The case involved the poisoning of an entire family after members drank Coca-Cola from a sealed bottle they purchased in their local grocery. The forensic investigation found that the plastic bottoms of three bottles that the family bought in the same store were turbid and cracked. Analyses of the soft drinks by gas chromatograph-mass spectra (GCMS) revealed that in addition to the usual known components of the soft drinks, they contained a mixture of gasoline compounds with medium petroleum distillate (MPD). Questioning of the grocery owner determined that wall painting had been recently done at the store. During the painting, the grocery ownder had placed sealed bottles of soft drinks to be sold on the same cardboard where paintbrushes soaked with thinner and paints were previously stored. The cardboard was already saturated with thinner when the bottles were placed on it. The thinner apparently cracked the bottom of the bottles and then penetrated through these cracks into the drinks. Simulations of the hypothesized chain of events were performed to test the hypothesis. The simulations confirmed the hypothesis. The penetration occurred, however, only when the closed bottles contained carbonated soft drinks. This indicates that inner pressure is a necessary condition for the cracking of the bottles. In the testing phase, the cracking phenomenon was more acute with exposure of the bottles to gasoline. In the case of toluene, the cracking appeared after 10 minutes of exposure, with methylcyclohexane after 20 minutes, and with cyclopean after 90 minutes. 6 figures and 21 references