Have you ever heard of the unsolved case of the 'Toxic Woman'? If not, get strapped in—because this one is wild.
In 1994, the New York Times reported that a woman called Gloria Ramirez, 31, attended Riverside General Hospital in California to be treated for late-stage cervical cancer.
According to the article, Ramirez arrived at the hospital semiconscious on the evening of 19 February, after her fiancé called an ambulance when she reported nausea and breathing difficulties.
Ramirez - who had only found out her cancer diagnosis six weeks earlier - was then treated by a number of medical staff who carried out a routine blood test.
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The mystery of Gloria Ramirez
When blood was drawn from the woman, it’s claimed a strong smell came from the liquid in the syringe.
According to the report, a doctor named Humberto Ochoa, who was the attending physician in the emergency room at the time, noticed that the sample looked as if it contained white crystal-like objects.
They also said she was emitting ‘fumes that smelled like ammonia’.
As these factors emerged, a handful of staff at the Californian institution began to feel dizzy, while some actually collapsed due to Ramirez’s foul-smelling blood.
According to the New York Times, one of the staff members ended up developing acute circulatory problems.
Meanwhile, another report from 1995 claimed 23 of the 37 medical experts experienced at least one symptom resembling poisoning by a deadly class of chemicals called organophosphates.
Due to the specialists’ overwhelming illness, the emergency room was quickly evacuated.
Experts were forced to treat patients in the car park while people dressed in protective clothing began testing the air in the emergency room for dangerous gases.
Ramirez, whose life was unable to be saved when she went into cardiac arrest, was sealed in an airtight coffin and removed from the premises.
The mum-of-two’s funeral was staged two months after her peculiar death, with Rev. Brian Taylor claiming she was a ‘friend to all, quick to smile, a carefree joker who brought comfort and joy to others’.
After referring to the ‘bizarre, tragic incident in the hospital emergency room’, the reverend blamed the US hospital for the ‘toxic fumes that took her life’.
“Gloria has not been treated right, her death was unjust and the treatment of her body has been unjust,” he continued, as per the LA Times.
“The people responsible need to be held accountable for that.”
Theories emerge over the 'Toxic Lady'
Despite the attention that Ramirez’s strange case got at the time, nobody has ever concluded how the so-called ‘Toxic Lady’ died.
However, according to a YouTube video, one of the widely accepted theories is that Ramirez’s cancer medication may have led to a chain reaction, causing poisonous gas.
The claim, made by the popular Weird History channel, states that one of the tablets she was taking may have metabolised when paramedics administered oxygen during her cardiac arrest.
“According to the theory, when Ramirez’s blood was drawn at the emergency room, its temperature dropped sharply. This caused the medication (Dimethyl Sulphone) to convert to the deadly compound Dimethyl Sulphate which was then released into the air,” the YouTube channel states.
This theory has also been endorsed by the Riverside Coroner’s Office and published in the popular Forensic Science International journal.
However, the creator was quick to say that several chemists have previously been skeptical of the theory, remarking that the chemical reaction seemed ‘unlikely’.
Years later, it’s still not known whether the case of Ramirez will ever be solved, and that’s despite ‘medical detectives from ten local, state and federal outfits’ examining dozens of potential causes.
Ramirez’s case has since been the base of a Grey’s Anatomy episode, a Murdoch Mysteries instalment, and is the basis of Buzzfeed Unsolved's The Bizarre Toxic Death of Gloria Ramirez.
Ella Scott