Hunt Yields No Clue of Deadly Spider in Home : Coroner Says Fullerton Woman Died of Bite, Making Her County’s First Such Known Fatality

No evidence of a poisonous spider was found Thursday in the search of a Fullerton home after the death of a woman who lived there was attributed to a spider bite.

The Orange County coroner’s office has ruled that the death early Tuesday of Patricia Garcia, 54, was caused by a spider. It was the first county death ever attributed to such a bite, officials said.

No Confirmation

Garcia reportedly suffered from weak kidneys, cirrhosis of the liver and cardiovascular disease, problems that could have intensified the effects of the bite. She was not treated for the bite until six days after it occurred.

“I think she had these problems, and then the spider bite happened, and that compounded to kill her,” said Bruce Lyle, a coroner’s supervisor.

Despite the official ruling, county officials and entomologists said no hard evidence had been gathered to confirm that a spider caused the death.

Dr. James Webb, an entomologist at Orange County Vector Control, said that unless the spider is found it would appear that there is only a “remote chance” that the cause of her death was spider bite.

Officials searched the Garcia home for signs of the poisonous brown recluse spider, or any other species that could offer better clues to the woman’s death, but found mostly non-poisonous cellar spiders, which are common to the area, county entomologist Rudy Geck said.

Webb said Garcia’s symptoms were similar to those caused by the brown recluse, a member of the Loxoscetidae family, a poisonous group often called violin spiders because of markings on their upper backs.

“The violin spider doesn’t wander,” Geck said. “It’s almost something you have to search out in the dark places.” He said vector control officials will resume searching boxes and corners in the garage next week.

He suggested that Garcia’s husband of 35 years, Joseph, use pesticidal fog in the garage where the violin spider would most likely live, in nooks and crannies or darker areas.

Garcia’s daughters took her to Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim at 4 a.m. Saturday after she awakened with a swollen eye and a blackened face, on the same side as the three bites resembling pimples over her eyebrow. She thought, and the coroner’s report states, that she had been bitten by a spider about six days earlier.

Typical immediate treatment of poison victims entails removing the infected area to stop the spread of the venom. However, because of the time lapse since Garcia thought she was bitten, the area was too badly infected to prevent further spreading, said Dr. Elizabeth Grimley, who was present at the hospital but did not treat the patient.

There are few recorded cases of fatalities from spider bites, and most entomologists consider it surprising that Garcia actually died from a bite.

“This is very surprising,” said Dr. Charles Hogue, entomology curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, estimating that nationwide less than 0.01% of those who suffer spider bites die of them. The last reported area sighting of a brown recluse spider was in Sierra Madre in 1969, he said.

With proper medical treatment or antivenin, poisonous spider bites can be cured relatively easily, Hogue said.

A poisonous spider bite “puts the whole body under stress and calls on all the body’s resources to fight it off,” Hogue said. “If things aren’t up to good working level, something has to give.”