Omaha, Nebraska
Sunday morning, September 10, 1978
After a late night of cards, Sandy and Duane Johnson slept in. Two-year-old Sherrie was the first to get up, shortly after nine. By then, the thick fog that hid the city at sunrise had burned off, unveiling a beautiful Indian summer day that promised to be one of those humid Midwest scorchers.
While Sherrie ate a small bowl of cereal, her father shuffled sleepily into the kitchen and poured himself a large glass of milk. His face wrinkled up like a prune.
"This milk tastes funny," Duane complained.
His wife smelled the opening of the gallon jug and looked inside.
"It's not curdled or anything," Sandy said. "It looks fine to me."
"Something's wrong with it," Duane insisted, setting the glass down on the table. "it tastes real funny."
To avert an argument so early on a gorgeous Sunday morning, Sandy grabbed the gallon of milk and emptied it into the sink. That satisfied her husband, a happy-go-lucky man who rarely grumbled about anything. Duane Johnson was twenty-four and the family's only breadwinner. He drove a truck for Hendrickson Equipment & Welding Supply Co., delivering industrial gases and equipment throughout the Midwest.
Still sleeping were the couple's infant son, Michael, and Sandy's sister, Susan Conley, who was nineteen and nine months pregnant. She'd been staying in the Johnsons' spare bedroom about a month, since she'd split up with her husband during a bad quarrel.
After breakfast, Sherrie complained of a stomachache, but at 10:30 she accompanied her mother to K mart anyway.
Duane stayed home to paint the outside of their modest three bedroom home on Fontenelle Boulevard. The shoe box house with the A frame roof stood amid a cluster of tall cottonwood trees next to a large vacant lot. It was hard to believe it contained three bedrooms, in addition to a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room.
Small or not, it was the Johnsons' dream home. They'd bought it only eight months before, partly because it sat in a quiet, well groomed neighborhood in the far north end of Omaha, miles from downtown and the city's business districts.
As the largest city in Nebraska, Omaha served as a national center for telemarketing companies that promoted and sold products by phone, and the headquarters for over thirty-five insurance firms. Most of all, Omaha was home to a compassionate people and Father Flanagan's Boys Town. The Catholic priest founded the home for boys in 1917 on the creed: "No Boy Is a Bad Boy."
To many, Omaha was Main Street America, a bastion of wholesome middle-class values. But on this blisteringly hot day, there was evil in the city. Duane Johnson and his little daughter Sherrie didn't know it, but while they were walking and talking, they were dying. Something was eating away at their bodies.
While Duane used a wide brush to turn his blue house a tulip yellow, Sandy's father and stepmother arrived. Harold and Elaine Betten were on their way home from church and dropped by to return a lawn mower they'd borrowed. Elaine Betten was known for telling corny jokes. Whenever someone asked her to spell her last name, she'd laugh: "Like we bet ten at the races, but we don't go. There we go again."
"If you're real busy," Harold shouted at Duane, who was halfway up a ladder, "we won't stay."
"No, no," Duane said with a grin. "It will give me a good excuse to quit painting. It's so hot out here."
Inside, the Bettens boiled water and fixed themselves coffee. Duane drank a cool ale. The couple indulged in a second cup of coffee with a piece of pecan pie before deciding to leave.
"Did you notice Duane?" Elaine asked her husband in the car.
"What do you mean?"
"He was talking in slow motion," she said. "Seriously, he was having trouble pronouncing his words."
If he'd overheard this remark, Duane John son would have been surprised. He thought he was fine. He went back to his paint can and brush.
He was still on his ladder at noon when Sandy unexpectedly returned home from the supermarket.
"What's wrong?" asked Duane.
"Sherrie keeps throwing up," Sandy said. "She threw up all over the store. I had to leave the groceries in the basket."
As Sandy described the scene at the store, Duane abruptly threw up as well. It must be the flu, he decided. Suddenly Duane felt rotten all over. Both father and daughter went straight to bed.
That Sunday, Sallie and Bruce Shelton had risen at dawn to shampoo their carpets at their attractive brick rambler on Sharon Drive a few minutes away from the home of Duane aud Sandy Johnson. Sallie was Sandy Johnson's younger sister. Sallie and Bruce planned a busy day and were eager to be out and about town. By nightfall they, too, would face the prospect of a terrifying death.
After arranging and rearranging the furniture in their home, the Sheltons scooped up their spunky eleven-month-old son, Chad, and buckled him into the family car, along with plenty of diapers and baby bottles. They planned to be gone all day.
"Where to first?" asked Bruce as he backed the car out of the driveway.
"The Nebraska Furniture Mart, of course," Sallie said.
Bruce wasn't surprised. In the months before Chad's birth, the Sheltons had spent almost all of their free time in the store trying to decide how to decorate the new arrival's room. Sallie and Bruce knew the store so well they might as well have owned it. The store was one of the state's largest furniture outlets, occupying almost an entire block off of Dodge Street, Oamaha's main east-west thoroughfare.
At the store, Sallie and Bruce went straight to the light fixture section and bought a pair of stylish lamps they'd been eyeing for some time. Anxious to show off their latest purchase, Sallie and Bruce drove over to see Sandy and Duane. The two sisters saw each other frequently.
Both Sandy and Sallie were petite and pretty. Sandy possessed piercing blue eyes and wavy blond hair, like her father. Sallie took after her mother, a brunette with warm brown eyes.
While the sisters resembled each other in looks, they were opposites in most other ways. While Sandy seemed satisfied to live the life of a housewife, Sallie Shelton was a career woman. She sustained her family and was nearing a promotion to a supervisory position at Mutual of Omaha, the giant insurance company. Her nontraditional role in marriage was at the forefront of a trend soon to become commonplace in relationships. Bruce, a tall, muscular man who favored a mustache and goatee, repaired television sets for Professional Electronics, a small south end business. He had a steady wage, but his job lacked potential, prestige. The marriage worked, though, and that's what mattered.
By the time the Sheltons arrived at the Johnsons' about 3 P.M., their clothes were soaked with sweat from the sweltering 91 degree heat.
"You're welcome to come in, but I have to warn you that Duane and Sherrie are sick," Sandy told her sister at the front door. "I think they have the flu."
"We'll just stay for a few minutes," Sallie said.
Sandy served everyone cool beverages, then went into the bathroom to check on her husband and daughter. They were taking turns in the bathroom, throwing up.
After quenching their thirst and displaying the new fixtures, the Sheltons waved good-bye and headed to their main destination, a birthday party for Bruce's niece.
Plenty of cake and ice cream were served at the party, but not much else, prompting the Sheltons to stop at a Taco Real on their way home. They loved Mexican food. As the sun inched toward the horizon just before six that evening, the family looked forward to watching 60 Minutes.
Sallie felt queasy while unloading the car, and upon walking in the house vomited. She thought little of it since she'd always suffered from a nervous stomach. After deciding to eat the tacos anyway, she fed her son bits of the burned hamburger filling. The tacos tasted funny, though. Actually, they tasted terrible and she threw them away. Bruce did the same with his.
A short time late, Chad threw up. There was something about the way he vomited that bothered Sallie. It wasn't just a normal baby's spit-up; his whole body trembled. Now that she thought about it, her son had been uncomfortable since early afternoon. The lethargy she had taken to be tiredness, in retrospect, may have been the beginning of an illness. Maybe it wasn't what they had eaten; maybe the Johnsons' flu had come home with them.
Cuddling her precious son and stroking his moon shaped face, she fervently wished he could talk and tell her what was wrong. Gazing at Chad, she realized her own body ached. Her stomach hurt so much she went to bed before 60 Minutes even came on. Chad normally slept by himself, but, tonight, his mother tucked him in beside her.
At nine that evening, loud gagging awakened Sallie. It was Bruce. Vomit was caught in his throat and it seemed forever before he caught his breath. Within seconds, Bruce gagged again and gasped for an ounce of air. With each vomiting spell, she heard the pungent liquid splash all over the bathroom. She desperately wanted to get out of bed to help him, but she couldn't. During her brief sleep, something drained her of all energy.
To Bruce, the vomiting fits came so violently they felt like his stomach was exorcising something evil instead of simply spitting out a piece of food that disagreed with it. His whole body shook like an old motor out of tune. Once the vomiting ceased, Bruce could hardly move; he had to lie on his back on the bathroom floor to rest before dragging himself to bed. Sallie and Bruce tried sleeping, but they ached too much. Chad slept restlessly.
Although the Sheltons believed they were merely suffering from the Johnsons' flu or possibly a bout of routine food poisoning, they worried about their infant son. Bruce, especially, found it hard to understand how Chad's body could endure a fraction of what he and his wife were going through. He couldn't recall ever feeling so sick, so physically wasted. And as he lay awake, his head started throbbing with excruciating pain. What was going on? What was making them so sick?
To convince himself it wasn't a bad dream, Bruce telephoned his own sister about eleven o'clock. She blamed it all on the tacos. That comforted Bruce, but it failed to completely erase his concern. He called Dr. R. David Glover, Clad's physician, at home and described Chad's symptoms.
"Sounds like food poisoning," Glover guessed. "Let's see how be does. If you don't feel he's gotten any better by morning, bring him to the clinic."
Bruce returned to bed and told Sallie what Glover had said. There wasn't much that could be done for ordinary food poisoning, according to Glover. Still, for most of the rest of the night, Sallie and Bruce vomited violently off and on. Each time, their stomachs ached more than the previous time.
Sunday morning, September 10, 1978
After a late night of cards, Sandy and Duane Johnson slept in. Two-year-old Sherrie was the first to get up, shortly after nine. By then, the thick fog that hid the city at sunrise had burned off, unveiling a beautiful Indian summer day that promised to be one of those humid Midwest scorchers.
While Sherrie ate a small bowl of cereal, her father shuffled sleepily into the kitchen and poured himself a large glass of milk. His face wrinkled up like a prune.
"This milk tastes funny," Duane complained.
His wife smelled the opening of the gallon jug and looked inside.
"It's not curdled or anything," Sandy said. "It looks fine to me."
"Something's wrong with it," Duane insisted, setting the glass down on the table. "it tastes real funny."
To avert an argument so early on a gorgeous Sunday morning, Sandy grabbed the gallon of milk and emptied it into the sink. That satisfied her husband, a happy-go-lucky man who rarely grumbled about anything. Duane Johnson was twenty-four and the family's only breadwinner. He drove a truck for Hendrickson Equipment & Welding Supply Co., delivering industrial gases and equipment throughout the Midwest.
Still sleeping were the couple's infant son, Michael, and Sandy's sister, Susan Conley, who was nineteen and nine months pregnant. She'd been staying in the Johnsons' spare bedroom about a month, since she'd split up with her husband during a bad quarrel.
After breakfast, Sherrie complained of a stomachache, but at 10:30 she accompanied her mother to K mart anyway.
Duane stayed home to paint the outside of their modest three bedroom home on Fontenelle Boulevard. The shoe box house with the A frame roof stood amid a cluster of tall cottonwood trees next to a large vacant lot. It was hard to believe it contained three bedrooms, in addition to a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room.
Small or not, it was the Johnsons' dream home. They'd bought it only eight months before, partly because it sat in a quiet, well groomed neighborhood in the far north end of Omaha, miles from downtown and the city's business districts.
As the largest city in Nebraska, Omaha served as a national center for telemarketing companies that promoted and sold products by phone, and the headquarters for over thirty-five insurance firms. Most of all, Omaha was home to a compassionate people and Father Flanagan's Boys Town. The Catholic priest founded the home for boys in 1917 on the creed: "No Boy Is a Bad Boy."
To many, Omaha was Main Street America, a bastion of wholesome middle-class values. But on this blisteringly hot day, there was evil in the city. Duane Johnson and his little daughter Sherrie didn't know it, but while they were walking and talking, they were dying. Something was eating away at their bodies.
While Duane used a wide brush to turn his blue house a tulip yellow, Sandy's father and stepmother arrived. Harold and Elaine Betten were on their way home from church and dropped by to return a lawn mower they'd borrowed. Elaine Betten was known for telling corny jokes. Whenever someone asked her to spell her last name, she'd laugh: "Like we bet ten at the races, but we don't go. There we go again."
"If you're real busy," Harold shouted at Duane, who was halfway up a ladder, "we won't stay."
"No, no," Duane said with a grin. "It will give me a good excuse to quit painting. It's so hot out here."
Inside, the Bettens boiled water and fixed themselves coffee. Duane drank a cool ale. The couple indulged in a second cup of coffee with a piece of pecan pie before deciding to leave.
"Did you notice Duane?" Elaine asked her husband in the car.
"What do you mean?"
"He was talking in slow motion," she said. "Seriously, he was having trouble pronouncing his words."
If he'd overheard this remark, Duane John son would have been surprised. He thought he was fine. He went back to his paint can and brush.
He was still on his ladder at noon when Sandy unexpectedly returned home from the supermarket.
"What's wrong?" asked Duane.
"Sherrie keeps throwing up," Sandy said. "She threw up all over the store. I had to leave the groceries in the basket."
As Sandy described the scene at the store, Duane abruptly threw up as well. It must be the flu, he decided. Suddenly Duane felt rotten all over. Both father and daughter went straight to bed.
That Sunday, Sallie and Bruce Shelton had risen at dawn to shampoo their carpets at their attractive brick rambler on Sharon Drive a few minutes away from the home of Duane aud Sandy Johnson. Sallie was Sandy Johnson's younger sister. Sallie and Bruce planned a busy day and were eager to be out and about town. By nightfall they, too, would face the prospect of a terrifying death.
After arranging and rearranging the furniture in their home, the Sheltons scooped up their spunky eleven-month-old son, Chad, and buckled him into the family car, along with plenty of diapers and baby bottles. They planned to be gone all day.
"Where to first?" asked Bruce as he backed the car out of the driveway.
"The Nebraska Furniture Mart, of course," Sallie said.
Bruce wasn't surprised. In the months before Chad's birth, the Sheltons had spent almost all of their free time in the store trying to decide how to decorate the new arrival's room. Sallie and Bruce knew the store so well they might as well have owned it. The store was one of the state's largest furniture outlets, occupying almost an entire block off of Dodge Street, Oamaha's main east-west thoroughfare.
At the store, Sallie and Bruce went straight to the light fixture section and bought a pair of stylish lamps they'd been eyeing for some time. Anxious to show off their latest purchase, Sallie and Bruce drove over to see Sandy and Duane. The two sisters saw each other frequently.
Both Sandy and Sallie were petite and pretty. Sandy possessed piercing blue eyes and wavy blond hair, like her father. Sallie took after her mother, a brunette with warm brown eyes.
While the sisters resembled each other in looks, they were opposites in most other ways. While Sandy seemed satisfied to live the life of a housewife, Sallie Shelton was a career woman. She sustained her family and was nearing a promotion to a supervisory position at Mutual of Omaha, the giant insurance company. Her nontraditional role in marriage was at the forefront of a trend soon to become commonplace in relationships. Bruce, a tall, muscular man who favored a mustache and goatee, repaired television sets for Professional Electronics, a small south end business. He had a steady wage, but his job lacked potential, prestige. The marriage worked, though, and that's what mattered.
By the time the Sheltons arrived at the Johnsons' about 3 P.M., their clothes were soaked with sweat from the sweltering 91 degree heat.
"You're welcome to come in, but I have to warn you that Duane and Sherrie are sick," Sandy told her sister at the front door. "I think they have the flu."
"We'll just stay for a few minutes," Sallie said.
Sandy served everyone cool beverages, then went into the bathroom to check on her husband and daughter. They were taking turns in the bathroom, throwing up.
After quenching their thirst and displaying the new fixtures, the Sheltons waved good-bye and headed to their main destination, a birthday party for Bruce's niece.
Plenty of cake and ice cream were served at the party, but not much else, prompting the Sheltons to stop at a Taco Real on their way home. They loved Mexican food. As the sun inched toward the horizon just before six that evening, the family looked forward to watching 60 Minutes.
Sallie felt queasy while unloading the car, and upon walking in the house vomited. She thought little of it since she'd always suffered from a nervous stomach. After deciding to eat the tacos anyway, she fed her son bits of the burned hamburger filling. The tacos tasted funny, though. Actually, they tasted terrible and she threw them away. Bruce did the same with his.
A short time late, Chad threw up. There was something about the way he vomited that bothered Sallie. It wasn't just a normal baby's spit-up; his whole body trembled. Now that she thought about it, her son had been uncomfortable since early afternoon. The lethargy she had taken to be tiredness, in retrospect, may have been the beginning of an illness. Maybe it wasn't what they had eaten; maybe the Johnsons' flu had come home with them.
Cuddling her precious son and stroking his moon shaped face, she fervently wished he could talk and tell her what was wrong. Gazing at Chad, she realized her own body ached. Her stomach hurt so much she went to bed before 60 Minutes even came on. Chad normally slept by himself, but, tonight, his mother tucked him in beside her.
At nine that evening, loud gagging awakened Sallie. It was Bruce. Vomit was caught in his throat and it seemed forever before he caught his breath. Within seconds, Bruce gagged again and gasped for an ounce of air. With each vomiting spell, she heard the pungent liquid splash all over the bathroom. She desperately wanted to get out of bed to help him, but she couldn't. During her brief sleep, something drained her of all energy.
To Bruce, the vomiting fits came so violently they felt like his stomach was exorcising something evil instead of simply spitting out a piece of food that disagreed with it. His whole body shook like an old motor out of tune. Once the vomiting ceased, Bruce could hardly move; he had to lie on his back on the bathroom floor to rest before dragging himself to bed. Sallie and Bruce tried sleeping, but they ached too much. Chad slept restlessly.
Although the Sheltons believed they were merely suffering from the Johnsons' flu or possibly a bout of routine food poisoning, they worried about their infant son. Bruce, especially, found it hard to understand how Chad's body could endure a fraction of what he and his wife were going through. He couldn't recall ever feeling so sick, so physically wasted. And as he lay awake, his head started throbbing with excruciating pain. What was going on? What was making them so sick?
To convince himself it wasn't a bad dream, Bruce telephoned his own sister about eleven o'clock. She blamed it all on the tacos. That comforted Bruce, but it failed to completely erase his concern. He called Dr. R. David Glover, Clad's physician, at home and described Chad's symptoms.
"Sounds like food poisoning," Glover guessed. "Let's see how be does. If you don't feel he's gotten any better by morning, bring him to the clinic."
Bruce returned to bed and told Sallie what Glover had said. There wasn't much that could be done for ordinary food poisoning, according to Glover. Still, for most of the rest of the night, Sallie and Bruce vomited violently off and on. Each time, their stomachs ached more than the previous time.