00:001. The Needle in the Dark Relation. 10 Minutes Scene 1. The Shadow of War. 0 o'clock, 2 o'clock. Narrator Ahmadyar Khan.
00:0818th World War 2. Japan has captured Burma and is bombing Kolkata. Amidst the chaos of war, corruption is rising and the old fear of the British law is fading. Legal insight.
00:20The CIA branch in Delhi takes over cases where local police fail under the British Raj. The rule of law was paramount. Even the smallest deviation was not tolerated, unlike the chaotic state of modern legal systems.
00:35Scene 2. A Suspicious Natural Death. 2 o'clock, 5 o'clock. The Conflict. Daisy, a 26-year-old Christian woman, dies in a private hospital room, allegedly from cholera. Her husband, Daniel, rushes to bury her without informing her parents.
00:51The father's report. Daisy's father files Anne Furr, claiming his daughter was poisoned because Daniel wanted to marry a Hindu girl named Vayanti.
01:01The investigative pivot. The British DSP orders the post-mortem to be moved from the civil hospital to the military hospital, CAMH, to ensure an unbiased report, fearing the hospital staff might be complicit.
01:15Scene 3. Forensic revelation. 5 o'clock, 8 o'clock. The autopsy. The CAMH report reveals that death was not caused by cholera, but by a specific poison.
01:25The discovery. The poison was not ingested. It was injected into the rubber tubing of the glucose drip.
01:33Legal or medical note. The poison was a medicine that is safe in drops, but lethal if injected directly into the bloodstream.
01:41Scene 4. The failure of the sub-inspector. 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock. The confrontation.
01:46Amad Yarkon and Inspector Tinson discover that sub-inspector Dioraj intentionally avoided investigating the hospital staff, the favor.
01:56Dioraj confesses he was returning a personal favor.
02:00The doctor in charge had saved his son's life without charging a penny.
02:04Legal concept. This highlights conflict of interest and dereliction of duty, where personal emotions compromise a criminal investigatite tonight.
02:14We delve into a case that feels like it's been ripped straight from a crime novel, a successful young couple, a beautiful home, and a secret that would shatter everything.
02:24This is the story of Clayton and Lana Clayton and the night a single tiny needle changed their lives forever.
02:32It was September 21, 2012, in Lake Wiley, South Carolina.
02:37The night was quiet, just like any other in their peaceful lakeside community.
02:42Around 2 in the morning, a frantic 911 call broke the silence.
02:47It was Clayton Kaufman. He told the dispatcher he'd just found his wife, Lana, unresponsive at the bottom of their basement stairs.
02:55He was performing CPR, his voice filled with panic.
02:59When paramedics arrived, they found a devastating scene.
03:03Lana was gone, and at first glance, it looked like a tragic, accidental fall, a terrible accident, but an accident nonetheless.
03:12The initial investigation seemed to confirm this.
03:15The scene was consistent with a fall.
03:18Clayton told police he had been asleep upstairs and was woken by the thud of his wife falling.
03:23He said she had been suffering from vertigo and headaches recently, which could easily explain a dizzy spell leading to a fall.
03:30Friends and family corroborated.
03:33This saying Lana had been complaining of feeling unwell.
03:36The medical examiner's initial findings also pointed towards an accidental death.
03:41The case seemed open and shut, a grieving husband, a freak accident.
03:46But one detective just couldn't shake a feeling that something was wrong.
03:51There were details, small things that didn't quite add up, and this detective's intuition would soon unravel a web of deception that was far more sinister than anyone could have imagined.
04:01The first crack in the story appeared during the autopsy, while the external injuries were consistent with a fall.
04:09The toxicology report revealed something startling.
04:13Lana had a lethal dose of Vizine in her system.
04:16Yes, Vizine, the common over-the-counter eye drops.
04:19Its active ingredient, when ingested in large quantities, can cause heart failure.
04:25This was no longer a simple accident.
04:28This was a poisoning.
04:29But how did it get there?
04:32Investigators now had a murder on their hands, but they had to be careful.
04:36They didn't have direct evidence linking Clayton to the poisoning.
04:40They started digging deeper into the couple's life.
04:42On the surface, they were the picture of success.
04:45Clayton was a respected state employee, and Lana was a dedicated nurse.
04:50They lived in a beautiful home and seemed to have it all.
04:53But beneath the surface, the picture was much darker.
04:57Investigators discovered Clayton was having an affair.
05:00He had been seeing another woman, and their text messages revealed him and Esperit to get out of his marriage.
05:05He complained about Lana, about their life together, and
05:09expressed his desire for a new beginning with his mistress.
05:12This provided a powerful motive.
05:15Clayton wanted Lana out of the way so he could start a new life, without a messy and costly divorce.
05:22But motive isn't proof.
05:24They needed to connect Clayton directly to the crime.
05:27Investigators started scrutinizing his every move.
05:30They looked at his internet search history.
05:32Nothing.
05:33They checked his phone records, his financial statements.
05:36They were building a circumstantial case.
05:39But they still lacked that crucial piece of evidence.
05:41That's when they turned their attention back to the scene itself.
05:45The detective, who'd had a bad feeling from the start, revisited the evidence from the home.
05:51He remembered something from the initial sweep.
05:54Something that seemed insignificant at the time.
05:57A small, empty spray bottle.
05:59The kind you might use for nasal spray or perhaps eye drops.
06:03They re-examined the autopsy photos with this new information in mind.
06:07And there it was.
06:09A tiny, almost invisible mark on Lana's nose.
06:12A puncture.
06:14Wound.
06:14It was so small it had been overlooked.
06:17Could it be a needle mark?
06:19The theory was chilling.
06:21Clayton hadn't just put Vizine in her drink.
06:23He had allegedly used a needle to inject it directly into her nasal cavity while she slept.
06:30This method would be fast acting and leave almost no trace.
06:34To fall down the stairs wasn't the cause of death.
06:37It was the cover-up.
06:38It was meant to explain away the signs of a sudden medical crisis induced by the poison.
06:44Armed with this new theory, investigators confronted Clayton.
06:48His story began to crumble.
06:49He'd told police he was asleep the whole time, but phone records showed his phone was active
06:55during the night, right around the time.
06:58Lana would have died.
07:00He had claimed Lana was suffering from vertigo, but her medical records showed no such diagnosis.
07:06Every part of his story was a carefully constructed lie.
07:10The police believed Clayton had waited for Lana to fall asleep, administered the lethal dose,
07:15and then, after she passed away, staged the scene by pushing her body down the stairs.
07:21The panic in his 911 call, the CPR, it was all an act.
07:26The trial was a media sensation.
07:28The prosecution laid out its case piece by piece.
07:32The affair, the financial motive, the suspicious search for a new life,
07:36and the damning medical evidence.
07:38They painted a picture of a cold, calculating man who planned his wife's murder to look like an accident.
07:43The defense argued that the evidence was purely circumstantial, they claimed.
07:49Lana was depressed and had taken her own life, staging the fall to spare her family the stigma of suicide.
07:56They pointed to the lack of a murder weapon no needle was ever found.
08:00It was a classic, he said.
08:02She said battle, except one of the key players could no longer speak.
08:06The jury had to decide, was Clayton Kaufman a grieving husband, wrongly accused?
08:12Or was he a cold-blooded killer who used a common household item to commit the perfect murder,
08:18only to be caught by a tiny, almost invisible clue?
08:22After days of deliberation, the jury reached its verdict.
08:26They found Clayton Kaufman guilty of murder.
08:29He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of peril.
08:32The case of the needle in the dark is a chilling reminder of how the most ordinary objects can be turned into weapons,
08:40and how the truth can be hidden in the smallest of details.
08:43It took one detective-y's nagging suspicion and a team-y's relentless pursuit of the truth
08:48to uncover the darkness hiding in plain sight.
08:51It's a story about
08:52A web of lies so intricate it almost worked,
08:56and a single needle prick that brought it all crashing down.
09:00Thank you for joining me on this deep dive.
09:02If you found this story compelling, please like this video,
09:06and subscribe to the channel for more true crime investigations.
09:10Stay safe out there.
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