It was Jan. 16 and ice covered the sidewalks. In one blue van, a group of five teens were doing nothing, as they say, just feeling the freedom of driving around on a Saturday night.
The high school students stopped for cigarettes at a Total gas station, got a peach Slurpee at 7-Eleven, smoked a marijuana joint and ate some burgers at McDonald's. Nights like this had become routine for the two senior boys in the car, but it was a thrill for the three freshman girls in the back seat.
But by early morning, two girls in the group—best friends Samantha Reid and Melanie Sindone—were lying unconscious next to each other on the cold tile of a stranger's bathroom.
Not too long before, Samantha and Melanie had sat in drug-education classes at Carlson High School in Gibraltar. They had learned about marijuana, heroin, cocaine and alcohol.
But teachers never mentioned a scientific-sounding drug called gamma hydroxybutyrate. The girls never learned there was a clear liquid known on the streets as G or Scoop or GHB.
Nobody told them to watch their glasses at parties. Nobody told them that if a drink tastes salty when it shouldn't, stop drinking it.
For Melanie, 15, the January night is mostly a blur. She remembers what it felt like as her body slowly went numb while she watched her friend slump down into a couch.
"I couldn't help her," Melanie said.
Nobody could. At 7:36 p.m. the following day, Samantha Reid would be dead.
For months, even years in some regions of the country, GHB had been putting body-builders and teen partiers into comas.
At least 46 deaths nationwide and more than 5,500 overdoses have been linked to GHB since 1995, including at least two deaths in Michigan, said Trinka Porrata, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective and the nation's leading GHB authority. The drug is colorless and odorless with a slightly salty taste. There is a small difference between a dose that will get someone high and one that will kill. The drug is often mixed at home by teens who unknowingly can put together a deadly substance.
"The risk of dying is so volatile and unpredictable. One time—and you might be dead as a doornail," Porrata said. "It is the most dangerous drug I have dealt with in 25 years."
The statistics dating back to 1995 are understated, she said, mostly because law enforcement officials and medical examiners weren't paying attention to a drug they thought was affecting only a few groups of people known to take risks, such as body builders.
But Samantha and Melanie weren't body builders or participants in all-night parties known as raves. For that reason, the drugging of these two young girls would bring national attention to a new alphabet of drugs: E for Ecstasy, K for Ketamine and G for GHB.
The story of Samantha Reid and Melanie Sindone would show that anybody can become a victim of this new drug culture, one promoted as "natural and safe" by underground manufacturers and traded in basements and over the Internet. It would make some teens cautious about where they party and frighten parents about what could happen to even the most innocent children. It would spark debate in Washington about putting strict penalties on the use of the easily available drugs.
It would lead to the nation's first prosecution for a GHB-related homicide. Still, since Samantha's death in January, the GHB statistics have continued to grow. At least 10 more people have died from this drug and another 40 deaths are being investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It was Jan. 14, 1999, and Joshua Cole, now 19, and Erick Limmer, now 26, were drinking at BT's Lounge, a strip club on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn. After the dancers finished, Josh and Erick met a third man at a gas station across the street from the bar. The man reached into the trunk of his car and took out a clear gallon container of what authorities believe was either GHB or a close chemical substitute called GBL. He unwound the bubble wrap from the glass container. Erick bought the drug and took it to his apartment on Grosse Ile.
Erick told Josh not to touch it, according to statements Josh later gave to police.
Last January, about the same time Erick and Josh bought the drug, Samantha and Melanie were at Samantha's house in Rockwood, watching Teletubbies. They ordered in cheesy bread from Benito's Pizza and passed a two-liter Mountain Dew back and forth between them. They listened to hip-hop, the Dixie Chicks and Monifah's Touch It. They talked about taking drivers' education classes together, going on a spring-break trip to Daytona Beach, Fla., and their latest crushes.
They used magic markers to write messages on the walls of Samantha's bedroom. Her mother planned to paint the room and allowed Samantha and her friends to graffiti the walls.
"Love you like a sis," Melanie wrote to Samantha. "Best friends forever." Samantha and Melanie met in middle school, but they didn't become friends until the beginning of their freshman year in high school. They quickly became inseparable. After school, Melanie often took the bus home to Samantha's house, where she would stay over three or four nights a week. Soon, the same three charms hung from their necks: Best Friends. 365. 24-7.
Samantha was Melanie's motivator. Samantha loved having fun and couldn't stand to see someone pouting. "Melanie SinDONE," she would say, accenting the last part of her name. "Get up. Have fun."
They both played loud music. Both had divorced parents. Both turned 15 in January.
They had differences, too.
Samantha craved attention and earned the nickname Hammy Sammy because she jumped in front of a camera at every opportunity. Melanie was always the quieter one who shied away from the spotlight.
Samantha, who stood 5 feet 4 inches and weighed 122 pounds, played every sport she could, including basketball, baseball and gymnastics. Melanie, a tiny girl at just 5 feet and about 95 pounds, planned to play basketball her freshman year, but she was hurt before the season started.
Both girls lived with their mothers after their parents divorced, and both moved around before their freshman year. Melanie's family stayed in the Downriver area; Samantha's mother, Judi Clark, 38, moved her daughter and son from Detroit to Lincoln Park to Rockwood.
After Samantha's father left when she was two years old, her mother moved Samantha and her older brother, Charles, to a home in southwest Detroit. But Judi, a strong-spirited mother, got into a pipe-fitter's apprenticeship program, and when she could afford it a few years later, she moved her family to Lincoln Park. Two years after that, when she could afford to move again, she bought a house in Rockwood to be in a safer neighborhood.
As a pipe-fitter, Judi did hard, dirty work for Great Lakes Steel Blast Furnace last winter, crawling into tunnels to reline furnaces. She worked 10 hours a day so Samantha could have the things teens want: Nike T-shirts, glitter make-up, money for the movies and, hopefully, a trip to Disney World.
Samantha was always eager to make others happy, especially her mother. Even as a freshman, when it's no longer cool to call her mother "mommy," she did it anyway.
"She's the same girl that everyone else is raising. She's the Girl Scout and the basketball player and the baseball player and the girl who likes the drive-through at McDonald's," said her mother, Judi. "She's the girl who looked forward to driving and getting a job."
Samantha and her mother had a deal: Judi would work long hours to support them, and Samantha would keep the house and yard tidy. Melanie sometimes helped Samantha with her chores.
When Samantha wasn't doing chores, one of her greatest passions was writing poetry.
She wrote about everything. About boyfriends, best friends and peer pressure.
She also wrote a poem about her fear of dying. In that poem, Samantha wrote: "What if I am too young still/Not old enough to die? What if I want to wait until/I've experienced life to say goodbye?"
Samantha didn't get that chance. On Jan.16, she said goodbye to her mom and got into a friend's van.
They drove to Grosse Ile, a community sheltered by the waters of the Detroit River.
A sign at the island's police station told visitors that it was "Michigan's safest community."
"What should I wear?" Samantha asked Melanie.
She had already changed a few times. Clothes were scattered on her bed and the floor. Lipstick and eye-shadow were strewn across her vanity.
It was Saturday night, and the girls were getting ready to hang out with two seniors from their high school, Daniel Brayman and Nicholas Holtschlag, both 18. Melanie's stepsister, Jessica VanWassehnova, also a ninth-grader, went along.
Samantha almost didn't make it out. Her mom had grounded her so her grades would improve. But Samantha had been upset about trouble in a relationship with her boyfriend. Her mom decided to let her go out, rationalizing that mingling with friends might get her mind off the problem.
About 8:30 p.m., there was a knock at the door and Nick came inside. Samantha told her mom she was going to see a movie and said she would be home before her 1 a.m. curfew. Melanie, who was planning to spend the night at Samantha's house, never called her mom to let her know she was going out.
The three girls got into the back of Nick's van, and they hit the road with no place to go. Dan was already sitting in the front. They drove around for about two to three hours. Nobody mentioned the movie.
They stopped at a Total gas station to get cigarettes and then went to the Marina Bay apartments in Gibraltar. In the parking lot of the apartment complex, a man walked up to the van and traded a bag of marijuana for cash. They drove through Downriver as they passed a joint, the smell of marijuana mixed with the taste of rebellion. It's unclear whether Samantha smoked it.
Melanie and Samantha went inside a 7-Eleven in Brownstown Township to get a peach Slurpee and then stopped at a McDonald's. Meanwhile, Nick picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. The phone rang at an apartment on Grosse Ile.
Nick told the person on the other end that the group was on its way over and to get alcohol, Melanie and Jessica recall.
Nick hung up and drove south toward the Detroit River. He crossed over the bumpy bridge to Grosse Ile and entered a different lifestyle. Grosse Ile is home to lakefront mansions, three yacht clubs and horse stables. There are no movie theaters or fast-food joints that dot every other Downriver town. When they got inside Apartment 34 in the Elbamar Apartment complex on Groh Road, the girls flopped down on a couch. It was about 11 p.m.
There were no parents there, just the three girls, Nick, Dan and another friend whom the girls didn't know, Joshua Cole. Their host was Erick Limmer.
They turned on Saturday Night Live. Teen heartthrob James Van Der Beek, better known as Dawson on the WB show Dawson's Creek, was the guest host. Melanie took a few sips of a Budweiser and put it down because she didn't like it. She declined another drink from Josh.
Erick walked into the living room. He threw a baggie of marijuana on the table and Nick rolled a joint, Melanie said. They watched Jackie Brown, a crime story about regular people who break the law from time to time. Melanie poured herself two shots of Apple Pucker liquor mixed with vodka. The teens were bored, and Josh started to get antsy. Erick left the room to take a shower.
"Let's play drinking games," Josh said, bringing out a deck of cards. "No," everyone else replied.
"Do you want something else to drink?" the girls recall Josh asking.
Melanie said she wanted a screwdriver, a mix of vodka and orange juice, and Samantha said she wanted a Mountain Dew. Josh, Nick and Dan went into the kitchen. They talked and passed around another joint, Melanie said. Josh made the girls their drinks.
Josh would later tell police that he wanted the girls to talk more, to act more lively. He wondered if some of that stuff Erick bought at the strip club, put into the girls' drinks, would liven up the party.
Dan handed a drink to Melanie, and Nick handed a drink to Samantha, Melanie said. They were watching Superfly on video, a 1972 movie about a coke dealer wanting to make one last big score before going clean.
Melanie and Samantha sipped their drinks.
"This tastes gross," Samantha said to her friend. "Can you try it?"
Melanie took a small sip, agreed that it tasted gross and handed it back to Samantha, who quickly gulped down almost the whole glass of Mountain Dew. She didn't know it, but she also swallowed GBL, the main ingredient of GHB. The chemical contains the same ingredients found in floor stripper and drain cleaner.
Within a few minutes, Samantha passed out on the couch. Melanie sipped the screwdriver and rapidly felt drunk. She felt her body going numb and tried to stop it.
Melanie began to vomit. Jessica and at least one of the boys carried her into the bathroom, where she continued to throw up. After she stopped vomiting, her friends laid her on her side on a towel in the bathroom "so she didn't choke," Jessica said.
It was about 2 a.m., and Samantha was still sleeping on the living-room couch as the rest of the group continued to watch TV. Erick was mad about the vomit on his carpet and furniture and told the teens to scrub the cushions and vacuum the carpet.
Then, they heard Samantha gagging and throwing up in her sleep. The other teens carried her into the bathroom and laid her next to Melanie, two best friends again sleeping side by side.
If they had taken Samantha to the hospital, she likely would be alive today, doctors would later say.
Instead, Samantha continued to vomit while she was unconscious.
Vomit went into Samantha's right lung, doctors would later discover. Soon, the vomit would block air trying to reach her lungs.
The other four teens knew the girls didn't look good, but they didn't think anything really bad could happen. So they left them there to sleep it off. While the two girls slept, Nick and Dan drove to Meijer at 3:15 a.m. and bought carpet cleaner and a $69.99 Hoover vacuum to clean the girls' vomit from Erick's apartment.
As they put the vacuum together, the teens heard a gagging noise coming from the bathroom.
Samantha was making "noises and having problems breathing," Jessica recalled. She checked for a pulse and wasn't sure if she had one. Jessica and the other boys discussed calling an ambulance.
"No," said Erick, worried about authorities coming to his house. About 4:30 a.m., six teens piled back into Nick's van. Josh carried Samantha, dropping her on the ice-covered sidewalk as he slipped on his way to the van.
Erick's parting advice: Don't tell anyone you were here.
On the way to the hospital, Jessica saw "white stuff stuck in ( Samantha's ) throat" and stuck her fingers in her mouth to try to clear it away.
Melanie, meanwhile, was "breathing funny," Jessica recalled. The girls were carried into Oakwood Hospital-Seaway Center in Trenton at 4:45 a.m.
Neither girl was breathing.
Neither girl had a heart beat.
"You don't know me, but my name is Josh and I met Melanie tonight and she got so drunk and passed out and we took her to the hospital."
Those are the words Nancy Sindone remembers waking up to when her telephone rang about 4:45 a.m. Jan. 17.
A few minutes later, the phone startled another mother, Judi Clark, who had fallen asleep on the couch. Joshua Cole, a boy she had never met, was on the line.
He started to give her the same news when the call-waiting beep interrupted him. It was the emergency room staff.
"Is she there because of alcohol poisoning?" Judi asked the nurse. She knew there had been a lot of that going on at colleges.
"No," he told her. He didn't tell her it was much worse: The two girls were unconscious, but they didn't reek of alcohol. Doctors suspected GHB, a powerful depressant they had learned about at a recent conference.
They had no way to test for GHB, so they treated the girls the same way they would treat any unconscious patient.
Minutes later, both mothers drove through dense fog to the emergency room. It was the beginning of a daylong vigil at their daughters' bedsides. During the first few hours at the hospital, the girls looked identical: Stark white, eyes shut, tubes stuck up their noses and down their throats. Hospital gowns replaced jeans.
"They looked dead," Nancy Sindone recalled.
Melanie was breathing slowly and was put on a respirator. Unlike Samantha, vomit had not reached her lungs. If Melanie had been brought to the hospital a few minutes later, she likely would have stopped breathing, had a heart attack and died, doctors said.
Her deterioration was just steps behind Samantha's. Doctors said Samantha was in such severe shock when she got to the hospital that she was essentially dead.
"You're wrong," Judi told the doctors. "I have a tough girl there, and she's going to make it."
Doctors didn't know why Samantha was in a coma. There was no external trauma and no sign of alcohol ingestion. They mentioned something called GHB, but said they weren't sure if that was what put her into a coma.
They had no way to know for sure. Oakwood Hospital-Seaway Center, like all the other hospitals in Michigan, has no way to test for GHB. In some ways, a test would be irrelevant: There is no antidote for GHB. And because it generally leaves the body within 12 hours, it may already be undetectable when a victim gets to the hospital.
Doctors wanted Judi to see her daughter right away. They feared that she wouldn't live much longer.
Judi tried to go to her daughter's bed, but couldn't. She called her mother and boyfriend. She couldn't go back there alone, couldn't see her 15-year-old daughter strapped to life support.
Samantha's boyfriend, aunts, and cousins came to the hospital to support Judi and tell Samantha that they loved her.
About 5 p.m., Judi went home to get clothes so she could spend the night at the hospital. When she returned, Samantha's bed was tilted and her feet were sticking up in the air.
The doctor asked Judi to leave the room. Samantha's heart had stopped beating twice, and it was becoming harder to get it started again. Her kidneys and liver had already shut down, her blood pressure kept dropping and her heart overworked itself trying to compensate for the failed organs. The doctor came out to the waiting room a half hour later. "How many times do you want to let your daughter die?" he asked Judi.
Judi never answered the question.
Melanie opened her eyes about 17 hours after she closed them on Grosse Ile. She gagged from the tube that went down her throat and into her lungs to help her breathe. Her arms were strapped to the bed.
Her eyes were open, but the tube lodged in her throat kept her from asking where she was and why she was there. Instead, she scribbled short phrases on scrap paper.
Where am I? What happened? Where's Sammy?
Doctors told her that Samantha was in the next room. They mentioned GHB. Melanie had never heard of it before.
She wanted to see Samantha. Doctors advised against it, but then reluctantly wheeled her bulky hospital bed to the window of the room next door.
Hours ago, they were lying unconscious on a bathroom floor. Now, Melanie was looking at Samantha through a window, the closest she could get to her best friend. She turned to Samantha's mother, Judi, whose face was puffy from a day of crying. She had to say something. "I'll come clean the house for you," she told Samantha's mom.
Judi heard what Melanie said, but she didn't know how to respond.
They looked at each other, looked through the window into Samantha's room, and looked back at each other.
In the silence, tears rolled down their faces.
"I'll clean your house," Melanie said again.
Judi nodded. They both knew that Samantha would never do the household chores again.
MANY FLIRT WITH GHB, UNMINDFUL OF RISKS
It Attracts Those Who Would Never Touch 'Real Drugs'
A 22-year-old man from Trenton puts five capfuls of GHB into Kool-Aid, guzzles the drink and passes out within minutes. He has a seizure at home while waiting for an ambulance.
A 23-year-old man from Grosse Pointe drinks GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate, from an Evian bottle at a bar. He begins twitching and has stopped breathing by the time he gets to a hospital.
A Detroit man, 30, has been using GHB for two months for body building and euphoria. He bought it from a friend and now can't go more than a few hours without it. He calls the Poison Control Center in Detroit, wanting to know about treatment programs for addiction.
A 17-year-old man from Pontiac bought GHB over the Internet. He drinks some of it, begins vomiting and lapses into a coma. He wakes up in the hospital four hours later.
This is the world of GHB, a drug gaining popularity in Michigan and throughout the nation. Although it is best known as a "date-rape" drug, more than 80 percent of overdose cases are from people who willingly use the drug. The majority are white men, ages 17 to 30.
Teens and young adults use it to get high without drinking alcohol or combine the two drugs in a lethal cocktail to intensify a buzz. Body builders think it will make them stronger.
The recreational users of GHB often buy the chemicals on the Internet and mix them at home. Unlike illegal drugs that are manufactured in controlled laboratories, this "kitchen sink" chemistry means there is little regard for accurate proportions or quality control.
As a result, there are unpredictable—and sometimes deadly—reactions like those experienced by callers to the Poison Control Center this year. Many of the calls come from doctors and nurses seeking advice about a possible GHB victim. The center already has received more than four times the number of GHB-related calls this year than it did four years ago.
GHB is colorless and odorless with a slightly salty taste. Because it is a clear liquid, it easily can be masked in other drinks such as water, soda or juice. There are cases where teens drank "water" from sports bottles, but really had mixed GHB into the liquid. Their parents or coaches had no idea.
Because only a few drops can get someone high, the drug can be carried in innocent-looking containers such as Visine eye-drop dispensers.
The drug is attracting people who say they would never touch "real drugs" such as cocaine and heroin, but want a drug that will relax them like alcohol.
But because there is a small difference between a dose that will get someone high and one that will kill, some users find themselves waking up in an emergency room.
"There is no safe level of use. Nobody can tell you what is a safe level," said Trinka Porrata, a drug consultant and former Los Angeles Police Department detective. "A drop may be too much. A dose that might make a 150-pound woman high can kill a 300-pound man. It's unpredictable."
Dr. Susan Smolinske of the Poison Control Center said more calls lately have come from people using GHB alternatives, products that act like GHB but instead contain a related substance that usually is legal. Those products are sold on the Internet with benign names like Renewtrient, Zen and Blue Nitro.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that at least 46 people have died and 5,500 others have overdosed since 1995. They are investigating at least 40 more suspected GHB deaths this year. "It is not some little cult of lost kids who are doing this drug," Porrata said. "These are the mainstream kids who are using it and dying from it."
Lethal Cocktail:
The Tragedy and the Aftermath of GHB
Originally published in The Detroit News, December, 1999
Part 2 of 2
Judi Clark, Samantha's mother, uses her daughter's death to show others the evils of GHB.
Silent now, Samantha Reid lay in a pink casket, the type usually chosen for girls who die too young.
Inside were a Girl Scout sash, her Bible, a picture of her dog Scrappy, her favorite teddy bear and a Tickle-me Cookie Monster.
Gone were the clothes of a young girl, the baggy Nike sweat shirts and glitter make-up she loved to wear. Instead, she wore a black suit and a pastel pink shirt that her mother, Judi Clark, picked out from Hudson's three days after her only daughter was fatally drugged.
Samantha was 15, an age when watching Teletubbies and seeking summer jobs seem equally appropriate. An age when there's a delicate line between what's fun and what's safe.
At the Voran Funeral Home in Taylor, Judi's crushing sobs drowned out the words of Jewel's song Hands, a song that calls for hope in seemingly desperate times.
"I won't be made useless, won't be idle with despair," Jewel sang.
In the year after the funeral, Judi, 38, has used those words to get up in the morning, to fight against the drug that killed her daughter and nearly killed her daughter's best friend, Melanie Sindone.
When Melanie, also 15, hears that song now, she sobs, sometimes for hours. The casket closed. A mother went to bury her only daughter, and a young girl went to bury her best friend.
But the drug GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate, continues to poison Melanie as she copes with the aftermath of the night she was drugged and her best friend died.
Also poisoned are the lives of four young men accused of putting GHB into the girls' drinks. The men could spend the rest of their lives in jail if convicted of manslaughter and poisoning at their trial next month. And from big-city parties to small-town high schools, the drug continues to claim more victims.
Although GHB had been slowly creeping into Michigan for about four years, few people knew about it last January when Samantha and Melanie were hanging out with some friends on Grosse Ile.
Young adults at all-night rave parties were using it for a quick high, and body-builders were taking it to build muscle. Some men knew about it as a date-rape drug because it could be secreted into a woman's drink to render her unconscious.
But most police officers were fighting the standard drugs of choice, namely cocaine and heroin. They had started to fight trendy drugs such as Ketamine and Ecstasy, but there was little attention given to GHB, a drug feared for its unpredictability. A small dose of GHB can get someone high, but a slightly larger dose can lead to seizures, coma or death.
By January, as the drug became more mainstream, signs emerged in Michigan that authorities were dangerously unaware of the unique threats of GHB. Overdose victims were arriving at emergency rooms, but few doctors knew what GHB was or how to recognize it in a patient.
Police were pulling over seemingly drunken drivers and were confused when Breathalyzer tests showed no evidence of alcohol. The police didn't know to look for the clear, odorless substance.
Educators hadn't heard of it and thus couldn't warn their students.
Meanwhile, Web sites were popping up that told teens how to make and buy GHB, a drug promoted as natural and safe on the Internet. Underground manufacturers were mixing new proportions of chemicals and picking new product names for their latest concoction of the same dangerous drug.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned over-the-counter sales of GHB in 1990, but sellers have found ways around the ban.
Some sell ingredients or kits to make the drug. Others sell similar, but legal chemicals called GBL or BD, which convert to GHB once ingested. The products are then sold with misleading names like Renewtrient, Zen or Serenity.
"There is no drug out there as scary, except maybe heroin," said Phyllis Good, a Michigan State Police specialist. "It will continue to increase, and it's only going to get worse."
The drug is still legal in about half the states. And because the federal government has not yet declared it an illegal substance, no agency tracks its use.
But at the very least, hundreds of thousands are taking GHB, say those who study the drug.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating at least 40 suspected GHB-related deaths this year. At a minimum, 46 people have already died since 1995. About 5,500 overdose victims have gone to emergency rooms, but that doesn't include all the people who overdose but don't go to a hospital.
"What is really scary is that there are a lot more," said Trinka Porrata, a drug consultant and retired Los Angeles Police Department detective. "For every one reported, there are kazillions that aren't."
Samantha Reid, at 15, is the youngest known victim of GHB. A 77-year-old man is the oldest.
The drug has killed people in every age group and every region of the country, from North Carolina to California, Pennsylvania to Michigan. People who abuse this drug sometimes have no idea what they are dealing with. They listen to the illegal manufacturers who promote their products as herbal or nutritional supplements.
Often, the people reading the Internet hype have the same youthful innocence as Samantha and Melanie.
One victim who believed the hype was Kyle Hagmann, a freshman at California Lutheran College in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousands Oaks. On April 24, he took GHB after a classmate told him it was a safe sleep aid. Hagmann, 19, read about its safety on a Web site, three months after Samantha died. So Hagmann, an honor student, took it one night to help him fall asleep. He never woke up. He suffocated with his face in the pillow.
When Grosse Ile detectives confronted Joshua Cole, one of the suspects in the drugging of Samantha Reid, it became clear that he also didn't know he was experimenting with an unpredictable, potentially deadly substance. He told police that the GHB would just liven up the party.
Police said that Josh and the girls' two friends from high school, Daniel Brayman and Nicholas Holtschlag, both 18, went into the kitchen to get the girls' drinks. The fourth man at the party was Erick Limmer, 26, who rents the apartment where the group was hanging out.
"We were getting bored when I remembered about the drug in question," Josh wrote in a statement for police. "At that point in time, I had mentioned it to Dan and then to Nick. We all decided that if we put a little into the girls' drink, maybe they would be more talkative and it wouldn't be so quiet. When we decided to go ahead with the idea, I then took some and dropped a little in each of the girls' glasses, two Mountain Dews, one orange juice ..."
Douglas Baker, the deputy chief assistant Wayne County prosecutor for major drug crimes, contends that all three teen-age men at the party knew about the GHB before giving the girls the final round of drinks. Hoping to keep themselves out of trouble, they laid the girls on the bathroom floor to let them sleep off the drug's effects instead of immediately taking them to the hospital when they began vomiting, Baker said.
"What they do is roll the dice with her life," Baker told a district judge during the four-day preliminary examination last May. "They roll the dice with her life because they're going to wait until the very last minute to see if they come out of it on their own.
"They wait and wait and wait and wait - until they're going to end up with two corpses in the apartment."
GHB leaves a notoriously difficult puzzle in its wake. Few police officers are trained to look for it.
Even more troubling, though, is that GHB leaves behind no odor and its residue is nearly untraceable. Few forensic labs even have the capacity to test for GHB.
The drug is hard to detect by law enforcement because it can mimic brash drunkenness. In Los Angeles, police stopped a man three times for drunken driving before they learned that he had not been drunk, but had been under the influence of GHB.
L.A. police stopped Scott Brockman on Aug. 17, 1996, for what they thought was drunken driving. A Breathalyzer test showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.03, far lower than the legal limit of 0.10.
Police were confused. He had run six stop signs while driving 45 mph in a 25 mph zone. They cited him for reckless driving.
Ten days later, Brockman was again under the influence of GHB when he crashed into a car stopped at a traffic light, killing the driver. Police again were stumped by a blood-alcohol content of 0.09. A year later, when police knew what to look for and blood samples were analyzed, GHB was found.
"It is scary that he made it through the system two and a half times before the true drug issue surfaced," Porrata said.
It wouldn't take that long for police to catch on in the death of Samantha Reid.
On the night Samantha was drugged, police went to the Trenton hospital and ran into a wall of lies from teens afraid of getting in trouble. The kids at the hospital told police they had been to a party in Ecorse that they knew about from a flier.
Lt. Robert Shaw drove the boys around Ecorse, hoping they could point out the house. They never found it, and Shaw didn't believe the story.
The first break in the case came when Melanie awoke from her coma. She told police that she had been at Erick Limmer's apartment on Grosse Ile.
Police obtained a search warrant. At 5:17 a.m. Monday, five officers crashed through the door of Erick's apartment. The girls' shoes were still outside the door.
Police seized 12 Budweiser beer bottles, a dozen glasses from the kitchen sink and counter, Mountain Dew and Coke bottles, Absolut vodka, Sunny Delight, Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps and butts from two marijuana cigarettes in the trash can.
Suspecting GHB, police sent the bottles and glasses, as well vials of blood and urine from Samantha and Melanie, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Chicago. Officials then sent the evidence to its Cincinnati lab to be tested.
There is no lab in Michigan that has the capacity to test for GHB, although the drug has been illegal in the state since July 1998.
Lab analysis returned nearly two months later showed that three glasses and seven beer bottles contained residue of GHB or a close chemical cousin, GBL.
The blood tests also showed that Samantha Reid and Melanie Sindone had been given more than twice the amount of GHB needed to kill them.
The four men now face charges of manslaughter and two counts of poisoning, which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison. They all pleaded not guilty. Their trials begin Jan. 31. It will be a precedent-setting case, the first prosecution for GHB-related homicide in the nation, Baker said.
John Gates, a Royal Oak attorney representing Daniel Brayman, said his client was unaware of the GHB.
Cecil St. Pierre, an attorney for Erick Limmer, said his client did not participate in putting GHB in the girls' final, deadly round of drinks. The charges against him had been dropped earlier this year, but they were reinstated by a Wayne Circuit Court judge. His attorney is appealing that decision.
The other defense attorneys declined to comment.
Melanie Sindone lives daily with what she remembers from that night and what she painfully can't remember.
She shies away from talking about the January night to her friends and family, in part because she gets upset when she can't remember details. She has difficulty listening to her mother or Samantha's mother, Judi Clark, talk about being in the hospital, watching the two girls in comas.
Exactly six months after Samantha died, Judi told Melanie and some of her friends that she found herself strong enough to stop at Oakwood Hospital-Seaway Center in Trenton. She wanted to see the nurse who took care of Samantha, she told a group of Samantha's friends.
"I thanked him for making Samantha as comfortable as he could," Judi told the girls. "He started crying. He said it changed him forever. He's still crying, just like the rest of us."
Judi looked over at Melanie, whose face was tucked down. She saw that tears were falling to the floor.
Melanie tried to speak, but was inaudible through her tear-choked voice. She ran from the room and her friends fell silent. They could hear her throwing up in the bathroom.
Melanie sat on the bathroom floor for a half hour, just above Samantha's basement bedroom. The bedroom was where the two girls spent hours talking, laughing and sharing their feelings.
It was their sanctuary from adults.
Just a few days before Samantha died, Melanie wrote her a letter in permanent marker on her bedroom wall.
Sam - Hey girl, what's up? You are my best friend in the whole wide world. I love you man. Promise me we will never fight and if we do, you gotta apologize. Just joking. I can tell you anything and you always understand. You are my girl. Always and forever, Melanie
Upstairs, Melanie's sister Anita tried to comfort her.
But there was only so much she could say. When Melanie was drugged, she lost the childhood innocence that made her feel invincible and allowed her world to expand.
Melanie continued to throw up.
After Samantha died, Judi tried to preserve all that she could of her daughter's life. For nine months, she left Samantha's room exactly as the 15-year-old girl had left it when she was fretting about what to wear before running out the door to see a movie with her best friend.
The clothes Samantha decided not to wear her last night remained scattered on the floor. Her make-up was still spread out, crumbs of eye shadow speckled on the vanity.
Judi refused to dust.
For a long time, Judi couldn't even sleep in the house, let alone enter Samantha's bedroom. But as months passed, she found herself wandering into her daughter's bedroom. Soon, it became her sanctuary.
It was where she could be alone with her thoughts of Samantha and read her daughter's writings on the wall.
She looks at the names of Samantha's friends that cover the wall. "Melanie + Sam. B.F.F." is written in blue marker on the vanity mirror.
Some names are crossed out, too, generally the names of ex-boyfriends. Even in the scribble, Judi can pick out two names from the wall that she had planned to paint.
The names Dan and Nick are etched on the wall in black marker.
They were crossed out after Samantha died.
Night after night, Nancy Sindone sees faceless boys when she closes her eyes to go to sleep.
In one dream, they are lurking around a family gathering, putting something into glasses of vodka and handing them to her family. She chases the boys but is awakened by her own voice screaming out loud for them to stop.
It has been 10 months since her daughter was drugged with GHB, but the nightmares are getting more vivid than ever.
Melanie has nightmares, too, but doesn't want to talk about them. The nightmares Melanie will talk about are played out during the day, especially at school.
After the drugging, Melanie missed about six weeks of classes at Carlson High School. She first went back to school about a month after Samantha died, but stayed home for two weeks after that because she said it was too difficult to be there.
During that time, Melanie sheltered herself in her bedroom, rarely even leaving to go downstairs. She listened to music, rearranged her room, painted her nails, talked to her sisters and rearranged her room again. One day, she was bored and picked up the phone to call Samantha. She started dialing before realizing that Samantha wouldn't be there.
"I definitely need her," Melanie said.
Back at school, Melanie cried when she saw Samantha's empty seat in their math and science classes. She grew sad when she went to locker No. 1175, which Melanie and Samantha had shared.
And in the hallways, she was self-conscious about what classmates might be saying about her.
"It felt like everybody's eyeballs were glued to me," Melanie said. "I didn't know if they were talking about me, but it felt like they were."
Melanie changed schools this year. After school now, she goes home and back to the memories of Samantha. She looks at the collage of pictures of Samantha in her room. She looks at the teddy bears she received during a somber 15th birthday party thrown for her while she was still in the hospital, just two days after her best friend died.
She reads the poem Samantha wrote to her last December, titled "For My Best Friend."
In that poem, Samantha wrote: "You taught me that I'm worth much more, Than what I'd always thought/You gave me strength and confidence, For that I owe a lot."
Recently, Melanie looked at the plastic bag of clothes in her living room. They're the clothes that she wore the last night she hung out with Samantha, recently picked up from the emergency room. There are jeans, her favorite green T-shirt, socks and a ponytail holder.
"I haven't wanted to look at them," Melanie said, peering closer at the bag to see what was inside. "Hey, that's Sammy's belt."
Judi's not quite sure why she called the Gibraltar Police Department. Maybe she wanted to see if her daughter's death had made an impact.
"Could you tell me what GHB is?" she asked the dispatcher who picked up the phone.
"I'm really not too sure. Wait, I think we have some pamphlets on it. Let me check," the dispatcher said, returning to the phone a few seconds later. "The pamphlets are all gone. Sorry."
That was when Judi decided she would start a crusade against GHB. She would begin in Michigan and then eventually go nationwide, telling as many people as possible that GHB can take their children's lives as easily as it took Samantha's.
That was about five months after her daughter's death. During those long months, she stayed home from work. She passed the time by planting a garden with more than 25 types of fruits and vegetables.
She went back to work as a pipe fitter in July, about the same time she read all the GHB literature she could find. She started the Samantha Reid Foundation with some relatives and about 10 of Samantha's friends.
The group plans to get non-profit status so it can raise money for anti-GHB awareness.
Judi already is responsible for the anti-GHB billboard at the Flat Rock Speedway and has passed out hundreds of GHB pamphlets at art fairs, seminars and union picnics. She cringes when she thinks that students are still not learning about GHB in school.
She has changed a lot in the past 10 months. It took almost eight weeks before she was brave enough to sleep at her empty home. It took two months before she went grocery shopping, previously a mother-daughter activity.
Now, she gets counseling and attends meetings of the support group, Parents of Murdered Children.
The Samantha Reid Foundation gives her hope that some meaning can come to this meaningless death. But while she acts strong and courageous during foundation meetings and at seminars, she quietly retreats into her memories of Samantha for most of the day.
One day, she went through the purse Samantha took with her that January night. She found strawberry and champagne lotion from Victoria's Secret, make-up, Teen Midol, deodorant, gum, house keys and a hair brush.
Judi stared at the brush for a while and retreated inward to that mother whose daughter had just died, a time when fighting GHB was a distant thought.
"That's all I have of her hair," she said, stroking the wisps left tangled in the brush. "I really wish I would have taken like a locket of her hair. But you don't think about them things until they're gone, y'know?"
If you listen closely in the Blue Ridge section of Michigan Memorial Park in Flat Rock, you can hear where Samantha lies.
A breeze blows through the skinny red maple by Samantha's grave, swaying the wind chimes that play like a music box over a baby's crib at night. Three women walk slowly up the slight hill to a spot where the grass is brighter than the rest.
Judi walks toward the plaque marking her daughter's grave. There is still no tombstone because she can't decide what to put on it. She thinks about her quiet house, one without dirty towels on the floor, missing remote controls and empty hair spray bottles.
Nancy Sindone looks toward Melanie and wonders whether she's becoming overprotective, worrying every time her daughter leaves the house.
Melanie looks at the purple cross she left at the cemetery. She talks about how she hates school, how she can't trust people. She's getting stronger and can talk about Samantha without crying. But she worries about the upcoming trial and again facing her former classmates from the witness stand.
Dan and Nick were kicked out of high school their senior year, a few months before the senior prom and graduation. Erick was engaged to be married when he was charged with manslaughter. Josh has nightmares about the trial and smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, his grandmother said.
At Michigan Memorial Park, two mothers and a scared, insecure young woman talk silently to Samantha, then begin to walk back to their cars, stopping at the red maple tree.
"It's too quiet out here," Judi says as she untwists some of the wind chimes on the tree. "Sam liked the noise."
Melanie corrects her: "Sam was the noise."
But Judi insists that Samantha still is the noise.
Inflaming her passion to warn the world about GHB, Judi recalls one of Samantha's poems:
For I shall not go quietly into the night; I shall succeed and no battle will be won until I have had my fight. Harsh hammers and evil enemies look out, I am on my way.
Nick and Dan were both released from prison today, Josh is up for released in 2015.
