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In July 1989, when Patricia “Patty” Stallings’ three-month-old son, Ryan, began vomiting & struggling to breathe, she immediately took him to the emergency room. There, doctors did an array of tests on the infant & discovered high levels of ethylene glycol in his blood, the main ingredient in antifreeze. Because they immediately suspected that Ryan had been poisoned, he was placed in protective custody & removed from the care of Patty & David. During the investigation, antifreeze was found in the basement of the Stallings’s home on Lake Wauwanoka in Jefferson City, west of St. Louis, Missouri, only solidifying their belief that Patty and/or David were responsible.
After Patty was allowed a supervised visit with her son weeks later, she fed Ryan a bottle & only days later, he yet again became extremely ill which reinforced the idea that she was making him ill. When Ryan tragically died only days later, Patty was arrested & charged with her son’s murder.
Although this appeared to be a tragic, but open & shut case, as time went on, it was clear that things weren’t at all what they seemed. After Patty was convicted of first-degree murder & sentenced to life in prison, her story appeared on the TV series, Unsolved Mysteries in 1991 & caught the attention of biochemists across the United States which ended up blowing the lid off the case.
Patty’s younger years had been anything but calm after she spent years in poverty with bouts of homelessness. Throughout this time, she also had a child, but as a struggling single mother, she had to surrender her child to the state.
By the late 1980s, Patty’s life began to fall into place after she started working at a convenience store in eastern Missouri. Here, she met a man named David Stallings, who worked as a printer. David was a frequent customer & the two began to date in 1986. They ended up getting married in 1988 & moved into a white house that overlooked a lake in Jefferson County, Missouri. On April 4, 1989, their first child, baby boy, Ryan, was born.
Patty indicated that being a wife & mother was the happiest time of her life, a time when everything seemed absolutely perfect. As she gazed at their son, she could see that Ryan inherited his hair from her & his facial features from his dad; he had huge dimples & big blue eyes.
Just when things didn’t seem like they could get any better, the bottom seemed to fall out when Ryan began getting sick on Friday, July 7, 1989, only one month after they moved into their adorable new home. Patty indicated that before she put him to bed, she fed Ryan his evening bottle & he began to vomit right after he finished it.
On Saturday, when Ryan seemed to be feeling better, Patty left him with David so she could go swimming at her sister’s house. It wasn’t until Sunday morning, July 9, when she noticed that he seemed lethargic, he was unable to keep his formula down & his breathing seemed labored.
Patty immediately contacted an area children’s hospital & made arrangements to see a doctor there. She & David rushed their son to the hospital, but since she got lost along the way, they ended up at Cardinal Glennon Hospital instead. Ryan was immediately placed in the pediatric intensive care unit. At the time, Patty & David were understandably sick with worry as the doctors weren’t sure what was wrong with him. They were instructed to wait in the waiting room until they had a better grasp on the situation.
David & Patty ended up renting a hospital room so they could be close to their son & after three days of treatment & testing, they were told that Ryan would live. They were also told that they believed their son had been poisoned. The pediatrician treating Ryan, Dr. Robert Lynch noted that his blood tests showed extremely high levels of ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is a synthetic liquid that is odorless, has a sweet taste & is used to make anti-freeze as well as de-icing solutions for cars, airplanes & boats.
Initial symptoms of ingestion mimic that of alcohol or ethanol consumption, but within as little as thirty minutes of ingestion, more toxic effects become apparent. As it breaks down, chemicals start to crystallize & these crystals can affect kidney function. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, decreased level of alertness or even coma. As the poison causes disturbances in the body’s chemistry, thus changing the body’s acid/base balance, the brain, lungs, liver & kidneys can become damaged. This can be so severe that it leads to profound shock, organ failure & eventually death. As little as four fluid ounces can kill an average-sized man while two tablespoons can be hazardous to a child.
Dr. Lynch contacted the Missouri Division of Family Services & signed an affidavit that he believe Ryan had been poisoned. At this point, Patty & David weren’t allowed to be alone with their son & anytime they were with him, two nurses or a doctor had to be present. That same day, police were called in & an investigation began.
Investigators spoke with Patty & David separately & asked them if there were issues at home, if they were dealing with marital stresses or fighting. They point blank told Patty that they knew that Ryan was either being poisoned by her or her husband, something that both devastated & infuriated her. Ryan was her world, he was perfect & she would never harm her child.
Ryan’s condition thankfully continued to improve & he was discharged from the hospital on July 17, but rather than going home with his parents, he was placed into foster care. Their contact with their son was severely restricted & they were only allowed a one-hour visit each week on Thursdays. Patty recalls looking forward to Thursday, a day she ended up living for so that she could spend time with her son.
The visits continued over the next five weeks & it was during Patty’s sixth visit on Thursday, August 31 when she was left alone with her son for a very short period of time. Only three days later, Ryan began to profusely vomit & he was once again rushed to the hospital. Just as with his previous admission, Ryan was again diagnosed with poisoning. This time, authorities came to Patty & David’s house with an arrest warrant.
As Patty & David were pulling up to their home & getting out of their car, officers were waiting & when Patty invited them to come inside, they immediately placed her in handcuffs & told her that she was being arrested for assault. This theory only seemed to be solidified when investigators found anti-freeze in the Stallings’s home. Patty was furious at everyone & felt it was absurd that they were accusing her of harming her own son. She could only assume that someone would quickly figure out that there had been a mistake, but instead, she spent the next seven months in jail.
Despite the fact that Ryan was critically ill, had been placed on life support & was not expected to live, Patty was forbidden from seeing her son, even when medical staff knew that he was dying & taking his final breaths. Meanwhile, David felt like he was trapped in a private hell. He’d been told by doctors that because they didn’t expect their son to live, they suggested he contact a minister to have Ryan baptized.
When David contacted the court system & requested that his wife be allowed to see their son before he passed, he was denied & told, Absolutely not, I’m not going to let a baby killer up there. He remained adamant that Patty had nothing to do with what was going on with Ryan.
When the medical team advised David to remove Ryan from life support, he reluctantly agreed & for three hours, he held his baby boy in his arms, watching the machines gradually go down each time his heart would beat, devastated that he was not only losing his son, but that his mother couldn’t be with him in his final moments.
Ryan Stallings died on September 7, 1989 when he was not yet six months old. Patty was also forbidden from attending his funeral.
After Ryan’s death, Patty’s charges were upgraded from assault to first-degree murder & she was held without bail. Only a few weeks later, Patty realized that she was pregnant again & six months later, their second son, David Jr. (DJ) was born on February 17, 1990. Even though David Sr. wasn’t a suspect, DJ was placed in foster care.
Despite having absolutely no contact with his parents, at only two weeks old, DJ began suffering from symptoms that looked alarmingly similar to that of his late brother, Ryan. Only a few weeks after he was born, doctors diagnosed DJ with a rare genetic disorder known as methylmalonic acidemia or MMA which prevents the body from breaking down proteins (amino acids) & fats (lipids) properly. The effects usually present in early infancy & can vary from mild to life-threatening. Symptoms include vomiting, dehydration, respiratory distress, weak muscle tone, lethargy, enlarged liver & growth delays. Because the condition causes excess acid to build up in the blood, without treatment, it can lead to coma & death.
Based on a large study, the detection of MMA was less than 2 cases per 100,000 newborns in North America, Europe & Asia-Pacific regions. A special diet that is low in certain proteins & fats, special formulas & medical foods are important in preventing the health problems associated with the disorder.
As part of the condition, propionic acid accumulates in the body, a compound that is chemically similar to ethylene glycol. Those unfamiliar with propionic acid’s makeup could easily mistake it for the toxic chemical.
According to an independent medical expert who was contacted by Unsolved Mysteries, it would be very simple to confuse the diagnosis of MMA with multiple poisonings because the symptoms are so similar. Also, because MMA & other similar disorders are so incredibly rare, the majority of doctors wouldn’t have ever seen a case before or thought to test for it.
Thankfully DJ was quickly diagnosed & survived. Once his symptoms improved, he was returned to foster care, but in the meantime, Patty’s defense team began to dig deeper into Ryan’s death. If her second child had been diagnosed with a genetic disorder, was it possible that Ryan had the same disorder, but hadn’t been properly diagnosed & treated which resulted in his death?
While local officials continued to pursue Ryan’s case & prosecutors evaluated the medical evidence, Patty was released from jail, but was still denied visitation rights for her newborn son.
Unfortunately, the judge would not allow the defense team to present this theory in court as they didn’t feel that there was enough definitive evidence that Ryan had MMA despite the fact that his brother did. They cited four expert witnesses & the judge refused to allow DJ’s diagnosis to be presented to the jury.
When Patty’s lawyer, Eric Rathbone, tried to tell the jury that it was possible that Ryan had died from natural causes, the newly appointed prosecutor, George McElroy III, responded, You might as well speculate that some little man from Mars came down & shot him full of some mysterious bacteria.
McElroy indicated that he was worried that if it came out that DJ had MMA or that Ryan also ended up having it, unless it could be proved that he actually died from it or if it was a contributing factor to his death, he didn’t feel it would be relevant & might cause the jury to go off on a wild goose chase & make a decision based on something that’s really not relevant.
Two major pieces of medical evidence seemed to indicate that Ryan had been poisoned by his mother. First, the medical team found ethylene glycol in the infant’s bloodstream confirmed by two independent labs & secondly, crystals were found in Ryan’s brain that experts concluded were positive signs of ethylene glycol poisoning. McElroy consulted with a couple of experts who indicated that even if Ryan had suffered from MMA, it still wouldn’t account for the high levels of ethylene glycol found in his system.
Without the medical testimony, the case against Patty seemed airtight & the prosecution focused on Patty’s sixth supervised visit with Ryan that happened on Thursday, August 31, 1989. On this visit, David’s parents were also allowed to attend & about twenty minutes into the visit, they decided to leave to allow Patty & David time alone with their son. As David escorted his parents out & walked them down the hall, he may have been out of the room for a max of 45 seconds.
George McElroy argued that Patty was alone with Ryan for anywhere between 3-8 minutes, during a time when she fed him a bottle. This was something that David disagreed with as he was insistent that Patty had not fed Ryan when she was alone with him. As he walked back to the little cubby where they were visiting with their son, David said that Ryan started to get a little fussy so he reached into the bag, took a bottle out & began to feed him. There was no discoloration to the contents in the bottle whatsoever.
Despite the fact that Patty’s family & friends argued her innocence, on March 4, 1991 a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder. At only 25-years-old, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It wasn’t until May 1991 when Unsolved Mysteries featured Ryan Stallings’ case & discussed the possibility that Ryan had died from MMA rather than poisoning. William Sly, a biochemist, happened to see the episode & offered to test Ryan’s blood for MMA since there was a one in four chance that he suffered from the same rare genetic disorder.
Dr. Christopher Long, who was head of the St. Louis University’s toxicology lab, which was one of the testing facilities that initially confirmed the presence of ethylene glycol in Ryan’s blood, agreed to give a small sample of Ryan’s blood to Dr. James Shoemaker. Dr. Shoemaker was the director of a metabolic screening lab at the university & had just set up a genetic disorder testing lab.
Shoemaker received about 1/10 of a teaspoon of Ryan’s blood serum which he tested for MMA. He discovered elevated levels of propionic acid which indicated that like his younger brother, Ryan also suffered from MMA.
When Prosecutor McElroy was informed of these results, he consulted with a renowned geneticist from Yale University, Piero Rinaldo, who believed that Patricia was innocent. He was highly critical of the original tests that were performed on Ryan’s blood serum & felt that the quality of the tests were highly unacceptable. He went on to say, I was astonished, I couldn’t believe that somebody would let this go through a criminal trial unchallenged.
When Rinaldo performed his own set of tests on the baby bottle that Patty used for her son’s last feeding, he concluded no traces of ethylene glycol. He was outspoken about the treatment that Ryan received at Cardinal Glennon Hospital & the fact that it was inappropriate for a child with MMA. Because the medical team believed that Ryan was poisoned with ethylene glycol, he was treated with an ethanol drip which caused his death.
This revelation meant that Patricia Stallings was innocent & she was released from prison in July 1991. On September 20, 1991, Prosecutor McElroy held a press conference where he formally apologized to Patricia & her family & cleared her of all charges. Most importantly, DJ was returned to the care of his parents.
Patty & David divorced sometime in the 1990s & sadly, their son, DJ passed away at 23-years-old in 2013.
David Stallings Sr passed away at 57-years-old on April 30, 2019. According to his obituary, his death came after a long illness.
After Patty sued Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital that treated Ryan as well as the lab that tested his blood, she won a settlement of several million dollars in 1993. Today her case is considered one of the most shocking wrongful conviction cases in American history.
References:
- Mount Sinai: Ethylene glycol poisoning
- Springfield News-Leader: How does anti-freeze kill? How quickly?
- Medline Plus: Methylmalonic acidemia
- NORD: Methylmalonic acidemia
- Northwestern Bluhm Legal Clinic Center on Wrongful Convictions: Patricia Stallings
- Ati: The tragic story of Patricia Stallings, the woman wrongfully convicted of murdering her own baby
- Unsolved Mysteries: Patty Stallings
- Dignity Memorial: David P. Stallings
- Find a Grave: David Patrick “DJ” Stallings Jr.
- Wikipedia: Patricia Stallings
- Justice Denied – The Magazine for the Wrongly Convicted: How the legal & medical systems failed Patricia & Ryan Stallings
