A forensic reconstruction

Anatomy of an Attempted Murder

2015–2017, in five phases. This is not a feeling. It is a sequence — and every claim below is marked for exactly how well it is proven.

Verified primary source / cited record Partial artifact exists, not fully extracted Asserted my account, pending production
How to read this. Each item carries a tag. The strongest evidence here is not my memory — it is her own text messages, pulled verbatim from a forensic phone extraction, and my own contemporaneous medical and police records. A criminal referral on this conduct is in preparation for submission to the FBI; nothing here is a conviction. I am asking you to read the record and weigh the tags.
I
2015 → September 2016

The Groundwork

The reunion was not a reconciliation. It was access — and while it was being arranged, the means were being assembled.
2015 · during nursing schoolAsserted

The campaign to move back in

While Elizabeth Howell was in her nursing program, pressure to let her move back into the family home arrived through friends and family — not from her directly at first. It seemed, in hindsight, that the summer was planned before I agreed to any of it.

Nov 2015 – Jun 2016Verified

Pharmacology training

Her Umpqua Community College nursing coursework covered clinical pharmacology — the study of drugs, doses, and their effects on the body — in the months immediately before my collapse.

Source: UCC coursework record; case evidence index.

Sept 26, 2016Verified

A daily liquid vehicle enters the home

An Amazon order for Liquid Vitamin D3 (5,000 IU) is placed. I want to be precise: D3 is a normal supplement, and I am not claiming D3 poisoned me. I am flagging what it is — an oil-based daily liquid, administered in the home under her influence, exactly the kind of vehicle a fat-soluble agent can ride in. Whether it was a carrier is a question for a toxicologist, not a conclusion I'm stating.

Statute anchor: ORS 166.065 (means/opportunity). Toxicology expert engagement pending.

Analysis · the method

The Pharmacology of Premeditation

She wasn't assigned these drugs because they're the poison. She was taught the one skill that is: how to harm a body below the threshold of detection — and make it look like a disease.

In the months her live-in partner was dying, Elizabeth Howell was a nursing student acing clinical pharmacology. Her own device documents a Nov 4, 2015 assignment to study four high-risk drugs by name. Read together, they are a curriculum in concealment: each one mimics a recognized natural illness, and not one appears on a routine toxicology panel.

Amiodarone

Antiarrhythmic · ~58-day half-life

Hepatotoxic; thyroid dysfunction (it's 37% iodine). Mimics: chronic liver & thyroid disease — exactly my liver enzymes and "thyroid storm."

Not on the 2017 panel. Fat-soluble.

Bumetanide (Bumex)

Loop diuretic · 40× furosemide

Severe diuresis, electrolyte loss, rapid wasting. Mimics: dehydration — and my 57-lb loss.

Not on the 2017 panel.

Epinephrine

Endogenous catecholamine

Tachycardia, hypertension, GI distress. Mimics: panic/anxiety — and being a normal body hormone, exogenous dosing is nearly undetectable after the fact.

Cannot be distinguished retrospectively.

Methylphenidate (Ritalin)

Schedule II stimulant

Anorexia, weight loss, tachycardia. Mimics: hyperthyroidism / an eating disorder.

Not on a heavy-metal panel.

The detection gapVerified

The 2017 panel could not have found any of it

The heavy-metal panel run in Jan 2017 tested four analytes: lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium. It did not test iron, prescription drugs, catecholamines, or diuretics. A negative result there proves nothing — by design, it would miss every agent above.

Source: Pharmacological White Paper §III; Cedars-Sinai panel TURNER-0057.

The suspected agentVerified

The evidence points to iron — and iron isn't on the panel either

My own physician independently named iron ("if iron was the agent used"). Iron drives oxidative injury to the liver, gut, and pancreas (the Fenton reaction); it's OTC, tasteless in food, and requires a separate iron-studies panel no one ordered. Ferritin 799 fits. Hereditary causes were later excluded — HFE-negative, no hemosiderin on biopsy.

Source: White Paper §IV; Campbell email Apr 5, 2017; Keck/Queen's biopsy 2025.

And the D3 questionAsserted · expert review

Why a daily oil-based liquid matters

Amiodarone is intensely fat-soluble. A liquid Vitamin D3 (oil-based, dosed daily, in her control) is precisely the kind of vehicle a lipophilic agent can ride in. I am not claiming this happened — I'm stating the question a forensic toxicologist should answer with the preserved record and specialized assays.

Means/opportunity analysis. Toxicology expert engagement pending.

She scored within 2% of an A on her pharmacology final — ten weeks before my decline accelerated.her own message, forensically recovered · June 6, 2016
II
October 2016

The Infiltration

Access secured. The financial motive set in writing. The exact method studied — and emailed to her boyfriend.
Oct 12, 2016 · 11:43 AMVerified

$3.25 million in policies — on me and the children

Applications for $1,000,000 in life insurance on each of four children, plus $250,000 on my life, are submitted through Banner Life — Policy #181263905 — during the active illness window. The financial motive, in the paperwork.

Source: timeline E002; Banner Life policy record; exhibits INS-1/INS-2/S-4.

Oct 19, 2016Verified

A proxy reaches for me

Her husband (M.H.) texts from her phone seeking my contact information — an early instance of the proxy pattern that would define the next decade.

Source: timeline E003; exhibit Y.

Oct 20, 2016 · 8:00 PMPartial

The toxidrome, studied and sent

A nursing-school paper on hepatic encephalopathy — the precise late-stage liver failure my body was sliding toward — is emailed to her then-partner (J.S.). The strongest single artifact in the file. (It exists as image captures; the message body has not yet been machine-extracted — hence Partial.)

Source: timeline E004; Exhibit BB (image).

III
October – December 2016

The Act

My body broke down. And in her own text messages, the plan narrates itself.
Dec 8, 2016Verified

The poisoning-window labs

LabCorp: ferritin 799 ng/mL (ref 30–400), CRP 28.7 (ref <1.0), AST 69, ALT 113, GGT 134, lipase 152 (pancreatitis range), and white count 3.4 — paradoxical leukopenia, consistent with marrow suppression. This is not a disease that comes and goes. It is the signature of an exposure.

Source: timeline E008; Turner Medical Forensic Narrative; LabCorp panel.

Dec 1, 2016 · eveningVerified

"Getting ready to get this last assignment done"

In her own thread with her then-partner (J.S.), recovered verbatim from the forensic phone extraction: "Getting ready to get this last assignment done. I scheduled a doctor's appointment for Tuesday morning. Banner life insurance said they'll insure me without problems and no underwriting on any of the children no problem… Zander is the broker." His reply: "There u go, he better get the job done. He makes a hefty commission on life policies." And: "Hun ur fine."

Source: timeline E006 / Smoking Gun S-2; UFED cell-phone extraction (primary source), thread anchored to her sign-off "Good day, Elizabeth."

Dec 30, 2016 · 7:30 PMVerified

The policy is finalized

Jeffrey J. Zander emails to finalize Banner Life Policy #181263905 on the children — eight days before I would be admitted to Cedars-Sinai.

Source: timeline E009.

"Getting ready to get this last assignment done."— Howell to her then-partner (J.S.), Dec 1, 2016 · her own words, forensically recovered
IV
Late October 2016 – January 2017

The Departure

She left at the lowest point of my life. The moment she was gone, my body began to climb back. I documented why before anyone could call it hindsight.
Late Oct 2016 →Verified

She moves out at my sickest — and the curve turns

She departs at the point I am closest to death. Then the labs do something a disease does not: they reverse. Ferritin begins falling roughly 90–100 points a month after separation — the descending half of an exposure that stopped.

Source: timeline E005; serial ferritin record (see the chart on the main page).

Jan 6 & Jan 29, 2017Verified

I took it to the top of the state — in writing, in January 2017

On January 6, 2017 I reported the suspected poisoning directly to the Director of Oregon State Police's Criminal Investigation Division — the head of the state's criminal investigators. He received my report and asked where to refer it. Douglas County never called me back. My own January 29, 2017 follow-up documents the silence, and states plainly that I believed I had been poisoned, naming the $250,000 policy taken on my life without my consent. This predates every later development — it cannot be a story built after the fact. (That official has since retired; he is a 2017 witness, not current OSP leadership.)

Source: timeline E011/E012; EX20 (OSP correspondence). The escalation: the top of the state received it — the county dropped it.

V
January – April 2017

The Cover-Up

When the evidence could prove it, the evidence disappeared. When the case could expose it, the case was closed in one line. When I reported, the story was flipped onto me.
On or about Jan 30, 2017Verified coordination: asserted

The burglary that took only what mattered

While I am at Cedars-Sinai, the Yoncalla home is burglarized in daylight. Taken: my medical records documenting the poisoning workup, four firearms, and our ESA dog, Stella Bear; the cat was injured. The gold and electronics were left. The paid housesitter — who lived a minute away — texted that he saw "4 cars and a truck," did not stop, did not call 911, and would not cooperate with deputies; my van had sat at his trailer and returned with 2,000+ extra miles. Documented. That Howell coordinated it is my belief from these facts — asserted, and laid out for investigators with subpoena targets.

Source: timeline E013; EX21 Cutsforth burglary letter (2/3/2017); DCSO #1702010296 (reported on/about Jan 30; some notes reference Jan 27); SAR CSP000914.

Feb 15, 2017Verified

Closed in one line

DCSO Detective Jayson Forte closes the case by email, offering a one-line alternative — "other possible explanations (i.e. liver disease)" — from the same department as a deputy personally connected to Howell. No investigation of the poisoning.

Source: timeline E014; exhibit K.

Spring 2017Verified

"If iron was the agent used"

My own physician, Dr. Paul Campbell, writes an email (dated in the spring of 2017) titled "If iron was the agent used" — a treating doctor, contemporaneously, naming the suspected agent. (Years later, HFE genetic testing and a liver biopsy would exclude every hereditary cause.)

Source: Campbell email chronology, Apr 5, 2017.

Apr 17, 2017Verified

The story, flipped

She files a false theft report against me (DCSO #1704170094) the same day I move to have my phone forensically analyzed — accompanied by DARVO texts about the phone forensics. The accused becomes the accuser. It would not be the last time: years later, when a court-appointed evaluator and my own attorney took my children's side, she would file complaints against their professional licenses — the same move, escalated.

Source: timeline E016; exhibits C, X.

In her own words · across the years

She kept telling on herself

The forensic record above is 2015–2017. But she never stopped putting her intent in writing. These are her own documented words — verbatim, from a court-monitored co-parenting account — not my characterization.

"I've secured professionals to investigate and protect my assets — including what you owe me and the children… I know and have known a lot of things, and I choose at my discretion when and how I reveal what I know."Elizabeth Howell · Our Family Wizard, Dec 19, 2019
"You can only be mad at yourself for forcing your once family to move from Los Angeles to a predominantly white county in Oregon."Elizabeth Howell · Our Family Wizard, Dec 19, 2019
"In response, I have contacted the FBI, who then promptly entered the children into a federal program that would mitigate them from being transported across the US border."Elizabeth Howell · Our Family Wizard, Oct 28, 2020 — a false federal report
The verification scorecard

Most of this is not my word against hers.

It is her own texts, my own labs, my own doctor, and the police record — tagged honestly, including where the proof is still partial. That discipline is the point. The weakest links are labeled; the spine is verified.

13
Verified
1
Partial
2
Asserted

See the six smoking guns →