February 12, 2025 • 43 mins
When a young newly engaged couple pick up a couple bottles of "Homemade" Limoncello from a local restaurant, they assume they are buying a product that is safe to consume. Greta Marie Otteson, 33, and Els Arno Quinton, 36 are world travelers, she from Great Brittain, he from South Africa, and are celebrating their recent engagement. Cleaning service shows up to clean their room on Boxing Day (December 26) and discovers the couple dead. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack take a look what really happened to the couple and other world travelers who are suffering the same or similar fate.
Transcript Highlights
00:12.79 Introduction: Mardi Gras - Drinking Alcohol
05:07.20 Ethanol vs methanol
10:05.13 "Homemade" Limoncello
15:13.03 Alcohol effects
20:06.36 Atlanta Bathtub gin
25:01.39 Alcohol - different types
30:21.77 Victim contacted mother, talks about worst hangover
35:31.07 Tourist dying drinking methanol instead of ethanol
40:02.02 Methanol poisoning, suspects being charged with murder
43:17.41 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quody bodies, but Joseph's gotten more than. One of the
things that's associated with Marti grass is revelry. I've been
to many Marti Graus parades in various locations around South
(00:22):
Louisiana over the course of my life. It's something that
my family has done for years. Even my grandmother, who
was from a very very religious family, took the train
down to New Orleans in the thirties and visited her aunt.
Aunt Bertha as a matter of fact, was her name,
and she lived in the French Quarter. And my grandmother
(00:47):
actually told me stories of going to Marti graous parades
with horse drawn floats and it was amazing, you know,
to hear talk about it and the actual flambeoa where
they're illuminating the path and they're actually using the flames
of the flambos that's what it comes from, and they're
dancing up and down the streets. But you know, into
(01:10):
her eyes from her religious upbringing, it was shocking, you know,
to say the very least, but it was a memory
that stuck with her. And of course, as Tom has
gone by, I've gone over the years and I've taken
my family to more family friendly events if you will.
But all in all, it is an end of a
(01:33):
season of the year where you're supposed to celebrate all
those things that have passed and then entering into the
Linton season, beg forgiveness and of course you're going to fast.
But for some they can't get past that. For some
(01:54):
they leave it all on the road. And I can't
tell you, my friends, how many cases of alcohol poisoning
I've worked as a death investigator in New Orleans over
the year. It's very sad because people that are not
used to drinking suddenly show up in my hometown and
drink like they're all old pros. And it is a
(02:19):
sight to behold and many times very tragic. But you know,
today we're going to discuss not just one case, two cases,
but actually a series of cases that have occurred in
various locations around the world recently that involved the consumption
(02:40):
of a type of alcohol that has led to death
and ruin for many. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks. Dave. You might not know this, but if
(03:02):
you've ever been around somebody that has been consuming alcohol, uh,
you know, like the night before where they've been out
partying and.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Eating that you're talking to.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Right, let's pretend I don't. Okay, but they go They'll
even go home and get a and bathe themselves, put
on cologne or perfume, and then next day they show
up to work and when they breathe in your face,
you've got that. And I've often described it as like
(03:35):
a it's like a sickly sweet smell that kind of
emanates from them, and you can you can tell that,
you know, mischief has been had perhaps or maybe revelry.
I don't know, but being so kind, well you know,
I don't I don't use the word debauchery. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It just like something that came out of an ashtray
mixed with great preagees.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It's it's rough and plus you know, I lived I was,
believe it or not, way back when I was a
fraternity boy, you know, and we we would mix up
uh you know, uh drinks and trash cans with boat
paddles and put fruit in there. And of course we
would use grain alcohol and lots of kool aid and
tons of eyes and we had no idea. I thank god,
(04:25):
uh that I escaped that without wind up winding up
in the hospital because it is very dangerous and alcohol
is very dangerous. And you know, for for us, we
think about alcohol in the sense of spirits, like spirits
to consume, celebrate with. Uh, maybe you enjoy wine and
(04:50):
the different types of wine that are out there. Maybe
you enjoy good scotch. I have no idea, but it's
all very dangerous. But you know there's not and but
consumable alcohols actually ethanol, and there are other kinds of
alcohol that are out there, and of course that's what
we're focused on today.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Well, in reality, the story that we started with was
it said recently engaged couple dies after drinking homemade lemon cello.
That was pretty much the headline. And when you get
down to the second paragraph, these two people are Greta
Marie Otison and els Arnold Quinton. She's from Great Britain,
(05:30):
he's from South Africa, and they meet up. They're both
world travelers. They travel and live in a lot of
different places and they both find each other in Vietnam.
And that's where they both in all the places they
had lived, where they wanted to remain and begin a
life together in this one place in Vietnam, and they
were just a mash everything I looked at on this
couple was just nice people, good people, educated, fun loving
(05:54):
and really loved each other. And they get engaged and
to celebrate, they picked up well the way it was written.
And I told you this homemade alcohol, homemade lemon cello.
Well for starters, I don't know what lemon cello is,
and being a recovered alcoholic in recovery for over thirty
three years now, it's something I had never even heard of,
(06:17):
and so I looked at it because I wanted to
see what we're really talking about. I'm thinking they're having
to mix up their own alcohol, you know, starting with
potatoes or something. And I was thinking, Okay, you got lemon,
so they're going to use lemon rys And I started
thinking that's what I was thinking. That's not the case
at all.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
In reality, they were in Vietnam and they went to
a restaurant and they purchased bottles of this lemon cello.
And what it is. It's a drink that is made
with from using lemon rinds and things like that. You
get slavery, yeah, but it's made with a vodka or
some type of ever clear, you know, a alcohol, yeah,
(06:58):
just brain alcohol and that has no real flavoring of
its own other than just here it is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
It's rotgut.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
But what they would do at some places, of course,
is you use much lower quality of vodka or what
have you. They wouldn't use the top shelf, and then
they would that's how they would make it to keep
it cheap.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But let me tell you, yeah, let me tell you
a real quick a side about ever Clear. I knew
we actually this was not my case. Okay, this was
not my case. It was a colleagues case. They we
had a case of and it wasn't ever Clear. It
(07:37):
was actually golden grain, which is essentially the same thing,
which is pure grain alcohol. The proof on it is
just absolutely through the roof. If you've ever even tasted
it with a tip of your tongue, it's a taste
that you'll never forget. It'll put you on the ceiling,
very very strong. And at this particular party, you had
(07:59):
people that were doing straight shots of Everclear and then
chase our golden grain and then chasing it with I
can't like sprite or something like this. Anyway, One of
these one of the people at the party, Dave, got
really hammered on this stuff, and he was a smoker,
and he made the decision to entertain entertain people there
(08:24):
by getting mouthfuls of golden grain and taking a lighter
and blowing it, you know, blowing it out and literally
blowing flames. If you set the house on fire. Two
people died. Ah yeah, in this particular instance, it's just
one of those little things, you know, the curves. But again,
when it comes down to it, you know, whether it's
(08:46):
vodka or whether it's golden grain, ever clear, that's ethanol.
That's a consumable alcohol. Are as consumable as it can be.
Now we all know that, you know. Look, I mean even.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Featuring you retelling the story of Revenge of the Nerds and.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Down yeah, yeah, and that that and I often wonder
if that's where they got the idea for that.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You said, this was like a really tiny house, we
called it kind of a clapboard siding house, and it
was like a party location and had two people die
in there. Go yeah, I know. My thought was was that,
you know, sometimes you obviously it goes without saying people
(09:32):
don't make the best decisions. Uh, but if you walk
into a bar and they're selling you bottles of alcohol.
And listen, if I'm not mistaken, this couple had recently
gotten engaged.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, they've been together for they had been together for
some time, but they were celebrating their engagement one week engaged. Yeah, celebrating,
and they bought it from the restaurant. That's the thing. See, Joe,
I told you when we started, I thought they made it. Wait,
they made it sound homemade lemonchello.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
When when you hear that in a story, don't you
think homemade means that Dave mac and Joseph's got Mortgaane
got together and made up a badge of lemon cello
at the house and invited some people over for a cookout.
I mean, that's what I was thinking. I had no
idea that you could. You know, they were really not.
They weren't talking about homemade alcohol. They were talking about
a homemade drink, a drink that was made at a
(10:24):
restaurant and bottled to take home.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Well, you know, one of the things I was curious
about relative to this. You know, if we like, if
we go to in Alabama, we have ABC stores which
are run by the State of Alabama, and you don't
have to buy alcohol. There there are independent alcohol but
you know, the one thing that we have, you know,
(10:46):
on our bottles, we have seals on the bottles. You know,
it's like a tax stamp or whatever. You know that
it's it's something that you look at, you know, and
it's recognized where it's sealed. And I'm thinking, so is
this behind the bar at this location, and how do
you know? How do you know it hasn't been broken
(11:07):
open before? And even if it has been broken open,
I mean there's there are people that have made you know,
thousands and thousands of dollars by forging tax stamps, you know,
for cigarettes and alcohol by the way, and you can
seal bottles up and try to make it look like
something that it's not, but there is no what's the
term that's used. There is no process by which to
(11:31):
guarantee or certify that this is safe to consume, like
a consumable that you're going to be putting into your body.
You know. The really sad thing about it is is
that once this has gone down the hatch day, there's
you're done, essentially, and particularly if you keep piling it
on because you know, let's just say that you're having
(11:54):
a celebratory moment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Right and the couple Wise Joe, they were actually having drinks.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
To They've got it over ice. You're sitting there, you're toasting,
and you know the next thing you know, you're in
a downward spiral.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
What would happen? How would you feel? What would you
you know? When you drink alcohol? You're from New Orleans,
I got a feeling in your horn. They actually check
your blood alcohol content at birth. They put it on
a chart and say, okay, that's your flat line. No,
that's your baseline. Then when you do get pulled over
for d u I and twenty five years old, they go, well,
wait a minute, here's his baseline at birth? No, he
(12:31):
was a point one to three at birth? Was he
now five nights? Fine?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah. In South Louisianda, we still have draw through dakri
stands where you're not breaking the law. You can do. Boy,
you can get high octane frozen dakeries and they'll put
a lid on it. But they don't. Here's how they
get around. They don't give you a straw and so.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
But because nobody everybody's got a nobody's got a straw
in their car. Oh my gosh, you get are you
you're messing with me, aren't you not?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
No? Uh uh, now, please, I beg you. If you
don't want to college students, don't believe the reason for
me to New Orleans, I assume that I'm lying. Wow,
and it's it's it's that way, and you can buy
it by the gallon as well, you know. And yeah, absolutely, listen,
I'm not making I'm not here to make excuses. New
Orleans is a very unique place. But you have an
(13:22):
expectation of safety in the sense of what you're going
to be putting into your body. And look, if you're
I have had people, Dave and every colleague that I
know of in in medical legal debt investigation has had
alcohol related deaths. And let's just kind of let's push
the anything in involving a motorized vehicle to the side, okay,
(13:47):
and let's push anything to the side that is fueled
by alcoholic anger, which you know, you and I both
have seen a lot of over the years. I know
you have as a recovery counselor yeah, you know, it'll
drive people.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm just talking about drinking where.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
You yeah, where you die? And we hear this, don't
we hear this every single year in fall when you
have people that are recruited in fraternities and you'll get
these kids that come in, they're fresh faced off the farm,
they've never been away from home, and there's any number
of these stories out there where these kids are forced
to consume massive amounts of alcohol and you will you
(14:28):
will have this manifestation of an alcohol what's referred to
as acute alcohol toxicity is actually what it's referred to as.
And that we're talking about ethanol here, and so with
with the ethanol and some of the symptomology that you'll
(14:49):
get with with with consumption of too much ethanol is
you'll get stomach cramps, pain, and we've seen people, you know,
you get people that are vomited, projectile vomiting. Body is
not meant to handle that. Obviously, they lose balance, there's
there's confusion, you know, and they're You'll find people just
(15:10):
talking out of their minds. And this is both people
that are acutely affected by a call as well as
those that are chronically affected by a call. They might
not even know, you know, where they are. You'll have
people that have slurred speech. That's one of the things
that police officers obviously look for, you know, along with
unable to walk a straight line or maintain a lane
(15:35):
where they're breaking center lane. And then you'll have people
that will pass out many times with those that go
into an unconscious state with ethanol will eventually wake up okay,
but it's very dangerous. A lot of it's dependent upon
the individual's own personal metabolism and also their body size.
You know, how much can you consume without it becoming
(15:59):
so toxic that it's going to push you over over
the edge. And here's one of the most insidious things
that I've seen with ethanol poisoning is you will have
people that will begin to vomit blood. And there's actually
a condition that I don't know that we would ever
(16:20):
cover on another edition of Body Bags, but I'll go
ahead and throw it out here. And this is something
that our friends may not have heard of before, but
there's a condition called esophageal verses, which see how can
I describe this? Generally with chronic alcoholism or ethanolism, you
(16:45):
will have people that have so let's see so eroded.
There's soft they're esophageal lining and their stomach that it
becomes very very fragile, and they might have repeatedly, they
might have stomach upset, and they might be functioning, you know,
(17:08):
you're talking about chronic alcoholism. They might be functioning. But
there's that won drink that after all these years that
they take and their esophagus is so eroded that finally
one of those vessels inside of that delicate sleeve ruptures. Well,
(17:29):
guess what happens when it ruptures. That blood travels down
the esophagus winds up in the stomach. Now, I don't
know how many people have ever, you know, like you've
had a busted lip and you've you've tasted your own blood.
It's disgusting. It's not something that's pleasant. Just imagine suddenly
you get a multiple C C dump of alcohol or
(17:52):
blood into your stomach. And Dave, I've walked onto scenes
and I can remember three right off the top of
my head that when I got there to the scene
that this is pretty pretty amazing. In all three of
the cases of these cases, I had three separate young
officers tell me that they thought they had a beating,
(18:14):
a beating death because there was projected blood everywhere, and
it makes the individual so nauseated that they do begin
to projectile vomit, and you'll get this kind of it'll
almost look like coffee grounds, bloody coffee grounds, and it's
it's everywhere. You'll see it. If they were seated at
(18:35):
a table, it'll be all over the table. In the
laboratory or the bathroom, you'll see the sink. It'll look
like they've been uh stabbed or something like that, and
you'll see blood all over the all over the or
they'll wind up in the in the bed, in the
bed is super saturated. Well, it's not trauma in the
classic sense that they have sustained. This is a projected
(19:00):
bleeding that occurs, and it is directly related to habitual
abuse of alcohol. Most people don't think about that, but
you see it in the medical legal world. You see it.
So you can't just because you've got a tremendous amount
of blood at a scene, you cannot necessarily say, oh, yeah, well,
this is some kind of this is some kind of
(19:25):
some kind of trauma that has occurred. You have to
weigh everything. But you know, in these cases that we're
discussing today, ethanol would have been far more welcome than
what these individuals were actually exposed to you know, Dave,
(19:57):
I'd mentioned this to you in passing before we signed on.
Interestingly enough, this does not involve New Orleans. I had
mentioned to you though, that in Atlanta I had worked,
we had a string of cases involving alcohol poison poisoning
(20:23):
rather forgive me, that had arisen from bathtub gin. And
that's a term that actually comes from that comes from
the twenties, you know, when prohibition was still a thing,
arguably one of the worst decisions the US government has
ever made. And bathtub gin was created literally in people's
(20:50):
bathtub because they could create a high volume of alcohol,
bottle it and then sell it, you know, bootlegging it. Essentially.
We're not talking about a regular still here, okay. We're
talking about and making it inside of a house in
a particular way, and people, we had a series of
these cases and it was, you know, we go on
(21:11):
and on where and you're you're more guilty of this
than I am, because I've been doing this for a
long time. You'll say, I hate I hate to say
that this is kind of interesting because it's so gruesome.
But you know, this is one of those one of
those moments in life that you know, as a death
investigators like, you know, I hate that the people died,
but it was kind of interesting intellectually stimulating that, you know,
(21:33):
that I would be part of an investigation and they
weren't all my cases, but that we had people that
had actually died of tainted alcohol.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And that's just seven years after prohibition.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you know back then the corner,
you know, the corners, back in the twenties, when that's
all they had, they worked those cases and you'd have
people that one of the biggest things back then was
lead poisoning that would arise from this and it would
create at all kinds of.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That was from the stills, right, using leadline pipes and.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Then yeah, yeah, and how they're producing this and then
not to mention anything that they would quote unquote accentuate
their own branding with chemically and you never know, you know,
what could be added. But Dave, you know, back to
this case in the.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Let me, I need to ask you more about this
bathtub gin you're talking about Metro Atlanta. Oh yeah, and
you're talking about in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
In the nineties, Yeah, that people.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Were actually buying you can buy gin.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, they would go to homes. Uh. And if I
remember correctly, and I know that you're going to know
where I'm talking, Well, it's right by old old the
old Olympic Stadium which became Turner Field. You've been to
Braves games there as I have, And it was back
in that that area over there, there were a couple
of locations where they were making this stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
As cheap as you can buy legitimate alcohol, right, and
they would still go that way.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Well, you just no, you cut out the middleman, you
cut out the You're going directly to the purchaser. And
here's the sad thing about it. There are so many
people out there that are crippled by alcohol addiction, but
they'll go everywhere. And I've worked cases or had colleagues
that have work cases where and here's a different kind
of alcohol where there have been prisoners that were not
(23:22):
being treated for alcohol related dependency and they were drinking
isopropyl alcohol, rubbing alcohol in the jails if they could
get their hands on it. Because the body is so
dependent upon it's very very sad, you know, it's very lethal.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
If you remember Michael Ducaccas, nineteen eighty eight Democratic nominee
for president, you remember that Michael Ducaca's wife, Kitty Ducaucus.
She was an alcoholic who ended up with Neil Pauli's
remover and things like that. That landed thankfully. She I
believe found recovery after that. But oh, my gosh, it's
(23:59):
been The other part is on Native American reservations in
New Mexico. I remember in Gallup, New Mexico, having a
problem with aquinet because it had such a huge hairspray
I had such a huge concentration of alcohol. They would
pop a nail because they didn't sell alcohol there on Sundays, right,
and they would take a nail put in the bottom
of that and suck the alcohol out of the aquinet,
(24:20):
which would then eat it at their throat and everything else.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And it's it's it's insidious, That's what it comes down to.
And it's a it's a dangerous it's it is. To
say that it's dangerous is certainly an understatement because it's
so insidious.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
But in this case, people are buying something they trust
and believe it's just a harmless drink. I'm buying some
I'm buying a couple of bottles of lemon cello, a
drink my fiance and I enjoy, and we're going to
take it back to our love nest and we're gonna
drink it in our new found home country of Vietnam.
And they buy several bottles from the local restaurant. You know,
they're bottled there. They bought them there. They yet they
(24:58):
weren't made with ethanol. A you've been talking about what
were they made with, Joe, Why why are people dying
from this?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, it's made with actually methanol, not ethanol. And there's
let me just break this down. There's three different times.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I am such an idiot. I would just see, I
would know. I would just know that all and I
would think, okay, medium methanol. There you go, it's there.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
They all there, their purpose for specific things. Listen, everybody,
if you've never even taken if you're a teetotaler and
you've never had alcohol at consumable like ethanol, then you've
been around. Is propyl alcohol. Most people have it in
their house. It's rubbing alcohol, okay, And it's used for cleansing, okay.
And that's one of the reasons. You know, you go
(25:39):
you go to get a shot at the doctor's for instance,
you're going to swab that area, uh with with io
propyle alcohol. More than likely it's also used as a
hand cleanser, right, you know, and Lord knows, we've come
through everything with COVID there. It doesn't necessarily have a
(25:59):
naturally a curring smell to it. Okay, it's heightened though,
I think like a lot of things through the chemical process,
where you know, you can get a whiff of it
and you'll recognize it, recognize it immediately. But there's three
types of alcohol. We have ethanol, we have methanol, and
(26:20):
isoproprial alcohol commonly that we see, and every one of
these has linkage to things that are absolutely dire if
they are in fact consumed. Because they're so very, very dangerous,
most people can't appreciate it. But these young people, this
(26:43):
young couple that had been consuming this lemon cello, were
exposing themselves to I think personally, one of the most
dangerous types of alcohol that there is that would begin
to shut them down because it leads to it will
(27:05):
literally lead to a multi system or multi organ failure.
And once that train starts, okay, it's really hard to
get it stopped. Interestingly enough, one of the things there
are a couple of different types of agents out there,
Dave that you can apply if you get to the
(27:28):
person soon enough, and it kind of it stems it, okay,
so that they can go back into recovery. But there's
always a problem that you've got permanent organ damage along
with consumption of methanol. But you know, in the absence
medical practitioners will actually treat methanol poisoning with ethanol and
(27:51):
it counteracts. Oh wow, yeah, it kind of counteracts.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
It's actual real alcohol, consumable alcohol.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Right, consumable alcohol.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Now, why would they use methanol, Joe? What would be
the purpose of using methanol? Is it definitely first drink
or does it require some Do I have to drink
a bunch or I mean, I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You're gonna have You're going to have effects of it
even after the consumption of just a wee bit of it. Now,
I'm not saying that the consumption of just like a
single shot of it is necessarily going to push you
over the edge. But how many people do you know
that go out and purchase like a nice bottle of
(28:32):
alcohol that they like, assuming that it is quote unquote safe,
are going to stop with merely one drink and it
tastes like lemons, Dave, I mean lemons not necessarily my
favorite thing in the world, but you know, I like
a good lemon pie just as much as the next person.
It's got lemons zest in it. You put it over ice.
(28:52):
Can you imagine you're in You're in Southeast Asia. It's
hot and human. Can you imagine how refreshing that is.
You know you're gonna and it's celebratory. It's got kind
of this uplifting But you know, by the time you've
begun to consume this to the point of where you
would normally consume an alcohol, an alcohol based beverage that
(29:14):
is ethanol, by that point in time, after you've had
several drinks of it, you're going down a road that
becomes very very dark, real real quick. You're you're going
to have shortness of breath, lightheadedness. They developed something that's
referred to actually as snow blindness. And this is an
(29:36):
interesting little kind of little caveat along with us, because
many people back in the twenties with bathtub gin, they
would go blind as a result of drinking bathtub gin.
That was one of the things that was indicative of
consumption of the stuff. But with methanol you develop what's
(29:57):
called snow blindness. And if I am not mistaken, one
of the victims and correct me if I'm wrong. She
actually contacted her mother in this particular case and said
that she had just this incredibly banging headache and it
(30:17):
was the worst I think, quote unquote, it was the
worst hangover she had ever suffered. She had survived long
enough to fire off a message to her mom. And
here was the interesting thing, Dave. She reported seeing little
black spots in front of her eyes, and it's like,
have you ever had that where you wake up in
(30:37):
the morning, maybe you're in a you're just you've slept
really good the night before, and it's it's kind of
hard to shake the cobwebs out, and you can't get
your eyes clear. Can you imagine, No matter how much
you rub your eyes or maybe you splash your eyes
with water, they are these black dots that are appearing
before your eyes and it's causing nerve. Damn it actually
(31:01):
to the optic nerve. It's gotten into the brain. At
this point in time, its uptake is into the brain,
and so that's one of the areas that it impacts
and so they developed snowblindness. And if I'm not mistaken,
this young woman actually reported to her mother that she
was having difficulties see. Yep, she did.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It was Greta Otis and she actually did tell her
mother that she was having the worst hangover and told
her some of the symptoms couldn't see, she was having
trouble seeing. And I I Am just blown away by this, Joe,
because this is not a one off, is it. I mean,
you're describing symptoms of something that if I'm in a country,
(31:46):
I'm drinking something out of a bottle, but I purchased
at a legitimate place, right, it would never occur to
me that, Okay, you have a hangover from drinking too
much alcohol. I get it, But there is a point
where you know, you kind of counteract the alcoholic I
mean they counteracted by drinking. Okay, if you ever really
(32:08):
bad hangover, you start drinking again and you feel better
and it just kind of prolongs it. But you're talking
about something here with methanol where the people that are
doing this are they using it to save money?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Is alcohol?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Is ethyl or ethanol so expensive that methanol is a
cheaper option that they're just thinking, Hey, if I sell
this and they don't drink it all at one time,
they'll live and they'll just have a bad hangover. Nobody's
going to put two and two together because if based
on what you're saying, this sounds like murder, it doesn't
(32:43):
sound like we mixed up some brew and it affected somebody. Wrong.
You have to know the consequences of drinking all of this,
putting methanol instead of alcohol instead of ethanol, that people
are going to die.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, but if you're the consumer of it, you have
and you're no not a bad pun here. You're blind
sided by it and you and can you imagine the
level of confusion that comes along with this because you're thinking, Okay,
what's affecting me? And then she's got her fiancee there
(33:15):
who is equally disturbed. He's in a separate area from
where she is.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Until now, I did not understand that, Joe.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It's a horrific thing. Let me tell you one more
thing that's interesting about about methanol, and folks might not
realize this. Did you know that if you drink diet
sodas and this has been floating around for it, but
this is legit if you drink diet soda. Diet soda,
it's kind of got that weird sweetener that's in it, aspertain. Well,
(33:49):
aspertain actually produces methanol and another component of of methanol.
Is you ready for this, it's formaldehyde. So it you know,
(34:09):
this single kick off and there were people years and
years ago that would say, and this is not true,
but they will say, well, you know, dot sotas have
got formaldehyde in it. No, it's got aspertame, which is
used to produce methanol, and methanol as a component of
or can be used to produce formaldehyde. So it's it's
(34:33):
very chemically complex, you know, like so many other things
that we talk about relative to the ingestion. And if
you're if you're just going about your life, you're young
couple and you're excited about the future and you're thinking,
oh my god, I can't wait to get married. We're
going to start a life, we're going to celebrate, we're
(34:53):
going to live out our dreams here in Southeast Asia.
Lord have mercy. You know, it comes to a very
sudden crashing halt, and I mean right quick, Dave. You know,
(35:21):
for this young couple that we've been discussing, Dave, this
isn't the only location that we're faced with this. I
hate I hate it when the news media, which I
guess to kind of a degree i'm a part of
the machine, I hate it when they throw around the
(35:44):
term epidemic, because epidemic implies something that is widespread and
but I don't and I don't think that this is
an epidemic. I think that it is a through line
that is running with many of these cases, Dave, just
(36:06):
since January, we've got this is occurring in a variety,
and I'm talking about geographically diverse areas around around the globe.
And one of the things that this made me think of,
do you remember was it the Dominican Republic. It was
like three years ago we had all those deaths at
the resorts. Do you remember that it actually went on
(36:28):
CNN and covered this. They didn't know what it was.
We were thinking that it was some kind of phosphate
related fertilizer that was being used. It's not regulated there,
and I don't know that they ever came up with
a solid answer, but people were terrified. I think that
was in the Dominican Republic and maybe a couple other
you know, where people were just dropping dead. You go
(36:49):
on vacation and you die or become deathly ill. But
we in addition, you know, the couple was in Vietnam.
But we've got six people, including one American, that was
hit as well in Laos, right, just obviously, if you
(37:11):
know anything about the history of Southeast Asian War, Laos
is immediately adjacent. And these people wound up really really sick.
And again, David, this is methanol poisoning.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You know, and in that case, one was a teenager
that died was on life support in a Bangkok hospital.
So you've got people spread out to get attention, to
get medical attention for what is happening. But it all
goes back to methanol poisoning that they got from buying
something they thought was regular alcohol. And the reason we're
getting these I dare say there are enough indigenous people
(37:45):
in all these countries who are also suffering the same fate.
We just don't hear about them because you know, were
the national press takes care of foreigners, you know, they
cover and when that's why there will be a six
people died, including one America. You know, thirty three people
died too American. And I'm not dodging anything by saying
and just pointing out that those are the types of
(38:06):
stories we're seeing and they all come back to methanol.
And that's why I was asking you a few minutes ago,
what would be the point?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
This is what I think, and I think it has
to do with taxing of ethanol, taxing of alcohol. Okay,
because look, you have a built in people. Okay, let's
just face it this way. If Kim and I flew,
she's dying for me to take her to Puerto Rico
(38:34):
or US Virginiles, which I've never been to either one,
that we have an idea of sitting on white sand
beach and enjoy. We're probably going to have an adult
drink if and when we ever go. Okay, that's one
of the things that you do when you go on vacation.
You've got a built in need that's there. Well, I
(38:54):
think these governors of these governments are taxing ethanol, and
so the people that are trying to make money in
the middle are saying the it's a bridge too far
for us. We've got to come up with another solution.
We've got this this event that occurs in Vietnam where
(39:14):
you've got these bottles that are on the back shelf.
You know, let me hook you up with this. My
one of my questions though, is that, Okay, if you're
a barman and you're working in you know, at a
resort or in a saloon, do you not have enough
sense to understand what methanol is going to do to
(39:34):
a fellow human being If you give it to them
and you're not going to get a return customer with this,
this is you know, you might as well be giving
them strict nine. And so that's that's what absolutely blows
my mind about this. So I think that there's economic
pressures that are being applied along the way here, because
(39:54):
Dave got to tell you, brother, it ain't just lows
and it just Vietnam. No, We've got a story that
dropped in January, Yeah, just last month out of Turkey.
What was the number of people?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, there's two, okay. In one story, we had seventeen
people killed, twenty two hospitalized in Istanbul after drinking bootleg
alcohol and a number of those are still in the hospital.
Seven have been discharged. But seventeen people dead, twenty two
people hospital wh wh whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
How many people did you say?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Did seventeen people died? Twenty two hospitalized? But then here
we go, here's another one. This just hit us poison horror.
Suspected methanol poisoning kills thirty three in Turkey with forty
eight in hospitals, as four who sold tainted drinks arrested
for homicide. This is the question I answered at the
(40:52):
beginning with you off there, Why are we not charging
these people with murder? If your mix of methanol, calling
it alcohol, I'm you know, drinking out. I'm telling you
you're you may as well a loaded gun and start
putting it into a crowd.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Because you cannot say, I don't think that you can
say any reasonable person cannot say that. They don't understand
what is the potential here? The lethality? You know, And
you make a good point by talking about pointing the
muzzle of a loaded weapon at somebody and then all
(41:26):
of a sudden you think that you pull the trigger
and nothing's going to happen. Well, you're an idiot, yes,
you know. And not only you an idiot, it's not
even idiocy, it is it's malicious it's malevolent. It's malevolent
because now you're doing this at the risk of killing
people to make a buck, and that's what this is.
(41:49):
I don't know that you've got individuals that they don't
have like a serialized mentality here where they're going out
to try to poison this mean people. I think that
it is h it's monetarily driven. They want to make
as much money as they possibly can. I got to
tell you, I don't think that in Vietnam, Laos, or
(42:12):
in certainly Turkey, I would want to be on the
end of an accusation in that governmental system of having
caused the death or deaths are injuries of multiple people.
I think they're going to pay a real price. We
have to be very mindful of what we consume when
(42:35):
we go on any trip that's out there, because, particularly
for folks that are looking to celebrate, whatever you do,
do it with caution. Whether you're visiting my hometown of
New Orleans for carnival or any other time, or whether
(42:55):
you're just hanging out with friends that show up with
a bottle of shine and say, hey, look what I got.
Try this, or whether you're going to a resort in
a foreign country because nobody is gonna watch care over
you like you. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.
Quody bodies, but Joseph's gotten more than. One of the
things that's associated with Marti grass is revelry. I've been
to many Marti Graus parades in various locations around South
(00:22):
Louisiana over the course of my life. It's something that
my family has done for years. Even my grandmother, who
was from a very very religious family, took the train
down to New Orleans in the thirties and visited her aunt.
Aunt Bertha as a matter of fact, was her name,
and she lived in the French Quarter. And my grandmother
(00:47):
actually told me stories of going to Marti graous parades
with horse drawn floats and it was amazing, you know,
to hear talk about it and the actual flambeoa where
they're illuminating the path and they're actually using the flames
of the flambos that's what it comes from, and they're
dancing up and down the streets. But you know, into
(01:10):
her eyes from her religious upbringing, it was shocking, you know,
to say the very least, but it was a memory
that stuck with her. And of course, as Tom has
gone by, I've gone over the years and I've taken
my family to more family friendly events if you will.
But all in all, it is an end of a
(01:33):
season of the year where you're supposed to celebrate all
those things that have passed and then entering into the
Linton season, beg forgiveness and of course you're going to fast.
But for some they can't get past that. For some
(01:54):
they leave it all on the road. And I can't
tell you, my friends, how many cases of alcohol poisoning
I've worked as a death investigator in New Orleans over
the year. It's very sad because people that are not
used to drinking suddenly show up in my hometown and
drink like they're all old pros. And it is a
(02:19):
sight to behold and many times very tragic. But you know,
today we're going to discuss not just one case, two cases,
but actually a series of cases that have occurred in
various locations around the world recently that involved the consumption
(02:40):
of a type of alcohol that has led to death
and ruin for many. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
is Bodybacks. Dave. You might not know this, but if
(03:02):
you've ever been around somebody that has been consuming alcohol, uh,
you know, like the night before where they've been out
partying and.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Eating that you're talking to.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Right, let's pretend I don't. Okay, but they go They'll
even go home and get a and bathe themselves, put
on cologne or perfume, and then next day they show
up to work and when they breathe in your face,
you've got that. And I've often described it as like
(03:35):
a it's like a sickly sweet smell that kind of
emanates from them, and you can you can tell that,
you know, mischief has been had perhaps or maybe revelry.
I don't know, but being so kind, well you know,
I don't I don't use the word debauchery. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It just like something that came out of an ashtray
mixed with great preagees.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
It's it's rough and plus you know, I lived I was,
believe it or not, way back when I was a
fraternity boy, you know, and we we would mix up
uh you know, uh drinks and trash cans with boat
paddles and put fruit in there. And of course we
would use grain alcohol and lots of kool aid and
tons of eyes and we had no idea. I thank god,
(04:25):
uh that I escaped that without wind up winding up
in the hospital because it is very dangerous and alcohol
is very dangerous. And you know, for for us, we
think about alcohol in the sense of spirits, like spirits
to consume, celebrate with. Uh, maybe you enjoy wine and
(04:50):
the different types of wine that are out there. Maybe
you enjoy good scotch. I have no idea, but it's
all very dangerous. But you know there's not and but
consumable alcohols actually ethanol, and there are other kinds of
alcohol that are out there, and of course that's what
we're focused on today.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Well, in reality, the story that we started with was
it said recently engaged couple dies after drinking homemade lemon cello.
That was pretty much the headline. And when you get
down to the second paragraph, these two people are Greta
Marie Otison and els Arnold Quinton. She's from Great Britain,
(05:30):
he's from South Africa, and they meet up. They're both
world travelers. They travel and live in a lot of
different places and they both find each other in Vietnam.
And that's where they both in all the places they
had lived, where they wanted to remain and begin a
life together in this one place in Vietnam, and they
were just a mash everything I looked at on this
couple was just nice people, good people, educated, fun loving
(05:54):
and really loved each other. And they get engaged and
to celebrate, they picked up well the way it was written.
And I told you this homemade alcohol, homemade lemon cello.
Well for starters, I don't know what lemon cello is,
and being a recovered alcoholic in recovery for over thirty
three years now, it's something I had never even heard of,
(06:17):
and so I looked at it because I wanted to
see what we're really talking about. I'm thinking they're having
to mix up their own alcohol, you know, starting with
potatoes or something. And I was thinking, Okay, you got lemon,
so they're going to use lemon rys And I started
thinking that's what I was thinking. That's not the case
at all.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
In reality, they were in Vietnam and they went to
a restaurant and they purchased bottles of this lemon cello.
And what it is. It's a drink that is made
with from using lemon rinds and things like that. You
get slavery, yeah, but it's made with a vodka or
some type of ever clear, you know, a alcohol, yeah,
(06:58):
just brain alcohol and that has no real flavoring of
its own other than just here it is.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
It's rotgut.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
But what they would do at some places, of course,
is you use much lower quality of vodka or what
have you. They wouldn't use the top shelf, and then
they would that's how they would make it to keep
it cheap.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But let me tell you, yeah, let me tell you
a real quick a side about ever Clear. I knew
we actually this was not my case. Okay, this was
not my case. It was a colleagues case. They we
had a case of and it wasn't ever Clear. It
(07:37):
was actually golden grain, which is essentially the same thing,
which is pure grain alcohol. The proof on it is
just absolutely through the roof. If you've ever even tasted
it with a tip of your tongue, it's a taste
that you'll never forget. It'll put you on the ceiling,
very very strong. And at this particular party, you had
(07:59):
people that were doing straight shots of Everclear and then
chase our golden grain and then chasing it with I
can't like sprite or something like this. Anyway, One of
these one of the people at the party, Dave, got
really hammered on this stuff, and he was a smoker,
and he made the decision to entertain entertain people there
(08:24):
by getting mouthfuls of golden grain and taking a lighter
and blowing it, you know, blowing it out and literally
blowing flames. If you set the house on fire. Two
people died. Ah yeah, in this particular instance, it's just
one of those little things, you know, the curves. But again,
when it comes down to it, you know, whether it's
(08:46):
vodka or whether it's golden grain, ever clear, that's ethanol.
That's a consumable alcohol. Are as consumable as it can be.
Now we all know that, you know. Look, I mean even.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Featuring you retelling the story of Revenge of the Nerds and.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Down yeah, yeah, and that that and I often wonder
if that's where they got the idea for that.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You said, this was like a really tiny house, we
called it kind of a clapboard siding house, and it
was like a party location and had two people die
in there. Go yeah, I know. My thought was was that,
you know, sometimes you obviously it goes without saying people
(09:32):
don't make the best decisions. Uh, but if you walk
into a bar and they're selling you bottles of alcohol.
And listen, if I'm not mistaken, this couple had recently
gotten engaged.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, they've been together for they had been together for
some time, but they were celebrating their engagement one week engaged. Yeah, celebrating,
and they bought it from the restaurant. That's the thing. See, Joe,
I told you when we started, I thought they made it. Wait,
they made it sound homemade lemonchello.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
When when you hear that in a story, don't you
think homemade means that Dave mac and Joseph's got Mortgaane
got together and made up a badge of lemon cello
at the house and invited some people over for a cookout.
I mean, that's what I was thinking. I had no
idea that you could. You know, they were really not.
They weren't talking about homemade alcohol. They were talking about
a homemade drink, a drink that was made at a
(10:24):
restaurant and bottled to take home.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Well, you know, one of the things I was curious
about relative to this. You know, if we like, if
we go to in Alabama, we have ABC stores which
are run by the State of Alabama, and you don't
have to buy alcohol. There there are independent alcohol but
you know, the one thing that we have, you know,
(10:46):
on our bottles, we have seals on the bottles. You know,
it's like a tax stamp or whatever. You know that
it's it's something that you look at, you know, and
it's recognized where it's sealed. And I'm thinking, so is
this behind the bar at this location, and how do
you know? How do you know it hasn't been broken
(11:07):
open before? And even if it has been broken open,
I mean there's there are people that have made you know,
thousands and thousands of dollars by forging tax stamps, you know,
for cigarettes and alcohol by the way, and you can
seal bottles up and try to make it look like
something that it's not, but there is no what's the
term that's used. There is no process by which to
(11:31):
guarantee or certify that this is safe to consume, like
a consumable that you're going to be putting into your body.
You know. The really sad thing about it is is
that once this has gone down the hatch day, there's
you're done, essentially, and particularly if you keep piling it
on because you know, let's just say that you're having
(11:54):
a celebratory moment.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Right and the couple Wise Joe, they were actually having drinks.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
To They've got it over ice. You're sitting there, you're toasting,
and you know the next thing you know, you're in
a downward spiral.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
What would happen? How would you feel? What would you
you know? When you drink alcohol? You're from New Orleans,
I got a feeling in your horn. They actually check
your blood alcohol content at birth. They put it on
a chart and say, okay, that's your flat line. No,
that's your baseline. Then when you do get pulled over
for d u I and twenty five years old, they go, well,
wait a minute, here's his baseline at birth? No, he
(12:31):
was a point one to three at birth? Was he
now five nights? Fine?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah. In South Louisianda, we still have draw through dakri
stands where you're not breaking the law. You can do. Boy,
you can get high octane frozen dakeries and they'll put
a lid on it. But they don't. Here's how they
get around. They don't give you a straw and so.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
But because nobody everybody's got a nobody's got a straw
in their car. Oh my gosh, you get are you
you're messing with me, aren't you not?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
No? Uh uh, now, please, I beg you. If you
don't want to college students, don't believe the reason for
me to New Orleans, I assume that I'm lying. Wow,
and it's it's it's that way, and you can buy
it by the gallon as well, you know. And yeah, absolutely, listen,
I'm not making I'm not here to make excuses. New
Orleans is a very unique place. But you have an
(13:22):
expectation of safety in the sense of what you're going
to be putting into your body. And look, if you're
I have had people, Dave and every colleague that I
know of in in medical legal debt investigation has had
alcohol related deaths. And let's just kind of let's push
the anything in involving a motorized vehicle to the side, okay,
(13:47):
and let's push anything to the side that is fueled
by alcoholic anger, which you know, you and I both
have seen a lot of over the years. I know
you have as a recovery counselor yeah, you know, it'll
drive people.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I'm just talking about drinking where.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
You yeah, where you die? And we hear this, don't
we hear this every single year in fall when you
have people that are recruited in fraternities and you'll get
these kids that come in, they're fresh faced off the farm,
they've never been away from home, and there's any number
of these stories out there where these kids are forced
to consume massive amounts of alcohol and you will you
(14:28):
will have this manifestation of an alcohol what's referred to
as acute alcohol toxicity is actually what it's referred to as.
And that we're talking about ethanol here, and so with
with the ethanol and some of the symptomology that you'll
(14:49):
get with with with consumption of too much ethanol is
you'll get stomach cramps, pain, and we've seen people, you know,
you get people that are vomited, projectile vomiting. Body is
not meant to handle that. Obviously, they lose balance, there's
there's confusion, you know, and they're You'll find people just
(15:10):
talking out of their minds. And this is both people
that are acutely affected by a call as well as
those that are chronically affected by a call. They might
not even know, you know, where they are. You'll have
people that have slurred speech. That's one of the things
that police officers obviously look for, you know, along with
unable to walk a straight line or maintain a lane
(15:35):
where they're breaking center lane. And then you'll have people
that will pass out many times with those that go
into an unconscious state with ethanol will eventually wake up okay,
but it's very dangerous. A lot of it's dependent upon
the individual's own personal metabolism and also their body size.
You know, how much can you consume without it becoming
(15:59):
so toxic that it's going to push you over over
the edge. And here's one of the most insidious things
that I've seen with ethanol poisoning is you will have
people that will begin to vomit blood. And there's actually
a condition that I don't know that we would ever
(16:20):
cover on another edition of Body Bags, but I'll go
ahead and throw it out here. And this is something
that our friends may not have heard of before, but
there's a condition called esophageal verses, which see how can
I describe this? Generally with chronic alcoholism or ethanolism, you
(16:45):
will have people that have so let's see so eroded.
There's soft they're esophageal lining and their stomach that it
becomes very very fragile, and they might have repeatedly, they
might have stomach upset, and they might be functioning, you know,
(17:08):
you're talking about chronic alcoholism. They might be functioning. But
there's that won drink that after all these years that
they take and their esophagus is so eroded that finally
one of those vessels inside of that delicate sleeve ruptures. Well,
(17:29):
guess what happens when it ruptures. That blood travels down
the esophagus winds up in the stomach. Now, I don't
know how many people have ever, you know, like you've
had a busted lip and you've you've tasted your own blood.
It's disgusting. It's not something that's pleasant. Just imagine suddenly
you get a multiple C C dump of alcohol or
(17:52):
blood into your stomach. And Dave, I've walked onto scenes
and I can remember three right off the top of
my head that when I got there to the scene
that this is pretty pretty amazing. In all three of
the cases of these cases, I had three separate young
officers tell me that they thought they had a beating,
(18:14):
a beating death because there was projected blood everywhere, and
it makes the individual so nauseated that they do begin
to projectile vomit, and you'll get this kind of it'll
almost look like coffee grounds, bloody coffee grounds, and it's
it's everywhere. You'll see it. If they were seated at
(18:35):
a table, it'll be all over the table. In the
laboratory or the bathroom, you'll see the sink. It'll look
like they've been uh stabbed or something like that, and
you'll see blood all over the all over the or
they'll wind up in the in the bed, in the
bed is super saturated. Well, it's not trauma in the
classic sense that they have sustained. This is a projected
(19:00):
bleeding that occurs, and it is directly related to habitual
abuse of alcohol. Most people don't think about that, but
you see it in the medical legal world. You see it.
So you can't just because you've got a tremendous amount
of blood at a scene, you cannot necessarily say, oh, yeah, well,
this is some kind of this is some kind of
(19:25):
some kind of trauma that has occurred. You have to
weigh everything. But you know, in these cases that we're
discussing today, ethanol would have been far more welcome than
what these individuals were actually exposed to you know, Dave,
(19:57):
I'd mentioned this to you in passing before we signed on.
Interestingly enough, this does not involve New Orleans. I had
mentioned to you though, that in Atlanta I had worked,
we had a string of cases involving alcohol poison poisoning
(20:23):
rather forgive me, that had arisen from bathtub gin. And
that's a term that actually comes from that comes from
the twenties, you know, when prohibition was still a thing,
arguably one of the worst decisions the US government has
ever made. And bathtub gin was created literally in people's
(20:50):
bathtub because they could create a high volume of alcohol,
bottle it and then sell it, you know, bootlegging it. Essentially.
We're not talking about a regular still here, okay. We're
talking about and making it inside of a house in
a particular way, and people, we had a series of
these cases and it was, you know, we go on
(21:11):
and on where and you're you're more guilty of this
than I am, because I've been doing this for a
long time. You'll say, I hate I hate to say
that this is kind of interesting because it's so gruesome.
But you know, this is one of those one of
those moments in life that you know, as a death
investigators like, you know, I hate that the people died,
but it was kind of interesting intellectually stimulating that, you know,
(21:33):
that I would be part of an investigation and they
weren't all my cases, but that we had people that
had actually died of tainted alcohol.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And that's just seven years after prohibition.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, you know back then the corner,
you know, the corners, back in the twenties, when that's
all they had, they worked those cases and you'd have
people that one of the biggest things back then was
lead poisoning that would arise from this and it would
create at all kinds of.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That was from the stills, right, using leadline pipes and.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Then yeah, yeah, and how they're producing this and then
not to mention anything that they would quote unquote accentuate
their own branding with chemically and you never know, you know,
what could be added. But Dave, you know, back to
this case in the.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Let me, I need to ask you more about this
bathtub gin you're talking about Metro Atlanta. Oh yeah, and
you're talking about in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
In the nineties, Yeah, that people.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Were actually buying you can buy gin.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, they would go to homes. Uh. And if I
remember correctly, and I know that you're going to know
where I'm talking, Well, it's right by old old the
old Olympic Stadium which became Turner Field. You've been to
Braves games there as I have, And it was back
in that that area over there, there were a couple
of locations where they were making this stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
As cheap as you can buy legitimate alcohol, right, and
they would still go that way.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Well, you just no, you cut out the middleman, you
cut out the You're going directly to the purchaser. And
here's the sad thing about it. There are so many
people out there that are crippled by alcohol addiction, but
they'll go everywhere. And I've worked cases or had colleagues
that have work cases where and here's a different kind
of alcohol where there have been prisoners that were not
(23:22):
being treated for alcohol related dependency and they were drinking
isopropyl alcohol, rubbing alcohol in the jails if they could
get their hands on it. Because the body is so
dependent upon it's very very sad, you know, it's very lethal.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
If you remember Michael Ducaccas, nineteen eighty eight Democratic nominee
for president, you remember that Michael Ducaca's wife, Kitty Ducaucus.
She was an alcoholic who ended up with Neil Pauli's
remover and things like that. That landed thankfully. She I
believe found recovery after that. But oh, my gosh, it's
(23:59):
been The other part is on Native American reservations in
New Mexico. I remember in Gallup, New Mexico, having a
problem with aquinet because it had such a huge hairspray
I had such a huge concentration of alcohol. They would
pop a nail because they didn't sell alcohol there on Sundays, right,
and they would take a nail put in the bottom
of that and suck the alcohol out of the aquinet,
(24:20):
which would then eat it at their throat and everything else.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And it's it's it's insidious, That's what it comes down to.
And it's a it's a dangerous it's it is. To
say that it's dangerous is certainly an understatement because it's
so insidious.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
But in this case, people are buying something they trust
and believe it's just a harmless drink. I'm buying some
I'm buying a couple of bottles of lemon cello, a
drink my fiance and I enjoy, and we're going to
take it back to our love nest and we're gonna
drink it in our new found home country of Vietnam.
And they buy several bottles from the local restaurant. You know,
they're bottled there. They bought them there. They yet they
(24:58):
weren't made with ethanol. A you've been talking about what
were they made with, Joe, Why why are people dying
from this?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, it's made with actually methanol, not ethanol. And there's
let me just break this down. There's three different times.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I am such an idiot. I would just see, I
would know. I would just know that all and I
would think, okay, medium methanol. There you go, it's there.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
They all there, their purpose for specific things. Listen, everybody,
if you've never even taken if you're a teetotaler and
you've never had alcohol at consumable like ethanol, then you've
been around. Is propyl alcohol. Most people have it in
their house. It's rubbing alcohol, okay, And it's used for cleansing, okay.
And that's one of the reasons. You know, you go
(25:39):
you go to get a shot at the doctor's for instance,
you're going to swab that area, uh with with io
propyle alcohol. More than likely it's also used as a
hand cleanser, right, you know, and Lord knows, we've come
through everything with COVID there. It doesn't necessarily have a
(25:59):
naturally a curring smell to it. Okay, it's heightened though,
I think like a lot of things through the chemical process,
where you know, you can get a whiff of it
and you'll recognize it, recognize it immediately. But there's three
types of alcohol. We have ethanol, we have methanol, and
(26:20):
isoproprial alcohol commonly that we see, and every one of
these has linkage to things that are absolutely dire if
they are in fact consumed. Because they're so very, very dangerous,
most people can't appreciate it. But these young people, this
(26:43):
young couple that had been consuming this lemon cello, were
exposing themselves to I think personally, one of the most
dangerous types of alcohol that there is that would begin
to shut them down because it leads to it will
(27:05):
literally lead to a multi system or multi organ failure.
And once that train starts, okay, it's really hard to
get it stopped. Interestingly enough, one of the things there
are a couple of different types of agents out there,
Dave that you can apply if you get to the
(27:28):
person soon enough, and it kind of it stems it, okay,
so that they can go back into recovery. But there's
always a problem that you've got permanent organ damage along
with consumption of methanol. But you know, in the absence
medical practitioners will actually treat methanol poisoning with ethanol and
(27:51):
it counteracts. Oh wow, yeah, it kind of counteracts.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
It's actual real alcohol, consumable alcohol.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Right, consumable alcohol.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Now, why would they use methanol, Joe? What would be
the purpose of using methanol? Is it definitely first drink
or does it require some Do I have to drink
a bunch or I mean, I'm thinking.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You're gonna have You're going to have effects of it
even after the consumption of just a wee bit of it. Now,
I'm not saying that the consumption of just like a
single shot of it is necessarily going to push you
over the edge. But how many people do you know
that go out and purchase like a nice bottle of
(28:32):
alcohol that they like, assuming that it is quote unquote safe,
are going to stop with merely one drink and it
tastes like lemons, Dave, I mean lemons not necessarily my
favorite thing in the world, but you know, I like
a good lemon pie just as much as the next person.
It's got lemons zest in it. You put it over ice.
(28:52):
Can you imagine you're in You're in Southeast Asia. It's
hot and human. Can you imagine how refreshing that is.
You know you're gonna and it's celebratory. It's got kind
of this uplifting But you know, by the time you've
begun to consume this to the point of where you
would normally consume an alcohol, an alcohol based beverage that
(29:14):
is ethanol, by that point in time, after you've had
several drinks of it, you're going down a road that
becomes very very dark, real real quick. You're you're going
to have shortness of breath, lightheadedness. They developed something that's
referred to actually as snow blindness. And this is an
(29:36):
interesting little kind of little caveat along with us, because
many people back in the twenties with bathtub gin, they
would go blind as a result of drinking bathtub gin.
That was one of the things that was indicative of
consumption of the stuff. But with methanol you develop what's
(29:57):
called snow blindness. And if I am not mistaken, one
of the victims and correct me if I'm wrong. She
actually contacted her mother in this particular case and said
that she had just this incredibly banging headache and it
(30:17):
was the worst I think, quote unquote, it was the
worst hangover she had ever suffered. She had survived long
enough to fire off a message to her mom. And
here was the interesting thing, Dave. She reported seeing little
black spots in front of her eyes, and it's like,
have you ever had that where you wake up in
(30:37):
the morning, maybe you're in a you're just you've slept
really good the night before, and it's it's kind of
hard to shake the cobwebs out, and you can't get
your eyes clear. Can you imagine, No matter how much
you rub your eyes or maybe you splash your eyes
with water, they are these black dots that are appearing
before your eyes and it's causing nerve. Damn it actually
(31:01):
to the optic nerve. It's gotten into the brain. At
this point in time, its uptake is into the brain,
and so that's one of the areas that it impacts
and so they developed snowblindness. And if I'm not mistaken,
this young woman actually reported to her mother that she
was having difficulties see. Yep, she did.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It was Greta Otis and she actually did tell her
mother that she was having the worst hangover and told
her some of the symptoms couldn't see, she was having
trouble seeing. And I I Am just blown away by this, Joe,
because this is not a one off, is it. I mean,
you're describing symptoms of something that if I'm in a country,
(31:46):
I'm drinking something out of a bottle, but I purchased
at a legitimate place, right, it would never occur to
me that, Okay, you have a hangover from drinking too
much alcohol. I get it, But there is a point
where you know, you kind of counteract the alcoholic I
mean they counteracted by drinking. Okay, if you ever really
(32:08):
bad hangover, you start drinking again and you feel better
and it just kind of prolongs it. But you're talking
about something here with methanol where the people that are
doing this are they using it to save money?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Is alcohol?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Is ethyl or ethanol so expensive that methanol is a
cheaper option that they're just thinking, Hey, if I sell
this and they don't drink it all at one time,
they'll live and they'll just have a bad hangover. Nobody's
going to put two and two together because if based
on what you're saying, this sounds like murder, it doesn't
(32:43):
sound like we mixed up some brew and it affected somebody. Wrong.
You have to know the consequences of drinking all of this,
putting methanol instead of alcohol instead of ethanol, that people
are going to die.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, but if you're the consumer of it, you have
and you're no not a bad pun here. You're blind
sided by it and you and can you imagine the
level of confusion that comes along with this because you're thinking, Okay,
what's affecting me? And then she's got her fiancee there
(33:15):
who is equally disturbed. He's in a separate area from
where she is.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Until now, I did not understand that, Joe.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It's a horrific thing. Let me tell you one more
thing that's interesting about about methanol, and folks might not
realize this. Did you know that if you drink diet
sodas and this has been floating around for it, but
this is legit if you drink diet soda. Diet soda,
it's kind of got that weird sweetener that's in it, aspertain. Well,
(33:49):
aspertain actually produces methanol and another component of of methanol.
Is you ready for this, it's formaldehyde. So it you know,
(34:09):
this single kick off and there were people years and
years ago that would say, and this is not true,
but they will say, well, you know, dot sotas have
got formaldehyde in it. No, it's got aspertame, which is
used to produce methanol, and methanol as a component of
or can be used to produce formaldehyde. So it's it's
(34:33):
very chemically complex, you know, like so many other things
that we talk about relative to the ingestion. And if
you're if you're just going about your life, you're young
couple and you're excited about the future and you're thinking,
oh my god, I can't wait to get married. We're
going to start a life, we're going to celebrate, we're
(34:53):
going to live out our dreams here in Southeast Asia.
Lord have mercy. You know, it comes to a very
sudden crashing halt, and I mean right quick, Dave. You know,
(35:21):
for this young couple that we've been discussing, Dave, this
isn't the only location that we're faced with this. I
hate I hate it when the news media, which I
guess to kind of a degree i'm a part of
the machine, I hate it when they throw around the
(35:44):
term epidemic, because epidemic implies something that is widespread and
but I don't and I don't think that this is
an epidemic. I think that it is a through line
that is running with many of these cases, Dave, just
(36:06):
since January, we've got this is occurring in a variety,
and I'm talking about geographically diverse areas around around the globe.
And one of the things that this made me think of,
do you remember was it the Dominican Republic. It was
like three years ago we had all those deaths at
the resorts. Do you remember that it actually went on
(36:28):
CNN and covered this. They didn't know what it was.
We were thinking that it was some kind of phosphate
related fertilizer that was being used. It's not regulated there,
and I don't know that they ever came up with
a solid answer, but people were terrified. I think that
was in the Dominican Republic and maybe a couple other
you know, where people were just dropping dead. You go
(36:49):
on vacation and you die or become deathly ill. But
we in addition, you know, the couple was in Vietnam.
But we've got six people, including one American, that was
hit as well in Laos, right, just obviously, if you
(37:11):
know anything about the history of Southeast Asian War, Laos
is immediately adjacent. And these people wound up really really sick.
And again, David, this is methanol poisoning.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You know, and in that case, one was a teenager
that died was on life support in a Bangkok hospital.
So you've got people spread out to get attention, to
get medical attention for what is happening. But it all
goes back to methanol poisoning that they got from buying
something they thought was regular alcohol. And the reason we're
getting these I dare say there are enough indigenous people
(37:45):
in all these countries who are also suffering the same fate.
We just don't hear about them because you know, were
the national press takes care of foreigners, you know, they
cover and when that's why there will be a six
people died, including one America. You know, thirty three people
died too American. And I'm not dodging anything by saying
and just pointing out that those are the types of
(38:06):
stories we're seeing and they all come back to methanol.
And that's why I was asking you a few minutes ago,
what would be the point?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
This is what I think, and I think it has
to do with taxing of ethanol, taxing of alcohol. Okay,
because look, you have a built in people. Okay, let's
just face it this way. If Kim and I flew,
she's dying for me to take her to Puerto Rico
(38:34):
or US Virginiles, which I've never been to either one,
that we have an idea of sitting on white sand
beach and enjoy. We're probably going to have an adult
drink if and when we ever go. Okay, that's one
of the things that you do when you go on vacation.
You've got a built in need that's there. Well, I
(38:54):
think these governors of these governments are taxing ethanol, and
so the people that are trying to make money in
the middle are saying the it's a bridge too far
for us. We've got to come up with another solution.
We've got this this event that occurs in Vietnam where
(39:14):
you've got these bottles that are on the back shelf.
You know, let me hook you up with this. My
one of my questions though, is that, Okay, if you're
a barman and you're working in you know, at a
resort or in a saloon, do you not have enough
sense to understand what methanol is going to do to
(39:34):
a fellow human being If you give it to them
and you're not going to get a return customer with this,
this is you know, you might as well be giving
them strict nine. And so that's that's what absolutely blows
my mind about this. So I think that there's economic
pressures that are being applied along the way here, because
(39:54):
Dave got to tell you, brother, it ain't just lows
and it just Vietnam. No, We've got a story that
dropped in January, Yeah, just last month out of Turkey.
What was the number of people?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, there's two, okay. In one story, we had seventeen
people killed, twenty two hospitalized in Istanbul after drinking bootleg
alcohol and a number of those are still in the hospital.
Seven have been discharged. But seventeen people dead, twenty two
people hospital wh wh whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
How many people did you say?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Did seventeen people died? Twenty two hospitalized? But then here
we go, here's another one. This just hit us poison horror.
Suspected methanol poisoning kills thirty three in Turkey with forty
eight in hospitals, as four who sold tainted drinks arrested
for homicide. This is the question I answered at the
(40:52):
beginning with you off there, Why are we not charging
these people with murder? If your mix of methanol, calling
it alcohol, I'm you know, drinking out. I'm telling you
you're you may as well a loaded gun and start
putting it into a crowd.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Because you cannot say, I don't think that you can
say any reasonable person cannot say that. They don't understand
what is the potential here? The lethality? You know, And
you make a good point by talking about pointing the
muzzle of a loaded weapon at somebody and then all
(41:26):
of a sudden you think that you pull the trigger
and nothing's going to happen. Well, you're an idiot, yes,
you know. And not only you an idiot, it's not
even idiocy, it is it's malicious it's malevolent. It's malevolent
because now you're doing this at the risk of killing
people to make a buck, and that's what this is.
(41:49):
I don't know that you've got individuals that they don't
have like a serialized mentality here where they're going out
to try to poison this mean people. I think that
it is h it's monetarily driven. They want to make
as much money as they possibly can. I got to
tell you, I don't think that in Vietnam, Laos, or
(42:12):
in certainly Turkey, I would want to be on the
end of an accusation in that governmental system of having
caused the death or deaths are injuries of multiple people.
I think they're going to pay a real price. We
have to be very mindful of what we consume when
(42:35):
we go on any trip that's out there, because, particularly
for folks that are looking to celebrate, whatever you do,
do it with caution. Whether you're visiting my hometown of
New Orleans for carnival or any other time, or whether
(42:55):
you're just hanging out with friends that show up with
a bottle of shine and say, hey, look what I got.
Try this, or whether you're going to a resort in
a foreign country because nobody is gonna watch care over
you like you. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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