- I'm craig melvin
And this is "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
- She said that things were getting really bad.
There was no fear of anything like what happened.
I don't know if something snapped.
I was shocked and I couldn't say anything.
- A doctor comes home, but not for long.
- I think my wife is heaving a stroke.
- An hour later, she was back at the hospital
She just left.
- She had this blank stare in her eyes.
- Three days later, she was dead.
- I said she's my child, I gave birth to her,
I want to know what happened to her.
- At first, it was just a medical mystery.
- I'm seeing a healthy white female,
That for all intents and purpose should be alive.
- To them, this was out of this world.
Just couldn't make any sense of it.
- But soon, it became a murder mystery.
- She said, "are you sitting down?"
- Because once they finally discovered what killed her,
The next question was who.
- If he couldn't have her, no one was going to have her.
- I still haven't made sense of it.
I still haven't made sense of it.
♪♪
- Hello, and welcome to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
Autumn klein was a brilliant young doctor
Whose career was thriving.
Her husband, bob ferrante,
Was a respected medical researcher
And they were eager to have a second child.
Then, out of the blue, autumn collapsed
And was rushed to the er.
But was this a case for doctors or the police?
Turns out, this marriage had secrets.
Did one of them lead to murder?
Here's dennis murphy with "lethal weapon".
♪♪
- The emergency room trauma team was losing her.
She'd been wheeled in glassy-eyed
And gasping for breath.
- Her heart stopped, so they had to restart her heart.
And within minutes, machines were doing the breathing
And blood circulation for 41-year-old autumn klein,
Wife, mother, medical doctor,
A rising star in the field of women's neurology.
A star whose light was dimming,
Even as they tried desperately to keep her going.
- These are doctors who are-are treating
Trauma patients every day.
This one had totally puzzled them.
- The woman failing in the er, dr. Klein,
Was in many ways what modern pittsburgh was all about.
The gleaming downtown towers didn't need to worry anymore
About grimy soot from the steel mill smokestacks
Along the river.
The steel industry here had mostly died by the early '80s
And moved overseas.
Universities, technology, medicine, and finance,
That was the foundation of the new pittsburgh
They called the renaissance.
And robert ferrante and his wife dr. Autumn klein
Relocated from boston,
Where just the kind of renaissance minds
The city was hoping to attract.
Autumn's colleague dr. Karen roche.
- She said that she loved pittsburgh.
She loved her patients.
That the people of pittsburgh were wonderful
And she was so happy to be there.
Autumn had always intended to be a caregiver.
Her cousin, close as sisters, sharon king,
Remembers that even as a little girl,
She administered playtime tlc.
- We had a doctor's office
And our patients were our stuffed animals.
- And dr. Autumn klein was holding clinic hours.
- She was the doctor.
- It was an interest that took root early for autumn
And never left.
Always a top-of-her-class student in the baltimore area,
She later got her undergraduate degree
In neuroscience from amherst.
- Helping people was the main thing.
She was just so smart, so intelligent,
So thoughtful, and so caring.
- You and-and your husband must have been very,
Very proud of her.
- We were.
- Lois klein is autumn's mom.
- We knew that she was putting her mind on her studies
And we were giving her the best education
We could possibly give her.
And she was taking advantage of it.
- Med school was a certainty.
Autumn announced she was heading to boston.
Her mother worried the city's crime rate was too high.
- She said, "I'm going to boston university medical school."
And I said, "no, you're not." and she said "yes, I am."
And I said, "no, you're not."
And she said, "yes, I am."
And she went to boston university medical school.
She had a mind of her own.
- In medical school, autumn developed a romantic thing
For a research colleague, and he for her.
Robert ferrante, bob to his friends,
Held a phd in neuroscience and was hunting for cures
To devastating brain illnesses like lou gehrig's
And huntington's diseases.
He was also more than 20 years her senior,
Divorced with two grown kids.
- I simply told her that
That was a little bit too old for her.
I didn't think that that was the right age.
- But two days before graduation from med school,
A determined autumn, wasting no time,
Was walking down the aisle with her much older bridegroom.
- And what was your impression of him, sharon?
- Nice guy, a charming guy. A bit heady, you know.
- Egghead? - Yeah.
- Nerdy? - Yeah.
And she kind of was and she kind of wasn't. Yeah.
- The couple made a home just outside boston.
In a few years, a baby girl arrived into their hectic lives.
Autumn took it in stride.
- A 2 a.M. Diaper change is nothing for her.
She's, you know, I mean, a 2 a.M. Call from the hospital,
You have to come in to take care of this patient.
You know, she's used to that.
- The new mother was becoming a sought-after specialist
In neurological ailments in women.
But autumn was growing frustrated with boston
And professionally, she felt as though she'd crested there.
That's when pittsburgh loomed into view.
In 2011, the university of pittsburgh
And its renowned sister medical center
Offered an ideal career move.
For bob, a new research lab; for autumn,
A chance to head her own department.
- Autumn was not just a rising star,
She was a shooting star.
She was nationally recognized as a leader in her field
At a very young age.
- But still, something was gnawing at her,
A kind of emotional vacuum.
She wanted to have another child.
By now in her early 40's, she was taking
Fertility treatments, hormone injections,
But nothing was happening.
Was it really eating away at her
That she wasn't getting pregnant?
Time was going by?
- Yes.
And, you know, just speaking from experience,
Fertility treatments are the loneliest place
A woman will ever go.
- Looking back, her mom lois recognizes
Now some worrisome signs, changes in her daughter.
- I kind of saw that she wasn't herself too much anymore,
That she was kind of a little,
What do you call it,
Kind of a little down, maybe, here and there.
- Then in early 2013, the couple tried a new approach
To the baby problem.
A fertility doctor thought the bodybuilding supplement
Known as creatine just might help autumn get pregnant.
As it turned out, her husband, bob,
Had been using the stuff in his research.
So, on April 17, autumn klein seemed ready
To give creatine a try.
She texted her husband that day:
- He answered:
- These are hospital security camera pictures
That show autumn throughout the day
And leaving work late that night.
Ten minutes later, she was home.
And minutes after that, her husband, bob ferrante,
Was on the phone to 911.
- His wife, slumped on the kitchen floor,
Gasping for breath.
The dispatcher asked the husband what he was seeing.
- Steve mason, then a paramedic with ems pittsburgh,
And his partner arrived at the ferrante home to find
A woman in very bad shape.
- She was lying on her back on the kitchen floor.
Her eyes were open and she was unresponsive.
- An hour after walking home from the medical center
Where she worked, dr. Autumn klein,
Seen here in hospital surveillance footage,
Was back as a gravely ill patient
In its emergency room.
And whatever was happening to her was a medical mystery
To the team trying to keep her alive.
Then they saw the blood, so neon red,
So out of their experience.
- Autumn was surrounded by some of the best doctors
In the country, desperate to save her.
And they were stumped.
- To them, this was out this world.
Just couldn't make any sense of it.
- Maybe someone else could.
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Dr. Autumn klein had been rushed by ambulance
To the er of the university of pittsburgh medical center
After slumping to the kitchen floor of her home.
- We thought that there was definitely a possibility
Of a stroke and we knew
That she was in critical condition.
- Now, the trauma team surrounding her was trying
Desperately to keep her vital signs going.
Alan jennings, at the time a reporter with
Nbc's pittsburgh affiliate wpxi covered the story.
He recounted what doctors later said about that night.
- She had this blank stare in her eyes, uh, barely a pulse.
- And they didn't know what had happened to her?
- No, they didn't.
- Autumn was struggling to breathe.
- And then, in comes, uh, the ventilator.
- The ventilator, the machines
Are now taking over? - The machines,
Taking over to-to keep her alive so they can--
Until they could determine what in the world
Was going on.
- At some point, alan, did they realize that
This is one of their own?
This is that brilliant young doctor that works
In the woman's neurology unit? - They did, at one point.
I don't know that they would have treated anyone
Any-any differently. But she was one of them.
One of the team.
- When autumn's husband, medical researcher bob ferrante
Arrived in the trauma room, he tried to give the team
Some of his wife's medical history.
He explained she'd been on fertility hormones.
- She had headaches, fainting spells,
And that she generally was expressing that
She hadn't been feeling well.
- He told the er doctors he thought his wife
Had suffered a stroke,
Though diagnostic tests said otherwise.
By then, bob ferrante had already called his father
And mother-in-law at their home near baltimore
With the bad news.
Autumn's mother lois klein said they got in the car
Immediately to drive through the night to pittsburgh.
She was counting out the exits.
- And I said please, let me get to frederick,
Then please let me get to hagerstown.
Please let me get to hancock
And please let me get to pittsburgh.
- Back in the er, a resident,
Trying to rally autumn's failing body,
Stuck an iv into her and noticed something quite odd.
Her blood in his tube showed shocking red.
And the observation of that doc at the bedside
That this blood is too red.
Why am I seeing blood this brilliantly red saturation?
- To them, this was out of this world.
Just couldn't make any sense out of it.
- Eventually, autumn went into cardiac arrest.
Doctors managed to bring her back, barely.
- They actually took turns, um,
Doing chest compressions to try to get
Some reaction from her;
To try to get her heart, uh, moving and pumping again.
- Another doctor reviewed autumn's symptoms
And ordered up a test.
He wanted a toxicology screen of her blood.
Hours passed.
Her blood was being pumped into a machine
That was doing the oxygenating work of her heart and lungs.
At some point, word had reached her cousin sharon,
Now living in washington state.
Sharon talked by phone to autumn's frantic husband bob
And was grateful for his medical background.
- He was calling his colleagues.
You know, he knows this neurologist
Or this person, you know.
Great, you know, use your resources.
You know? I had no idea what was going on.
- Eventually though, autumn lost brain function.
By the time her parents finally made it to the hospital,
They could see there was little hope
For their daughter.
- They had a lot of tubes and things hooked up to her.
And I held her hand,
And I talked to her,
And I told her,
You heal everybody else's brain,
Why can't you heal your own?
- Sharon wanted desperately to fly out from washington state
To see autumn, but her aunt lois told her to wait.
- That's my other half in that hospital bed;
I need to be there.
- Doctors managed to keep autumn alive for two full days.
At some point,
Sharon could tell that autumn's grieving husband
Had run out of hope.
- And he did say to me I'm going to go spend
The last night with the love of my life.
And at the time, I thought it's not over yet.
- But in the er suite, everyone knew it was.
Autumn's little girl was brought to her bedside.
- She made some comment to somebody about
"I don't think mommy's ever going to come home again."
- On the third day after she'd been wheeled into the er,
Autumn's exhausted colleagues pronounced her dead
And turned off the machines keeping her alive.
- A lot of my life feels like it doesn't make sense
Without her. You know?
She was there for everything.
- Autumn's husband and family now had funeral plans to make
And even darker days to get through.
But one person wasn't done with the mysterious case
Of autumn klein.
His work was just getting started.
Dr. Todd luckasevic, associate medical examiner
For allegheny county, performed the autopsy on autumn.
- It was regarded as a sudden unexpected death.
- Which meant the county needed to figure out why
This otherwise healthy woman was dead.
There was no reason to suspect fertility hormones,
Vitamins, or supplements like creatine
Could have led to her collapse.
Her brain showed no signs of a stroke,
Though an examination of the heart did reveal
An abnormally shaped heart valve.
- It's a congenital anomaly found in approximately
2% of the population.
- Does it lead to early death?
- Not in your 40's. Uh, you need to be symptomatic.
- At the conclusion of autumn klein's autopsy,
The medical examiner was perplexed
As to what killed this woman. - I'm not seeing anything.
I'm seeing a healthy white female that,
For all intents and purpose, should be alive.
- On the form that asked for cause of death,
Dr. Luckasevic wrote "pending,"
No definitive answer.
But in a few days' time, he would have more information.
The blood work was back from the lab.
Autumn klein had suffered a very unnatural death.
- A medical mystery was about to be solved.
Those lab results would leave autumn's loved ones
Stunned and turn this case into a who-done-it.
What exactly had killed autumn?
- I was shocked. And I couldn't say anything.
- Or is the question who?
When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Two days after allegheny county's associate medical examiner
Performed his autopsy on autumn klein,
The phone rang.
The voice on the other end was from the hospital.
Autumn's blood tests were back.
Dr. Todd luckasevic was startled to hear
What the lab found.
- Lethal deadly amount of cyanide.
- What did that tell you?
- That told me that I have a cause of death now.
- Cyanide, the poison of the nazi death camps
And the jonestown massacre of the '70s.
Lethal, fast-killing stuff. Not a common cause of death.
- I have done approximately 3500 cases in my career
And this is my first case of cyanide poisoning.
- The lab's toxicology work found cyanide levels
Of 3.35 milligrams per liter in autumn's blood.
- So, this is a lot of cyanide.
- That is correct.
- Still, he needed to confirm the results with his own tests.
He wanted to reexamine autumn's remains to see
If he could find cyanide in other parts of her body.
But by then, he had released it to the funeral home.
- So, here's an-an easy solution.
You go back to the body and you take a second look.
- Would love to.
Uh, when we got the phone call on Tuesday
That she had a lethal level of cyanide in her blood,
I called immediately to the funeral home
And she had already been cremated.
- But the m.E. Still had samples of autumn's blood.
Its toxicology unit performed its own tests for cyanide.
Analyst alicia smith added a simple solution to the blood.
If cyanide was present in the sample,
It would turn the center well of this disc purple.
She had luckasevic demonstrated what they found.
- This example that we used today is-is very representative
Of autumn klein's sample.
It's-it's almost identical.
- Sure enough, the sample changed color.
- Her color change was a, uh, deep kind of dark purplish pink.
And it was obviously positive for cyanide.
- Does that saturation of color tell you
You've got a lethal amount? - Oh, yes. Definitely.
Uh, a-a-any amount, even the 1 milligram per liter,
Even the light pink color change means there's cyanide there,
A significant, toxic, if not lethal amount
Of cyanide present.
- Autumn klein had died of cyanide poisoning.
No question about it, he said.
He grew even more confident when he reviewed the details
Of how she had collapsed and suffered.
Cyanide, once ingested,
Can quickly starve the body of oxygen.
- So, oxygen's on the blood,
But it's not being utilized by the body.
- It was the trapped oxygen that had turned the blood
In autumn's veins that vivid red.
He also considered the 911 call.
As her husband is begging for help,
Autumn could be heard moaning in the background.
- Luckasevic says that was likely autumn
Struggling to breathe, another important sign
That cyanide was in her system.
He knew he had a bizarre death on his hands
And immediately contacted the police.
- I called the detectives and I let them know
Cause of death is cyanide poisoning.
You need to help me with the manner of death.
- He wanted to know if autumn had died by suicide
Or been poisoned. In other words, murdered.
- There's a note on my desk saying that the coroner's office
Had a, um, a woman come in who had a lethal level
Of cyanide in her system.
- Cyanide poisoning? - Yes.
- How many of those have you seen in your career?
- This is my first one.
- Soon, autumn's mom was given the news about
The blood results.
She then called her niece sharon king out in washington.
- She said "are you sitting down?"
I was like, "okay."
Then she said it was cyanide.
- Just like that?
- And I was shocked.
And I couldn't say anything. I couldn't catch my breath.
- When autumn's colleague dr. Karen rouse heard about it,
She knew right away her friend had suffered
An agonizing death.
- As a medical professional, I know about how people die
Of cyanide poisoning.
And I couldn't dwell on that.
- And just as in an old agatha christie cozy murder mystery
About a cyanide poisoning in the village,
The inspector was about to call.
Pittsburgh's senior investigators were on route
To talk to robert ferrante.
Did he have any idea how cyanide found its way
Into the bloodstream of his late wife?
- A husband's theory of how and why his wife died.
- So, what did he say?
- Why would she do this to herself?
- What was he suggesting?
Did he know something that police didn't?
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back to "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin.
Autumn klein's sudden death left her loved ones reeling.
Then the coroner delivered another blow.
Autumn's cause of death? A lethal dose of cyanide.
Now, police had the case.
Investigators wondered if autumn had been poisoned,
Was a toxic relationship to blame?
Her husband was about to share
His own interesting theory.
Once again, here's dennis murphy
With "lethal weapon".
[beeping]
- Five days after doctors turned off the machines
On dr. Autumn klein,
Pittsburgh police detectives made their way
To the three-story brick house where she made a home
With her daughter and husband,
Medical researcher robert ferrante.
Veteran detective jim mcgee took the lead.
Ferrante greeted him and his partner.
- We start talking to him and what he can tell us
About what happened to his wife at that point.
- Ferrante told the detectives how his wife had arrived home
That night a little before midnight.
- And how she came through the door and just
Collapsed on the floor. - Oh, god!
- He then recounted what he told 911.
- I think my wife is having a stroke.
- He thought his wife had suffered a stroke.
The detectives informed him he was wrong about that.
- We asked him if he knew that his wife died
Of cyanide poisoning.
- So, what did he say?
- He kind of gasped and said,
"why would she do this to herself?
- Why would she do that to herself?
- That's correct.
- To the cops, the man looked visibly shaken.
It seemed he was suggesting his wife had died by suicide.
Ferrante then told the story about autumn
Trying and failing to get pregnant.
He said she had recently been taking the supplement
Called creatine in the hopes it would help with fertility.
Harry lutton, then a detective with the pittsburgh police,
Understood the late wife's emotional agony.
- She's trying to have another child
And that's a lot of stress on a woman
When they're trying to have children
And they can't have children.
- Could autumn's distressed state of mind
Have led to suicide?
Detectives had to consider that as a theory.
But cyanide?
That's an unusual way to kill yourself
And it's a hard-to-get poison.
How could autumn have gotten her hands on it?
- Well, we looked into the labs that,
You know, where she worked.
She didn't work in a lab.
Um, she worked with patients.
- She was a clinic doctor, right?
- Yes. - She was working hands-on.
- Yes.
- But there were other labs at the medical complex.
Labs stocked with poisons, including cyanide.
Maybe autumn wandered into one of those.
Detectives pulled hospital security cam footage
From that last day and here's what they saw.
That's autumn as she's getting ready to leave work.
She goes up a set of escalators,
Disappears for roughly six minutes
Before coming back down and heading home.
Question, in those minutes missing from the camera's eye,
Had she found her way into a lab with toxins?
- And maybe this is where she goes to get
Her hands on cyanide to inexplicably kill herself?
- That's correct.
- Yet there was a problem with that scenario, a big one.
The investigators learned that to get into any of those labs,
Autumn would have needed a special access card.
- Is there any sign that she had a card swipe
That put her in an area
Where another researcher or somebody
Might have had cyanide?
- No.
There's no card swipes at the time that she left work.
- The more they dug, the less detectives
Believed this unexpected death was a suicide.
True, autumn was frustrated by her infertility,
But disappointment was all it was,
Thinks her cousin sharon.
Suicide was never on her radar.
- That was not autumn.
That was just not autumn.
- Family, friends, and colleagues agreed.
Autumn was a woman with plans to live, not die.
She had a daughter she adored
And was scheduling vacations
And new research projects just before her death.
- So, if she didn't take it,
And your theory is that she hasn't killed herself,
The only place to go is homicide.
- That's correct.
- Who would want to murder autumn klein?
The spouse is almost always a suspect until they're not.
But the husband here, bob ferrante,
Was a renowned medical researcher.
He didn't seem to fit the bill.
- Professional guy. - Yes.
- Well regarded.
And there don't seem to be any money issues
In the household. - That's true.
- In fact, the marriage of ferrante and klein
Appeared to outsiders to be a good one.
Still, detectives had to consider
The husband's line of research.
He worked routinely with toxins in his lab.
But not with cyanide.
More than a week after they first
Interviewed the husband,
Detectives began talking to his lab associates.
- The people that we talked to
Said that there was no research with cyanide.
- Yet detectives were just getting started
With their investigation.
They combed through labs and laptops,
Interviewed friends and colleagues,
Reanalyzed hospital footage.
- I think once we got all that together
And got all the pieces of that puzzle together,
We had our picture.
- A picture, he said, that revealed only one person
Who had the motive and the means to kill autumn klein.
Her husband, bob ferrante.
Though the evidence was largely circumstantial,
Three months after autumn's death,
The cops were ready to make an arrest.
At the time,
Bob ferrante was visiting his sister in florida.
Pittsburgh p.D. Detective lutton headed south to make the arrest.
But when he got there,
The sister said ferrante was gone.
- She said that he got a phone call from an attorney
And he got in the car and said I gotta go.
And he left.
- Did you think that dr. Ferrante
Was doing a runner on you?
He was trying to get away?
- Yes, yes.
I mean, we were told that he was going to his attorney,
But he's running from us.
He knew we were coming.
- On your books, he's a fugitive?
- Yes.
- But not for long.
As it turned out,
Ferrante was on his way back to pittsburgh
To turn himself in, says his attorney,
When he was pulled over by state police in west virginia
And later handed over to pittsburgh authorities.
Police had their man.
Now, they and the commonwealth of pennsylvania
Had to prove to 12 men and women
That he was the right one.
- They heard a clean case. - They heard a very clean case.
- To jeffrey a. Manning,
The judge who would preside over it all,
The case against bob ferrante,
Far from a sure thing,
Could well leave jurors scratching their heads.
- And I'm not one for predicting verdicts,
But I would not have predicted one here.
- It could have gone either way
And you wouldn't have been surprised?
- That would be correct.
- This power couple seemed to have a perfect life.
So, why would bob ferrante want to end autumn's?
A marriage was about to be dissected in court.
Coming up...
Was jealousy a possible motive for murder?
What had bob ferrante discovered about his wife?
- If this were somebody that she was
Remotely interested in, she would have told me.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Dr. Autumn klein and robert ferrante
Had all the trappings of success and happiness.
A nice three-story home
A short drive from the heart of the city,
Prestigious jobs at the university of pittsburgh
And its medical center.
At one time, it all seemed enviable.
- Did you think they were a good couple?
- Yeah, yeah, I did.
- And then it all went so wrong.
Autumn, dead from apparent cyanide poisoning,
Her husband now, a year and a half later,
Standing trial for her murder.
Even to the presiding judge, with years on the bench,
This was a first.
- You had a very intelligent man
Who's accused of poisoning his wife.
You have experts who argue with one another.
- And tip-top good lawyering going on.
- Very-very good lawyering, very good experts.
- And it would be up to prosecutor lisa pellegrini
To explain what drove an otherwise
Mild-mannered scientist
To kill the wife he supposedly loved.
And in such a cruel manner.
She opened by describing a man infuriated,
One losing control of his more successful wife
Who had, in turn, grown tired of him.
- Alan jennings in the courthouse.
- Reporter alan jennings was in the courtroom.
- Prosecutors say he was obsessed, jealous.
His marriage, he realized
He was going to be dumped by his wife.
- The prosecutor asserted that the marriage
Was in free-fall at the time of her death.
Autumn believed her husband had emotionally checked out,
Especially when it came to the issue
Of having another child.
She more or less told her cousin sharon
He was a cold fish.
- My husband is a psychologist
And she said I need you to ask him
If there is such a gene as for compassion.
Because if there is, then bob is lacking it.
- Wow!
That just describes acres of sadness, doesn't it?
- Yeah, yeah.
- The prosecutor showed an email
Autumn had sent her husband
In the months before her death.
She wrote,
- Did she ever say, sharon, I'm going to leave him?
This isn't working? - Yes, she did.
- She said that to you? - She did to me, yes.
- And he was positively rattled to the core,
Said the prosecutor,
When he found out autumn was texting and emailing
A male colleague she'd spent time with
At a conference in san francisco.
Bob ferrante, said the prosecutor,
Suspected his wife was having an affair.
Autumn's cousin was certain that wasn't true.
- If this were somebody
That she was remotely interested in,
She would have told me.
- So, you don't think anything physical
Was happening certainly.
- No, no.
- But as the prosecutors told it,
The defendant believed otherwise.
Rather than shoring up a crumbling marriage,
The embittered scientist, his wife the new rising star,
Came up with a cold-blooded solution.
He poisoned her.
- The motivation,
Just jealousy that if he couldn't have her,
No one was going to have her.
- Ferrante, the prosecutor said,
Thought he could get rid of his wife quickly
By slipping her cyanide.
When she didn't die immediately,
He had to come up with a plan b
To mislead the paramedics and doctors.
The prosecutor played that 911 call.
- I think my wife is having a stroke.
- The prosecution was establishing
Dr. Ferrante's attempts to lead everybody that he encountered,
Starting with the 911 operator.
And he said, "well, I think she's had a stroke."
- So, steering it. - Steering it.
- Then when autumn finally died, according to the prosecutor,
Ferrante said something that he thought
Would keep the cause of death secret.
Lois klein testified that her son-in-law said flatly
He did not want an autopsy.
- I said, "I'm her mother and I want an autopsy."
- Because you wanted to know the cause of death?
- I said, "I can't believe you don't want to know
What happened to her."
And his response was that, um, people do that.
They do autopsies
And then the people don't want to know the results of it.
So, that was that.
- The prosecution had described a man who'd lost control
Of his wife, killed her,
And then tried desperately to cover it up.
Defense attorneys bill difenderfer
And wendy williams.
- You get this picture of a jealous guy
Whose career is being eclipsed by his wife,
Thinks she's got a lover, and bang, she's dead.
- Well, that's the spin that the commonwealth
Put on this thing.
And obviously,
We think the reality is that's not the case.
- They said the prosecutor's alleged motive here
Made for great melodrama,
But it was miles away from the truth.
- Bob was very successful, um, huntington's disease,
Als on the verge of some big breakthroughs.
- Bob ferrante, they countered,
Was a brilliant researcher and a loving man
Devoted to helping his wife, not hurting her.
And to sell that image,
They flabbergasted the courtroom
By calling the defendant himself to the stand.
- So, in this case, the defendant made that choice.
I've often said that it's risky, at best.
That the minute the defendant takes the stand,
We now have the government's proof
Versus the defendant's credibility.
- A gamble his defense team said ferrante
Was willing to make.
He wanted jurors to see him for the man he was,
One who loved his bright, complicated wife.
- He wanted to help the jury understand
What was going on in their marriage.
And-and, you know, tell them how badly
His wife wanted to have a child.
- Yes, he conceded,
He had been a jealous husband for a brief moment,
But then he and autumn had kissed and made up
In the weeks before her death.
- They go on a trip to puerto rico
With their daughter.
As the neighbors described, when they come back,
They're glowing, they're in love,
They're holding hands.
Those actions speak a thousand words.
- In the moments after his wife collapsed,
He said he honestly thought she was having a stroke.
When she died,
He wanted simply to honor her wishes
And donate her organs.
And that's why he did not want an autopsy.
- He was aware that if an autopsy is done,
A full autopsy is done,
It will destroy the ability to donate the organs,
Which was his wife's request.
- A loving and loyal husband to the end,
According to the defense.
Not a mad scientist treating his wife
Like a lab rat, killing her with cyanide.
Speaking of which, they said,
The prosecution's claim of how autumn died was all wrong.
- There was not evidence that my client,
Um, had anything to do with her death,
Let alone her death caused by cyanide.
- An age-old poison,
It's connection to a medical researcher
And his doctor wife
Were about to be analyzed beneath
A very different kind of microscope,
The unforgiving eye of the law.
- Coming up...
Would someone as smart as robert ferrante
Really use something as obvious
And as easy to trace as cyanide?
- Well, that's like me buying a shotgun,
Telling everybody hey, I just bought a shotgun,
And two hours later,
My wife is deceased from a shotgun shot.
- Couldn't be that stupid.
- He would be the dumbest guy in the universe.
- When "dateline: Secrets uncovered" continues.
♪♪
- Welcome back.
Medical researcher bob ferrante was on trial
For the murder of his wife, dr. Autumn klein.
Prosecutors argued that the marriage was in trouble
And the scientist could easily get hold
Of the toxin that killed autumn.
Now, bob's defense team was about to make a bold claim.
This loving husband
Could not have possibly committed the crime
Because there was no crime at all.
Here's dennis murphy with the conclusion
Of "lethal weapon."
- The commonwealth of pennsylvania
Had tried to paint robert ferrante
As a jealous husband,
Driven by rage to poison his wife.
How did he do it?
Prosecutors believed he slipped the cyanide
Inside a drink and gave it to her
Shortly after she came home that night.
A theory, said judge manning, that was tough to prove.
- No one stood there with their two eyes and said,
I saw him put the cyanide
In the drink and give it to her.
No one said that.
- That is a weak point in the prosecution's argument.
They wish they had it, but they didn't.
- Of course, it is.
But keep in mind, circumstantial evidence,
Even though most people don't-don't believe
What it really is, is very powerful.
- Prosecutor lisa pellegrini told the court that ferrante
Used his wife's vulnerability,
Namely her infertility,
To trick her into taking cyanide that night.
Earlier in the day, autumn had sent him this text.
I ovulate tomorrow.
He texted back perfect timing.
Creatine, smiley face.
- Creatine? - Creatine.
- This is the solution. - This is it.
- Ferrante, the prosecutor alleged,
Had convinced his wife that creatine
Could help her get pregnant.
He whipped up a poison drink knowing she'd take it
As soon as she came home.
The poison drink theory was corroborated
By something told later to a doctor friend of ferrante.
- Dr. Ferrante told him he said, I don't know,
She came home, I gave her a creatine drink,
She drank it and she passed out on the floor.
- And no one may have been the wiser for it
If it hadn't been for a lab test
That found a sky-high amount
Of cyanide in autumn's blood.
Subsequent tests, the prosecutor added,
Were also positive for the poison.
Associate medical examiner dr. Todd luckasevic
Underscored that for the jury.
- What caused this woman's death was...
- Cyanide poisoning. Period.
- No doubt? - No doubt.
- Nor was there any doubt, said the prosecutor,
As to who poisoned autumn.
Police discovered the defendant's laptop
Hidden in an office safe.
And inside it, a wealth of information
That told them bob ferrante had indeed
Been a very busy researcher
In the months before his wife's death.
- Dr. Ferrante was googling searches, um,
Concerning cyanide.
Where to purchase it, how to purchase it,
The effects on people.
- And he didn't stop there.
The prosecutor said bob ferrante
Then made an interesting request to his lab associates,
Something later relayed to detectives.
- He goes to the purchasing person in the laboratory
And he tells this person
That he wants to order a bottle of cyanide.
- Has he ever done that before, detective?
- Never.
- Better yet, the detectives explained,
The doctor asked for the cyanide
To be delivered overnight.
- And when is all this in relation to autumn's
Slumping to the floor in her home?
- Two days prior. - Two days prior?
- Yes.
- Ferrante, he said, had even left his fingerprint
On the container, which interestingly to them
Had 8.3 grams of cyanide missing.
- What, like a heaping teaspoonful, maybe, of cyanide?
- I think about a teaspoonful would be about 8 grams.
- Is that a lethal amount of cyanide?
- Yes.
- Prosecutor lisa pellegrini said the defendant
Thought he was so smart,
Fooling his wife and then everyone else,
By using a poison he assumed was untraceable.
- Standing and looking at the jury,
Points to ferrante, that man right there
Was one blood test away from the perfect murder.
- Murder, responded the defense?
What murder?
Robert ferrante, it said, did not commit a crime
Because there was no crime.
- I said, as forcefully as I could,
We don't believe and we will never believe
That autumn klein died from cyanide.
- The defense was attacking the cornerstone
Of the commonwealth's case.
That blood test with its lethal reading of cyanide
Could never be trusted, it said.
- There's no way that the result is reliable?
- Throw it out? - Yes.
- Because, he said, the lab initially screwed up
With that 3.35 calculation.
It only caught its error months later,
Correcting the level to 2.2,
A still lethal amount of cyanide in autumn's blood.
- It certainly raises its--
A real issue of its credibility.
- And gives the defense something to work with?
- It absolutely gave the defense a lot to work with.
- Far more reliable, argued ferrante's attorneys,
Was another test
Done in the weeks after autumn's death.
It, too, found cyanide in her blood,
But at very low levels nowhere near lethal.
- And in this case, that alone,
As cyril wecht eloquently articulated, uh,
Was more than reasonable doubt
For this jury to acquit my client.
- The reports are highly conflicting.
- Dr. Cyril wecht.
The defense had introduced into the legal mix
A renowned pittsburgh and internationally recognized
Pathologist of many years.
Dr. Wecht had weighed in on cases
From the jfk assassination
To the deaths of elvis presley and jonbenet ramsey.
He told the court
The conflicting tests demanded a tiebreaker.
- What you do is, you've got to send it in again
For laboratory testing,
Preferably to a third highly respected toxicology lab.
That was not done.
- More compelling, he said, was evidence of scarring
Around autumn's heart, which could have triggered
An electrical malfunction, stopping the organ cold.
Only on the spot cpr could have saved her.
- And in the absence of somebody
Hitting you in the chest,
Somebody knowing what they're doing
With training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation,
You probably will die.
- In other words, the defense said
Autumn could have died of natural causes.
They added that crime scene techs processed the house
And never did find so much as a trace of the poison.
And their client's cyanide google searches
Done for research purposes, not murder.
- I mean, here he is in January
Asking questions of google
About the nature of cyanide.
This looks very bad.
- In April, he's asking about cyanide,
Potassium cyanide neuroscience research project.
- The defendant further explained his actions
From the stand.
He ordered the poison for work and even took it
Out of the box when it arrived.
That's why his fingerprint was on the container.
Besides, his lawyer added,
A man as smart as bob ferrante
Would never use a weapon that could so easily
Be traced back to him.
- That's like me buying a shotgun,
Telling everybody hey, I just bought a shotgun,
And two hours later my wife is deceased from a shotgun shot.
- Couldn't be that stupid.
- He would be the dumbest guy in the universe.
- In closing, the defense begged the jurors
To use their common sense,
Which they later said is exactly what they did.
Their common sense and the science presented
Told them autumn klein had died of cyanide poisoning
Because the defendant had given it to her.
They found him guilty of first-degree murder.
He is appealing his conviction.
- Crushing. - Right.
- Crushing. - Yep.
- Especially in this case, absolutely crushing.
- Yep, good description.
- Robert ferrante was sentenced to life in prison.
At the time of our interview,
Autumn's family felt they'd gotten justice.
Their anger toward her husband
Had been overshadowed by all the what-ifs.
- Not only do I grieve autumn
And the loss that she is to me
And to us as a family and to our community
And our friends, but also her patients.
You know, my heart breaks for her patients.
- It was all dr. Autumn klein had ever wanted to do.
Help others.
Now, that chance is gone.
Swept away way too soon.
- And that's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered."
I'm craig melvin, thank you for watching.