had space from us yet they were safe. >> there was something some of tara's friends knew but her parents didn't. tara was planning to experiment that night with lsd. >> the main purpose of having the sleepover was to try it, try the drug. >> try lsd? >> uh-huh. >> tara's friends say their group, including tara, didn't usually drink or do drugs. >> as far as going to parties and drugs and alcohol wasn't really something that was like her. >> but, still, this was high school and they weren't exactly shocked that tara wanted to try something illegal. >> i told her that's a stupid idea. >> and left it at that? >> yeah. >> she didn't really want to be talked out of it. >> i think everyone knew it was a bucket list type thing for her. she was really into the beatles and they obviously talk about that kind of thing in their songs. >> that weekend started like so many for teenagers, tara's

friends came over for their friday night sleepover and the two girls spent the night doing their own thing in the basement. >> i could hear the girls down there laughing. i didn't want to go down there and talk to them -- >> and invade their privacy. >> the next morning they let the girls sleep in and quietly left the house for a basketball game with tara's little sister. they assumed everything was fine at the house until they got a frantic call, the mother of this friend that slept over. >> she called and said she was at our house and couldn't wake tara up. >> couldn't wake her up. >> right. then she said something about, i think she's taken some drug or something. i was like, what? you can't wake her up, i said call 911. i immediately got off the phone and grabbed mai and we shot out the door to go for home. >> drugs? they couldn't fathom it but tara's parents as well as their whole community were about to

get an unwelcome education. >> i never would have thought that she'd take anything, never, in a million years. >> what exactly had happened to tara? investigators were about to uncover some disturbing clues. >> we know from their phones that this was a planned event. they had discussed it, they took pictu pictures. >> when we come back, what those pictures revealed. it added this other level of clean to it. it just kinda like...wiped everything clean. 6x cleaning my teeth are glowing. they are so white. 6x whitening i actually really like the 2 steps. step 1, cleans step 2, whitens. every time i use this together, it felt like... ...leaving the dentist office. crest hd. 6x cleaning, 6x whitening i would switch to crest hd over what i was using before.

no other scents feel like glade. melt your mood with our hawaiian breeze fragrance. feel relaxed, feel glade. and i can't wait to startlanta telling people how switching to geico could save them hundreds of dollars on car insurance. but first, my luggage. ahh, there it is. uh, excuse me, sir? i think you've got the wrong bag. sorry, they all look alike, you know? no worries. well, car's here, i can't save people money chatting at the baggage claim all day. geico®. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

the worst thing about toilet they don't stay in the toilet. disinfect your bathroom with lysol bathroom trigger... ...lysol power foamer... ...and lysol toilet bowl cleaner. they're approved to kill 50% more types of germs than leading competitors. to clean and disinfect in and out of the toilet... lysol that. ♪ ♪ sc johnson

the sun rose on a cold midwestern morning and tom and mai fitzgerald were facing the worst moment of their lives. >> what in the world happened? how could this be? it just seemed like a complete name. >> they were at an early morning basketball game with their yo g youngest child when they got a terrifying phone call from a fellow parent at their home. she said their 17-year-old daughter, tara, was lying unresponsive in the basement. tom told the other call 911. >> her lips are blue. and -- and i don't -- i don't feel a pulse. i don't feel a pulse. >> you don't feel a pulse? >> correct. >> okay.

try to shake her and shout, are you ork? does she respond? >> are you all right, tara? are you okay, sweetie? >> nothing. nothing. >> tom and mai raced home to find their house surrounded. >> they called an ambulance. i was praying. >> the paramedics were working on her trying to get her to breathe. i talked to her, saying, please, tara, you know. come back. i tried to encourage her. >> they put her in the ambulance, took her to the hospital. >> then i went, mai was inconsolable. i had to leave. i went by myself and i drove to the hospital. i was in there with her and the doctors. >> doctors worked tirelessly for almost a half hour to save tara and then they had to stop. >> they just told me that it

wasn't going to happen, so they were going to stop their efforts. i don't know. i was in shock, you know. i just went and laid on her and cried. it seemed surreal, unbelievable. >> you hear terrible story on tv and you hear all this tragedy, but you never thought that it could happen to your own kid. >> not in a million years. >> you never think that would happen. so when it happens you don't believe it. >> no. >> tara's friends knew she was planning to take lsd that night but it never occurred to them that she could die. >> she assured me it's not dangerous. i didn't know anything about it so i assumed she must be doing her research on it. >> mai called them to break the news. >> she was really hysterical. she was say, erin, your best friend died and kept yelling

that over and over. >> my god, what did you do? >> i was so shocked, it was hard to process what that meant. >> my first response was, are you kidding? it didn't feel real yet but then everything kind of hit at once and it was all just -- everything fell apart. >> investigators were surprised, too, but by something else. commander brian mueller is the head of the local drug task force. when he heard tara overdosed on lsd it didn't add up. >> we don't see that with lsd related drugs. >> lsd, also known as acid was created by a research chemist back in the '30s and has been studied for decades. much is known act its effects. in mueller's experience he knows lsd can trigger deadly behavior. >> somebody jumps out a window or acts out because of lsd. >> absolutely, injures himself

or gets in a fight and jumps out a window. >> the drug itself is not usually deadly. >> an lsd overdose typically isn't going to happen in our experience. our concern was what was inge ingested, was that the cause of her death and is there any more out there. >> even tara's grief stricken father was perplexed. >> when i heard about acid, i thought, i never heard of anybody overdosing from acid. it seemed peculiar, some of the things running through my mind. >> another question, if tara and her friend both took the drug, why did one girl live and the other die. michelle frasconi was the lead detective. >> how do you explain that? >> terrifying. that is something we had to look at, why do we have one able to communicate with us a few hours later sitting in an interview room and the other going to autopsy. our first thing was to talk to the friend who provided us quite a bit of information, at least a

decent timeline. we did phone frisk immediately. >> what did that tell you what happened after midnight? >> we know from their phones this was a planned event, they had discussed it, they took pictures. >> this is a photo of tara taken just moments after she took the drug. that's what an actual lsd tab looks like. it was unclear to detectives whether those are two tabs or one tab that came apart. >> the reason they had selected the night of the 10th was because tara's parents were going to be gone in the morning for a sporting event for her sister. this was going to give them time to recover. >> tara and her friend had pl planned it all out, even arra e arranging to have another friend on standby to call in case something went wrong. as teenagers do, they had their phones out taking photos and vid videos. this is some of the video taken that night. [ laughter ] >> the video showed investiga r

investigators how the night went from a fun gigli high. >> how do you feel, tara? >> weird. >> to this. tara lying unresponsive on the basement floor. she was in serious trouble. but her friend never woke tara's parents who were right upstairs and she never called 911. but she did call the friend who had agreed to help in an emergency and she sped right over. >> it sounds like she comes in through a window. something's not right with tara, she's not communicating anymore and she's not talking to them and this person who comes says i sit with her on the floor, i rub her hair, i just hope it's all going to go away. >> does she stay? >> she stays for a bit of time and then ultimately says the reason for leaving is, well, one, she had to get a car home and secondly, she just -- it was too freaky. >> too freaky.

>> yeah. didn't want to have to deal with it. >> the friend sleeping over wrote this heartbreaking note towards the end of the night. dear tara, this is the worst night of my life and it still isn't over. love friend. >> how do the friends explain not calling for help. what do they say to you? >> they simply said they didn't want to get in trouble and not want their parents to be upset or get in trouble. >> they thought they could wait it out. >> right. >> because the teenagers didn't think lsd was all that dangerous let alone deadly. >> she assumed it was again lsd and must have read somewhere you can't overdose on again lsd. >> the police were thinking along those same lines. it couldn't have been lsd. tara had to have taken something else. >> we have to figure out where it came from, what it is, is it illegal? >> woodbury police now had a mystery to solve and deadly drug

to track down. coming up, investigators also want to find out who gave tara the drug that killed her? now, they and her family are in for a huge surprise. >> i was like,

the woodbury minnesota police department was trying to find out how one small dose of a drug killed 17-year-old tara fitzgerald. tara thought she was taking lsd but the local drug task force team suspected she had taken something else. we're pretty sure it's some type of synthetic drug either we've heard about or don't know about. >> a synthetic drug? >> yes. >> the term "synthetic drugs" refers to a new class of narcotics developed in just the last seven years. they are made from chemicals that can be unpredictable and sometimes sold masquerading as other better known drugs. tara's case was the first time police in this suburb were dealing with a synthetic drug death. tara's friends say they knew little if anything about this new class of drugs. >> i know in our health class, which all high schoolers are required to take, they do speak of synthetic drugs but it kind of made out to seem like one of

those you're not really going to see it in your life kind of drugs. >> are there lots of drugs in the high school? >> it was casual to hear about marijuana and alcohol in our great or high school. then you get up into the higher more dangerous drugs we wont really hear about that. >> at parties, they'd be smoking pot, right? dri drinking? >> uh-huh. >> anything more than that? >> no. if people were going to do anything more than that usually it would have been something a little bit more private. >> we were absolutely terrified. our biggest fear as a police department and community that something this deadly in this small of a dose had entered our high school, not just our community but our kids. >> investigators first priority was locating the drugs and getting them off the street. that meant finding the person who sold them to tara, a search through her text messages pointed to one name. >> so you're able right away to

figure out here's the person that gave it to tara. who has the person? >> brian norlander. >> who is he? >> brian was completely unknown to us? brian was a high school junior, honors student, football player and close friend of tara's. >> never been in trouble before? >> never been in trouble. never been in trouble before. >> yet somehow brian was mixed up in a drug deal. text messages told police he sold tara the tabs for $10 each. >> you need to find brian right away. >> we need to find brian. >> it was saturday afternoon, just hours after tara died and her friends were gathered at her home. >> i remember walking in an seeing mai on the couch and h r hearing her scream. the atmosphere was tense and everyone was absolutely heartbroken. >> two of tara's friends knew that brian sold her the drug and texted him to meet.

but they didn't know police were looking for him, too. >> he lived by tara. so me and erin walked and he drove and we met up with him on the street and just went into his car to tell him what had happened. >> so you guys were walking from up there, right? >> uh-huh. >> brian is driving a car. >> brian drove up to here and we were walking from that way. >> sitting in the car, they told brian what happened. >> i mean, he had to deal with losing his friend on top of thinking i gave her that drug. so i think it was so much for him to take in all at once so we kind of all sat in silence. >> but the silence was broken when a car pulled up and someone approached the window. it was the police. >> what happens? tells brian to get out of the car? >> tells brian to get out of the car. so we all stepped out of the car. another officer asked jessie and i to put our hands on the back of the car. they took our information and took our phones. >> your cell phones? >> yes. >> you're watching brian be

handcuffed? >> yes. >> down at the station, brian admitted right away that he had supplied the drugs to tara. he was clearly distraught. >> you didn't want to kill her? >> no. >> was brian a drug user? a drug dealer? was this something he did regularly? >> not that we believe? >> brian said the drug deal was a one time thing, something he'd done as a favor for his friend, tara. >> do you know what kind of drug it was? >> is it actually lsd as far as you know or is it something else? >> fairly positive it is. >> brian was reluctant to say where he got it but eventually he gave police a name. >> who is alistair? >> i don't know. >> officers went right out to find him. they questioned alistair at his home, where he confessed to

selling brian the drugs but said he was no drug dealer either. he said he bought the drugs from yet another woodbury high school student, sidney johnson. >> this is becoming even more concerning for law enforcement because we have not made it out of the high school yet. >> who are these kids that we're talking about? >> they're good kids. they've never been in trouble with the law. they've never been in trouble at school. for the majority of them, straight a, honor society, honor roll kids. >> and now they were all in serious trouble. tara's parents were stunned when they heard where the police investigation was going. >> i was like, what the -- are you kidding me? brian orlander this is one who gave this to her. what is going on? how can this be? >> your whole world is being shaken? >> turned upside down. he would be the last person in the world i would have imagined she would have gotten something from. >> responsible kid? >> very responsible, very good

influence. >> he is smart kid. >> it was that third student from the high school, sidney johnson, who gave police the next important piece of information. a first name and cell phone number of a local dealer. he had a girlfriend who went to woodbury high. >> cole is the lead we've been waiting for. we have an adult, we have a drug dealer and we have the connection to the high school. we have the statements up to cole. >> the next day, 18-year-old cole was arrested with more than 30 doses of the same drug tara took ready to be sold. >> so he's got more of this stuff. he's pedaling it and selling it. >> not only does he have more of this stuff? he has more of this stuff knowing someone has already died in our community. >> detectives later sat down with cole and his attorney and cole confirmed what authorities already suspected. he was lying to his clients telling them the drugs were lsd

because he knew they wouldn't want synthetics. >> people don't like that stuff. they think it's -- they know it's bad, you know. >> police were about to find out exactly what killed tara fitzgerald and discover it was a problem that went way beyond their quiet suburb. coming up. many synthetic drugs are pack e packaged to seem completely h m harmless. but -- >> they're not regulated, they're not consistent, they're not safe. >> what exactly is this stuff? ,. keep going... sara, will you marry... [phone rings again] what do you want, todd???? [crowd cheering] keep it going!!!! if you sit on your phone, you butt-dial people. it's what you do. todd! if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to geico. it's what you do. i know we just met like, two months ago... yes! [crowd cheering] [crowd cheering over phone]

can this much love be cleanedrlin' by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah. one bottle has the grease cleaning power of two bottles of this bargain brand. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. unless you have allergies. then your eyes may see it differently. flonase is the first and only nasal spray approved to relieve both itchy, watery eyes and congestion. no other nasal allergy spray can say that. when we breathe in allergens our bodies react by over producing six key inflammatory substances that cause our symptoms. most allergy pills only control one substance. flonase controls six. and six is greater than one. more complete allergy relief. flonase. 6>1 changes everything.

i tabut with my back paines, i couldn't sleep and get up in time. then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. ...one hair color wants to to help you keep on being you.. nice'n easy. natural-looking color... ...that even in sunlight, doesn't look like hair color... it just looks like you. nice'n easy: color as real as you are. our bacteria family's been on this alright kiddos!erations. everybody off the backpack, we made it to the ottoman. i like to watch them clean, but they'll never get me on the mattress! finally there's a disinfectant mist designed for sofas, mattresses and more. introducing new lysol max cover. its innovative cap has a 2x wider spray that kills 99.9% of bacteria. max cover is another great way to lysol that.

after weeks of speculation, woodbury police finally confirm that the drug 17-year-old tara fitzgerald had taken was really a deadly synthetic drug. >> people are generally just purporting it to be acid.

>> yeah. i need acid, i go buy acid. >> cole mcnair was the local dealer who supplied the drugs to students at woodbury high. he admitted to police the tabs he was selling as lsd were really a synthetic drug called 2 25i. >> people don't like that stuff, they think it's -- they know it's bad, you know. >> but you know it's 25i? >> had you ever heard of it before? >> no. we never heard of it before. >> 25i was a chemical only made illegal in the u.s. two months before tara died. it can cause hallucinations like lsd but in tara's case it also led to seizures, respiratory distress and ultimately cardiac arrest. it sometimes goes by the street name, end bomb or smiles. detectives were about to show us the doses they seized in tara's

case. >> this is this size of that. >> that's the drug on that little tiny pink piece of paper. it's smaller than my pinky fingernail. >> typically packaged in tiny pieces of tinfoil it almost looks like trash but inside the drugs are so potent, investigators have to handle them with gloves. >> the reason that the detective and i are wearing gloves, if you touch that you could absorb that and become -- the drug could affect you simply by absorption. >> when you take a closer look it's easy to see how some tabs could be stronger than others. >> there's no way of knowing the amount of drug on this tab here and this individual tab here. >> they all look different. how would anybody know what they're getting. >> that this is biggest problem and our biggest concern because this process is so unscientific. >> it's a problem become a national concern. across the country the drug enforcement administration has seen an increasing number of cases of synthetic drug sales

and overdoses and deaths. we paid a visit to a nondescript building under intense security, the dea's intense testing lab and met with a chemist. >> are we still under a growing epidemic when it comes to synthet synthetics? >> i would say we are. >> this dea lab has identified and analyzed more than 400 different types of synthetic drugs seized in the u.s. most of these chemicals have one thing in common, they've been manufactured for the sole purpose of creating a cheap recreational high. this one is the base chemical tara ingested. >> this file is 25i. >> is it just a powder? >> it is a powder. >> when dissolved into a liquid, the 25i is soaked or eye dropped on to perforated paper to look like dose just like lsd tabs. >> it looks similar to lsd and

labels similar to lsd. >> is it chemically like lsd? >> it is not chemically like lsd. >> a drop is far stronger than a drop of lsd. if you apply too much a single dose can be fatal. >> it's like russian roulette, you don't know until too late what's in it or what effect it will have and it takes one time to have very serious effects. >> these new chemicals are turned into drugs that come in all different forms, powders, pills, crystals, even liquids, some are sold by dealers, there's another even easier way kids get their hands on synthetic drugs. many are sold in stores or head shops in packages like these designed to make them look ha harmless. >> says does not contain any dea banned substances. statements like these are very misle misleading. >> even though they're in flashy

packa packages -- >> they're not regulated, they're not consistent, they're not safe, they're not tested. >> the dea has even found problems with what's sometimes called synthetic marijuana. it looks like pot and is sometimes sold in head shops but it is nothing like the marijuana that's been legalized in some states. the plant material has been coated or sprayed with a synthetic drug making it much more potent and potentially deadly. >> this is a combination of plant material that has been dosed with the drug. >> somebody would roll that and smoke it? >> correct. right. >> but one of the scariest things about all these synthetic drugs is where they're coming from and how difficult it is to stop the flow into the united states. >> how easy is it for someone here in america to buy these chemicals? >> too easy. extremely easy. a couple clicks and it's on its way. coming up, synthetic drugs

all too tempting to kids. why dealers love them, too. >> if you make about a 15$1500 so investment in these chemicals, you can probably make about a quarter of a million dollars on the street. >> that's a huge return on investment. >> it's a big mark-up. >> when "dateline" continues. he. mom we're out of peanut butter! we tried the bargain detergent but we had to use twice as much. so we switched to tide. now we get three generations of clothes clean in one wash. has anybody seen my pants? i found them helen! put those on dad! one bottle lasts up to two times longer. it's got to be tide.

but pantene is making my hair hairpractically unbreakable.ff. the new pro-v formula makes every inch stronger. so i can love my hair longer. strong is beautiful. pantene. recently we've noticed some ads created by these two birds, inviting you to stay away from the streak free shine of windex. well dear windex users these ads are false. sfx: squeaks from window cleaning clean glass is better than dirty glass. don't stand for dirty. use windex. one day a rider made a decision. the decision to ride on and save money. he decided to save money by switching his motorcycle insurance to geico. there's no shame in saving money. ride on, ride proud. geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides.

our bacteria family's been on this alright kiddos!erations. everybody off the backpack, we made it to the ottoman. i like to watch them clean, but they'll never get me on the mattress! finally there's a disinfectant mist designed for sofas, mattresses and more. introducing new lysol max cover. its innovative cap has a 2x wider spray that kills 99.9% of bacteria. max cover is another great way to lysol that. no problem. that's a lot of dishes& i'll use a lot of detergent. dish issues? get cascade platinum. one pac cleans tough food better than 6 pacs of the bargain brand combined. cascade.

♪ sfx: crowd cheering ♪ sc johnson you know mom, i will change you. change your body, and what you call love. i'm going to make you think less about yourself... and more about those little things you've never noticed. sometimes, i will turn your night into day... and for sure, i will mark you forever. but i promise mom, it will be the greatest journey of your life.

while local officials were chasing down the source of a deadly synthetic drug in minneapolis, the drug enforcement administration has been doing the same on a national level. >> you're talking a multi-million dollar industry in the united states. >> chuck rosenberg is the administrator of the dea. >> you're talking about an industry killing our kids. >> the dea said the synthetic drug problem in the u.s. originates far outside our borders. >> the chemicals come from abroad and often processed and assembled and packaged here. >> are most of these chemicals coming from china, is it fair to say? >> most of it's coming from china. >> in china for the most part, it's been perfectly legal to manufacturer and sell most synthetic chemicals. over the last seven years the china pipeline, as it's called, has made so many of these

chemical compounds it's created a whole new world of drug dealing. a world where drug makers and dealers rarely meet and where drug buys take place online. >> how easy is it for someone here in america to buy these chemicals? >> too easy, extremely easy. somebody sits down at their keyboard, orders it over the internet and comes in a package. >> they're reasonably savvy how they package it. you can only imagine how many packages across our borders every day. you're talking millions and millions of packages. finding the one with the bad stuff in it, hard to do. >> finding a website willing to sell and ship these chemicals straight to your doorstep, that's pretty easy. >> my producer found several websites you can pretty easily buy and import a kilo, a few pounds, right? >> 2.2 pounds. >> if she can do it can any do it? >> she can't do it legally.

yes, if she can do it any can do it. >> we didn't, by the way. >> i'm glad to hear that. i would prefer that you not. >> this is video shot inside an actual lab in china where synthetic drugs are manufactured. for those willing to break the law and have them shipped to the u.s. dealing synthetic drugs canned be easier and cheaper than dealing drugs like meth and lsd. the base chemicals are sold ready made, no chemistry experience required. a relatively small investment can reap enormous profits, only a tiny amount of the chemical is needed for one dose so a kilo goes a long way. >> somebody who knows this business can turn that into 6500 or so foil packets for resale. if you make about a 15$1500 or investment, in these chemicals, you can probably make about a quarter of a million dollars on the street. >> that's a huge return on investment.

>> it's a big mark-up. they're in it to make money. they don't care whose life they take, it is a gamble, every time a kid gets ahold of one of these things they're gambling except they're gambling with their life. >> because it's so inconsistent? >> absolutely. you and i could buy the same day on the same place and nothing happens to you and i end up dead. >> that was apparently what happened in tara's case, the b tabs she and her friend took were haphazardly made and only tara ended up with a deadly dose. >> she had this high level of this drug, 25i. >> had you ever heard? >> never heard of it. i'm sure tara hadn't either. they thought they were taking something completely different than what they were. >> what did you know about synthetic drugs before this? >> nothing. >> the trafficking of synthetics can be tough to prosecute. as soon as the federal government deems one chemical compound illegal foreign labs

alter its molecular structure producing a similar version not officially banned. >> the formulas are being twe tweaked all the time. that's a problem. there's some degree of playing catch-up? >> sort of like a whack-a-mole you whack one and something else pops up? >> not a bad analogy. >> detectives identified three high school students and a dealer involved in the drug sale that led to her death. after months of digging they finally found the main supplier, 19-year-old alexander clausen. he was caught with more than 300 doses of 25i. >> you have the right to remain silent. anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. >> the drugs were seized and the entire distribution chain involved in tara's death was finally shut down. just one final question loomed, what would happen to tara's classma

classmates, the kids who expe expected to be going off to college soon? not prison. >> religiously i want to forgive everybody. but as parent, let me tell you, it's harder, it's very hard. >> coming up, the stakes are about to go up. tara's classmates may be charged with no less than homicide. >> if you sell a substance that leads to death, you're guilty of murder. >> what will that mean sometimes we use k-y ultragel to enhance my body's natural

moisture so i can get into it a bit quicker. and when i know she's into it, i get into it and... feel the difference with k-y ultragel.

tara fitzgerald's friends and family had got an lesson, one they never asked for, one that came too late to save tara from a synthetic overdose. >> we're not taught how dangerous it really is and how unstable the chemicals can be. >> the kids don't know how deadly these drugs are, there's not enough information pushed out to the public.

you hear a lot about things like heroin and cocaine and meth. something like these synthetics is far deadlier than tiny doses. >> prosecutors handling the first synthetic drug deaths in woodbury now had five defendants including three high school students and two adults who were profiting from the drugs were charged not with drug sales but murder. >> why homicide? >> in minnesota, there's murder in this third degree. it's a pretty open statute that s says, if you sell a substance, a schedule 1 or 2 substance that leads to the death, you're guilty of murder. >> both adults pleaded guilty to third degree murder. the main supplier, alexander clausen, was sentenced to six years in prison, while cole got a year in county jail and 15 years probation. yet, when it came to prosecuting the three students, there were

more difficult decisions to be made. these teenagers had never been in trouble before and seemed to have promising futures, but like the adults, they, too, were f e facing murder charges. county attorney, pete orpit. >> i don't want to scare kids, bully scare kids and let them know, if you do this, you can expect justice. we're pretty firm about it. >> when investigators said they were going to throw the book at these kids? >> yeah. i was for it. >> you were for it. >> i was for it, yes, absolutely. they make mistakes, so from that aspect of it, i can understand both side, but the overpowering part of it is that i am tara's dad and they made a mistake that killed my daughter. they have to take responsibility for that. >> but it never came to that. inside the county attorney's office, negotiations got under way and all three teens reached plea agreements. they pleaded guilty to drug sale charges in juvenile court and

were sentenced to a combination of parole, fines and one weekend a month in a detention facility. >> you end up negotiating a pretty creative deal for the three high school students. >> i think so. >> why did you do that? >> because we try to be fair. they weren't the ones making money distributing it. this seemed like a one time deal. i don't want them to suffer but they need to have some guilt about what they did. it can't be free. >> mai and tom were disappointed with the more lenient plea deals the teens negotiated. >> is it justice? snow no, not by a long shot for me, no, it's not. >> tara's parents would say it wasn't enough. >> we were not flip about it. we put a good time into going, are we being too tough? are we being tough enough? i'm convinced they were phareslutions in the end? tom went to all five sentencing hearings and looked each defendant in the eye. >> i wanted to read a statement to them and show them what this

loss has meant to the family. this is who tara was and what she meant to us. she meant everything. everything to us. along with her younger sister. without her, a piece of our soul is gone. >> it was heart wrenching to hear him talk about his daughter, that he doesn't get to see anymore. it was really difficult to watch him and see all the emotion. >> since tara's death and with the publicity surrounding her case, woodbury police have not seen another synthetic drug overdose. >> i think it's definitely caused a deterrent. we're not seeing it in this high school like we were with this case. >> on the national level, the dea increased efforts to shut down synthetic drug rings. in just the last three years, operation project synergy has seized almost 50,000 pounds of synthetic drugs and made more than 400 arrests.

>> did we get it all? of course not. that would be a very difficult thing to do but we got a bunch of it. we got some stuff off the streets and i premium in the pr -- presumed in the process saved some lives. >> last october after international pressure, china made it illegal to manufacturer and sell more than 100 synthetic drug chemicals including 25i. >> that was a great step. is it enough? no. we need to do a lot more, them, us, everybody. >> at home, detective said parents start respecting their kids' privacy a little less and start. >> ing around a lot more. >> go through their stuff. search their stuff. >> that's hard, though, what about their privacy? they're teenagers. >> there is an element of privacy with teenagers, however, you don't want me showing up at your door.

if the difference is an upset kid and you know what they're doing or them being in a casket, i guess i'd choose the upset kid. >> i wish i would have gone downstairs because i would have probably detected something off with those girls but didn't because i didn't want to infringe on their space. their greatest hope is that other parents will learn from their loss and become more aware of the risks. >> we all feel immune to drugs because our kids are better than that, they know better, they're not going to do this, they're going to be smarter and it's not going to happen to us. >> tara's friends are in college now and think of her often. they hope with the investigation behind them, people will remember tara not just for the way she died but as they do. >> i remember how spunky she was. >> she was a rare gem to have as a friend and we were lucky to have been with her. >> i want people to know that she was smart and she had a

future and she just happened to make one bad decision. >> that's all for all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. xxxx it was very surreal. i was reeling from shock my parents were gone. >> a devoted couple killed in the home shay shared with museum's worth of collectibles. >> he was big into guns of all kinds. >> was there any connection between the memorabilia and murder. >> who will benefit by these two dea deaths? >> jessica is the only child. >> the sole heir. >> sole heir. >> wait. hidden among the treasures something odd. >> it was by far the most important piece of evidence in this case. >> a clue pointing to a surpr e surprising and calculating killer? someone with a sick mind is all i know. >> here's