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  • 5/20/2025
Toxic Season 1 Episode 3

#Toxic
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Transcript
00:00We decided to go to the cemetery where we came across a beautiful plot, and she said
00:13this is the perfect place for him.
00:15The geese were swimming in the little stream behind there, and she put her arms around
00:21me and she said, Mama, don't you worry, I'm going to help you on this journey.
00:28She said, I'll be here, don't worry.
00:31Little did she know that she was picking her own grave.
00:34Montgomery County 911, what's the address of the emergency?
00:39Hi, this is James Ryan 13907 Gottwitz Street.
00:43My girlfriend, I think, overdosed.
00:44I'm trying to resuscitate her right now.
00:47He was a very well-known and respected doctor practicing in this community.
00:50She's flat on her back, I'm doing chest compressions, and I'm a doctor, I know how to do things.
00:55He had this charming personality.
00:58I'm supposed to trust him.
01:00He couldn't be poisoning my daughter.
01:02Can he?
01:03Can he really be doing that?
01:04Did you sense any remorse from him at all?
01:06No, not one tear shed.
01:08I trusted him as a doctor, and I trusted him as a person.
01:11I would not have ever forced Sarah to take such a large quantity of pills.
01:15She went from patient to employee to live-in girlfriend in a matter of months.
01:19It was part of this power dynamic that he had over her.
01:23She drugged this girl when she was asleep.
01:26I wish, I wish, I wish I would have known what was going on.
01:29You left that day, you sprung into action.
01:32I knew leaving the house that day, I was going to prove that he murdered my sister.
01:41When it comes to love, betrayal is the death of a thousand dreams, and the unravelling
01:50of countless lives.
01:52You can spend years picking up the pieces, examining them, rearranging them, digging
01:59through the past to make sense of it all.
02:02Navigating through my personal heartbreak took me back to my roots as an investigative
02:06journalist.
02:07Hi, I'm Elizabeth Chambers.
02:08Elizabeth Chambers.
02:09Elizabeth Chambers outside the Los Angeles Police Department.
02:13It ignited a curiosity inside of me about love that fractured.
02:16Oh my God.
02:17Inflicts lasting trauma.
02:18Hi, I wanted to see if I could ask you some questions.
02:21Absolutely not.
02:23And can lead to tragedy.
02:24And that's when my world ended.
02:26I feel that it's part of my calling to meet with the victims, the survivors, to listen
02:32to their stories, show how it can happen to anyone, and expose the truth.
02:40I'm Elizabeth Chambers, and this is Toxic.
02:52I've always been interested in the dynamics of power in a relationship.
02:58In most relationships, there is an imbalance of power.
03:01One person can have more power because of finances, social standing, maybe even their
03:05personality.
03:06And in most relationships, that's okay.
03:09But it's important to understand the consequences when that power is in the wrong hands.
03:14Roll sound, please.
03:15Sound speeds.
03:16Check.
03:17Can you bring it up?
03:18That's why I connected with Tina Harris.
03:21The mother of a remarkable woman whose life was cut very short after she found herself
03:26in a dangerously imbalanced relationship.
03:29Tina, tell us about your Sarah.
03:33It's hard to know where to start.
03:36She was the light of my life.
03:39Sarah was my youngest child of four beautiful children, Victoria, Christopher, Rachel, and
03:46then my Sarah Jane.
03:48Sarah was very, very intelligent.
03:52She could speak several different languages.
03:53Hi.
03:54I just wanted to tell you happy birthday.
03:57Sign language was her favorite because she felt like she could give back to people with
04:01the sign language.
04:02And when she went to college, she loved the medical field.
04:06And so I envisioned her as someone that would make a name for herself in the world.
04:13We were very close.
04:14We're four years apart.
04:16We played together, navigated the world together.
04:20Sarah was gorgeous inside and out.
04:23She was caring, ambitious.
04:25I mean, you met Sarah one time for a brief second.
04:29You would not forget her.
04:31She was a light in a world that needed light.
04:36People were drawn to that.
04:38I'm James Ryan.
04:40Our philosophy really is to treat patients the way that we want to be treated ourselves.
04:44Anybody that has teeth or even doesn't have teeth, we can see.
04:48So that's pretty much everyone.
04:52September of 2020 is when Sarah had to get her wisdom teeth pulled.
04:58And James Ryan was recommended.
05:02During the recovery period, he asked her if she knew anyone that would be interested in
05:08coming to work for him as a surgical assistant.
05:12She said, well, I guess maybe I'm interested, but I have no experience.
05:16And his response was, that is exactly what I wanted to hear.
05:19You were the one that I wanted.
05:22I looked at it as a wonderful opportunity, a stepping stone into a career in medicine
05:28that she was interested in.
05:31Only three months, four months later, he texted her on her phone and said, you should go into
05:36the office before everybody else gets there.
05:39I have a Christmas present in your locker for you.
05:42He bought her a diamond necklace.
05:45I said, is he wanting to date you?
05:47And she goes, yeah, he's been after me about it, which I was kind of surprised.
05:52She goes, I don't know what to do, Mom.
05:54I said, well, you're an adult woman.
05:56That's your call.
05:57If you want to date him, date him.
05:58If you don't, tell him to leave you alone.
06:01And she had just turned 24 when she went out with him for the first time.
06:07He was an older man.
06:08He had life experience.
06:11And he had a brilliant career.
06:14And she told me it was just amazing to watch him and what he was teaching her.
06:21So she started dating him in January of 2021.
06:27And then in March of 2021, we had the horrible, horrible tragedy.
06:34March of 2021.
06:37So this is where I might.
06:41So March of 2021, my fiance took his life in front of me.
06:44It happened in front of me.
06:46There are no words to explain other than that Rachel that existed died.
06:55My family rushed to my rescue.
06:58I was in Florida.
06:59And at this point, Sarah and James were together.
07:03So immediately, James went into, don't worry about anything.
07:07He paid for the hotels.
07:09He paid for a rental car.
07:12Every evening, he would go on an app.
07:14And he would have food sent to the hotel room for us.
07:17And I just thought, what a nice man.
07:19He really must like my daughter.
07:21From what Tina told me, Rachel was so distraught
07:24that she couldn't even function.
07:26So James prescribed anxiety medication for her.
07:29It helped her greatly.
07:31It kind of knocked her out most of the time, which
07:33is what I needed to get her home.
07:38James stepped up.
07:39He made sure there was a wheelchair at the airport.
07:41He flew them first class so they don't have to be around other people.
07:44And a few months after Rachel returned to Maryland,
07:46he even gave her a job at his practice to get her back on her feet.
07:50Through every step of this tragedy, James was the rock, not only for Rachel,
07:55but for the whole family.
07:56That was really the introduction that James had to my family.
08:02And it was through this horrific tragedy that it happened.
08:06He's willing to do this for my family, for myself.
08:09Wow, that speaks volumes.
08:14This is a little album of baby pictures.
08:18Big blue eyes.
08:19Yep.
08:20And that smile.
08:21She always has that smile.
08:23She really was such a happy, happy child.
08:25And this one here, I love that model pose.
08:29The beginning of the pageant career.
08:31These are pictures from the pageant in July of 2021.
08:39Wow.
08:40And when she came out on stage, I just was like, oh my gosh,
08:44I can't believe that's my Sarah.
08:46Because she just looked so grown up to me.
08:52In July of 2021, Sarah was invited to compete in the Miss Maryland Pageant.
08:59James Ryan, myself, and Rachel all went to see her compete.
09:07She was healthy.
09:08She looked good.
09:10James was very loving.
09:12He seemed proud of Sarah.
09:14It was a very nice time that we had.
09:17At that time is when he asked Sarah if she would move in with him.
09:20And she did.
09:23After that, things changed drastically.
09:28She became very withdrawn.
09:30She became very isolated.
09:33It was very rare that I was speaking to her throughout the week.
09:36We would make plans to see her, and then she'd cancel.
09:40She had lost appetite.
09:42She would run out of energy really quickly, which I found surprising.
09:46She just wasn't herself.
09:47It's like just all of the lights were turned out.
09:51I mean, at this point in time, she was 24 years old.
09:54So I kind of just thought, well, this is the first time
09:57she's moved out of the home.
09:59She doesn't live with my mom.
10:00So kind of chucking it up to those things.
10:04Tina and Rachel felt that Sarah was clearly going through something
10:09when, all of a sudden, an unthinkable tragedy struck again.
10:14I get a call that my son's in intensive care in Montana on life support.
10:23He had suffered a heart attack.
10:25Christopher was 38, and heart disease runs in his father's family.
10:31And the doctors advised that the family get to Montana as quickly as possible.
10:37So it was extremely stressful for everyone.
10:43I watched the sun rise in that hospital room the day he died.
10:49I was with him when he came into this world,
10:51and I'm so glad I was with him when he left this world.
10:55As a mother of two, I cannot think of anything
10:58worse than losing my children.
11:00Part of your being is gone, and you have to figure out,
11:04how do I live in a world without my child?
11:10So when we came back from Montana, we had started
11:13looking at different cemeteries.
11:16Sarah was very sad, but she was Sarah.
11:20And she said, I'm going to put a bench here so I can come
11:22and talk to my brother all the time.
11:24So the next day comes.
11:27I guess it was about 8.30.
11:30I woke up to Rachel screaming in the other room.
11:33And James Ryan is on the phone.
11:42And that's when my world ended, and hell began for me.
11:50So you get a FaceTime coming from James Ryan.
11:53Yeah.
11:54And what did he say to you?
11:57He said, Sarah, Sarah's gone.
11:58Sarah's dead.
12:01I didn't believe him.
12:02I was like, you're lying.
12:03So he flipped the camera around.
12:07He showed you her body.
12:08He did, yes.
12:10That is not normal human behavior.
12:13I cannot imagine how she felt at that time.
12:16Her entire world came crashing down.
12:19And I can't imagine what he was thinking.
12:20For a person to do that, you have
12:22to be very unaware of other people's feelings and emotion.
12:26And you have to lack empathy in a very extreme way.
12:31All I remember saying is, don't let them take her.
12:35I have to get to her.
12:37Don't let them take her.
12:38And when I touched her, she was cold as ice.
12:42And I just kept asking them what happened.
12:46Do you know how long it was before James called
12:48you from the time of her death?
12:51He said he came down at 6.30 in the morning.
12:56And she was slumped over on the couch.
13:00That's when he realized that she was not breathing.
13:03And he moved her to the floor and tried to perform CPR.
13:08He called the paramedics about six minutes later.
13:13He called the paramedics about seven.
13:16I got a call at 8.30.
13:19That would have been almost two hours after.
13:23And I immediately started thinking, OK,
13:25something's not right.
13:28And I confronted James Ryan.
13:31First, he said Sarah accidentally overdosed,
13:34that she was stealing drugs from his office,
13:36that he had no idea at all that she was a druggie.
13:41And the 911 call has him putting the blame on Sarah.
13:50Then he tried to convince us that she killed herself.
13:55But I know my Sarah and she would not
13:57have taken her life, especially right after her brother died.
14:01To the detectives at the scene, this
14:03appeared to be an accidental overdose.
14:06But Tina and Rachel knew something
14:08the investigators didn't.
14:11In October of 2021, I called Sarah.
14:18And when she picked up the phone,
14:20it was early in the morning.
14:21She sounded completely drugged.
14:24I said, Sarah, what's going on?
14:26Are you OK?
14:27She goes, no, I'm just tired.
14:28I was sleeping.
14:29I said, no, no, you don't sound like yourself.
14:32I'm coming right over right now.
14:34Rachel and I got in the car and we went over there.
14:39She looks unwell.
14:43She looks like she hasn't showered in days.
14:45She smells.
14:46I said, oh my gosh, what's wrong?
14:49And I'm just, I'm not feeling good.
14:51And as we proceeded to walk into the house,
14:53I started seeing things that just alarmed me.
14:58Needles, IVs, tubing, all of these medical supplies.
15:02I freaked out.
15:02I was like, what in the world is going on here?
15:06She goes, no, mom, it's OK.
15:07He's just hydrating me.
15:09I said, is he allowed to do this in his home?
15:12She said, yeah, I think he is.
15:15He told me he was.
15:18I waited for James Ryan to come home and I confronted him.
15:21What are you doing to my daughter?
15:23He said, I'm just trying to help her.
15:24I'm just hydrating her.
15:25I said, well, I don't think this is legal.
15:28He said, I'm allowed to do this.
15:30James was very good at convincing people,
15:34especially if you're questioning him.
15:36No, it's OK.
15:38You can trust me.
15:40Look at what I've done for you in the past.
15:42I shouldn't have brought these things home.
15:45I was just hydrating her.
15:47His bedside manner was great.
15:49I'm not a medical profession.
15:51I don't know.
15:52And I trusted him.
15:53He was a doctor.
15:54Why would he be harming my daughter?
15:57So that's going through my head.
15:59He wouldn't do anything to hurt Sarah.
16:01He got me out of Florida.
16:03He helped me and my family during this horrific time.
16:07And I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't.
16:09And it was like I was indebted to him
16:13and I didn't want to look too much because if I did,
16:16I might find something that I couldn't be ignorant to.
16:21A doctor is entrusted.
16:23They take a Hippocratic oath to put health and well-being
16:26above all else.
16:28So if they walked into the house and there
16:30were IVs and drugs and needles all over the place
16:33and Sarah was dating a construction worker,
16:36that would be a very different story.
16:39His job is to administer medication.
16:41And that just adds another layer of confusion,
16:44another layer of imbalance, and another layer
16:47of smoke and mirrors because Tina and Rachel trusted
16:50that he knew what he was doing.
16:51And then look what happened.
16:54Two months later, in December of 2021,
16:57Sarah calls them again, dazed, confused,
17:00completely out of it.
17:01After the first incident, he gave us a key to the house,
17:05saying, oh, I'm not going to do it again.
17:07And to prove that, I'll give you a key
17:08so you can come over any time.
17:10When I walked into the house that time,
17:13it was a much different scene than the first time.
17:17I had never seen something like it before.
17:20There was blood everywhere.
17:21There was syringes.
17:23There was needles.
17:24I mean, I refer to it looking like on the outside,
17:28you see this multimillion dollar home and you go inside
17:30and it's a crack den.
17:32There was bloody footprints.
17:33There was blood soaked paper towels.
17:36There was needles.
17:37I'm finding vials of drugs.
17:38I had no idea what these drugs were, what they did,
17:42but there's no way this could be from hydration.
17:45My thought was like, I need to document this.
17:49I was walking into this very naive,
17:52and you don't know what these drugs are capable of.
17:54You don't know how addictive these drugs are.
17:56This isn't a world that you live in.
17:58And so I took pictures.
18:00I went around.
18:01I was looking for my sister, but I didn't go upstairs.
18:03I just, I had to get out.
18:05And so at that point, after the second incident,
18:09I knew everything he had said was a lie
18:14and that he was not who he was claiming to be.
18:16At this point, I was so angry.
18:20I suspected that James Ryan was administering drugs to Sarah.
18:26And probably about four hours later,
18:28I get a call from Sarah and she immediately starts crying
18:32and sobbing and said, look, she's just hydrating me.
18:35I said, no, this is something more.
18:39I don't know what's going on, but this is going to stop.
18:43The next day, I got a call from James Ryan
18:47and the next day I went to James Ryan's work
18:52and I confronted him.
18:54I told him that he was going to break it off
18:57with my daughter, that he would go home
18:59and he would tell her that this was going to end.
19:02And if he did not do that,
19:04that I would turn him into the authorities.
19:07So the plan was for her to move out after the holidays.
19:11And...
19:13I think for me, the most tragic part
19:16of this entire story is the timing.
19:21Sarah was scheduled to move out of James's apartment
19:24the day after Chris's heart attack.
19:26So as James once again comes to the family's aid
19:29during another horrific tragedy, Sarah stays with him.
19:34And just three weeks later,
19:37Tina and Rachel are beside her life-long friend,
19:40and Tina and Rachel are beside her lifeless body
19:43on James Ryan's floor.
19:45When I first walked into the house
19:47and there were police everywhere and the paramedics,
19:50they went into her purse and on the top of her purse
19:53were vials and vials of drugs
19:56just tossed on the top of her purse.
19:58The IV pole had been moved to the closet
20:02and there were IV bags in the trash.
20:05I believe in my heart
20:07that he injected my daughter with those drugs
20:10and he overdosed her and he couldn't get her to come back.
20:15I firmly believe that he realized
20:19when he could not revive her
20:20that he went into the panic mode
20:23and started cleaning things up as much as he could,
20:26but left some things out
20:28to make it look like she did it to herself.
20:31So he took time to clean up before he called 911.
20:38The autopsy report showed that Sarah
20:42had the following drugs in her system.
20:45Diazepam, propofol, and ketamine.
20:49It's not a crime scene, right?
20:50At this point, it's an overdose.
20:52Right, yeah.
20:52At that point, the day Sarah passed away,
20:54it was not marked as a crime scene.
20:55How did, what was your internal response?
20:58I just kept thinking this isn't right.
21:00I knew he was involved with my sister's death.
21:03Every fiber in your being was like,
21:05this is not an accident.
21:07No part of me wanted to open up this disturbed world.
21:13I sat with it for a week and I tried to say,
21:15no, no, no, he didn't.
21:16No, no.
21:17I would wake up in the middle of the night,
21:18James killed her.
21:20And so it was my job to bring his dirty secrets
21:23out of the closet.
21:24I knew leaving the house that day
21:27that I was going to prove that he murdered my sister.
21:31All of this escalated quite quickly.
21:33Yes.
21:34And do you think that was a result of his reaction
21:37to thinking she was leaving,
21:38that he upped the doses at that time?
21:40Part of me thinks that he did it on purpose.
21:45The mentality of, if I can't have you,
21:47nobody's gonna have you.
21:48And that he knew he could get away with it
21:51because there wasn't any evidence
21:53to prove what he was doing.
21:55I knew that he was going to kill my sister.
21:59I knew that he was going to paint Sarah in a picture
22:03that wasn't the reality of it.
22:05And so it was my job to figure out
22:07how to get the information to turn him into the police.
22:12I had her MacBook, which was synced to her cell phone.
22:17I knew my sister.
22:19I knew, okay, well, maybe she used this password.
22:23There was a mixture of guessing the specific dates,
22:27birth dates, names.
22:29It took me quite a few tries.
22:35Once I got into Sarah's computer,
22:37that was the motherlode.
22:40There were just, I don't even know how many text messages
22:43of James admitting to giving my sister
22:47these medical grade drugs.
22:50This is what I need.
22:51Sarah's not just gonna be considered another overdose.
22:56I spent two weeks compiling a binder of over 200 pages
23:01of incriminating evidence against James
23:04to turn into the police with the hopes of providing them
23:08with a roadmap as to where to start an investigation.
23:11We have to prove that he did it.
23:12We have to give the evidence that he did it.
23:14Right, like she wasn't passed away, she was murdered.
23:16Yeah, we have to figure this out.
23:18This is what's going to bury James.
23:21So the binder first came to me on March 4th, 2022.
23:28Yeah, that's,
23:32cause that day in my life and my career kind of changed, so.
23:39The binder was given to me by the original detective.
23:44So Detective Icavello was part of Montgomery County PD's
23:48department that focused on pharmaceutical drugs.
23:51So his expertise was targeting doctors
23:53who prescribed outside of their limit.
23:56Because of what I'm trained in,
23:57I knew exactly what had to be done.
24:01The text gave a very clear route from start to finish.
24:06Sarah had been complaining in the text
24:09about not being able to sleep.
24:11James said, I can give you a shot
24:13and it will be gone in, I think it was six seconds.
24:16Her response was, that doesn't sound very good.
24:18He says, it's already, it's done.
24:21At that point, everything started.
24:23And the text did show that he's administering the drugs
24:27and that there was an IV.
24:28And this was in February of 2021
24:31that he introduced her to these drugs.
24:33And it just progressively got worse
24:35until she was so deep into this addiction
24:38and so reliant on James that she could never leave.
24:44She could never leave.
24:48In September, in October, in November,
24:50the texts were pretty much a shopping list.
24:55Sarah was no longer working.
24:57Sarah was at home.
24:58Sarah was complaining about symptoms she was feeling,
25:01all symptoms of these drugs.
25:03She would say, we don't have any syringes.
25:06Is there any more ketamine?
25:07His response would be,
25:08I'll have to wait for everybody to leave to check.
25:11Maybe I'll pretend to leave and then come back.
25:14I can't believe what I'm looking at.
25:17These texts were something unlike I'd ever seen.
25:19These were daily.
25:21And the texts showed me
25:22that drugs were being taken from the office.
25:25He's administering the drugs at his house.
25:28And he's the one who's trained
25:29in knowing the long-term effects
25:31of all of these drugs is death.
25:36I told the Harris family, I'm gonna do whatever I can.
25:39We're gonna get justice for Sarah.
25:43James did not stop working.
25:44The office was open.
25:46He had a very large patient base,
25:48of which many were children.
25:51I stressed to the state's attorney's office,
25:53we needed to operate quickly.
25:56My name is John McCarthy,
25:58state's attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland.
26:00This is a kind of a unique case.
26:02You've got a medical doctor
26:03who's armed with special information
26:06based on years of medical training
26:09to know precisely what the risks are.
26:11The way in which,
26:12and the place in which he administered the drugs,
26:14you would have never done outside a clinical setting
26:17and not even close to being consistent
26:20with what he was taught to do.
26:23I knew that they were very close
26:25to getting ready to arrest him.
26:28I had to pretend like everything was okay.
26:31He kept texting me and telling me
26:34that Sarah was coming to him in her spirit.
26:38Her ghost was in the house.
26:40And he kept saying,
26:41I know now what I need to do with my life for Sarah.
26:44I'm just gonna get back to work
26:45and really just concentrate on helping people.
26:48The family didn't want it,
26:50but I allowed him to go to the viewing.
26:52I had to allow him to hug me at the funeral home.
26:56I said, we have to allow it
26:58because I don't want him to think anything is going on.
27:02Because I didn't want him to run away.
27:06I'm so lost in grief that it was tearing me up.
27:13But I said, I have to keep up the charade
27:15until they arrest him.
27:20James Ryan was arrested on March 22nd, 2022
27:24and was charged with second degree depraved heart murder.
27:29The idea behind a depraved heart
27:31second degree murder charge
27:34is that the defendant didn't necessarily
27:38want to kill the person,
27:40but the actions they took were so extreme
27:43that it exhibited a wanton
27:45and reckless disregard for human life.
27:49So the depraved heart charge is really interesting.
27:52In order for the prosecution to convict him of this,
27:55they had to prove that James acted
27:57with reckless indifference towards Sarah's life
28:00by bringing her the drugs.
28:01We were obviously confident in the guilt of James Ryan,
28:05but when you have a jury trial,
28:08ultimately it's up to those 12 people
28:11to actually determine that guilt.
28:12Depraved heart theory hadn't been successfully used
28:16in any overdose case in Maryland.
28:19And so that was our biggest challenge.
28:21How did you feel on the day of the trial?
28:25Honestly, when I walked into the courtroom,
28:29I was still living in this like sort of false reality.
28:32And I thought that I knew who James was,
28:36but I unfortunately didn't know the extent
28:39of how dark and disturbed and twisted he really was.
28:51In August of 2023, James Ryan's criminal trial begins.
28:56And I was able to get my hands
28:57on the audio recordings from the trial.
29:01He had the power in the relationship.
29:04He had the access to the drugs,
29:06ketamine, propofol, and diazepam.
29:10He introduces these drugs to her.
29:12He created the defendants.
29:14The text messages show a history
29:16of the defendants setting up those lines
29:19that it took to eventually kill Sarah Harris.
29:22Our main thing was text messages
29:24that we had between James Ryan and Sarah Harris.
29:28There was one message about him getting her ketamine
29:32while she was sleeping.
29:33He was instructing her on how much more
29:35to push basically in the IV
29:38if she needed to when she woke up.
29:40We saw his instructions to her
29:42on how to increase their potency.
29:45He was giving her the tricks.
29:47He told her to take the medication with grapefruit juice
29:51and to leave the pills under her tongue
29:54to not drink water to increase the potency.
29:57And if that wasn't enough,
29:59he invited her to get propofol, Versed,
30:01and syringes from the trunk of his car at his office.
30:09The power dynamics for us
30:10were a really important part of this case.
30:14He had such the upper hand in terms of power dynamics.
30:20He started off as her doctor.
30:22Then he became shortly thereafter her employer.
30:26Afterwards, they became involved in a romantic relationship.
30:30He, again, held the power in that scenario.
30:34He was grooming her step-by-step much like a child.
30:38He clearly sort of seemed to have been fixated,
30:42as it turns out,
30:43seemed to have been fixated on her for a really long time.
30:48Back in September of 2021,
30:51like two months before we saw her with the drugs,
30:55she told me that James and her
30:57were going to go to Key West for a few days.
31:00Would you and Rachel come?
31:02James will pay for everything.
31:05You don't have to worry about a thing.
31:06And I said, oh, that sounds like a lot of fun.
31:08So we all went together,
31:10and James was charming and fun.
31:15But on that trip, I noticed that he drank a lot.
31:21We were sitting on a couch,
31:22and it was just myself, Rachel, and James Ryan.
31:25Sarah had gone to bed.
31:27And he had been drinking,
31:28and he started talking to Rachel and I.
31:31He told me, you know,
31:32I used to live down the street from you.
31:36And I said, well, that's weird.
31:39What a coincidence.
31:40Then he went on to say that he noticed Sarah
31:44in the neighborhood.
31:45And she was how old at the time?
31:46Sarah would have been 14.
31:49And he said, I used to see Sarah in the neighborhood,
31:51playing at the park,
31:52and saw her with her girlfriends and everything.
31:54And he thought she was very pretty.
31:56And then he proceeded to say that
31:59he went into the local toy store that she worked at,
32:03and he realized she was working there.
32:05And he just thought she was so beautiful.
32:07And he would take his kids to the toy store
32:09just so he could see Sarah.
32:12When she started working as a server
32:14in one of the local restaurants,
32:16he would go back to that restaurant
32:17just so he could see her,
32:19and she could wait on him.
32:20But she had no idea who he was.
32:22And he said when she walked into the office,
32:25he knew exactly who she was,
32:27and that he had been attracted to her.
32:30I eventually did tell Sarah,
32:31and she said, that's really creepy.
32:33But she didn't think any more of it.
32:36And I didn't think anything of it, really.
32:37But now that I look back on it,
32:40that just tells me that he wanted control over her,
32:43is all he wanted.
32:44And with control comes isolation.
32:47Yes.
32:48Which he accomplished.
32:49Yes, he did.
32:50He isolated her.
32:51He did his best to remove her from her family.
32:56I believe James knew if he created dependency
32:59within my sister by pumping her full of drugs,
33:02then it almost would be impossible
33:05for my sister to leave him,
33:07which I think was his ultimate goal,
33:08was to make it so that she could never leave.
33:14I learned a lot of things at the trial.
33:18He was barely going to work,
33:20but he was ordering two to three times more drugs
33:23than he would normally order in a week.
33:26His patient number had gone down,
33:28but his ordering had gone up.
33:29Yes, drastically.
33:31He tried to set up another office in DC
33:33where he could stock more drugs there
33:36and take those drugs.
33:37We also found out that right before Christmas,
33:41he OD'd her and had to resuscitate her.
33:47I did not know about any of this until the trial.
33:50I found out when her message was read
33:53that she sent to her friend.
33:56James had to give her CPR for a whole five minutes
34:00and that she's really upset about that
34:02and that she didn't want to die.
34:05He brought her back literally from the dead
34:08on a prior overdose without ever calling anybody
34:12for any help.
34:13She may have died on a particular day in January of 2022,
34:17but she was dying for months.
34:22We have all of the members of the jury present.
34:25We have received your note
34:26that the jury has reached a verdict.
34:29The jury took maybe over three hours to come to a verdict.
34:36Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
34:37have you reached a verdict?
34:38Yes.
34:40As to count one murder in second degree?
34:44Guilty.
34:47Count two involuntary manslaughter?
34:49Guilty.
34:50Count three possession with intent to distribute?
34:52Guilty.
34:55To hear that guilty verdict,
34:57it doesn't bring my sister back,
34:59but what it does do is it sets my sister free
35:02from James's lies.
35:03We all just sat there and cried.
35:07And then I immediately started thinking,
35:10okay, how many years could he actually get?
35:13In the last two years comes down to this decision tomorrow.
35:16Once you get that guilty verdict,
35:18that's really the important part
35:19is how long is this person going to prison for?
35:22Thinking about James Ryan
35:23not spending the rest of his life in prison
35:26tears at my gut.
35:34Hi, good morning.
35:36How are you?
35:37I was going to give you a squeeze before.
35:40Been waiting for a long time for this, so we're ready.
35:45How are you guys doing?
35:47There's obviously a sense of anxiety and worry,
35:49but at the end of the day,
35:50I trust that the judge sees through his narcissism
35:54and his lies.
35:55We want him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
35:59He took a life and he, in our eyes, needs to pay with his.
36:03For him to sit in the trial and show no remorse,
36:07to stare me down when I was on the stand
36:11as if he was going to frighten me.
36:13I want the opportunity to look straight at James Ryan
36:18and speak to him.
36:24I have been absolutely devastated
36:25since discovering Sarah on the morning of January 26th, 2022.
36:30I do not place blame on anyone else
36:32or try to excuse my actions in any way,
36:35and I fully accept my responsibility.
36:38He makes some statements that I take full responsibility,
36:41but then he turns around
36:41and he denies it to a lot of extent.
36:44Well, I did not administer the drugs to Sarah,
36:46and I'm not exactly sure when she got them,
36:48but it's necessary for me to own my choices,
36:51accept my responsibility,
36:52work extremely hard every day
36:55to ensure that I never repeat any of the choices
36:57that have led me here.
37:00For me personally, to sit in the courtroom,
37:04I needed him to hear me, hear my voice.
37:09My Sarah was everything,
37:11but you took her from me.
37:14You lied to me, you used me, you conned me.
37:19This is all I have left of my baby.
37:21Her ashes and her hair.
37:24Do you see this?
37:25This is all I have.
37:28Don't look away from me.
37:32The Harris family spoke to make sure that it was clear
37:36James Ryan was the sole reason for Sarah Harris's death.
37:41There may have been a lot going on in her life,
37:45but the court's focus should have been on James Ryan
37:48and his role in her death.
37:51I was feeling more nervous the day of the sentencing
37:55than sometimes I was feeling throughout the trial.
37:57Questioning, is the judge going to see through his lies?
38:01Because ultimately it comes down to what she feels
38:04is the appropriate amount of time for him
38:06to spend in prison for these crimes.
38:11The reason I don't think I'll ever forget these messages
38:16is because the one person in the room who knew better
38:19was the one supplying.
38:21So if you would stand up, sir.
38:25As to count one second degree murder,
38:27it is the sentence of this court
38:29that you be committed to the Maryland Division of Corrections
38:32for a period of 45 years.
38:38When the judge gave him the 45 and no parole,
38:42I think my heart leaped.
38:43I really knew then that he would suffer.
38:48I want him to never have another happy moment in his life
38:51for what he's done.
38:54This sentence is 20 years over the top
38:57of the Maryland sentencing guidelines.
38:58I think this is an enormously good sentence.
39:01I hope he's going to go to jail for the rest of his life.
39:05I am enormously proud of the men and women that worked for me
39:08that helped us get to where we are.
39:10Rachel's a hero to me in this case.
39:11Yeah.
39:13And the Montgomery County Police Department,
39:15one of our great detectives here.
39:21What a way to end my career.
39:23This was a wrong that I'm so happy
39:28that I was able to write.
39:31My goal is to get some kind of law put into place
39:37to enforce checks and balances into private practices
39:42that have license to buy these deadly drugs.
39:46The amount of drugs that James Ryan purchased,
39:51there should have been a red flag.
39:52I know for a fact that my daughter's not the only one
39:54that has died from something like this.
39:57It's just never been able to been proved.
39:59You made history today.
40:01And it was because you always fought so hard.
40:03Imagine if you didn't.
40:04This is the first time a case like this
40:07has gone to court in the state of Maryland.
40:09There's not been another one like it.
40:12It's a win.
40:13It is.
40:16It's been a pleasure getting to know you
40:18during this process.
40:19I appreciate you allowing me to introduce Sarah
40:23to everyone.
40:24I'm hoping through this and through my words
40:26that I will have a hand in stopping one person
40:30from losing their life to something like this.
40:33That's Sarah's legacy for us now
40:35is to make it so that these people in high power positions
40:39don't feel that they can play God
40:41and decide who gets to live and who gets to die.
40:43To keep this kind of grief from one mother.
40:46That is my journey now.
40:48And I do it for my Sarah.
40:49And I will stay on that journey
40:52until I can get it done for her.

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