In August 2022, Edward Peter LeClair was found guilty of five counts of sexual assault of a child in a Denton County, Texas, courtroom. As the verdicts were announced, he drank heavily from a water bottle, became violently ill, and died later that afternoon. Toxicology findings eventually revealed sodium nitrite poisoning, and his death was ruled a suicide. In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, forensic nurse and former death investigator Julie Mattson examines the unusual circumstances, the medical evidence, and the criminal case that brought LeClair to court.
What happens when a man hears a guilty verdict in a Texas courtroom and suddenly collapses after drinking from his water bottle?
This week on Pushing Up Lilies, I'm examining the unusual death of Edward Peter LeClair, a 57-year-old man convicted of five counts of sexual assault of a child. Moments after the verdicts were announced, LeClair became critically ill and died. Months later, the medical examiner confirmed sodium nitrite poisoning and ruled his death a suicide.
As a forensic nurse and former death investigator, I'll explain how this type of poisoning affects the body's ability to carry oxygen, why toxicology is so important, and how investigators piece together an unexpected death. We'll also discuss the young victim whose case brought LeClair to court and why her story shouldn't be overshadowed by his death.
* Listener discretion advised.
00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
00:10
Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you. Are you ready? Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. If you've been here before, thanks for coming back.
00:39
If you are new to the podcast, thank you for listening. I am on YouTube as well as just audio, so feel free to go to my YouTube channel.
00:48
You can watch this on video, but I'm glad you're here either way. Now, I want to thank everybody who came out this past weekend to the Denton Day of the Dead Festival. I did have a booth there.
00:59
I sold a ton of merch. I'm almost out, y'all. Go onto my website, pushinguplilies.com. You can see what I have left, but I can tell you, I am running so low on my Serial Killer Cookbooks.
01:14
I'm also running super low on the organ donor lunch boxes. Those were crazy popular.
01:23
I think I have one left, so I'm gonna order more because I go to the Texas EMS Conference at the end of November, and I wanna take a handful of those with me.
01:32
So, I feel like that the medics and all will love those, so it ought to be a good conversation piece. It is a good way to keep your coworkers from eating your lunch out of the employee refrigerator.
01:44
So anyway, today we're gonna talk about a case happened right here in my backyard, Denton County, and I gotta tell you, when I first heard about this story, there were a lot of reasons I was interested in it, but first of all, it happened in a courthouse, which is certainly not somewhere that you would expect someone to die from poisoning.
02:03
Second, this man literally had just been convicted of sexually assaulting a child, and the third, the way he died was just so unusual, which of course, got my attention because of my background as a nurse.
02:18
So, I've spent years investigating deaths and working in forensic nursing, and one thing I've learned is that the circumstances surrounding a death are often every bit as important as the medical findings.
02:29
Sometimes, we've talked about this before, and what looks like one thing turns out to be something completely different. And once you start putting that evidence together, you see it.
02:38
This case is a really good example of why we have to wait for toxicology and the medical examiner's findings before we really know what happened.
02:47
Before we really get into what happened though, I wanna tell you about the man involved because I think the circumstances that brought him into the courtroom are an important part of this story.
02:56
He was not just at the courthouse waiting to get a copy of his dad's death certificate. He wasn't just sitting in the audience.
03:05
He had been accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, and a jury had spent days listening to the evidence against him. Now, his name was Edward Peter LeClair. He was 57.
03:18
He lived in Frisco, Texas, and he had previously served in the Navy as a mechanic.
03:23
But he'd also been, at one time, I think, a corporate recruiter, but there isn't a tremendous amount of public information about him, so I don't want to make assumptions.
03:32
But what we do know is that he was 51 when he became involved with a teenage girl in a situation that would eventually lead to five felony convictions.
03:45
And y'all, when I say teenage girl, I'm talking about a 14-year-old child, not a young adult, not somebody who was even close to being legally old enough to consent.
03:55
She was 14 and LeClair was in his 50s. So according to information, LeClair met this girl through Craigslist. Now, I don't know if you're really young, you may not be...
04:07
Well, I guess it's still around, but you may not be super familiar with Craigslist, but it used to be super popular.
04:14
Craigslist was a site that was used to buy furniture, find apartments, look for jobs, pretty much anything.
04:22
But it also had personal advertisement sections where people arranged romantic and sexual encounters, and according to investigators, that's how LeClair very first connected with this girl.
04:35
And the two arranged to meet, and they went to a hotel, and sexual activity occurred, and LeClair reportedly paid her $200, and she later sent him a nude photograph by email.
04:48
The fact that money was exchanged does not make this a consensual transaction between adults.
04:55
We're talking about a child who was 14 years old and a man who was more than three decades older than she was. Now, from my perspective, that's a pretty significant distinction.
05:09
When we're dealing with children and sexual exploitation, we have to be careful about the language we use because sometimes people hear that a teenager communicated with an adult online or agreed to meet, and they start questioning the child's decisions.
05:23
But the responsibility for an adult's criminal sexual conduct belongs to the adult.
05:31
A child doesn't suddenly become legally capable of consenting to that conduct because money was involved or because the initial contact happened online.
05:40
So according to his search warrant, after the first encounter, the girl told LeClair that she was only 14, and you would think that that would have been the end of it.
05:50
But investigators said that he continued communicating with her and arranging additional sexual encounters, and he paid her for sex on three more occasions, including an encounter at his home in Frisco.
06:06
So, this wasn't an investigation involving one reported encounter.
06:11
Investigators were looking at allegations of repeated sexual abuse involving the same child, and one of the most troubling details is that according to those investigative records, LeClair continued even after learning her age.
06:27
Now, in Texas, the general age of consent is seventeen, although there are specific legal exceptions depending on the circumstances.
06:35
But those exceptions don't ever make sexual conduct between a fifty-one-year-old man and a fourteen-year-old child lawful.
06:44
And ultimately, a Denton County jury would find LeClair guilty on five counts of sexual assault of a child. But here's where this story takes another really unusual turn.
06:55
These allegations did not immediately result in a police investigation.
07:01
The reported encounters happened back in twenty-sixteen, and it wasn't until two years later that the girl's family learned what had been happening.
07:11
And the person who reportedly brought the situation to their attention was LeClair's girlfriend. According to reporting on the search warrant, LeClair's girlfriend was a woman named Melody Shea.
07:24
And in twenty eighteen, she discovered communications between LeClair and the teenager, and by that point, the girl was sixteen.
07:33
And so instead of immediately contacting the police, she contacted the teenager herself and actually arranged to meet her.
07:42
Now, this is where I really started paying attention to the details of this investigation because the situation described in those records was very unusual.
07:51
According to this affidavit, Shea brought the teenager back to LeClair's home, where Shea and LeClair actually got into an argument, and LeClair eventually drove the girl back to the location where she met the girlfriend in the first place.
08:07
And according to the reported investigative records, Shea made comments to the girl about LeClair grooming her. She knew what was going on, and she had mentioned it to her.
08:19
But there were also allegations that Shea offered to help the teenager make more money. She wanted the arrangements to go through her. She kind of wanted to pimp her out, in a sense.
08:32
So, I want to be clear that those statements were reported from investigative documents.
08:37
I have not found the documentation establishing that Shea was convicted of a crime in connection with those allegations, so I want to make that clear.
08:45
But think about how concerning that situation is.
08:47
You have a teenager who's reportedly been involved in repeated sexual encounters with a man in his fifties, and now here comes this other adult that's involved.
08:58
So those circumstances raise serious concerns about exploitation, vulnerability, and just the ability of a child to recognize or safely navigate, like, what's happening around her.
09:12
Eventually, Shea informed the girl's parents about the relationship, and the family contacted Frisco police.
09:20
According to published reports, the police complaint was made on June twenty-ninth of twenty eighteen. By that point, two years had passed since the original offense.
09:33
Now, something I want to talk about here is delayed reporting in sexual assault cases, because I think people sometimes misunderstand how those investigations work.
09:43
So, a lot of people assume that if someone doesn't immediately report an assault, there must be something wrong with the allegation, or they're making it up, or it didn't really happen.
09:54
But that simply is not a reliable way to evaluate sexual assault cases, especially those involving children, especially.
10:03
There are many reasons why a child does not immediately disclose abuse sometimes. It can be a lot of things.
10:10
It can be fear, confusion, shame, concerns about how adults are going to react or difficulty understanding the situation.
10:22
I've had kids before not report it for a long time because it's their dad or it's their best friend's dad, and they don't want to disrupt the lifestyle.
10:35
I had a young girl one time that reported the uncle had sexually assaulted her, and it was right around the holidays, and she didn't want to tell anybody because she didn't want to ruin Christmas for the family.
10:46
And that's very thoughtful, but this is a crime and should be reported. And when they're groomed, they don't always realize sometimes that it's a crime.
10:57
When a report comes months or years later, the investigation looks different from one that begins immediately after an assault.
11:05
So, when I worked in forensic nursing, one of the things that was always important was understanding what evidence might be available and then recognizing the limitations of the medical examination.
11:17
If somebody actually showed up immediately after a sexual assault, there might be an opportunity to actually collect evidence, evidence that's still gonna be on the body that we can swab, put in the rape kit, send to the crime lab, and pick up on the DNA swabs.
11:36
There might be injuries, and we can preserve the clothing or other material.
11:40
But if its reported years later, investigators are gonna have to look at other sources of evidence that may not be there. And in this particular case, digital communications were very important.
11:53
Investigators reviewed messages involving LeClair, the girl, and his girlfriend.
11:58
And those communications actually helped establish the history of contact and the circumstances that investigators were examining.
12:06
So, There was not the physical evidence that we would see in a regular sexual assault case because it wasn't reported immediately.
12:17
She was interviewed by forensic interviewers, and she was actually examined to rule out sexually transmitted infections, but there was no physical evidence that could be collected immediately after this happened.
12:36
So, I think sometimes people forget how significant electronic evidence is, and in a case like this, it's very strong.
12:44
Text messages, photographs, emails, social media, a lot of times that gives us information long after an offense occurred.
12:52
And in cases involving repeated contact between an adult and a minor, those records are really relevant.
13:00
So, I haven't reviewed the complete trial transcript or every message that was collected, so I'm not gonna pretend I know what was said in each one, but the investigation moved forward.
13:11
Now, July twenty-sixth of twenty eighteen, Edward LeClair was actually arrested.
13:15
Now, initial reports describe charges involving attempted sexual assault, and his bond was set at thirty thousand dollars.
13:23
And he posted that bond, which allowed him to remain out of custody while the case continued through the legal system. And I always hate this. Why did you let this guy bond out?
13:34
I mean, he sexually assaulted a child more than once, so he's just gonna pay thirty thousand dollars and walk around for years until this case goes to trial.
13:46
Anyway, in February of twenty-twenty, LeClair was indicted on five counts of sexual assault of a child, and all five counts involved the same victim.
13:55
And this was the conduct that was dated back in July of twenty sixteen. Now think about that timeline. The abuse occurred in twenty sixteen. The police became involved in twenty eighteen.
14:06
The indictment came in twenty-twenty, and the trial didn't begin until twenty twenty-two. So that's about six years between the original reported offense and the jury hearing the case.
14:19
And to me, that's crazy. But during that time, the girl who had been fourteen years old when this began was an adult.
14:27
So, Jamie Beck is a prosecutor here in Denton County, and the victim actually flew into Denton to testify at LeClair's trial.
14:36
I don't know what her personal circumstances were or how she felt about having to testify, but I do know that testifying in a sexual assault case involves extremely personal information that someone would have to reveal about themselves.
14:51
And you have to talk about it in front of people and in front of a jury and in front of friends and in front of a lot of people that you don't know.
15:01
When the allegations involve childhood sexual abuse, there are a lot of consideration, including trauma and the passage of time.
15:10
Now, the trial began on August eighth of twenty twenty-two at the Denton County Courts building on McKinney Street here in Denton, and it was the sixteenth district court with Judge Lee Gabriel presiding in place of Judge Sherry Shipman.
15:25
Now, LeClair was represented by Dallas defense attorney Mike Howard, who later told reporters that his client was innocent.
15:32
That's important because regardless of the allegations, he still had the right to a trial and the right to an attorney and the right to challenge the evidence against him.
15:42
And the prosecution had the responsibility of proving the charges beyond the reasonable doubt.
15:48
And over the next several days, the jury heard this case, and the victim actually testified, and the jurors considered the evidence presented by both sides.
15:58
Now, again, I don't have a complete transcript of every witness or every exhibit, so I don't wanna embellish what happened during the testimony, but we know the jury eventually reached a decision.
16:09
On August eleventh, twenty twenty-two, after three and a half hours of deliberations, the jury returned to the courtroom, and they had found Edward LeClair guilty on all five counts of sexual assault of a child.
16:23
Now, this was a very serious conviction, and according to his defense attorney, LeClair faced a possible punishment of up to a hundred years in prison, as he should.
16:33
As those verdicts were being announced, something was happening at the defense table that nobody fully understood at the time. So LeClair had brought a large water bottle into the courtroom.
16:46
And according to Jamie Beck, who was the DA, he had not been drinking from it during the trial. But when the guilty verdicts were read, he began drinking heavily out of this water bottle.
16:59
Now, the contents were described as being cloudy, and Jamie Beck said that he was consuming it much more aggressively than somebody taking an occasional sip of water.
17:16
Now, his attorney, Mike Howard, also noticed the drinking, and Howard said that when he looked over at LeClair, his client's hand was shaking.
17:24
And at first, he assumed that he was reacting to the guilty verdicts, which under the circumstances would have been a reasonable assumption.
17:31
But this was a man who had just been convicted of five serious crimes and was facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
17:39
So LeClair kept drinking out of this water bottle, and according to Howard, he consumed most of the liquid in the bottle.
17:46
And while there are slight differences in witness account about whether he'd been drinking from it earlier in the trial, the witnesses agreed that he took a substantial amount as the guilty verdicts were announced.
18:00
Now, imagine being in that courtroom, everybody focused on the verdict. The attorneys were thinking about what happens next. The judge is preparing to address the punishment phase.
18:09
And the defendant's sitting there just drinking from a bottle that we all think is water. But one investigator noticed something unusual.
18:18
An investigator assigned to the courtroom thought that LeClair's drinking behavior was concerning and brought it to the attention of one of the bailiffs, and he suggested that the bailiff check on LeClair.
18:30
And I want you to remember that detail because when we talk about death investigations, sometimes the smallest observations become very important pieces of the timeline.
18:40
After the guilty verdicts were announced, LeClair was taken into custody, and he was escorted to a holding cell near the courtroom.
18:49
Now remember, he'd been out on bond before this verdict, so he had not been sitting in the jail waiting for the trial. But now he's been convicted, and his custody status is a little bit different.
19:01
Now, his attorney had reportedly spoke with him briefly in the holding area, and Howard later described LeClair as appearing dejected and in shock.
19:11
And Howard then returned to the courtroom to discuss the next steps in the proceeding. Shortly afterwards, LeClair became violently ill.
19:21
So according to reports, he started vomiting while in the holding cell. And when the bailiff checked on him, LeClair had collapsed.
19:28
Now, deputies began providing medical assistance, and emergency medical personnel were called to the courthouse.
19:35
First responders were dispatched at two thirty-nine that afternoon, according to reporting on the emergency response.
19:43
LeClair was unconscious but still breathing when emergency personnel evaluated him, and he was transported to a local hospital in critical condition.
19:52
One of the details his attorney described afterward really caught my attention.
19:57
His attorney said that when he saw LeClair being taken away on the stretcher, his skin color looked really, really gray.
20:05
Now, as a nurse, that's an observation that I would definitely want documented, because when somebody suddenly becomes ill and loses consciousness and develops an abnormal color, I'm immediately concerned about their oxygen.
20:18
And the reason that detail interests me so much in this case is because what the medical examiner eventually determined. Despite the emergency response, LeClair died that afternoon.
20:29
Now, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office recorded his time of death as three twenty-one PM on August eleventh, twenty twenty-two.
20:37
So, within a relatively short period after hearing the guilty verdicts, he was dead.
20:42
Now, the Texas Rangers were assigned to investigate this 'cause this was considered an in-custody death, and the water bottle was collected as evidence.
20:50
But initially, investigators didn't have a confirmed explanation for what happened. Nobody really knew what was going on. There was speculation about poisoning, and some reports mentioned cyanide.
21:02
But at that point, nobody had really publicly confirmed the substance involved.
21:07
And that's exactly why I think it's important to be cautious when we hear about unusual deaths before these toxicology results come back.
21:15
Because a person that collapses after drinking an unidentified liquid really doesn't tell us what caused the collapse.
21:22
There are different toxic substances that affect the body in different ways, and there are medical conditions that could also resemble poisoning.
21:30
So, you need the circumstances, the medical findings, and the laboratory results before you can reach a conclusion.
21:37
Now, in February of twenty twenty-three, six months after LeClair's death, the medical examiner's findings were publicly reported.
21:46
Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office determined that Edward LeClair died from toxic effects of sodium nitrite, and his manner of death was ruled suicide. That's pretty interesting.
21:58
Now, this is where the forensic nurse in me gets particularly interested, because sodium nitrite poisoning has a very specific effect on the body. So, let's talk a little bit about what that is.
22:10
Sodium nitrite is a chemical that's used for legitimate purposes, including certain food preservation processes.
22:18
But in toxic amounts, it actually interferes with the blood's ability to carry oxygen effectively. And the medical condition that we call that is methemoglobinemia. Say that fast three times.
22:32
Now, I know that's a long medical term, but let me kind of explain what it means, because it's really pretty interesting.
22:40
Normally, our red blood cells contain hemoglobin, and that hemoglobin carries oxygen from our lungs to the tissues in our body.
22:49
And our brain needs oxygen, our heart needs oxygen, and every organ depends on an adequate oxygen supply to actually function.
22:56
But when somebody develops methemoglobinemia, that's hard to say, the iron within the hemoglobin changes into a form that doesn't transport oxygen normally.
23:09
So even though a person might still be breathing and air might still be entering the lungs, the blood isn't delivering oxygen to the tissues.
23:18
And that's where things become dangerous, because if the brain and heart aren't receiving enough oxygen, the person's condition is gonna deteriorate very quickly.
23:30
Symptoms of significant methemoglobinemia include headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, weakness, I mean, all the things, shortness of breath, and confusion.
23:40
And in severe cases, a person can lose consciousness, develop seizures or dangerous heart rhythms. They can have cardiovascular collapse and can die, obviously.
23:53
Now, remember what LeClair's attorney said about his appearance. He described his skin as gray.
23:57
And one of the findings associated with significant methemoglobinemia is cyanosis, which is a blue or grayish discoloration of the skin or the mucous membranes, like your lips.
24:10
I think that's an interesting detail. And I also wanna be clear that gray skin by itself does not diagnose methemoglobinemia.
24:20
There are other medical emergencies that can cause changes in your skin color. Some people that have kidney issues may have gray skin.
24:29
But knowing that the medical examiner ultimately determined sodium nitrite toxicity, that observation is very consistent with the type of oxygen delivery problem that this chemical can cause.
24:43
So, another thing that's really interesting about methemoglobinemia is the appearance of the blood. In severe cases, the blood develops an unusually dark brown color.
24:55
Medical professionals sometimes describe it as chocolate-colored blood.
24:59
Now, I haven't reviewed his complete autopsy report, and I don't know whether that finding was documented in his case, but it is something that forensic pathologists recognize as a possible clue when they're trying to evaluate unexplained poisoning.
25:15
And that alone could lead them to decide or help them to decide what tests to run, because we know this is not something that's normally tested for in a typical toxicology.
25:27
Now, here's another thing that I think is important for nurses and other healthcare professionals to understand.
25:33
A pulse oximeter, that little thing that we put on our finger to measure oxygen saturation, is not always reliable when someone has significant methemoglobinemia.
25:45
And that's because ordinary pulse oximetry has limitations when abnormal forms of hemoglobin are present.
25:52
So, you might have a patient who looks critically ill with symptoms that might suggest that they're not getting the oxygen they need, and the number on that monitor may not accurately explain what's happening.
26:06
So that's something to think about, and that's why we always have to assess the entire patient. We can't rely on one number or one observation.
26:15
We need to look at the symptoms, their clinical appearance, their history, and the possibility of a toxic exposure. A specialized test called co-oximetry helps measure methemoglobin directly.
26:33
And there is a treatment called methylene blue that's used in appropriate patients with significant methemoglobinemia.
26:43
But severe poisoning is a medical emergency, obviously, and prompt recognition is extremely important. Now, again, I don't have LeClair's emergency department records.
26:55
I don't know his methemoglobin level, what his vital signs were when he arrived at the hospital, or exactly what treatment he received.
27:03
And I don't know whether any particular intervention would have even changed the outcome. So, I'm not gonna speculate about that at all.
27:11
But what we do know is that he developed a medical emergency after consuming the liquid.
27:17
His condition deteriorated quickly, and the medical examiner ultimately determined that sodium nitrite toxicity caused his death.
27:27
From my perspective as a forensic nurse death investigator, there are several things about this case that stand out. Timelines are extremely important in death investigation.
27:37
So, when somebody dies suddenly, especially under unusual circumstances, you want to know exactly what happened leading up to the death.
27:46
So, when was the person last seen breathing or behaving normally? When did somebody first notice a change? What symptoms developed? Who witnessed those?
27:56
And when did medical personnel actually become involved? In LeClair's case, investigators had multiple potential witnesses.
28:03
There was a defense attorney, the prosecutors, courtroom personnel, an investigator who noticed the unusual drinking behavior, and a lot of deputies who became involved after LeClair was eventually taken into custody.
28:18
So, a lot of people saw this, and those witness statements help establish the sequence of events, but they don't replace the medical evidence.
28:28
Somebody just saying that a liquid looks cloudy doesn't really establish what chemical was present. And somebody describing a person's skin as gray doesn't really help us with the cause of death.
28:39
And that's why the water bottle was such an important piece of evidence.
28:44
Think about how many times, and I think about this all the time, the possibility that someone drank something at home that we saw at their house that looked just like a water bottle could have been a suicide, and they could have just done the same exact thing.
29:02
We never would have known.
29:04
We never would have suspected poisoning because there was no history of suicidal ideation, and we didn't know what was going on, and the liquids in the house weren't brought in as evidence.
29:19
It's crazy, and it's probably happened multiple times and been overlooked inadvertently, but you have to think about that.
29:26
Investigators needed to preserve the bottle, document where it was recovered, and evaluate its connection. We didn't know anything.
29:34
Evidence handling is important because you're investigating a suspected poisoning, and you want to establish the relationship between the substance and the medical findings.
29:45
And because LeClair died after being taken into custody, the circumstances required an investigation into what happened, and so the Texas Rangers were assigned to that.
29:55
Now, another question that people had was how he managed to bring that bottle into the courtroom in the first place, and that is a very fair question.
30:04
We have to remember that LeClair had been out on bond. He was not transported into the courtroom from the jail like a lot of people are.
30:13
So, his personal belongings would have been subject to different restrictions. He'd been attending the trial as a defendant who wasn't already in custody.
30:23
He had his water bottle with him at the defense table. I haven't seen enough verified information about the courthouse screening procedures. I've been in the courthouse before.
30:34
I know that you do go through a scanner, and you do put your belongings in the little basket that goes through the X-ray, but it's not necessarily gonna pick up what the contents of liquid are in a bottle.
30:50
So y'all, I don't know what the specific rules are at the courthouse about liquids.
30:57
I'm assuming that there's a lot of volatile substances that can be transported, and that's why you're not allowed to take liquid into the airport.
31:08
So, I would think that those same rules would apply at the courthouse, but I don't know for sure.
31:14
So, I don't know their screening procedures enough to know if there was any specific security policy violated. So wanna make that clear.
31:24
But the circumstances certainly raise questions about how dangerous substances might enter a courtroom without anyone actually recognizing the risk.
31:35
I think that's something worth considering, particularly when a defendant is facing the possibility of a very lengthy prison sentence.
31:43
Now, the other question people naturally ask is whether LeClair planned to die if the jury found him guilty, and the timing is certainly striking. He had the bottle with him.
31:56
He consumed a substantial amount of liquid as the guilty verdicts were being read, and then he died from sodium nitrite poisoning.
32:05
His attorney later said that he didn't know he had a plan to harm himself.
32:11
And while the medical examiner classified the death as suicide, the public reporting doesn't establish exactly when LeClair obtained the substance, when he prepared the bottle, or how long he had been considering suicide, and that's an important distinction.
32:30
So, as death investigators, we have to separate what we know from what we think.
32:35
The medical examiner's determination establishes the official cause and manner of death, but it doesn't tell us about every private thought or decision that led up to it.
32:46
Now, there's another part of the story that I think deserves attention, and that's what happened to the criminal case after LeClair died.
32:53
Now, remember, the jury had already found him guilty on all five counts, but the punishment phase had not been completed, so there was no prison sentence imposed.
33:04
His attorney told reporters that the court would have to address how to conclude his proceedings following his death. Now, think about what that meant for this victim.
33:14
She'd been fourteen years old when the reported abuse began in twenty sixteen.
33:20
She was sixteen when the police investigation started in twenty eighteen, and she was an adult by the time she testified in twenty twenty-two.
33:28
This case had taken years to reach a jury, and after the jurors found LeClair guilty, he died before the court completed the punishment proceedings.
33:38
Now, I don't know how the victim felt about this outcome, and I don't think it's appropriate to assume what she was thinking, but I do think it's important to remember that her experience is part of this story.
33:49
Because the headlines focused on the unusual poisoning in the courthouse, and understandably so, it's an extraordinary set of circumstances.
33:57
But before LeClair became the subject of a death investigation, he was a defendant in a case involving the repeated sexual assault of a child, and the jury found him guilty on all five counts.
34:10
Now, something else caught my attention was the effect this had on the jurors.
34:14
According to reporting at the time, the jurors returned the following day, and they were told that LeClair had died, and his defense attorney described the situation as emotional for everyone involved, especially the jury.
34:28
The judge and attorneys reportedly reassured the jurors that they weren't responsible for his death. I wouldn't even care. I'm sorry. If I was a juror, I'd be like c'est la vie.
34:40
I would not feel the least bit responsible. The fact is, he committed the crime.
34:46
He was gonna have to do the time, and he didn't want to, and he was afraid of the consequences, and he took the easy way out.
34:54
And if I were one of the jurors, I would not feel the least bit responsible.
35:01
I think that's important, though, because these were ordinary citizens who had been selected to serve on a jury, and they'd spent several days listening to the evidence involving sexual offenses against a child, and they returned the verdicts based on the evidence presented.
35:18
Then they learned that the defendant had died shortly afterward. So, I think sometimes people underestimate the emotional impact of participating in a criminal trial.
35:29
Jurors hear very difficult testimony. They see disturbing evidence, and they make decisions that have serious consequences.
35:38
It is very stressful, I know, as a sexual assault nurse, and even having testified in capital murder cases. It's difficult on the jury.
35:49
These jurors are not typically people like me who go into death investigations and are super familiar with cases like this. It's not part of their every day like it's part of my every day.
36:03
So, it's hard for me to remember that sometimes because, you know, I went to work and came home, and it was my passion. It was more than just a job to me, but I did it every day.
36:15
And so, these people had to hear all this difficult testimony and disturbing evidence, and they probably would've loved to see him had to carry out the sentence.
36:27
But in this case, the unexpected death of this defendant added something that nobody really anticipated.
36:34
I also think about the people working in the courthouse, so the attorneys, the bailiffs, the investigators, and the emergency responders even.
36:42
These are professionals who do deal with difficult situations as part of their jobs, but that doesn't mean an unexpected death is really something that they can just forget.
36:53
So, Jamie Beck, who had worked in the Denton County DA's office for many years, told reporters that she'd seen people faint, she'd seen people suffer heart attacks, and even saw a shooting during her career, but she hadn't experienced anything like what happened with LeClair.
37:10
It was a very, very different situation, and that just tells you how unusual this case was.
37:17
Now, one of the things I want people to take away from this story is the importance of waiting for medical examiner findings before drawing conclusions about an unexpected death.
37:28
Now, when LeClair died in August of twenty twenty-two, reporters knew that he'd consumed an unidentified liquid and collapsed.
37:36
Now, there was speculation about poisoning, but the specific substance had not yet been confirmed.
37:44
It wasn't until February of twenty twenty-three that the medical examiner's findings were publicly reported identifying the sodium nitrite toxicity and ruling the manner of death suicide.
37:57
And that's something we've always emphasized when discussing forensic death investigation. The scene only gives you part of the picture.
38:05
Witnesses provide a lot of information about the circumstances.
38:10
Medical records and emergency response documentation actually helps establish what happened clinically, and then the autopsy and toxicology findings provide additional medical evidence.
38:22
You have to put all those pieces together. Sometimes the results confirm what investigators initially suspected, but other times they reveal something that nobody expected.
38:34
And sometimes there are still unanswered questions even after the investigation is completed. But in this case, we know quite a bit about what happened.
38:44
We know LeClair was a fifty-seven-year-old from Frisco who had worked as a corporate recruiter. He was accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old girl beginning in twenty sixteen.
38:55
And we know investigators examined communications involving LeClair, the girl, and his girlfriend.
39:02
And we know he was arrested in twenty eighteen and later indicted on five counts of sexual assault of a child.
39:09
And when this case went to trial, we know that a Denton County jury found him guilty on all five counts.
39:16
And those verdicts were being announced when LeClair drank from this bottle containing this toxic substance and collapsed in a holding cell and later died that afternoon.
39:28
The medical examiner determined again that sodium nitrite toxicity caused his death.
39:34
Again, we don't know when he obtained this substance or when he actually prepared the bottle, and we don't know every medical intervention that was performed after he collapsed.
39:46
But it's important to acknowledge those limitations instead of trying to fill in the gaps with speculation. Now, when I think about this case, there are two different aspects that stand out to me.
39:58
The first is the criminal case itself.
40:00
A man in his fifties being accused of sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old girl is just crazy, and that it took so many years for him to go to trial and be found guilty.
40:12
And the second aspect is just this unusual medical emergency that occurred after the verdict.
40:18
So, I find the toxicology in this case fascinating because sodium nitrite poisoning affects the body's ability to actually transport oxygen. I did not work this case. One of my coworkers did.
40:30
But the symptoms develop rapidly, and the medical findings are different from what people might expect when they hear the word poisoning.
40:40
But I also think that the circumstances are important because they demonstrate how quickly a routine courtroom proceeding can become a death investigation.
40:50
So, everybody was kind of focused on the verdict. They really weren't expecting anybody in the courtroom to collapse from toxic exposure. It all happened pretty fast.
41:01
So, this again is a reminder why observations matter, evidence preservation is important, and we always have to remain objective when we're investigating an unexpected death.
41:14
And when we tell true crime stories, we need to always remember the people that are affected by the underlying crime.
41:22
Because Edward LeClair's death made national headlines, but the reason he was sitting in that courtroom was because he sexually assaulted a child, and that part of the story deserves attention too.
41:35
The victim participated in the criminal proceedings, and she was there, and his death prevented the punishment phase from being completed, but it didn't change the verdict that the jury had returned.
41:49
So, I think that that's an important part to remember. I think it's interesting how different the public's understanding of a case can be from the information that investigators eventually establish.
42:02
A headline kind of tells you somebody died after drinking poison in a courtroom, but it doesn't tell you everything about the criminal case and the witnesses and the medical findings or the investigation that followed that.
42:14
And that's why I enjoy bringing these stories to you from a forensic nursing perspective, because there's a lot more to understand than what that initial headline suggests.
42:24
And in this case, the facts are unusual enough without adding anything to them. So, this case is one that I won't forget anytime soon, and that's where I'm gonna leave this one today.
42:36
I hope you found this case as interesting as I did, especially the forensic nursing side of it.
42:42
I think understanding what happens inside the body during a poisoning actually helps explain why the medical findings are so important in a death investigation.
42:52
And I hope you'll remember that behind the unusual circumstances of LeClair's death was a criminal case involving a young girl whose allegations ultimately resulted in those guilty verdicts.
43:04
Thank you so much for listening, spending some time with me today, and for continuing to support the podcast.
43:11
So, if you enjoy True Crime, make sure you're following Pushing Up Lilies wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Don't forget on YouTube channel, I'm on video.
43:21
And if you know somebody who enjoys learning about the medical and investigative side of True Crime, share this episode with them. Y'all stay safe, take care of yourself, and I'll see you next week.
43:32
Bye, y'all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
43:45
This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public. Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.