How to Make a Heart-Stopping Salad

by Deborah Blum

One evening, in the early summer of 2008, a Colorado sheriff's deputy named Jonathan Allen came home to find that his wife had made him a "special" dinner. Waiting on the table was his favorite spicy spaghetti dish and a big leafy bowl of salad.

As he told investigators later, some of those leaves in the salad were startling bitter. But his wife told him it was just a spring mix. He assumed it contained another of those trendy herbs that people use to liven things up. "Make sure you eat your greens," she added. "They're good for you."

So, he didn't worry when his toddler daughter tried to grab a bite and his wife, Lisa, reached out to stop the child. It was only a few hours later, when he was rushed to hospital suffering from severe stomach cramps and a wildly speeding heart, that he started to worry. And wonder.

After his stomach was pumped and the contents analyzed, Allen was no longer puzzled by his symptoms. The bitter taste was traced to leaves from a familiar and beautiful ornamental shrub, one growing in the family garden, in fact. Allen survived but he did not return to his home in the suburban Denver town of Golden, Colorado. He carefully stayed away while authorities launched an investigation into exactly how foxglove leaves got into the dinner salad.

And this year--about six months ago--42-year-old Lisa Leigh Allen pleaded guilty to felony assault, avoiding a trial for attempted murder with what The Denver Post called a "lethal plant." She was sentenced in mid-March to four-and-a-half years in prison.

A lethal plant is definitely one way to describe foxglove but--and, I have to admit, the description made me laugh--also definitely too simplistic. Yes, the foxglove plant is poisonous, but the very properties that make it poisonous also make it the source of some of our most important heart medications. I'll give that paradox away when I tell you that the common foxglove belongs to a family of plants with the Latin name of Digitalis. The plant that ended up in the Colorado deputy's summer salad is formally called Digitalis purpurea, but it also goes by some wonderfully evocative common names such as Witch's Glove, Bloody Fingers, and Dead Man's Bells.

Plants in the Digitalis family are packed with sugar-rich organic molecules called glycosides that can directly affect the rhythmic beat of the heart. The most important of these is called digoxin, or sometimes just digitalis, and is used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and to strengthen contractions of the heart. The knowledge that foxglove extracts affect the heart is nothing new--it was first reported in 1785 by a British physician named William Withering--but medical understanding of how it works is fairly recent.

For instance, digoxin (and a related compound digitoxin) are known to trigger a cascade of chemical reactions which increase the amount of calcium delivered to muscle cells. This increases the strength of the muscular contractions, thus giving new power to a weakened heart beat. Digitalis can also stimulate the nerves which regulate the internal pacing of the heart beat.

So, at the prescribed dose, digitalis is the opposite of lethal--a life-saving compound, in fact. But the proper dose is extremely small, and the body sounds warning bells if digitalis levels get too high. Early symptoms include nausea, stomach cramps, headaches and even hallucinations. It won't surprise you to know that the worst effect of digitalis poisoning is on the heart--its powerful effect on the heart muscle varies, depending on the individual, but an overdose can either slow the beat to a complete halt or speed it to a point of lethal over-taxation.

Thus, Jonathan Allen's early warning symptoms--the stomach cramps, the acute nausea, the racing heart beat--added a little more evidence to the case against his wife. The prosecution was also helped by searching her computer's hard drive, where investigators found a search history for foxglove, digitalis, and the homicidal possibilities. "I couldn't fathom that my wife was trying to kill me," Allen said during his wife's sentencing hearing. He was writhing with pain shortly before calling for an ambulance: "I went to bed and laid next to her. She said, 'It's probably just stress from your job.'"

Testimony in the sentencing hearing also detailed a very troubled marriage. Lisa Allen and her father testified that her husband was possessive and physically abusive and he had warned her that she would never be able to leave. Jonathan Allen said she and her family had been telling such lies about him for years. Even the judge finally wondered out loud why the couple hadn't separated, as both of their families had urged earlier.

It would have been, after all, a much better option than mixing up a heart-stopping salad.

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Seeking Truth and Justice . . . 25 Years Later

by Donna Weaver

Twenty-five years ago this month, my husband Gary suddenly vanished without a trace. This year, just as I have every year before, I find myself reliving the moments I last saw his face and heard his voice. And I become more determined than ever to find his remains and bring his killer to justice.

I met Gary in December of 1981. One year later we were married and the following spring we were blessed with the birth of our twin daughters. I was the luckiest girl in the world—I was in love and married to my best friend, and I had two beautiful, healthy, and happy babies. Like many new families just starting out, money was a little tight and when Gary was offered an opportunity to make some extra money fixing diesel engines in the Bahamas, I encouraged him to take the job, assuring him the girls and I would be fine for the 2 or 3 days he would be gone.

I last spoke to Gary on the morning of December 9, 1983 when he called to say he was almost finished with his work and had just purchased his plane ticket at the airport in Nassau to return home the next day. We happily talked of the plans we had for after I picked him up at the airport. We were going straight to my Mothers of Twins club Christmas party where the babies would sit on Santa's lap for the first time—something Gary was excited about as he had been eagerly anticipating the girls’ first Christmas almost since the day they were born. The following day, December 11th, was to be our first wedding anniversary. We were laughing on the phone about the prospect of eating the top of our wedding cake with the babies—all of us with our fingers! And I had a surprise for him—one of the babies had started to say Da-Da while he was away, and I couldn’t wait to see his face when he heard it for the first time. So many happy days ahead!

On December 10th, I stood eagerly waiting at the airport gate with the babies next to me in their double stroller. Gary didn't come home on the plane that day, and I never saw him again. He disappeared without a trace, and the last time anyone saw him was 45 minutes after I last spoke with him on the telephone the day before. I had very little information about who Gary was working for and where he was staying in the Bahamas.

It wasn't until the year 1999 that I learned Gary disappeared and was most likely murdered somewhere on Andros Island as a result of FBI Operation Airlift.

I learned of Airlift and its dirty little secrets by an amazing stroke of luck. I was working as a part-time bartender in Fort Lauderdale when I happened to see a copy of the weekly news magazine New Times laying on the empty bar when I arrived at work. Staring up at me from the cover was a full page photograph of an elderly man with the caption "Oldfella." I'm not sure why, but that face captivated me. I brought the paper home with me that night, but didn't pick it up again until two days later. After reading the feature article by Bob Norman, the circumstances of Gary's disappearance seemed to fit. Although I didn't recognize any of the names mentioned in the article, I felt certain that I would at last discover what had happened to my husband. I contacted Norman and asked him about other names he may have learned that were not included in his article, which told a tale of drug smuggling, murder, and a corrupt FBI agent. The first name he gave me was Randy Krugh. "Oh my God" I replied. "Randy Krugh was Best Man at my wedding!"

The corrupt former FBI agent in the story, Dan Mitrione Jr. went bad while heading Operation Airlift, a major undercover drug smuggling investigation. Immediately after resigning from the FBI in June 1983, Mitrione became business partners with his murderous confidential informant, Hilmer Sandini. Their business partnership dissolved when a plastic explosive was found under Sandini's car in 1984. Fortunately, the bomb was discovered before it went off, potentially killing many innocent people. Although it kept its findings secret at the time, the FBI issued an internal memo stating their belief that it was Mitrione who planted the bomb:

"This investigation, which is being conducted by a special FBIHQ [headquarters] investigative team, has been severely hampered by recent developments indicating a strong likelihood that Mitrione is culpable in the attempted murder of Sandini."

In March 1985, the former agent was convicted of violations of the bribery statute and drug trafficking. The special FBIHQ investigative team was headed by agent John Morris of the FBI's Boston office. At the time, Morris also supervised agent John J. Connolly who was recently convicted of murder in Miami, Florida. It was also discovered that Morris took bribes from his confidential informants just weeks before coming to Florida to head the Mitrione investigation.

Gary was not the only person to disappear and be murdered during the Airlift debacle. After Bob Norman's four part New Times series, "Finding Gary", I was contacted by the family of Jairo Sanchez (pictured right) who said their loved one disappeared the same day as my husband, and they did recognize the names, dates, and places in the articles. After meeting with them, Norman wrote a fifth installment to the series—"Finding Jairo."

Twenty-five years later we have almost all of our answers, and I believe that soon, those responsible for the murders of Gary Weaver and Jairo Sanchez will answer for what they have done.

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Left for Dead

by Susan Murphy-Milano

Munk Caselow Willis has been incarcerated for approximately 8,047 days. His home for 22 years--the Alabama State Prison.

One person is particular, has counted the total hours and days Willis has been in prison. It is a woman Willis and two others kidnapped, raped, beat, shot, and left for dead in an abandoned quarry.

On May 14, 1986, Susan Waller, 21, was a student at the University of Alabama while holding down a job in a clinical laboratory. That evening, her girlfriend Emily came over to her apartment. Susan answered the door. Three young men burst into the door of the dwelling, knocking both women to the floor. Armed with shot guns and knives, the men tore through the apartment room by room, like a tornado looking for anything of value.

At gunpoint, the men kidnapped Susan and Emily, taking the women across town to another location.

After hours of rape, torture and beatings, the 3 men took the women to an abandoned trash filled quarry. Both Susan and Emily were ordered by the men into the water. The young women swam as quickly as possible.

Little did either realize the next move by the men was to shoot at them like target practice as they swam for their lives.

When the bullets finally stopped and there was silence, Susan and Emily waited in the water, for what seemed like forever before swimming to the other side of the quarry. Once they reached shore, the women ran towards the bright lights up on the hill.

Suddenly, out from the darkness, the 3 men emerged. Susan and Emily begged the men for their lives, “please, please, we won’t tell anyone, just let us go.”

One of the men held a shot gun to Susan’s head. “I don’t care about you bitch.” Bang. The noise was so loud it scared one of the other gunmen and Emily was able to break away and jump back into the water and escape.

The men took Susan’s body, dragging it across the hard gravel. “The bitch aint dead”, said one of the men. "She will be" , remarked another. The men dumped Susan’s body into the water. Susan played dead, remaining conscious enough to keep her mouth out of the water.

The three men responsible have only served twenty-two years of two concurrent life terms for rape and attempted murder. Each man becomes eligible for parole every three to five years. On January 8, 2009 I must stand before the Alabama Board of Paroles and ask them to deny parole to inmate Munk Willis. “It is my belief that this violent sex offender will not be capable of conforming to minimal standards of conduct within a community; and in fact poses a grave risk to society.”

Susan Waller , Stacy Dittrich, Robin Sax and myself are asking readers to sign a petition of protest (you need only be a citizen of the U.S. for your signature to count) supporting this request to the board. As a political machine, they are influenced by public opinion, and every signature will matter. The petition is a confidential document; viewed only by Susan Waller and the acting parole board members. Your signature will never be made public.

We are enclosing a link directly to the petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/denyparole_munkcaselowwillis/index.html

On Tuesday, December 16, 2008, Susan Waller will be a guest on Justice Interrupted.

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