The Effect
It is 9th July 1989 and in Jefferson County Missouri, a young mother rushes her son to hospital in a state of total panic. The baby boy is just three months old and suffering from horrendous gastric distress. He is immediately placed in paediatric intensive care, and his parents are shocked to see such a small baby so incapacitated and rigged up to the multitude of machines that are trying to stabilise his condition and save his life. But just what is the cause of this severe and life-threatening condition?
The baby’s mother, Patricia Stallings, or Patty for short, had met his father, David, while working at a convenience store. The pair married in 1988 and moved into their dream home in Jefferson County; a quiet white house overlooking a lake. The following spring, Patty gives birth to their first child, a baby boy they name Ryan. But when Ryan is just three months old, he begins vomiting, seemingly unable to keep any food down. At first the Stallings suspect it is merely a stomach bug, but over the hours that follow, baby Ryan becomes increasingly lethargic.
Ryan’s concerned new parents rush the child to hospital, where he is admitted to intensive care as his doctors run a series of tests to try to get to the bottom of what might be wrong with him. And they are shocked by the results. The tests reveal surprising levels of the substance ethylene glycol in Ryan’s blood, one of the key ingredients in household antifreeze.
Ryan’s doctors are instantly suspicious. Surely there is no way such a young baby could have this much ethylene glycol in his system unless he had been deliberately poisoned. From that point on, hospital staff ensure Patty and David are never left alone with their baby.
Suspecting Ryan has been the victim of a deliberate poisoning, his doctors are next obligated to get in touch with Missouri family services, and the baby is promptly put into protective custody, with Patty and David’s contact severely restricted. The police, too, are called. They start attempting to get to the bottom of the poisoning by conducting a search of the Stallings’ family home.
While searching the house, the authorities discover what they believe to be a damning piece of evidence. In the Stallings’ basement is a partly-used gallon container of antifreeze, the very substance doctors found in Ryan’s system. The antifreeze is seized as evidence.
Thankfully though, baby Ryan’s condition begins to improve and, ten days after he was first admitted, he is discharged from hospital. With the investigation ongoing, however, Ryan is placed in foster care, with Patty and David Stallings only permitted one visit with their son per week.
Patty and David begin to live for these Thursday morning visits, with Ryan’s face lighting up as he sees his parents each time they arrive. The visits continue as normal for five weeks, and the family begins to hope that the dreadful events of the past months may be resolved, and eventually put behind them. They are completely unaware of how much worse their situation is about to get.
On the sixth week of the arranged visits, Patty is left alone with her baby for the very first time since before he was admitted to hospital, while David steps out into the corridor. His parents have been visiting their grandchild, too, and he wants to see them out. In David’s version of events, he is gone from the room for just forty-five seconds, as Patty feeds her son from a pre-prepared bottle. However, after this visit, baby Ryan once again begins vomiting and hyperventilating. And this time his condition is even more serious.
The bottle Patty had used to feed Ryan is taken and tested as evidence, and found to contain traces of ethylene glycol. The baby is again admitted to intensive care and treated for ethylene glycol poisoning, as police swoop on the Stallings’ family home and arrest Patty. She is taken into custody as her baby’s condition worsens, not knowing that he is now close to death. While Patty is detained, her husband David tries desperately to persuade the authorities to release his wife so that she can see her baby one last time. But his request is refused, and with just David at his son’s side, the machines that had been keeping Ryan alive are switched off. At the time of his death, Ryan is just five months old and, as well as Patty not being granted a visit to the hospital, she is also denied permission to attend her baby’s funeral.
As if the presence of ethylene glycol in the bottle Patty had used to feed Ryan that final time wasn’t incriminating enough, an autopsy reveals crystals of calcium oxalate in Ryan’s brain, something also consistent with ethylene glycol poisoning. At this point, the evidence against Patty Stallings seems to be overwhelming, and the public prosecutor makes it known that he is considering advocating for the death penalty.
But is this woman really guilty of such shocking charges? Patty didn’t have any antifreeze on her when she arrived at the hospital for that last, tragic visit. She was only left alone with her baby for less than a minute. The bottle had been pre-prepared by Ryan’s foster parents. So just how could this poisoning have been carried out? Or, despite all the evidence, might it not have been a poisoning, after all…
The Method
Patricia Stallings, a young mother grieving the tragic death of her baby, spends the next few months in police custody. But during this time, she discovers she is pregnant.
Patty gives birth to her second son, David Jnr, in February 1990, while still in custody. But because of the charges Patty faces, this baby, too, is placed in protective care, even though his father David is still a free man, and not under police investigation.
However, despite having no contact with either of his parents, David Jnr soon starts to exhibit the very same symptoms that Ryan had before his death. David Jnr is just two weeks old at the time, yet there is no way he could possibly have been poisoned. After all, the woman who poisoned his brother is securely locked up in prison. So just what is going on?
Doctors at the St Louis Children’s Hospital this time run a more extensive set of tests. And as a result of these tests they are able to diagnose David Jnr with an extremely rare condition: Methylmalonic Acidemia. Or MMA.
MMA is a rare genetic disorder that stops the body from being able to properly digest and process certain proteins. This leads to harmful non metabolised by-products building up in the blood, causing sufferers of the disease to sustain damage to their organs. Moreover, this unusual disorder causes the exact same symptoms experienced by first baby Ryan and later David Jnr.
Because David Jnr’s diagnosis had come earlier in his life than Ryan’s, doctors are able to treat the baby more successfully, and his condition is fully stabilised. And as a result of this new diagnosis of MMA, Patty is released from jail, convinced that her ordeal is over. But to the shock of the Stallings family, Jefferson County officials continue to pursue the case against her. Prosecuting attorney George McElroy is certain: even if it is proven that David Jnr does suffer from MMA, there is no proof that Ryan Stallings had died from the condition, or even that the condition had played a significant contributing factor in his death.
McElroy, therefore, decides to go ahead with the charge of first degree murder against Patty. And when Patty’s lawyers put forward no medical experts to counter McElroy’s opinion, the judge agrees with him, stating that neither David Jnr’s condition nor any of his symptoms should be allowed to be presented as evidence at Patty’s trial.
So Patty’s murder trial goes ahead, and in court prosecutor McElroy tells the jury: “Don’t try to understand why Patricia Stallings poisoned her child by feeding him from a baby bottle laced with antifreeze. The point is she did it. Only she could have done it.” McElroy goes on to state that during the scheduled visit when Ryan was poisoned, Patty was left alone with her baby for three to eight minutes. This is a direct contradiction to her husband David’s assertion he had only left the room for forty-five seconds. And David was also adamant that Patty had not begun to feed Ryan with the so-called tainted bottle until he returned. Furthermore, he could detect no signs that it had been tainted, he said. Neither could he smell any chemicals - or antifreeze - on the bottle.
As a result of this one-sided trial, Patty Stallings is found guilty, and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Determined not to accept this verdict, and convinced his wife is innocent, Patty’s husband David campaigns vehemently on her behalf. He tries everything he can to prove Patty has been wrongfully accused until, in desperation, he contacts the producers of the popular television crime show Unsolved Mysteries, who cover Patty’s story in May 1991.
Dr William Sly, a respected professor of biochemistry at the university of St Louis, watches the programme with interest and decides to run further tests himself. The first thing Dr Sly discovers is that the original testing of Ryan’s blood had not been conducted using the correct scientific methods. So, with the help of his colleagues, Dr Sly retests the blood samples using gas chromatography mass spectrometry - or GCMS - a far more sensitive testing process. The results of this process confirm that Ryan had indeed suffered from MMA, just like his brother David Jnr. But, despite all this, still not enough evidence of Patty’s innocence has been collected to persuade prosecutor McElroy to drop the charges against her.
So further analysis of Ryan’s blood samples is undertaken, and this testing reveals that the original labs trying to uncover the cause of the baby’s illness had made a shocking error. It wasn’t ethylene glycol - the toxic chemical constituent of antifreeze - that was present in Ryan’s blood. It was propionic acid, which can easily be mistaken for ethylene glycol. Propionic acid is one of the substances that can build up in the blood of sufferers of MMA.
As a result of these latest tests, George McElroy decides to hear evidence from an independent expert with no prior knowledge of the case. This task falls to Dr Piero Rinaldo, a respected geneticist at Yale University. After reviewing all the data surrounding the alleged poisoning of Ryan, Dr Rinaldo agrees that the baby had indeed died from MMA. He finds no evidence of ethylene glycol being present in the baby bottle Patty was supposed to have used to poison her son. He also states that the crystals of calcium oxalate present in Ryan’s brain had probably been caused by the ethanol drip administered to him in hospital, to treat the suspected poisoning. If Patty had poisoned the bottle, Ryan would have been taken severely ill in a much shorter time frame than the three days it actually took. After reading Dr Rinaldo’s report, Prosecutor George McElroy is finally convinced there is enough doubt of Patty’s guilt for her to be granted a new trial.
Two years after her initial arrest, Patricia Stallings was released from prison and all charges against her dropped. She was finally free to reunite with her husband and surviving son, grieve baby Ryan’s death, and find a way of managing David Jnr’s diagnosis.
Shortly after her release, the Stallings’ filed a lawsuit against the hospital that misdiagnosed Ryan’s poisoning. They eventually received an out-of-court settlement, which went little way to compensate for the immense trauma they’d suffered, or the months Patty had spent in prison, grieving and separated from her family.
Two years after his baby brother’s death, custody of David Jnr was granted to the Stallings, and their son returned home with them. It was thanks to David’s unwavering belief in his wife’s innocence, plus the dedication of a handful of expert biochemists, that Patty was granted her freedom. If not for them, she might still be in prison, convicted for poisoning her baby, to this day. As tragic as the Stallings story was, it has, over the years, helped raise the profile of MMA, allowing sufferers of this rare genetic condition - and their families - a better chance of getting the medical help they deserve.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
