Carter Roy

Grace Fryer is unable to walk and has lost all her teeth.

The press goes wild.

Newspapers across the country cover the case.

They dub the women the Radium Girls and the Living Dead.

And as the case unfolds, damning details emerge, including the fact that in the same building where the dial painters were told to lick their brushes, the company's scientists were protecting themselves with lead screens, tongs, and masks.

Same building, same radium.

One group gets protection, the other gets told the paint is harmless.

The hypocrisy enrages the public.

Raymond Berry then runs into his next problem in April, three months into the trial.

Cecil Drinker, the Harvard scientist who found radium in dozens of dust samples from the factory, refuses to testify.

So does Dr. Harrison Martland, the pathologist who developed tests to detect radium in living people.

Now, it's not clear exactly why the scientists refused.

Maybe they were intimidated by USRC.

Maybe they just didn't want to get involved.

Either way,

They were Barry's smoking guns.

He needs an expert to testify that the factory caused the girls to develop radium poisoning.

And he needs one fast, because the five plaintiffs have just been given only months to live.

And luckily, he finds a physicist named Elizabeth Hughes.

She's trained in Dr. Martland's methods.