Toxic Season 1 Episode 3

Crime TV Show USA

Toxic Season 1 Episode 3  #Toxic #CrimeTVShowUSA 🎞 Please join https://t.me/CinemaSeriesUSFilm

Transcript

00:00We decided to go to the cemetery where we came across a beautiful plot.

00:18And she said this is the perfect place for him.

00:21The geese were swimming in the little stream behind there and she put her arms around me

00:27and she said, Mama, don't you worry, I'm going to help you on this journey.

00:34She said, I'll be here.

00:35Don't worry.

00:37Little did she know that she was picking her own grave.

00:40Montgomery County 911, what's the address of the emergency?

00:44Hi, this is James Ryan 13907 Gatwick Street.

00:49My girlfriend I think overdosed.

00:50I'm trying to resuscitate her right now.

00:53He was a very well known and respected doctor practicing in this community.

00:56She's flat on her back.

00:57I'm doing chest compressions.

00:58Okay.

00:59And I'm a doctor.

01:00I know how to treat them.

01:01He had this charming personality.

01:04I'm supposed to trust him.

01:06He couldn't be poisoning my daughter.

01:08Can he?

01:09Can he really be doing that?

01:10Did you sense any remorse from him at all?

01:12No.

01:13Not one tear shed.

01:14I trusted him as a doctor and I trusted him as a person.

01:17I would not have ever forced Sarah to take such a large quantity of pills.

01:21She went from patient to employee to live-in girlfriend in a matter of months.

01:25It was part of this power dynamic that he had over her.

01:29He drugged this girl when she was asleep.

01:31I wish, I wish, I wish I would have known what was going on.

01:35You left that day.

01:36You sprung into action.

01:38I knew leaving the house that day.

01:41I was going to prove that he murdered my sister.

01:47When it comes to love, betrayal is the death of a thousand dreams.

01:56And the unraveling of countless lives.

01:58You can spend years picking up the pieces, examining them, rearranging them, digging

02:05through the past to make sense of it all.

02:08Navigating through my personal heartbreak took me back to my roots as an investigative

02:12journalist.

02:13Hi, I'm Elizabeth Chambers.

02:14Elizabeth Chambers.

02:15Elizabeth Chambers.

02:16Outside the Los Angeles Police Department.

02:19It ignited a curiosity inside of me about love that fractured.

02:22Oh my God.

02:23Inflicts lasting trauma.

02:24Hi, I wanted to see if I could ask you some questions.

02:27Absolutely not.

02:28And can lead to tragedy.

02:30And that's when my world ended.

02:32I feel that it's part of my calling to meet with the victims, the survivors, to listen

02:38to their stories, show how it can happen to anyone, and expose the truth.

02:46I'm Elizabeth Chambers, and this is Toxic.

02:54I've always been interested in the dynamics of power in a relationship.

03:04In most relationships, there is an imbalance of power.

03:07One person can have more power because of finances, social standing, maybe even their

03:11personality.

03:12And in most relationships, that's okay.

03:15But it's important to understand the consequences when that power is in the wrong hands.

03:20Roll sound, please.

03:21Sound speeds.

03:22Check.

03:23Can you bring out?

03:24That's why I connected with Tina Harris, the mother of a remarkable woman whose life was

03:30cut very short after she found herself in a dangerously imbalanced relationship.

03:35Tina, tell us about your Sarah.

03:39It's hard to know where to start.

03:42She was the light of my life.

03:45Sarah was my youngest child of four beautiful children, Victoria, Christopher, Rachel, and

03:52then my Sarah Jane.

03:55Sarah was very, very intelligent.

03:57She could speak several different languages.

03:59Hi.

04:00I just wanted to tell you happy birthday.

04:03Sign language was her favorite because she felt like she could give back to people with

04:07the sign language.

04:08And when she went to college, she loved the medical field.

04:12And so I envisioned her as someone that would make a name for herself in the world.

04:19We were very close.

04:20We're four years apart.

04:21We played together, navigated the world together.

04:26Sarah was gorgeous inside and out.

04:28She was caring, ambitious.

04:31I mean, you met Sarah one time for a brief second.

04:35You would not forget her.

04:37She was a light in a world that needed light.

04:42People were drawn to that.

04:44I'm James Ryan.

04:46Our philosophy really is to treat patients the way that we want to be treated ourselves.

04:50Anybody that has teeth or even doesn't have teeth, we can see.

04:53So that's pretty much everyone.

04:57September of 2020 is when Sarah had to get her wisdom teeth pulled.

05:05And James Ryan was recommended.

05:08During the recovery period, he asked her if she knew anyone that would be interested in

05:14coming to work for him as a surgical assistant.

05:18She said, well, I guess maybe I'm interested, but I have no experience.

05:22And his response was, that is exactly what I wanted to hear.

05:25You were the one that I wanted.

05:28I looked at it as a wonderful opportunity, a stepping stone into a career in medicine

05:34that she was interested in.

05:37Maybe three months, four months later, he texted her on her phone and said, you should

05:42go into the office before everybody else gets there.

05:45I have a Christmas present in your locker for you.

05:48He bought her a diamond necklace.

05:51I said, is he wanting to date you?

05:53And she goes, yeah, he's been after me about it, which I was kind of surprised.

05:58She goes, I don't know what to do, Mom.

06:00I said, well, you're an adult woman.

06:02That's your call.

06:03If you want to date him, date him.

06:04If you don't, tell him to leave you alone.

06:07And she had just turned 24 when she went out with him for the first time.

06:13He was an older man.

06:14He had life experience.

06:17And he had a brilliant career.

06:20And she told me it was just amazing to watch him and what he was teaching her.

06:27So she started dating him in January of 2021.

06:33And then in March of 2021, we had the horrible, horrible tragedy.

06:40March of 2021.

06:43So this is where I might.

06:47So March of 2021, my fiance took his life in front of me.

06:50It happened in front of me.

06:52There are no words to explain other than that Rachel that existed died.

07:01My family rushed to my rescue.

07:04I was in Florida.

07:05And at this point, Sarah and James were together.

07:09So immediately, James went into, don't worry about anything.

07:13He paid for the hotels.

07:15He paid for a rental car.

07:18Every evening, he would go on an app, and he would have food sent to the hotel room

07:22for us.

07:23And I just thought, what a nice man.

07:25He really must like my daughter.

07:27From what Tina told me, Rachel was so distraught that she couldn't even function.

07:32So James prescribed anxiety medication for her.

07:35It helped her greatly.

07:37It kind of knocked her out most of the time, which is what I needed to get her home.

07:44James stepped up.

07:45He made sure there was a wheelchair at the airport.

07:47He flew them first class so they don't have to be around other people.

07:50And a few months after Rachel returned to Maryland, he even gave her a job at his practice

07:54to get her back on her feet.

07:56Through every step of this tragedy, James was the rock, not only for Rachel, but for

08:01the whole family.

08:02That was really the introduction that James had to my family.

08:08And it was through this horrific tragedy that it happened.

08:12And he's willing to do this for my family, for myself.

08:15Wow, that speaks volumes.

08:20This is a little album of baby pictures.

08:24Big blue eyes.

08:25Yes.

08:26And that smile.

08:27She always has that smile.

08:28She really was such a happy, happy child.

08:31And this one here, I love that model pose.

08:35The beginning of the pageant career.

08:37Yeah.

08:38These are pictures from the pageant in July of 2021.

08:44Wow.

08:45And when she came out on stage, I just was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that's my

08:51Sarah.

08:52Because she just looked so grown up to me.

08:58In July of 2021, Sarah was invited to compete in the Miss Maryland Pageant.

09:05James Ryan, myself, and Rachel all went to see her compete.

09:13She was healthy.

09:14She looked good.

09:16James was very loving.

09:18He seemed proud of Sarah.

09:20It was a very nice time that we had.

09:23At that time is when he asked Sarah if she would move in with him, and she did.

09:29After that, things changed drastically.

09:34She became very withdrawn.

09:36She became very isolated.

09:39It was very rare that I was speaking to her throughout the week.

09:42We would make plans to see her, and then she'd cancel.

09:46She had lost appetite.

09:48She would run out of energy really quickly, which I found surprising.

09:52She just wasn't herself.

09:53It's like just all of the lights were turned out.

09:57I mean, at this point in time, she was 24 years old, so I kind of just thought, well,

10:01you know, this is the first time she's moved out of the home.

10:05She doesn't live with my mom, so kind of checking it up to those things.

10:10Tina and Rachel felt that Sarah was clearly going through something when all of a sudden

10:16an unthinkable tragedy struck again.

10:20I get a call that my son's in intensive care in Montana on life support.

10:29He had suffered a heart attack.

10:31Christopher was 38, and heart disease runs in his father's family, and the doctors advised

10:39that the family get to Montana as quickly as possible.

10:43So it was extremely stressful for everyone.

10:49I watched the sunrise in that hospital room the day he died.

10:55I was with him when he came into this world, and I'm so glad I was with him when he left

10:59this world.

11:00As a mother of two, I cannot think of anything worse than losing my children.

11:06Part of your being is gone, and you have to figure out, how do I live in a world without

11:12my child?

11:16So when we came back from Montana, we had started looking at different cemeteries.

11:22Sarah was very sad, but she was Sarah, and she said, I'm going to put a bench here so

11:27I can come and talk to my brother all the time.

11:30So the next day comes, I guess it was about 8.30.

11:35I woke up to Rachel screaming in the other room, and James Ryan is on the phone.

11:41She's in the living room, and doing chest compressions and CPR.

11:45She's not breathing.

11:47And that's when my world ended, and hell began for me.

11:58So you get a FaceTime coming from James Ryan.

12:01Yeah.

12:02And what did he say to you?

12:04He said, Sarah, Sarah's gone.

12:06Sarah's dead.

12:08I didn't believe him.

12:09I was like, you're lying.

12:10So he flipped the camera around.

12:14He showed you her body.

12:15He did.

12:16Yes.

12:17That is not normal human behavior.

12:19I cannot imagine how she felt at that time.

12:23Her entire world came crashing down and went dark.

12:27And I can't imagine what he was thinking.

12:29For a person to do that, you have to be very unaware of other people's feelings and emotion,

12:35and you have to lack empathy in a very extreme way.

12:40All I remember saying is, don't let them take her.

12:44I have to get to her.

12:46Don't let them take her.

12:48And when I touched her, she was cold as ice.

12:51And I just kept asking them what happened.

12:55Do you know how long it was before James called you from the time of her death?

13:01He said he came down at 6.30 in the morning.

13:06And she was slumped over on the couch.

13:10That's when he realized that she was not breathing.

13:13And he moved her to the floor and tried to perform CPR.

13:18He called the paramedics about 7.

13:21I got a call at 8.30, so that would have been almost two hours after.

13:28And I immediately started thinking, okay, something's not right.

13:33And I confronted James Ryan.

13:35First, he said Sarah accidentally overdosed.

13:39That she was stealing drugs from his office.

13:41That he had no idea at all that she was a druggie.

13:46And the 911 call has him putting the blame on Sarah.

13:50Hi, this is James Ryan.

13:52My girlfriend, I think, overdosed.

13:54I'm trying to resuscitate her right now.

13:56Then he tried to convince us that she killed herself.

14:00But I know my Sarah and she would not have taken her life,

14:04especially right after her brother died.

14:07To the detectives at the scene, this appeared to be an accidental overdose.

14:12But Tina and Rachel knew something the investigators didn't.

14:17In October of 2021, I called Sarah.

14:23And when she picked up the phone, it was early in the morning.

14:27She sounded completely drugged.

14:30I said, Sarah, what's going on? Are you okay?

14:32She goes, no, I'm just tired. I was sleeping.

14:34I said, no, no, you don't sound like yourself.

14:37I'm coming right over right now.

14:40Rachel and I got in the car and we went over there.

14:44She looks unwell.

14:48She looks like she hasn't showered in days.

14:50She smells.

14:52I said, oh my gosh, what's wrong?

14:54And I'm just, I'm not feeling good.

14:56And as we proceeded to walk into the house,

14:58I started seeing things that just alarmed me.

15:03Needles, IVs, tubing, all of these medical supplies.

15:07I freaked out. I was like, what in the world is going on here?

15:11She goes, no, mom, it's okay. He's just hydrating me.

15:14I said, is he allowed to do this in his home?

15:18She said, yeah, I think he is.

15:20He told me he was.

15:23I waited for James Ryan to come home and I confronted him.

15:26What are you doing to my daughter?

15:28He said, I'm just trying to help her. I'm just hydrating her.

15:31I said, well, I don't think this is legal.

15:34He said, I'm allowed to do this.

15:36James was very good at convincing people,

15:39especially if you're questioning him.

15:41No, it's okay. You can trust me.

15:45Look at what I've done for you in the past.

15:47I shouldn't have brought these things home.

15:50I was just hydrating her.

15:52His bedside manner was great.

15:54I'm not a medical profession. I don't know.

15:57And I trusted him. He was a doctor.

15:59Why would he be harming my daughter?

16:02So that's going through my head.

16:04He wouldn't do anything to hurt Sarah.

16:06He got me out of Florida.

16:08He helped me and my family during this horrific time.

16:12And I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't.

16:15And it was like I was indebted to him

16:18and I didn't want to look too much

16:20because if I did, I might find something that I couldn't,

16:24that I couldn't be ignorant to.

16:26A doctor is entrusted, they take a Hippocratic oath

16:30to put health and well-being above all else.

16:33So if they walked into the house

16:35and there were IVs and drugs and needles all over the place

16:39and Sarah was dating a construction worker,

16:42that would be a very different story.

16:44His job is to administer medication

16:47and that just adds another layer of confusion,

16:49another layer of imbalance,

16:51and another layer of smoke and mirrors

16:53because Tina and Rachel trusted that he knew what he was doing.

16:57And then look what happened.

16:59Two months later, in December of 2021,

17:02Sarah calls them again, dazed, confused,

17:05completely out of it.

17:07After the first incident, he gave us a key to the house,

17:10saying, oh, I'm not going to do it again.

17:12And to prove that, I'll give you a key

17:14so you can come over any time.

17:16When I walked into the house that time,

17:18it was a much different scene than the first time.

17:22I had never seen something like it before.

17:25There was blood everywhere.

17:27There was syringes. There was needles.

17:29I mean, I refer to it looking like on the outside,

17:33you see this multimillion-dollar home

17:35and you go inside and it's a crack den.

17:37There was bloody footprints.

17:39There was blood-soaked paper towels.

17:41There was needles. I'm finding vials of drugs.

17:44I had no idea what these drugs were, what they did,

17:47but there's no way this could be from hydration.

17:50My thought was, like, I need to document this.

17:55I was walking into this very naive,

17:58you don't know what these drugs are capable of,

18:00you don't know how addictive these drugs are.

18:02This isn't a world that you live in.

18:04And so I took pictures, I went around,

18:06I was looking for my sister, but I didn't go upstairs.

18:09I just, I had to get out.

18:11And so at that point, after the second incident,

18:15I knew everything he had said was a lie

18:20and that he was not who he was claiming to be.

18:23At this point, I was so angry.

18:27I suspected that James Ryan was administering drugs to Sarah.

18:33And probably about four hours later, I get a call from Sarah

18:37and she immediately starts crying and sobbing and said,

18:41look, she's just hydrating me.

18:43I said, no, this is something more.

18:46I don't know what's going on, but this is going to stop.

18:50The next day, I went to James Ryan's work

18:54and I confronted him.

18:56I told him that he was going to break it off with my daughter,

19:00that he would go home and he would tell her

19:03that this was going to end.

19:04And if he did not do that, that I would turn him

19:07into the authorities.

19:09So the plan was for her to move out after the holidays.

19:14I think for me, the most tragic part of this entire story

19:19is the timing.

19:22Sarah was scheduled to move out of James's apartment

19:25the day after Chris's heart attack.

19:28So as James once again comes to the family's aid

19:31during another horrific tragedy, Sarah stays with him.

19:36And James, who was supposed to be with him,

19:40Sarah stays with him.

19:42And just three weeks later, Tina and Rachel

19:46are beside her lifeless body on James Ryan's floor.

19:50When I first walked into the house,

19:52there were police everywhere.

19:54And the paramedics, they went into her purse

19:57and on the top of her purse were vials and vials of drugs

20:01just tossed on the top of her purse.

20:03The IV pole had been moved to the closet

20:07and there were IV bags in the trash.

20:10I believe in my heart that he injected my daughter

20:14with those drugs and he overdosed her

20:18and he couldn't get her to come back.

20:20I firmly believe that he realized when he could not revive her

20:25that he went into the panic mode

20:28and started cleaning things up as much as he could

20:31but left some things out to make it look like

20:34she did it to herself.

20:36So he took time to clean up before he called 911.

20:42The autopsy report showed that Sarah

20:46had the following drugs in her system.

20:49Diazepam, propofol, and ketamine.

20:53It's not a crime scene, right?

20:55At this point, it's an overdose.

20:57Right, yeah. At that point, the day Sarah passed away,

20:59it was not marked as a crime scene.

21:01What was your internal response?

21:03I just kept thinking, this isn't right.

21:06I knew he was involved with my sister's death.

21:09Every fiber in your being was like, this is not an accident.

21:12No part of me wanted to open up this disturbed world.

21:18I sat with it for a week and I tried to say,

21:20no, no, no, he didn't. No, no.

21:22I would wake up in the middle of the night, James killed her.

21:25So it was my job to bring his dirty secrets out of the closet.

21:29I knew leaving the house that day

21:32that I was going to prove that he murdered my sister.

21:40All of this escalated quite quickly.

21:42Yes.

21:43And do you think that was a result of his reaction

21:46to thinking she was leaving?

21:47That he upped the doses at that time?

21:49Part of me thinks that he did it on purpose.

21:54The mentality of, if I can't have you,

21:56nobody's going to have you.

21:57And that he knew he could get away with it

22:00because there wasn't any evidence to prove what he was doing.

22:03I knew that he was going to paint Sarah in a picture

22:08that wasn't the reality of it.

22:10And so it was my job to figure out

22:12how to get the information to turn him into the police.

22:17I had her MacBook, which was synced to her cell phone.

22:22I knew my sister, I knew, okay, well,

22:25maybe she used this password.

22:27There was a mixture of guessing the specific dates,

22:32birth dates, names.

22:34It took me quite a few tries.

22:39Once I got into Sarah's computer, that was the motherlode.

22:44There were just, I don't even know how many text messages

22:48of James admitting to giving my sister

22:52these medical grade drugs.

22:54This is what I need.

22:56Sarah's not just going to be considered another overdose.

23:01I spent two weeks compiling a binder of over 200 pages

23:06of incriminating evidence against James

23:09to turn into the police with the hopes of providing them

23:13with a roadmap as to where to start an investigation.

23:16We have to prove that he did it.

23:17We have to give the evidence that he did it.

23:19Right, like, she wasn't passed away, she was murdered.

23:21Yeah, we have to figure this out.

23:23This is what's going to bury James.

23:29So the binder first came to me on March 4th, 2022.

23:35Yeah, that's...

23:39Because that day in my life,

23:42that my career kind of changed, so.

23:47The binder was given to me by the original detective.

23:51So Detective Icavello was part of Montgomery County PD's

23:55department that focused on pharmaceutical drugs.

23:58So his expertise was targeting doctors

24:00who prescribed outside of their limit.

24:03Because of what I'm trained in,

24:05I knew exactly what had to be done.

24:08The text gave a very clear route from start to finish.

24:13Sarah had been complaining in the text

24:16about not being able to sleep.

24:18James said, I can give you a shot,

24:20and it will be gone in, I think it was six seconds.

24:23Her response was, that doesn't sound very good.

24:25He says it's already, it's done.

24:28At that point, everything started.

24:30And the text did show that he's administering the drugs

24:34and that there was an IV.

24:36And this was in February of 2021

24:38that he introduced her to these drugs.

24:40And it just progressively got worse

24:42until she was so deep into this addiction

24:46and so reliant on James that she could never leave.

24:53In September, in October, in November,

24:56the texts were pretty much a shopping list.

25:00Sarah was no longer working.

25:02Sarah was at home.

25:03Sarah was complaining about symptoms she was feeling,

25:06all symptoms of these drugs.

25:08She would say, we don't have any syringes.

25:11Is there any more ketamine?

25:12His response would be, I'll have to wait

25:14for everybody to leave to check.

25:16Maybe I'll pretend to leave and then come back.

25:19I can't believe what I'm looking at.

25:22These texts were something unlike I'd ever seen.

25:25These were daily.

25:26And the texts showed me that drugs

25:28were being taken from the office.

25:30He's administering the drugs at his house,

25:33and he's the one who's trained in knowing

25:35the long-term effects of all of these drugs is death.

25:41I told the Harris family,

25:42I'm going to do whatever I can.

25:44We're going to get justice for Sarah.

25:48James did not stop working.

25:50The office was open.

25:51He had a very large patient base,

25:54of which many were children.

25:56I stressed to the state's attorney's office,

25:59we needed to operate quickly.

26:02My name is John McCarthy,

26:03state's attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland.

26:05This is a kind of a unique case.

26:07You've got a medical doctor who's armed

26:09with special information based on years of medical training

26:14to know precisely what the risks are.

26:16The way in which and the place in which

26:18he administered the drugs,

26:19you would have never done outside a clinical setting

26:23and not even close to being consistent

26:25with what he was taught to do.

26:28I knew that they were very close

26:30to getting ready to arrest him.

26:33I had to pretend like everything was okay.

26:36He kept texting me and telling me

26:39that Sarah was coming to him

26:41and her spirit, her ghost was in the house.

26:45And he kept saying, you know,

26:47I know now what I need to do with my life for Sarah.

26:50I'm just going to get back to work

26:51and really just concentrate on helping people.

26:54The family didn't want it,

26:56but I allowed him to go to the viewing.

26:58I had to allow him to hug me at the funeral home.

27:01I said, we have to allow it

27:03because I don't want him to think anything is going on

27:07because I didn't want him to, you know, run away.

27:12I'm so lost in grief that it was tearing me up.

27:18But I said, I have to keep up this charade

27:21until they arrest him.

27:26James Ryan was arrested on March 22nd, 2022

27:30and was charged with second-degree

27:32depraved heart murder.

27:34The idea behind a depraved heart,

27:37second-degree murder charge

27:39is that the defendant didn't necessarily

27:43want to kill the person,

27:45but the actions they took were so extreme

27:48that it exhibited a wanton

27:51and reckless disregard for human life.

27:54So the depraved heart charge is really interesting.

27:57In order for the prosecution to convict him of this,

28:00they had to prove that James acted

28:02with reckless indifference towards Sarah's life

28:05by bringing her the drugs.

28:07We were obviously confident in the guilt of James Ryan,

28:11but when you have a jury trial,

28:14ultimately it's up to those 12 people

28:16to actually determine that guilt.

28:18Depraved heart theory hadn't been successfully used

28:21in any overdose case in Maryland,

28:24and so that was our biggest challenge.

28:26How did you feel on the day of the trial?

28:30Honestly, when I walked into the courtroom,

28:34I was still living in this sort of false reality,

28:37and I thought that I knew who James was,

28:41but I unfortunately didn't know the extent

28:44of how dark and disturbed and twisted he really was.

28:55In August of 2023, James Ryan's criminal trial begins,

29:00and I was able to get my hands

29:02on the audio recordings from the trial.

29:05He had the power in the relationship.

29:08He had the access to the drugs ketamine,

29:12propofol, and diazepam.

29:14He introduces these drugs to her.

29:17He created a dependence.

29:19The text messages show a history

29:21of the defendant setting up those lines

29:24that it took to eventually kill Sarah Harris.

29:27Our main thing was text messages

29:29that we had between James Ryan and Sarah Harris.

29:33There was one message about him getting her ketamine

29:37while she was sleeping.

29:38He was instructing her on how much more to push,

29:41basically, in the IV if she needed to when she woke up.

29:45We saw his instructions to her

29:47on how to increase their potency.

29:50He was giving her the tricks.

29:52He told her to take the medication

29:55with grapefruit juice

29:56and to leave the pills under her tongue

29:58and to not drink water to increase the potency.

30:02And if that wasn't enough,

30:03he invited her to get propofol, Versed, and syringes

30:07from the trunk of his car at his office.

30:14The power dynamics for us

30:15were a really important part of this case.

30:19He had such the upper hand

30:22in terms of power dynamics.

30:25He started off as her doctor.

30:27Then he became, shortly thereafter, her employer.

30:31Afterwards, they became involved

30:33in a romantic relationship.

30:35He, again, held the power in that scenario.

30:39He was grooming her step-by-step

30:42much like a child.

30:43He clearly sort of seemed to have been fixated,

30:47as it turns out.

30:48Seemed to have been fixated on her

30:50for a really long time.

30:53Back in September of 2021,

30:56like two months before we saw her with the drugs,

31:01she told me that James and her

31:03were going to go to Key West for a few days.

31:06Would you and Rachel come?

31:08James will pay for everything.

31:10You don't have to worry about a thing.

31:12And I said, oh, that sounds like a lot of fun.

31:14So we all went together.

31:16And James was charming and fun.

31:20But on that trip,

31:22I noticed that he drank a lot.

31:25We were sitting on a couch,

31:27and it was just myself, Rachel, and James Ryan.

31:30Sarah had gone to bed.

31:31And he had been drinking,

31:32and he started talking to Rachel and I.

31:35He told me, you know,

31:37I used to live down the street from you.

31:40And I said, well, that's weird.

31:43What a coincidence.

31:45Then he went on to say that

31:47he noticed Sarah in the neighborhood.

31:50And she was how old at the time?

31:52Sarah would have been 14.

31:54And he said, I used to see Sarah in the neighborhood,

31:56playing at the park,

31:57and saw her with her girlfriends and everything.

31:59And he thought she was very pretty.

32:01And then he proceeded to say that

32:04he went into the local toy store that she worked at,

32:08and he realized she was working there.

32:10And he just thought she was so beautiful.

32:12And he would take his kids to the toy store

32:15just so he could see Sarah.

32:17When she started working as a server

32:19in one of the local restaurants,

32:21he would go back to that restaurant

32:22just so he could see her and she could wait on him.

32:25But she had no idea who he was.

32:27And he said when she walked into the office,

32:30he knew exactly who she was

32:32and that he had been attracted to her.

32:35I eventually did tell Sarah,

32:36and she said, that's really creepy.

32:38But she didn't think any more of it.

32:41And I didn't think anything of it, really.

32:43But now that I look back on it,

32:45that just tells me that he wanted control over her

32:49is all he wanted.

32:50And with control comes isolation.

32:52Yes.

32:53Which he accomplished.

32:54Yes, he did.

32:55He isolated her.

32:56He did his best to remove her from her family.

33:01I believe James knew if he created dependency

33:04within my sister by pumping her full of drugs,

33:07then it almost would be impossible

33:10for my sister to leave him.

33:11Which I think was his ultimate goal,

33:13was to make it so that she could never leave.

33:19I learned a lot of things at the trial.

33:22He was barely going to work,

33:24but he was ordering two to three times more drugs

33:28than he would normally order in a week.

33:31His patient number had gone down,

33:33but his ordering had gone up.

33:34Yes, drastically.

33:36He tried to set up another office in D.C.

33:38where he could stock more drugs there

33:41and take those drugs.

33:42We also found out that right before Christmas,

33:46he OD'd her and had to resuscitate her.

33:52I did not know about any of this until the trial.

33:55I found out when her message was read

33:58that she sent to her friend.

34:01James had to give her CPR for a whole five minutes

34:05and that she's really upset about that

34:07and that she didn't want to die.

34:10He brought her back literally from the dead

34:13on a prior overdose

34:14without ever calling anybody for any help.

34:18She may have died on a particular day in January of 2022,

34:22but she was dying for months.

34:27We have all of the members of the jury present.

34:30We have received your note

34:31that the jury has reached a verdict.

34:34The jury took maybe over three hours

34:37to come to a verdict.

35:00To hear that guilty verdict,

35:02it doesn't bring my sister back,

35:04but what it does do

35:05is it sets my sister free from James' lies.

35:09We all just sat there and cried,

35:12and then I immediately started thinking,

35:15okay, how many years could he actually get?

35:18In the last two years,

35:19it comes down to this decision tomorrow.

35:21Once you get that guilty verdict,

35:23that's really the important part

35:24is how long is this person going to prison for?

35:27Thinking about James Ryan

35:28not spending the rest of his life in prison

35:31tears at my gut.

35:39Hi, good morning.

35:41How are you?

35:42I was going to give you a squeeze before.

35:45Been waiting for a long time for this, so we're ready.

35:50How are you guys feeling?

35:51There's obviously a sense of anxiety and worry,

35:54but at the end of the day,

35:55I trust that the judge sees through

35:58his narcissism and his lies.

36:00We want him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

36:04He took a life,

36:05and he, in our eyes, needs to pay with his.

36:08For him to sit in the trial and show no remorse,

36:12to stare me down when I was on the stand

36:16as if he was going to frighten me,

36:18I want the opportunity to look straight at James Ryan

36:23and speak to him.

36:26I have been absolutely devastated

36:29since discovering Sarah

36:30on the morning of January 26, 2022.

36:33I do not place blame on anyone else

36:36or try to excuse my actions in any way,

36:39and I fully accept my responsibility.

36:41He makes some statements that I take full responsibility,

36:44but then he turns around and he denies it to a lot of extent.

36:48Well, I did not administer the drugs to Sarah,

36:50and I'm not exactly sure when she got them,

36:52but it's necessary for me to own my choices,

36:55accept my responsibility,

36:57work extremely hard every day

36:59to ensure that I never repeat any of the choices

37:02that have led me here.

37:04For me personally to sit in the courtroom,

37:08I needed him to hear me, hear my voice.

37:12My Sarah was everything,

37:16but you took her from me.

37:18You lied to me.

37:20You used me.

37:22You conned me.

37:24This is all I have left of my baby,

37:27her ashes and her hair.

37:29Do you see this?

37:31This is all I have!

37:33Don't look away from me!

37:36The Harris family spoke to make sure that it was clear

37:41James Ryan was the sole reason for Sarah Harris' death.

37:46There may have been a lot going on in her life,

37:49but the court's focus should have been on James Ryan

37:52and his role in her death.

37:54I was feeling more nervous the day of the sentencing

37:58than sometimes I was feeling throughout the trial.

38:01Questioning, is the judge going to see through his lies?

38:05Because ultimately it comes down to what she feels

38:08is the appropriate amount of time for him

38:10to spend in prison for these crimes.

38:15The reason I don't think I'll ever forget

38:18these messages is because the one person in the room

38:22who knew better was the one supplying.

38:25So if you would stand up, sir.

38:29As to count one second-degree murder,

38:32it is the sentence of this court

38:34that you be committed to the Maryland Division of Corrections

38:37for a period of 45 years.

38:43When the judge gave him the 45 and no parole,

38:46I think my heart leaped.

38:48I really knew then that he would suffer.

38:52I want him to never have another happy moment in his life

38:55for what he's done.

38:57This sentence is 20 years over the top

39:00of the Maryland sentencing guidelines.

39:02I think this is an enormously good sentence.

39:05I think he's going to go to jail for the rest of his life.

39:08I am enormously proud of the men and women that worked for me

39:11that helped us get to where we are.

39:13Rachel's a hero to me in this case.

39:15Yeah.

39:17And the Montgomery County Police Department,

39:19one of our great detectives here.

39:25What a way to end my career.

39:27This was a wrong that I'm so happy that I was able to write.

39:34My goal is to get some kind of law put into place

39:41to enforce checks and balances into private practices

39:46that have license to buy these deadly drugs.

39:50The amount of drugs that James Ryan purchased,

39:54there should have been a red flag.

39:56I know for a fact that my daughter's not the only one

39:59that has died from something like this.

40:01It's just never been able to be proved.

40:03You made history today,

40:05and it was because you guys fought so hard.

40:07Imagine if you didn't.

40:09This is the first time a case like this has gone to court

40:13in the state of Maryland.

40:15There's not been another one like it.

40:17It's a win.

40:19It is.

40:21It's been a pleasure getting to know you during this process.

40:24I appreciate you allowing me to introduce Sarah to everyone.

40:28I'm hoping through this and through my words

40:31that I will have a hand in stopping one person

40:35from losing their life to something like this.

40:38That's Sarah's legacy for us now,

40:40is to make it so that these people in high-power positions

40:44don't feel that they can play God

40:46and decide who gets to live and who gets to die.

40:48To keep this kind of grief from one mother,

40:51that is my journey now, and I do it for my Sarah,

40:54and I will stay on that journey

40:57until I can get it done for her.

Category

Transcript

Recommended