A California death row inmate, sentenced for the 1979 murder of his pregnant wife, who was on the brink of giving birth, has died following over 45 years of incarceration.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reported that Jerry T. Bunyard passed away on July 10 at the California State Prison, Sacramento. He was 76 years old.

“At 4:44 p.m., Bunyard was declared dead at an external medical facility by medical personnel,” stated the CDCR in an official release. “The Sacramento County Coroner will ascertain his exact cause of death.”

Bunyard had been convicted of first-degree murder for taking the lives of his wife, Elaine Bunyard, and their unborn child. Elaine was discovered dead on November 1, 1979, in the garage of their San Joaquin County residence, which she shared with Bunyard and their 7-year-old daughter.

Elaine Bunyard died from a massive shotgun blast to the head, and the fetus died from a lack of oxygen moments later, according to court records. Investigators said Bunyard had hired a childhood friend, Erwin Popham, to commit the murders.

Popham, a drifter, small-time criminal, and frequent drug user, lived with the Bunyard family intermittently. Eventually, Bunyard asked Popham to kill his wife, believing she had gotten pregnant by another man.

Bunyard had offered his wife a $50,000 settlement for a divorce, but she refused, court records state. He also wanted to clear the way to be with his new girlfriend.

Popham initially declined to commit the murder, but the pair eventually settled on a $1,000 fee to be paid within a week of the slaying, followed by additional money once Bunyard received the proceeds of his wife’s life insurance policy.

The murder was supposed to be staged as a suicide.

Popham attacked Elaine Bunyard as she was washing dishes in her kitchen, repeatedly striking her on the head with frying pans. He then dragged her unconscious body to the garage and placed her in a chair. Once she was seated, Popham propped Bunyard’s pump shotgun under Elaine’s chin and pulled the trigger.

Half of her face was blown off, prosecutors said. Given the extreme amount of blood at the scene, Popham abandoned the suicide staging and decided to make the killing look like a robbery instead.

He then drove to Bunyard’s construction job in Patterson and told him “it was done,” according to the California Supreme Court’s review of the evidence.

Currently, 567 California prison inmates are on death row, according to the CDCR. However, in 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order instituting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, granting a temporary reprieve to all individuals sentenced to death.

A woman experiencing intense abdominal pain, nausea, and frequent vomiting decided to visit the emergency room, suspecting stress might be the underlying cause of her discomfort.

However, her symptoms were actually the result of a gooey green mass that had developed in her stomach, partially due to her GLP-1 medication.

The 63-year-old patient sought medical attention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She explained to the doctors that she had been using semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy, for approximately one year.

Over the previous month, she experienced increased episodes of vomiting and nausea coupled with severe pain near her torso. While the medication had initially helped her lose a significant amount of weight, the rate of weight loss had sped up in the last month, coinciding with these new symptoms.

The medical team conducted several diagnostic tests, including a CT scan that revealed a blockage of stool in her digestive tract, although there seemed to be nothing physically obstructing its passage. Using an endoscope—a slender, flexible tube equipped with a camera and light—the doctors finally identified the root of the problem.

The case of the bizarre bezoar

They saw a “large, greenish, gooey-looking mass covered in mucus” in her stomach. It was a bezoar, which affects at most 4 in 1,000 people. While it wasn’t blocking the opening to the small intestine, it was taking up a lot of space and making it harder for food to pass through.

Bezoars are tightly packed masses of undigested or partially digested food, usually in the stomach. There are a few different types. Phytobezoars form from eating too much cellulose-rich food, like celery, prunes, raisins and pumpkin. Trichobezoars form from hair.

In her case, doctors believe delayed gastric emptying caused the bezoar to form.

Gastric emptying is the process of food moving from the stomach into the small intestine. If it’s delayed — a condition called gastroparesis — food can accumulate and harden into a bezoar.

This slowing of food movement also happens to be one of the main effects of GLP-1s. It helps people feel fuller for longer, slows the rate at which carbs are broken down and prevents sugar from flooding the bloodstream.

But GLP-1s are known for sometimes slowing food down too much, causing gastroparesis. This side effect is associated with increasing dosage too quickly. Gastroparesis can lead to nausea, vomiting, bloating, pain, poor appetite and heartburn.

Around 11% of US adults are on a GLP-1, or roughly 28 million to 30 million people.

A Coca-Cola cure

The woman was taken off her GLP-1 immediately, but doctors now had a different problem on their hands: how to get rid of the bezoar.

There are a few options: break it up with an endoscopic knife or use medications like metoclopramide or erythromycin to chemically get things moving. If those don’t work, doctors might resort to surgically removing the bezoar.

But why use meds when a cold Coke will do the trick?

It sounds silly, but yes — doctors have found it’s a great first treatment to try for bezoars before turning to more aggressive methods.

They’re not exactly sure what it is about Coca-Cola that dissolves bezoars so effectively. It could be that the carbon dioxide bubbles penetrate the fibers in the mass, helping to break it apart. Or it might be Coca-Cola’s acidity, which is close to the pH of stomach acid.

Even better news: Diet Coke works just as well as the regular stuff, research shows. That’s especially helpful because many people who develop bezoars have diabetes and need to limit their sugar.

This was true in the Massachusetts woman’s case. She was given Diet Coke, and because she didn’t like carbonation, she drank just 1.5 liters — about half the recommended amount used to break up a bezoar.

On the second day, she reported a “tugging sensation” in her abdomen and felt a wave of relief from the nausea and stomach pain. Another endoscopy showed the bezoar was gone.

She returned to her normal diet and stayed off her GLP-1. With the nausea, vomiting and pain gone, her appetite returned and she regained weight.

FOX LAKE, Ill. (WLS) — A tragedy struck Monday night as a 15-year-old boy from the northern suburbs drowned in the Chain O’Lakes.

The Lake County Coroner’s Office has identified the young victim as Brayan Monzanga, who was from Round Lake.

ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch

According to Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the teen either leapt from a boat or accidentally fell into the waters of Myers Bay, a section of Pistakee Lake, and did not reappear.

Despite valiant attempts by his friends, who dove in after him, their efforts to locate him proved unsuccessful.

At around 6 p.m., a 911 call was made, prompting emergency responders to quickly arrive at the scene near Fox Lake in the northern suburbs.

Divers and search teams conducted what they hoped would be a rescue operation – before the search shifted to a recovery.

The missing teen was found nearly two hours later by an underwater drone-device. He was not wearing a life jacket.

“Just recreational swimming on the water, went into the water and never came back up. At that point, we were contacted via 911 and started our operations and response,” Fox Lake Fire Deputy Chief Samuel Santiago said. “This is a great location to come bring your families and that’s what they were just trying to do. So just from that aspect, from the organization to the family, we’re very sorry for your loss.”

The incident remains under investigation by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Conservation Police and the Lake County Coroner’s Office.

In a shocking case that has left a community reeling, a teenager and her boyfriend allegedly embarked on a violent shooting spree, resulting in the deaths of five family members and injuries to two others. The father of the girl, who was ordered to be homeschooled by her parents, shared his disbelief over the tragic events.

The 15-year-old girl, whose identity remains undisclosed due to her arrest but pending formal charges, reportedly carried out these actions at multiple sites in East St. Louis, Illinois, on Sunday.

Her accomplice, 16-year-old Ja’ymeir Davis, was charged on Tuesday with five counts of murder, according to police reports.

The victims of this tragic incident have been identified by authorities as Devin May, 24, a cousin of the girl; Quentin Thompson, 21, and Shania Thompson, 25, her step-siblings; Patricia May, 74, her grandmother; and Cherie May, 49, her aunt.

Marcus May, the girl’s father, expressed his profound heartbreak over the incident, revealing that there were several warning signs leading up to the devastating shooting.

He claimed he received a call from his child’s mother five days before the shooting warning that she had run away from home and stolen her gun, reports the St Louis Post Dispatch. 

May, who shares custody of his daughter, said his she had been repeatedly getting in trouble in school in the months leading up to the shooting, leading him and her mother to pull her out of school and homeschool her.

He said the move infuriated his daughter, who lived with her mother, and she had previously run away from home several times and stolen her mother’s credit card. 

May added that his ex-partner warned him that their daughter was in a  disturbing group chat with her boyfriend and other teens where they talked about killing her family members, but he did not take the threat seriously at the time. 

May said his daughter’s troubling behavior escalated until she stole the gun from her mother days before the shooting. 

On the day of the bloodbath, he said the girl’s grandmother Patricia, who was killed in the shooting spree, had called her granddaughter begging her to come home and insisted she could ‘deal with’ her behavior.

May meanwhile said he contacted the boyfriend’s parents to tell them to get their son away from his daughter. 

The girl’s mother then reported her missing and warned police that the gun was stolen, but days passed without them hearing from her. 

On Sunday morning, May said he woke up to numerous missed calls and messages, and he knew something had gone terribly wrong. 

Police said the victims were killed in several locations across East St. Louis, with Shania Thompson found in a car behind an abandoned property near May’s home. 

Her brother Quentin was found nearby on the other side of Interstate 64. 

The other three victims were all discovered at the Samuel Gompers apartment complex. 

Two other people, who have not been publicly identified, were also shot during the violent episode, and sustained serious injuries but survived. 

Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said the events were a ‘targeted mass shooting’ and the teenagers have been arrested, however they have not been formally charged. 

The Daily Mail has contacted the Illinois State Police for updates on their case. 

May said the shootings have left him heartbroken, saying: ‘I lost my whole family in one fell swoop.’ 

He told KSDK that he is in disbelief that his own daughter would allegedly kill her own family members, and he ‘can’t show her no sympathy.’ 

Devin had welcomed a baby daughter just a year before the tragedy, with his wife Chelsey Gatlin saying in a touching tribute he ‘was a great father.’

‘A great person and a great man,’ she said. 

Miranda May, Devin’s sister and daughter of Cherie, added: ‘He loved his family. I really don’t have no words to say. I can’t believe this. They were wonderful people with good hearts.’ 

She said the loss of Patricia, 74, was devastating, as she continued: ‘My granny is so loved. It just hurts to see that she was gone like this. It hurts so bad.’

In a GoFundMe set up to help the surviving family members, the deceased’s loved ones said they have been left ‘feeling broken and alone, not knowing where to turn.’ 

‘The media has called this tragedy a massacre, and the pain is compounded by the circumstances—two young family members were responsible for these devastating murders,’ the fundraiser alleged.