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Forensic Files

Water Hazard

Forensic Files

HLN

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode originally aired June 27, 2019. The victim had ingested a massive amount of cyanide. An unlikely clue - a flaw on a mailing envelope -- exposed a murderer who was willing to kill innocent people to get the one person he wanted.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Investigators described it as a one-in-a-million chance. A tiny manufacturing flaw on an envelope exposed a murderer who was willing to kill innocent victims to get at the one person he wanted dead.

0:37.2

It was a typical Monday morning at the Transamerica title insurance Company in Tempe, Arizona.

0:41.6

There were only four employees, all friends,

0:44.8

who spent their work days processing paperwork.

0:50.4

46-year-old Julie Williams had been working at Transamerica for two months.

0:52.7

She had gotten this new job.

0:56.5

Things were going really well. For her, she was happy.

1:01.7

When I talked to her on the phone, she always expressed how well things were going and how she was really starting to feel a sense of peace and joy in her life.

1:07.5

On the Monday morning around 9 a.m., Julie got a drink from the water cooler.

1:14.8

After taking a sip, she said that her lips and tongue were burning and warned her coworkers not to drink the water.

1:23.4

She walks down to the bathroom, she goes into the bathroom bathroom and the people are kind of worried about her.

1:28.3

The other employees were baffled.

1:31.3

They got some water out of the water cooler and tasted it.

1:35.3

And it burned their mouths and they had to spit it out.

1:38.3

Meanwhile, Julie never returned from the bathroom.

1:43.3

She's in the stall. They can't open the door because her, basically her body is against the door.

1:50.0

Somebody has to crawl up over the stall or underneath the stall.

1:53.0

They found Julie unconscious, completely unresponsive.

1:58.0

Paramedics arrived minutes later and rushed her to the hospital. She was in a coma,

2:04.7

and by that time we knew that that was pretty serious, and that the doctors were telling us we needed

2:09.1

to get there quickly because they really weren't sure how bad this was. At first, doctors thought

2:14.8

Julie had suffered a massive stroke, but it was even worse.

...

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