Transcript of The Tragic Death of Gloria Ramirez

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And I'm Elaina.

And this is Morbid with a Side of Refrigerator Cigarette. In case you don't know what that is. I don't promote smoking. I do promote Diet Coke.

Yeah, that's a thing. People call Diet Coke a fridge cigarette.

It's just a meme I saw once.

Yeah, I think that's funny.

I think- I, too, think it's funny.

Strawberries and cream Dr. Pepper, my fridge cigarettes.

All right.

Well, I think Diet Coke is disgusting.

You know No, you know which one I do like of the Dr. Pepper ones? The cream soda one.

Oh, see, I think that's disgusting. Disgusting. I'm disgusting. But that's funny because they were in your fridge when I tried them. You gave them a shot and you didn't like them. Yeah, because somebody... No, you know why they were in my fridge?

Tell me.

Because I think you thought that was the kind I liked and you got them for one of your get-togethers, and then you gave me the rest of them and I felt bad. She's telling me it's my fault.

You know why those are in my fridge? My You know why those are in my refrigerator? Because of you.

No, because you were doing a kind. I was. You were doing a kindness, and then I did a kindness back by taking them and not saying, Those are not the ones that I like.

Until now.

Until now. Like a year later.

You little. You little.

Because I really don't like those. But you, you drank them. I like them. And I think Aiden drank some. Worked out. Worked out for me.

Drink, drink, drunk.

Drank it.

Yeah. What else is You Brother Man?

You guys sold out the Sunday show. In under four minutes. You're outrageous.

It's insane. Like, who are you? Here's the thing. There are tickets being resold. That has nothing to do with us. Yeah. We get a proposal with how many seats, and we say, yeah, that price sounds fair. And then people can buy them and do whatever the fuck they want with them, which sucks, I realize.

It sucks a giant ass.

But we have nothing to do with that.

So if you see tickets that are like, crazy price. It's even on the Wilbur website, because you have to look under the thing and it'll say verified resale ticket. That tells you that someone's trying to resell that ticket. Because there's like, balcony seats that are sitting there right for $1,200. Whoever did that, go fuck yourself.

That's such a dick move.

But that's not us. You know we're not out here charging fucking $1,200.

No. And that's how it works. We literally get a proposal with each seat and how much money it should cost. And we actually went back a couple of times and we were like, let's be a little more fair.

We would never do that to you. No.

So anyway.

But there was just a couple of people that were concerned that we were trying to...

Concerned that we thought we were Taylor Swift.

That we were out here thinking we're like, Sabrina Carpenter or something. I wish. And also those tickets that people were concerned about, those aren't... We're not... Like the resale tickets? Whoever's selling those tickets, if somebody buys them, they get that money. So we're not profiting off of that in any way. It's just crazy.

It's a wild world.

Yeah. People are getting rougher and rougher out here in these streets. But you know what? You're all great. You're all fantastic. So that's all that matters.

You're all fan-freaking-tastic.

Yeah. We just It was only a couple of people that even noticed it and mentioned it, but we just didn't want anybody thinking that we were out here trying to sell tickets for $700 and shit. No. That's crazy. That's crazy. But, yeah. So So that's stupid. Um, stupid of people to do.

I think that's really our only Bitnasty, though.

I know. I think that is.

I like that I've officially named our business segment, Bitnasty.

That's pretty fun in my opinion.

And then commences. Bit Nasty.

Yeah, because I don't think there's anything else that really has come up.

No.

That you guys need to fucking know about. You know?

Don't forget, we lied. Bit Nasty, not ever.

More bit Nasty.

Don't forget tomorrow, actually, because I think this is Thursday's episode.

I was going to say, look at, look at. I looked at the producer. She looked at me first like, I know anything.

She looked at me blankly and shook her head.

I just went, oh, no. I don't know those things.

So today is Thursday for you. It's what? Tuesday for us? So we're not even that far apart. Don't worry. We're not getting back into craziness. But anyway, Friday is going to be our bonus episode where we are going to talk about Unknown Number, the high school catfish scandal, which I actually last night, me and Drew were watching TikTok together, and people have been filming their reactions when they find out who the catfish is. Oh, yeah. And I need you all to please do that if you don't know. Oh, hell, yeah. If you somehow don't know who the catfish is at this point, you got to film yourself watching it because your reaction And will be the same.

I've been spoiled. I already know. I got spoiled ahead of time. So I won't do it, but you guys should definitely do it.

I got spoiled ahead of time, but even still- Still shocking. Even still shocking. And also I was like, well, I don't know. I didn't know exactly. Yeah.

But we'll talk about it on Friday. We'll talk about it on Friday.

Yeah. Aka tomorrow, if you're listening on Thursday. Yeah. All right. So that wraps up Bid Nasty.

Now Bid Nasty is done. Pinky swear. Let's go, girls. Today, Today, we are going to be talking about a very interesting case. We're going to be talking about Gloria Ramirez. You might see her referred to sometimes as the toxic woman, which is shitty. Not great to do that. It's really not great to name somebody that. After you hear the story, you'll understand why. And her family does not want her to be known or That's the toxic woman. Yeah. Who would want that? We will not be calling her the toxic woman, but I just wanted in case you had seen it, that that's the same Gloria Ramirez. This story is wild.

I know of this story, but I don't know all the details.

Very interesting. Very tragic. Very scary.

Yeah.

So let's start. Within hours of Gloria Ramirez taking an unexpected visit to the ER in 1994, medical personnel who rushed to her aid that evening became sick with symptoms that are typically associated with insecticide poisoning. Oh, shit. Like, very strange tremors, apnea, burning skin, like, randomly.

So if you ingested raid or something?

Yeah. And several of these people, several of these medical personnel, required hospitalization themselves because of it. Oh. And in the days and weeks after this, the doctors and nurses who came into direct contact with Ramirez continued to experience these crazy bizarre symptoms. They were defying logical explanation at this point, and they were leaving everyone wondering, how had this seemingly ordinary woman's body been transformed into some Trojan horse of toxicity? That's essentially what they were saying. Like, what happened here?

Because initially they had no idea.

They had no idea. They didn't know what they had gotten into. And honestly, Really, the symptoms and things that were happening were associated with chemical warfare, essentially. What? Yeah. It's wild. So let's start at the beginning. It's the best place to start. It always is. On the evening of February 19th, 1994, Gloria Ramirez complained to her boyfriend, Johnny Estrada, that she was having some trouble breathing, which is scary. She was only 31 years old. She was a mother of two, but she had been diagnosed with advanced stage cervical cancer about six weeks before this. Oh, wow. She was actually scheduled to begin some pretty aggressive chemotherapy the following Tuesday. But obviously this night, things took a pretty alarming turn. When she started to say, I'm having trouble breathing, it It could never be something that's ignored. But getting that diagnosis, it made it even scarier. Yeah, of course. She actually ended up collapsing. She told her boyfriend, I had something's wrong, and then she collapsed. Oh, that's so scary. Johnny called the paramedics, and they got there really quickly She was very quickly transported to Riverside General Hospital, and this is in California. She was admitted at about 08: 15 PM and taken to Trauma Unit 1.

Emergency staff assessed the whole situation. Everybody was moving at a rapid pace, but by the time she arrived there, her breathing had gotten way worse. It was super shallow, really quick, and it was causing her blood pressure to fall really, really rapidly. That's so scary. So in just trying to to determine what the cause of all of this was, doctors and nurses questioned Gloria as best they could. But by this point, she was barely conscious, and she was only able to really provide some short answers. And most of them were unintelligible and frankly, unhelpful at this point.

Yeah, she's not totally with it at this point.

Yeah. So the doctors and nurses, the whole staff, were questioning the paramedics as well who transported Gloria. All they knew was that they had been told by Johnny Estrada that her name is Gloria Ramirez. She's 31 years old, and she was recently diagnosed with cervical cancer. So the attending medical staff started treatment, and they started by injecting a combination of benzodiazapines, Valium, Versid, and Ativan. Oh, wow. That was to sedate Gloria. Yeah, I would think so. Obviously, and followed by more injections of lidocaine and an anti-arrhythmic called Bertilium to stabilize the irregular heartbeat that was happening. Okay. So the drugs started working their way through her system And in the meanwhile, nurse Maureen Welch began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with an Ambu bag. God, this is like- Because she was starting to really go. Intense. It's like one of those intense medical scenes that you're picturing in your head. It was like chaos.

I'm picturing something from the pit.

Exactly. That's exactly what it is. And the combination of the drugs and this forced air should have been enough to stabilize Gloria's situation, at least for a brief period of time, just trying So they could collect some more information even just to move forward. But when it became clear she wasn't responding to the treatment at all, medical staff began preparing to shock Gloria's heart back into a normal rhythm with a defibrillator.

Shit.

It was just going to Yeah. Everything was going haywire. She's 31, you said? 31 years old. Jesus. 31 years old. And the first indication that something was a miss came when the nurse cut away Gloria's T-shirt to try to apply the electrodes. And she found that the woman's body was covered in what looked like an oily sheen, like an oily substance.

Like you put like, Vicks on your chest or something. Yeah.

But one nurse described it as like an oil slick. She said, like you see on the ground of a gas station.

Oh.

You know, like that sheen, which is different. Yeah.

I was like, so not like when you put Vicks on your chest.

It was then that the medical staff noticed a faint odor coming from Gloria's body, what they thought was probably coming from Gloria's body that some would later describe as fruity, while others said it smelled more like garlic. It's always like sickly sweet.

To me, how people can smell things differently or see things differently.

Or it's like just different notes of this odor hit someone different, someone more. Like someone's going to sit there and say, well, it was sickly sweet, like garlic. And it's like they get the note of garlic. Somebody else is like fruit.

It's like when you see people do a wine tasting and they're like, I'm getting notes of sandalwood. And then you're drinking it and you're like, I'm getting notes of grape.

Grape. Exactly. Sour grape. Old grape. Now, by the time this was all going on, Gloria was in full cardiac arrest. Full cardiac arrest. And there was no time to linger over this odd discovery that they had all just come across. Yeah, they were like, We'll get to that when we get there. Yeah, they were like, Put a pin in that. So medical staff continued the life-saving protocols. And following the defibrillation, nurse Susan Caine swabbed Gloria's arm and inserted the catheter. Then attached the syringe to try to draw blood. Once the vial was filled, Caine handed it to Maureen Welch. It's important that you're getting this transfer of the chain of custody, essentially, of everything. So it'll be important later. So again, Susan Caine swabbed Gloria's arm, inserted the catheter, took the syringe, drew the blood, and then she handed it to Maureen Welch, the nurse, who immediately noticed that the blood smelled of ammonia. Oh, Well, Welch passed the vial off to medical resident Julie Gordchinsky, who, in addition to the unusual ammonia smell, noticed there appeared to be, Manila-colored particles floating in the blood. They were Probably all like, what the fuck is going on?

Yeah. So moments after the blood sample was collected, trauma Unit One was plunged further into chaos, if you can even believe it.

I was like, yeah, how?

As he continued his attempt to stabilize Gloria Ramirez, Dr. Umberto Ochoa heard someone shout, catch her.

Catch her?

Catch her.

Okay.

Turning to see what the fuck- Because I'm like, Gloria is on a table.

Yeah.

So turning to see where the fuck that's coming from, Ochoa just barely managed to catch Susan Cain under the arms as her legs gave out and she dropped to the floor.

She lost consciousness?

Yeah. Just passed out. Okay. Caine had just been removed from the room on a journey when Gordchinsky began to feel nauseous.

And these are all the people that were doing- All the medical personnel.

All the medical personnel. Yeah. Feeling as though she was going to be sick, she excused herself from the room and went to sit down at the nurses station. But she wasn't there for long before she, too, slumped to the floor and started exhibiting symptoms of apnea. She was intermittently twitching and shaking, and then she would stop breathing for several seconds.

What the fuck?

Like, picturing this scene from beginning to now, even, and it's going to keep going.

It feels like something out of a television show.

It doesn't feel... You would see this happening in a show and be like, Calm the fuck down, everybody.

It feels like something out of like, ER, so dramatized.

But even in the ER, you'd be like, no. No, I know. Exactly. You'd be like, guys, this is not... This doesn't make sense.

No, no. It actually feels like something out of house. You know when crazy shit goes down in house and then he gets to the bottom of it.

They have this crazy diseases This is a house episode. Yes. Which, by the way, I fucking love that show.

House is a great- I haven't seen that in forever. A great show.

Yeah, this is because we're going from... And it's all so sudden. That's the thing. It's all happening very quickly. Yeah. Poor Gloria is just six weeks ago, diagnosed. And then immediately feels a little shortness of breath passes out cold at her house, is rushed to the hospital. Right when she gets there, she goes into cardiac arrest. They're trying to do like mouth to mouth, trying to defibrillate her heart back into motion. And now everyone is dropping. And now everybody starts dropping like flies. It just won't stop. I feel like I would run out of that hospital crying. No, same. That's a lot. Now, back in Trauma Unit One, Maureen Welch, another person who handled the vial, was the third person affected. She later said, I remember hearing someone scream, and she said, And then she passed out. When regained consciousness, she no longer had control over her arms and legs. What? Yeah. Moments after that, the entire emergency room at Riverside General was evacuated. Yeah.

I was waiting for that.

Because what the fuck is going on? And medical staff continued treating patients in the parking lot. Holy canole. Well, and I quote, Hazardous materials collectors dressed in protective clothing, tested the air in the emergency room for dangerous gasses. Because that would be my first thought. I'd be like, this is a gas leak.

Something's up here.

Really bad is in this ventilation system, and we're all fucking breathing it in right now. Evidently. In Trauma Unit One, Gloria's condition continued to worsen as all this was going on, with her blood blood pressure dropping at an alarming rate. And despite their efforts to stabilize her, and this is just so tragic, amid all of this, Gloria Ramirez died at 08: 50 PM from what an autopsy would later identify as kidney failure brought on by cervical cancer. Oh, wow.

So she was diagnosed six weeks earlier and died. That is wild.

And it's like she got in there at 8: 15 PM and was dead by 8: 50. Wow. As all around her People are just chaos.

But they're also at the same time trying to treat her. Trying to treat her. They're absolute best.

Oh, it's awful. It's so tragic all the way around.

She's so young. And you said she had two children.

Yeah, she's a mother.

That's awful.

Now, once Dr. Ochoa had pronounced Gloria dead, her body was sealed into an air tight bag and moved to an isolated room in the hospital because, again, they don't know what's going on.

Nobody knows. Yeah.

Among those who helped move the body was ER nurse Sally Balderas, who had been in trauma unit one and helped to collect the blood sample from Gloria. Once she'd returned to the parking lot after moving Gloria to where she needed to be, Balderas felt ill and then started retching and complaining of, quote, a burning sensation on her skin. Oh. And then she, too, needed emergency medical attention.

This is like the fourth or fifth person at this point.

In total, 23 of the 37 members of the emergency Department who worked the night Ramirez was brought in complained of experiencing at At least one symptom.

Whoa.

23 of the 37 members of the emergency Department.

Is that mass hysteria?

Well, that was one of the theories that people had.

Because I'm like, that's an insane amount of people who weren't even in the room.

This is also, too, though. It's like people are experiencing real symptoms. They're not just Salem witch trial style, throwing themselves, saying they see monkeys on the wall and Yeah. They're experiencing actual medical emergencies, which is wild. Yeah. Now, Balderas, whose symptoms were initially described as a little more than a headache, required a 10-day hospital stay to treat the symptoms of apnea she began experiencing after exposure.

That's another person with apnea.

Yeah. Susan Cain also continued to experience apnea in the days following and was hospitalized at Corona Regional Medical Center until her symptoms subsided three days later.

I wonder if they renamed that place.

I know. I was thinking that, too. It was like, whewf.

But also, holy shit.

Yeah. By far the most affected from the exposure to Gloria Ramirez was Dr. Julie Gordzinski, who suffered a number of serious symptoms and even underwent surgery on her knees several weeks later to treat avascular necrosis. What is that? Which is a condition where the bones that make up the joints begin basically dying for lack of blood Yeah, I knew.

Like, necrosis. What the fuck?

Yeah. Gordchinsky's other symptoms included hepatitis, pankreatitis, and quote, chest seizing muscle spasms, and breathing relapses that necessitated use of a respirator.

Holy shit. I just keep saying that, but like, holy shit.

She was only 33 experiencing all this, and she couldn't draw a full breath for months after exposure.

And so what was the thing called that she had? The necrosis thing?

Avascular necrosis.

So the nerves in her knees were dying off?

The bones that make up the joints start dying from lack of blood circulation.

Holy, and she's 30 something years old?

33.

Is she going to be able to use her legs?

Mm-hmm. Now, among the more baffling elements of the case, at least in the earlier days of this whole investigation, because now they're like, What the fuck happened here? Yeah. Was that the paramedics who transported Gloria to Riverside General, who'd presumably been in close contact with her body and experienced none of the symptoms present among the ER staff.

I just pulled my head back and went to the side like, huh?

This led investigators from Riverside County agencies and Cal OSHA to focus their attention on the hospital itself, believing that something was circulating in the hospital, possibly in the ventilation system.

Because a lot of times, and I don't know, obviously, what happened here, but a lot of times they're putting oxygen on you. That close.

They were doing all the things. She was in full... She was in very much distress on her way to cardiac arrest in the ambulance. So they were doing a hell of a lot.

And think about a trauma unit compared to the size of that compared to an ambulance. The back of an ambulance. And a closed in, probably not that well ventilated space.

That's why they're thinking it has to do with the ventilation in the hospital. Yeah. In fact, this wasn't the first time Riverside General had trouble with toxic fumes.

That's not something you want on your Yelp reviews. No. You don't want one that says toxic fumes, let alone multiple.

One time having toxic fumes is too many. In 1991, so only a couple of years before this, two employees required treatment for exposure to what was believed to be a toxic gas leak from a sterilizer.

Not a sterilizer leaking toxic fumes.

Just one A year later, a federal inspection discovered that algae growing in a water reservoir was also causing issues.

Babe, we got algae? Yeah. We got algae?

And a year after that, an inspection found the emergency room was permeated with sewer gas from a drain. That can kill you. Sour gas will fucking kill you. Yeah.

Not sewer gas in the emergency. Don't you tell me there's more. Is there another comma there? No. Okay, I mean, Jesus Christ.

We got enough commas. The HAZMAT team began by searching for a variety of toxins capable of causing the symptoms that the hospital staff were dealing with, particularly hydrogen sulfide, which is an insidious poison that smells like rotten eggs and at high concentrations can kill a person after one or two whiffs.

Insidious.

Insidious.

People who go into HAZMAT are just like straight up heroes. Yeah. Imagine like, risking shit like that.

I know. And phasteine, a chemical commonly used in the creation of organic chemical compounds, but one that can also be used to create a chemical weapon.

Oh, good.

Don't write that down. It tears open capillaries in the lungs, drowning its victims in their own blood.

Oh, that is like chemical warfare.

Chemical weapons are the scariest thing in the entire universe. So scary. And they sound made up.

No, they do. It sounds like something out of a futuristic novel.

I'm horrified right now. So where hazmat team is looking for hydrogen sulfide, insidious poison that smells like rotten eggs and can kill you with a couple of whips, whips or phasgene, which is literally something that will tear open capillaries in your lungs and around your blood. Unfortunately, neither was found at the hospital. That's riveting.

So there's that. Fantastic news.

So in addition to the negative the results from the test looking for toxins in the air, the theory that those affected had been exposed to something circulating in the vents or other hospital symptoms, while certainly a reasonable theory, was undermined by other obvious factors. For one, Dr. Ochoa, who'd probably spent more time with Gloria Ramirez than anyone else. Was totally fine. Never experienced any ill effects from exposure to Gloria's body.

Interesting.

That is something you need to understand. He was closest, probably spent the most time, and he did not experience anything from Gloria Ramirez's body. Also, if something had been circulating in the vents or the water supply there, it almost certainly would have affected more than just those working in the ER. It would have also affected patients and visitors because it's not just the only people in the ER are the people working there. There's a ton of civilians walking around.

Well, and even probably other areas of the hospital, too. It's not always just one building. I don't know. Maybe it is in this case.

Because Because of that, investigators returned to the only lead they had, which was Gloria Ramirez's body, might have had something going on.

Which I understand needing to check all the boxes.

Oh, yeah. I don't think anybody faults them for having to look at that as an option. After several delays, the autopsy of Gloria Ramirez took place on February 25th. From the start, it was clear that it was going to be anything but a typical autopsy. Working in a specially sealed room, the 90-minute autopsy was conducted by a team of four pathologists all dressed in air tight, toxin proof safety suits.

How long does a typical autopsy take?

Honestly, it can take... It varies. That's the thing. 90 minutes is like, sure. It really depends on... You've done that before? It's so many factors in an autopsy. If it's a complete autopsy, if it's a keep, if it's a return. What is the difference between that? Keep the organs for research or you're returning them to the body. To the body. If it includes the head, if it's a neuro case, if they want the spinal cord taken out, if they want bone marrow taken. Say they want so many things.

For lack of a better term, the works. How long does that take?

That could take hours.

Okay, so this one isn't really insanely long.

This is a pretty decent one, I would say. This is- And again, somebody very skilled and capable can probably do a complete one in less time than I probably could.

And when you were performing them, how many people were working at the same time? Is four people working on the same body?

Four pathologists is a lot of pathologists to have in the room. But I understand why they did it in this case, because I've never worked with four pathologists on an autopy.

How many would you typically?

Usually, I was only alongside one. And if it was a neuro case, maybe two, because it was like a neuro pathologist with us.

And the pathologist is like the doctor, right?

Yeah, they're like the medical examiner. They're the specialists there. I see. So four pathologists, that's a lot.

Yeah.

Unless they may be confused I have four pathologists with a couple of texts, too, but I could see why they would have four pathologists here because what the fuck is going on?

But also at the same time, I'm like, if this is coming from Gloria's body, which it sounds like it's probably not, four pathologists, you want to take all those people out?

I know.

You want to take all those pathologies?

They're wearing their safety suits. They're wearing the PE required, I guess. So that's good. They're wearing air tight, toxin proof safety suits.

Kind of like what you wore during COVID.

I was just going to say during COVID, we wore those.

I remember seeing you in your full garb.

It's crazy and it sucks. Like your sweat is very necessary, won't ever knock it. But damn, you sweat. You sweat and it's hard to do things. And it's like, you don't get to be as precise as you want to be because you're in this really bulky thing. We had special bubbles, plastic bubbles that would go over the person's head. So you had to reach into the bubble to do the brain removal, and it was not great. Wow. Yeah. Covid was a fucking time for autopsies.

I'll tell you that. Covid was a fucking time for autopsies, and you're also just a wild bitch. You're a wild bitch. You're like, We'd have to reach into the bubble to do the brain. She's just like, I'll take a mediumized regular. I'm like, okay. Totally. It was crazy. I know. Like I said, you're a wild bitch.

It's pretty standard otherwise. You're not.

You're not.

You're in a bubble in some crazy suit, and it's harder. But yeah. So although the situation that occurred in the ER was highly unusual. It was, in fact, not the first time that it happened also.

Wait, everybody going down like that?

Well, several years earlier, emergency room workers in Perth, Australia, were similarly affected to a less dramatic extent, I will say, during the examination of a man who had killed himself by ingesting weevle poison. Oh, fuck. Yeah. With that in mind, so there was some precedent for this. I won't say it's a direct precedent, but there's some A shaky precedent. Yeah. With that in mind, the pathologist expected to find something in Gloria Ramirez's body that could wreak similar havoc, like an organophosphate pesticide. But Neither the search of her apartment or the autopsy turned up any chemicals like that. Okay. Also, although she had been diagnosed with the advanced stage cancer only recently, she hadn't started chemotherapy and had only been taking copazine, a drug used to control nausea. Okay. So she wasn't even on any the crazy chemo drugs. You know what I mean? Yeah. As the evidence collected during the autopsy was being analyzed, Gloria's body was put back into air tight storage, and county officials continued the investigation. The family, meanwhile, was left in a limbo state, which must have been really hard. They still had no explanation for what the fuck had happened.

And with the investigation still open, they couldn't bury Gloria and start the grieving process. That's tough.

I imagine that somebody was close by when all the chaos was happening in the ER, and that must have been really traumatic.

That must have been really dramatic. Now, by mid-April, the Ramirez family hired an attorney and filed a request for a court order that would allow for an independent pathologist to conduct another autopsy. Good for them. Also, others in the Riverside community started to wonder whether the county's refusal to release their findings or update the public was perhaps an indication of a cover-up. That was them wondering that. I'm not saying that's what it was.

I could see why people would be curious like that.

Robert Schwartz, an environmental attorney, told the LA Times, The county is destroying the single most important piece of evidence. They're destroying Gloria Ramirez's remains by having delayed things this long. Tom DeSantis, a representative from Riverside County, responded to the public pressure and said, This investigation isn't as simple as testing a hypothesis by checking for the presence of a particular chemical. The testing that is being performed is designed to rule out the thousands of possible chemical compounds and narrow the focus of the investigation.

You can see both sides here.

Yeah, you really can. But he couldn't provide any additional information at that time.

But it's also like, if you don't have the answer, what are you supposed to say?

Now, while the county struggled under increasing pressure from the public, the evidence and samples collected from the autopsy were sent to the forensic science center at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is a former nuclear weapons production and testing lab that was transformed and rebranded in the early '90s to focus on areas of natural sciences. Okay. The technicians at the forensic science center had expected to find the culprit in gasses contained in the head space of the containers, if not in the liver itself. But all they found was nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and argon, normal constituents of air. Yeah. Just nothing out of the ordinary. Right. Among the mysteries the technicians at the lab were able to solve, though, was the ammonia smell that many of the emergency room personnel noticed emanating from Gloria's body and the blood that was taken. According to Brian Anderson, a director at the forensic science center, the odor was most likely caused by Gloria's body breaking down that anti-nausea medication that she was taking at the time. Oh, okay. That's interesting. It is interesting. Ultimately, the team at the center was able to identify and explain many of the unusual compounds found in the blood and tissue samples submitted by the county.

In fact, the only thing Anderson and his team couldn't explain was the heavy presence of dimethylsulfone, which is a naturally occurring chemical compound found in everything from plant and marine life to food and beauty products.

Oh, okay.

As far as Anderson knew, this compound was a relatively harmless chemical, and it really couldn't have caused the damaging effects that people in the ER were suffering from that night. So he returned to the Riverside coroner's office and reported his findings, confirming that no toxins were found in Gloria Ramirez's body.

So anyone calling her the toxic woman is fucking stupid.

It's not real.

Exactly.

The technicians at the forensic science center had done as thorough an analysis as possible in 1994. So Anderson's findings were more or less the final word. Despite having no explanations for what had happened at Riverside General, county officials were confident there was no existing threat at the hospital, and the strange case of Gloria Ramirez was effectively closed, at least as far as the county was concerned. Okay. The coroner's office released the body to the family in late April, and Gloria Ramirez was buried at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside on April 27, 1994.

Almost two months after she passed away. That's tough on that family.

So if Riverside County officials had hoped that releasing Gloria's body would put an end to the chaos and the mystery surrounding this case, they were definitely disappointed in the weeks after that. The family still pressed the coroner's office for answers, rightfully so. They were, unfortunately, never going to really get any. And in August, Dr. Gordchinsky filed a $6 million lawsuit against Riverside General Hospital, alleging that conditions at the hospital and failure of safety protocols had left her with more than one debilitating condition preventing her from working. She was a 33-year-old doctor. Right. According to her lawyer, Russell Cusman, the suit was filed in part to compel the hospital in the county to release whatever information they had related to the case. He said later to reporters, Clearly, she's the victim of some toxic poisoning. The question is, where did it come from and who is responsible? Now, officials from the county and Riverside Hospital immediately immediately took a defensive position, contacting the California Department of Health and Human Services to undertake a study to determine the cause of the symptoms. They were like, We're going to try to figure this out. After reviewing the medical information from most of those affected by it that night and interviewing 34 of the staff members working at the hospital that evening, the DHS concluded the symptoms experienced by those who came in contact with Gloria was a case of mass psychogenic illness.

A situation in which symptoms of physical illness are experienced by large groups of people for psychological reasons.

That's what I was thinking. Exactly.

Now, although the study allowed for the possibility that a small number of those affected, particularly those who came in close contact with Gloria Ramirez's body, were exposed to a poisonous substance, they did not know the origin of the poison. It's important to note that mass psychogenic illness tends to be applied with bias, though, and is ascribed far more often to women than it is to men.

A lot of women went down.

That's the case here. Yeah.

So maybe it wasn't necessarily that is what you're implying.

Nobody really knows here. So as one would expect, the county's official explanation of mass psychogenic illness was poorly received. I bet. Especially by those directly affected. When Riverside ER nurse Maureen Welch read the report, she went to the forensic science center and implored Anderson to take a second look at the case because she was like, This is bullshit. Yeah.

I mean, you can understand why people thought that just because this is like such an insane case.

Yeah, of course. But the people who experienced it are pissed.

That's exactly what I was just going to say.

Now, upon review, it was discovered that what was initially identified as dimethylsulfone, remember the thing that wouldn't have caused issues, found in a lot of things.

Was it in cosmetics and everything? Yeah.

Was in fact dimethylsulfone cell foxide or DMSO. The only difference between those two chemicals is that DMSO has one oxygen atom, not two. So that changes the compound completely. Yeah.

Oh, God, not physics. Let's talk about it. Or in the chemistry.

I was like, no, it's not physics. I was like, you're in chemistry.

I was bad at both.

Fortunately, it's not physics.

But unfortunately, it is chemistry.

Organic chemistry, in fact. Boo. So since the 1960s, DMSO has been sold as a gel solvent used in industrial cleaning products. What? But it's also used by some as a folk remedy for pain relief. And it's occasional use in the treatment of interstitial cystitis, excuse me, a condition causing painful urinary tract lesions in women. The presence of DMSO would explain the oily sheen discovered on Gloria Ramirez's body, assuming that she may have used it for pain relief, like a topical pain relief. Right, because she's sick. This would also explain the aroma of garlic described by several of the workers present in the room with Ramirez because these are both hallmarks of this product.

Oh, wow. I mean, I love the smell of garlic. I do, too. But I don't have a toxic thing.

No. The presence of DMSO alone didn't explain the symptoms supposedly caused by exposure to Gloria, though. Okay. That alone. It was only when Anderson checked the chemical index text to review DMSO that he noticed an adjacent entry for a different chemical that seemed the most likely explanation for what had caused the medical mystery surrounding the death of Gloria Ramirez. Okay. Dimethylsulfate.

There's so many dimethyls. There is.

In most cases, dimethyl sulfate is used in small quantities in the manufacturing of Exactly.

I'm like, You're nerding out so hard over there.

I have my finger up.

She's like, In most cases, a little pointer finger. I'm like, Hey, I just wanted to point out.

I could see your face immediately when my finger went up.

I was like, it's so funny. So in most cases, finger went up again.

Dimethyl sulfate is used in small quantities in the manufacturing of dyes, perfumes, and certain drugs. But the chemical has That's an unpleasant history as one of the main components of this thing called nerve gas used in chemical warfare.

Not more chemical warfare. Nerve gas?

Dies, perfume, certain drugs. Oh, also nerve gas.

Nerve gas. I'm thinking that whole thing that the doctor experience. It seems legit.

Or nor.

Yeah.

Very unpleasant history for sure. In vapor form, dimethyl sulfate can, quote, kill the cells and exposed tissues such as the eyes, mouth, and lungs. When absorbed into the body, dimethyl sulfate causes convulsions, delirium, paralysis, coma, and delayed damage to the kidneys, liver, and heart.

Did somebody have kidney failure?

Gloria did.

Oh, Gloria did? Yeah. Okay.

Given its uses and the knowledge and skill required to handle it, no one suspected dimethyl sulfate in the case of Gloria Ramirez, because that's like fucking chemical warfare. Like, no. After all, Why would a mother of two housewife, just normal everyday human being, why would she have come in contact with such a volatile chemical? Where would she have come in contact with that?

I don't know.

But just as dimethyl Dimethylsulfone can be transformed into the DMSO compound with the addition of just one oxygen molecule. It doesn't take a lot to transform it. Dimethylsulfate can be created by adding one more oxygen molecule to DMSO. It's so delicate. Yeah. It transforms a fairly innocuous chemical into a literal toxic gas capable of killing a person. Like that.

That's so scary.

One extra oxygen molecule.

That reminds me of an episode of Below Deck, where I forget which- I'm very interested to see where it goes. No, it's actually funny. I forget which chief steward was and which like, lower steward was, but she kept mixing cleaning products that they were telling her not to mix.

Oh, fuck, no. You got to be so careful.

She was like, you're literally going to create mustard gas and blow the boat up.

And it's so easy to do.

Yeah. And they told her a couple of times, and finally she had to go to the captain. She was like, oh, hey.

Yeah. It's like so... And the girl's like, so- And the girl was like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry. You have to be, and I'm telling you right now, be so careful with that shit. When you are cleaning, do not mix it. Have an open window. It's so easy for people to get so sick from that shit. I don't mix anything. I don't want any of you getting sick, so be careful.

No, we love you. We do. Oh, fuck. I'm trying to think of the lady on the commercials. I love her. What's the floor? Oh, my God. It starts with P. I love that woman on the commercials.

Palmolive. No.

Pine Pine Saul.

Pine Saul. I love Pine Saul. I was thinking Pine Saul, but I said Palmolive.

No, that's actually funny because my brain was doing the same thing.

Because I could smell Pine Saul while I said Palmolive.

Bitch, I love Pine Saul. I mix it with warm water. Do you think that's okay?

That's fine. Okay. Yeah, you're okay there. All right, cool. So, yeah, be careful, everybody. But because they had taken the case pro bono, which is pretty great, Anderson and his team had to work nights and weekends over an extended period of time before they finally arrived at the best possible explanation for what the fuck had happened at Riverside General. The team theorized that like many cancer patients, Gloria Ramirez had turned to DMSO, the one that wasn't okay, to help manage her cancer-related pain, which would account for the oily sheen on her skin.

You said that was okay.

That was okay. When the paramedics placed the oxygen mask on her in the ambulance, Gloria's bloodstream was flooded with oxygen, creating the highly unusual set of fucking circumstances required to transform the DMSO into dimethyl sulfate. Blew my fucking mind when I heard that. No, my mind is, wow. Because they did exactly what they It was supposed to do. They put oxygen on her because she wasn't breathing. They did nothing wrong. Yeah, because they didn't. How would they know? They would have no idea. That is not a common question that you have to ask someone. Do you have DMSO on you? I've never been asked that. Also, she wasn't able to really respond to a lot anyways. Yeah. So they didn't do anything wrong. This was not them being negligent. No. But it's just a wildly unusual and freak fucking set of circumstances here.

Well, and also, realistically, I would assume that that could have affected as many people as it did Because did it spread through the... How does that work, actually? Where so many of the ER staff went down because her blood was now filled with toxic gas, essentially.

Okay. Because her bloodstream was now flooded with oxygen, and that added the extra oxygen molecule to DMSO to turn it into that essential nerve gas.

So even holding a vial of her blood, it could go through the vial?

It's going to be exposed to the air somehow. Now because it's going to be transferred into the vial. So there is going to be some... I see. And even just from that little pin prick to insert the catheter to put the syringe in. It went into the air. Exposure to the air. It's vapor, essentially. It can travel. But it just blew my fucking mind. That's shocking. What are the goddamn odds of this?

I would say they're very insane. Yeah.

So the chemical reaction, well put.

I was like, in my head, I went to say they're low, and then I was like, yeah, no, they're not high, but I questioned myself. I was like, they're crazy.

So the chemical reaction would also explain the presence of the white or off-white, like Manila, is what they describe them. All the particles. Crystals observed in the blood samples taken in the ER. When the blood sample was drawn, small amounts of the lethal gas, like I said, leaked from the syringe, which explains why those closest in proximity, Cain, Welch, and Gordchinsky, were the most affected. Oh, because they all had. And as they went out further, people experienced considerably less symptoms of exposure. So it would be the same as chemical warfare.

This is horrible, but incredibly fascinating.

And just what the fuck are the odds that all this would happen? It's just like, it really is wild.

It really is an episode of fucking House. I'm like, has House done an episode on this?

I know, probably.

I'm about to Google it. I'll let you know.

It would be impossible for Anderson and his team to recreate the exact circumstances necessary to concretely prove this theory. So when they submitted the report to the coroner in the case, it was only so they could get the county's feedback. Nevertheless, the Riverside County coroner's office accepted the forensic science center's explanation because it makes so much fucking sense and released the report as the final word on the matter. Although some people were skeptical of the results, pointing out that a reaction like that would have required an enormous amount of DMSO, Oregon State toxicologist Frank Dost pointed out, in that stage of fighting for her life, Ramirez may have really overloaded on it, creating the precise set of circumstances under which the chain reaction could occur. And I fully believe that. I think this is just a freak set of circumstances that absolutely no one is at fault for.

Totally. I mean, you think of the products that are available that you don't realize how dangerous they can be. I'm 29 years old. I just found out that you can't put Vicks under your nose overnight.

Yeah. I have no idea. That is something we used to do when we were younger. Yeah.

And it's these home remedy things.

But when you start looking into them, you realize how dangerous this shit can be.

I'm so glad I'm related to you because you're so sciency. I would have no idea.

It's scary. Even things like dry shampoo, aerosol dry shampoo. I know. The fact that that's been connected to so much cancer and different stuff. It's so scary. You're better off with the really natural pump powder ones. But you also have to be careful of those. So be really careful when you're picking this shit because you just don't want to put yourself in that position. Now, for the last over 25 years, Gloria Ramirez has been called the Toxic Lady, someone whose existence was only significant in death, essentially.

Because of what people said about her.

The curiosity, of course, is only natural. I mean, it's a fascinating case. It's a fascinating case. The circumstances of her death are bizarre. Incredibly complex, easily lending themselves to fantastical interpretations of it. But from the moment she died, Gloria's family had to face a seemingly endless stream of reporters, media personalities, and headlines that accused Gloria, who was not here to defend herself, of everything from PCP addiction to being an alien.

I'm sorry. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. If you're rolling up to somebody's house as a reporter, like, listen, I get it. Reporters are a thing. If you're rolling up to somebody's house who has just lost their family member and asking if they're a fucking alien, go fuck yourself.

Reevaluate your fucking life choices.

Reevaluate your entire existence as a human. Are you joking? And these are- And PCP addiction? Where do we even get that from?

It's just grasping at sensational headlines. That's all it is.

It's not so shitty.

It's outrageous. I mean, the speculation was ridiculous, and it obscured her humanity. Sure did. Gloria Ramirez was a single mother of two young children. She was described as, quote, a simple homemaker, according to Reverend Brian Taylor, who spoke at her graveside. She was also a sister, a girlfriend, and a member of the community whose life was tragically cut short very quickly by cancer. Like so many of us, her life was just ordinary, just a life. Hardly befitting the science fiction narrative that she is so often involuntarily inserted into. When Gloria was finally laid to rest on April 27th, more than two months after her death, it was under the invasive eye of journalists, photographers, a whole host of people who were shouting questions at the grieving family. At the funeral? Setting a disrespectful and thoughtless tone that honestly permeated her legacy for more than two decades at this point.

Yeah, get the fuck away from people's gravesides unless you're related or friends with them.

Don't be yelling at people there. Get out of here. In a brief article for the Los Angeles Times, Peter King's summation of the funeral is something that we should probably all keep in mind today. They wrote, Speaking well of the dead, allowing them a final dignity is a basic human courtesy. Gloria Ramirez just got cheated.

Yeah, she absolutely did.

It's so true because I fully believe the theory that the forensic science center came up with.

It makes so much sense.

It makes so much sense.

Just from a scientific standpoint.

It is just a freak set of circumstances that can happen, but obviously don't happen often. Yeah, no, right. No one is at fault. No one was doing anything that they shouldn't have been doing. No. Gloria was in pain. She was doing what she was She might have been, who knows? Maybe she was grown up with that remedy. You know what I mean? Just like that by someone.

I grew up and Vicks under my nose. Yeah.

She was just doing what she had to do to get relief, which none of us who have not experienced cancer, personally, can speak to because I can't imagine that. No. And the paramedics were just doing their job, getting oxygen to her brain and her lungs when she was losing it rapidly. Right. Doing their job. And the ER staff was doing their job. And it just nobody did anything wrong. It just was a shit set of circumstances that happened to fall into an even shittier one. Yeah, 100 %. But Gloria Ramirez is not the toxic lady. No.

Like you just said, she was like a family member of many people and a friend and a sister.

She's a mom, she's a friend, a sister, a girlfriend, a community member, and somebody who got sick in a shit set of circumstances happened. Yeah, that's it. But it's like, let's give people dignity. It's more fascinating what happened to make all of that occur than it is to sit here and call her the toxic woman and say that it was something ask if she's an alien or like, things like that. Like, something naturally occurring in her body or something like that. No, this is just fucking organic chemistry, really. People are such dicks. Gawn a rye.

Wow.

But that's the tale of Gloria Ramirez. I hope her family has gotten some release over the past couple of decades here. Yeah.

Because- We would hope so. Here we are to set the record straight. She's not a toxic woman.

She's not a toxic woman. Get the fuck out of here with that. She's Gloria Ramirez.

That really was a fascinating case. It is. I had heard of it, but I did not know everything that went into that.

Yeah, I had only heard her called the toxic lady. Me too. So, yeah.

Wow.

All right.

Well, thanks for listening. We hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird that you're rolling up to people's houses or their gravesites asking stupid questions. I had to sing during the episode and here it is.

Yeah, don't do that.

Don't do that. I'll punch you. Don't do that. I won't actually punch you, but I'll metaphorically punch you. Yeah.