Lester Holt

So here's an easy solution.

You go back to the body and you take a second look.

Would love to.

When we got the phone call on Tuesday that she had a lethal level of cyanide in her blood, I called immediately the funeral home and she had already been cremated.

But the ME still had samples of Autumn's blood.

Its toxicology unit performed its own test for cyanide.

Analyst Alicia Smith added a simple solution to the blood.

If cyanide was present in the sample, it would turn the center well of this disc purple.

She and Lukacevic demonstrated what they found.

Sure enough, the sample changed color.

Her color change was a deep, kind of dark purplish pink, and it was obviously positive for cyanide.

Does that saturation of color tell you you got a lethal amount?

Oh, yes, definitely.

Any amount, even the one milligram per liter, even the light pink color change, means there's cyanide there, a significant toxic, if not lethal, amount of cyanide present.

Autumn Klein had died of cyanide poisoning.

No question about it, he said.

He grew even more confident when he reviewed the details of how she had collapsed and suffered.

Cyanide once ingested can quickly starve the body of oxygen.

So oxygen's on the blood, but it's not being utilized by the body.

It was the trapped oxygen that had turned the blood in Autumn's veins that vivid red.