Doctors Who Kill
Profiles of lethal medics
CAROL ANNE DAVIS
For Ian
1957 – 2009
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Part One: Doctor in the House
1 Dr Richard John Sharpe
2 Dr Robert Bierenbaum
3 Dr Geza de Kaplany
4 Dr Debora Green
5 Dr Dirk Greineder
6 Dr Jonathan Nyce
7 Dr John Cavaness
8 Sinedu Tadesse
9 Virginia McGinnis
10 Edna Chubb
11 Noreen O’Conner
Part Two: Killer on the Ward
12 Colin Norris
13 Kristen Gilbert
14 Robert Diaz
Part Three: Medics in the Media
15 Dr Harold Shipman
16 Beverly Allitt
17 Charles Cullen
18 Orville Lynn Majors
Part Four: Deadly Dentists
19 Dr Samuel Perera
20 Dr Clara Harris
21 Dr Glennon Engleman
22 Dr Kenneth Taylor
Part Five: Lethal Paramedics
23 Gavin Hall
24 Kristin Rossum
25 Bruce Moilanen
26 Chante Mallard
Part Six: Paper Masks
27 John Brown
28 Dean Faiello
29 John Christie
Part Seven: Unbridled Lust
30 Francis Fahey
31 Dr Joseph Charalambous
32 Anthony Joyner
33 Dr Samson Dubria
34 Bobby Joe Long
Part Eight: Why They Kill
35 Typologies of Medical Killers
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography
Filmography
Index
By Carol Anne Davis
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
When I worked for Women’s Aid in the mid-Eighties, I was told that some of the most vicious wife-beaters were doctors. The literature on abused women included a lengthy confessional from a woman who had frequently been beaten by her husband, a respected British village-based GP. She said that he was revered by his staff and patients and demanded that his home life be similarly deferential, with nothing ever out of place. If a few of the children’s toys were lying around or the Sunday roast wasn’t quite ready, he would become enraged. Though he would punch and kick her with seeming abandon, he took care to aim his blows at her body rather than her face.
The woman admitted that she’d remained in the marriage because of the lifestyle that his salary afforded them and her fear of being alone, but had finally left after twenty years of fear and anguish. Later, I read similar stories from other British GPs’ wives, and, when I began to write true crime books, found that murderous American doctors and surgeons often had a similar history of perpetrating domestic violence. Many of them had been denied a fun-filled childhood, instead growing up in families where academic achievement was everything, whilst others had been mocked and beaten throughout their formative years.
Expanding on this theme, the first part of this book, Doctor in the House, profiles medics who have killed a family member or members. Most murdered their long-suffering spouses, but one female doctor attempted to murder all three of her children in an arson attack.
The second part looks at killers on the ward and is self-explanatory. Most of these murderers were desperate for attention, creating endless dramas both at home and in the hospitals where they worked. They were belatedly diagnosed with personality disorders, ranging from borderline to full-blown psychopathy. The majority were nurses, who commit most medical murders, a total of 45%. The other 55% is made up of doctors, surgeons and an array of workers in paramedical roles.
Other sections look at medics in the media, particularly intriguing cases which captured the public imagination, and paramedics who murdered their partners in order to enjoy the single life. Those of a weak disposition may want to avoid the Paper Masks section, though dental-phobics can safely read the Deadly Dentists segment as none of the surgeons killed within their surgeries.
The penultimate part, Unbridled Lust, examines those who killed their patients – or strangers – after raping or sexually assaulting them, and includes the profile of a medical technician turned serial killer who is currently on Death Row, whilst the final section examines typologies of medical killers.
PART ONE
DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE
Though the medics in this section had potentially fatal drugs at their disposal, most chose to dispatch their victims by using traditional weapons – guns and knives – or even their bare hands. Unstable and controlling in their personal relationships, when challenged or faced with excessive demands, they exploded into violence.
The first seven chapters profile doctors who murdered a close relative, usually a wife but sometimes two or more of their own children. The other four chapters in this section focus on less-qualified medics who also killed in a domestic environment. These, too, were particularly brutal crimes, with the female paramedics stabbing, strangling and bludgeoning their friends in a paroxysm of rage at real and imagined slights.
1 Dr Richard John Sharpe
With his exceptional IQ and myriad skills, this doctor could have been anything that he wanted to be. Instead, he gave in to his rage with ultimately fatal results.
A terrifying childhood
Richard John Sharpe was born on the 23rd August 1954 to housewife Laura and toolmaker Benjamin in Connecticut, USA. He was their third son and, a mere fifteen months later, they had a fourth child, a girl.
Benjamin Sharpe worked long hours but he also played hard, drinking too much and running up sizeable gambling debts. At home he was a tyrant, beating his children and telling them that they were no good. He endlessly criticised his timid wife, beat his sons and even threatened Richard with a gun. Benjamin’s own father, a religious zealot with mental health problems who lived next door, committed suicide.
Early cross-dressing
Richard noticed that his sister, Laura, was the only member of the family who wasn’t beaten. Keen to become like her, he began to wear her clothes. This soon became a daily occurrence and, when he was twelve, he used money from his paper round to buy a girlish outfit of his own. With his small, slender figure and long hair, he was able to pass as a female and often went into town dressed as one.
By his early teens, he’d started to square up to his father and sometimes got the better of the older man. He also fought his corner in the playground and was aggressive in the classroom and on the street. His violence was wide ranging and he hit his mother and sister and killed several of the family pets. However, at seventeen, he showed a different side to his nature when a new girl, Karen, arrived at his high school. He wooed the sixteen-year-old with flattery and long romantic phone calls and, within months, she was expecting his child.
Fatherhood and marriage
On the last day of May 1973, Richard became a father for the first time. The couple called the baby Shannon. Karen took the child home to her parents, whilst Richard continued living with his. Almost everyone who knew them was against the match as, by now, Richard had shown repeatedly that he could be cold and arrogant. Realising that he was too controlling, Karen began a relationship with another teenager and, when Richard found out, he slapped her, after which they made up. That September they married secretly and moved into a rented flat.
Domestic violence
A week into the marriage, Richard overslept, blamed his new wife and threw an alarm cloc
k at her. The abuse continued and he worked hard to alienate her from her family and friends. He was studying for an engineering degree and she supported him by working double shifts as a care assistant whilst also going to college part-time to train as a nurse.
By the mid-Seventies he was taking her birth control pills in order to grow breasts – this made him look even more womanly. Richard said that he hoped the pills would relieve stress, but he remained abusive and began to beat and mock their little daughter Shannon on a regular basis so that she became terrified of him. In 1978, he received his engineering degree but immediately changed path and enrolled on a medical course. He also continued to hit Karen and, in August 1979, assaulted her in front of a police officer. He was arrested but the charges were later dropped. By now he felt invincible; he beat Karen harder, leaving her with concussion, two black eyes and a broken nose. When Shannon was ten, he treated her with equal cruelty, blackening both her eyes.
Karen’s response was to keep her daughter out of school for two days, after which Richard told the ten-year-old to explain to her teacher that she had fallen downstairs. Ironically, children from middle- and upper-class homes such as the Sharpes’ are less likely to be perceived as domestic violence victims so adults tend to believe them when they say that they’ve sustained accidental injuries.
Like most abusers, Richard was determined to terrorise his spouse into staying with him, warning that he’d kill her parents and siblings (whom Karen was very close to) if she left.
Affairs
In 1985, at the age of thirty-one, Richard graduated from medical school and did a research year at a Massachusetts hospital. He then became a resident at Harvard Medical School whilst Karen continued to work in a nursing home. He had several affairs during his residency and would later allege that Karen had one too. When chatting up a new woman, he often introduced the subject of cross-dressing and showed them photos of himself in a female wig, make-up and attire. With his fine features and slender physique, he looked more feminine than most transvestites and was upset when some of his new girlfriends were repulsed and ended the relationship.
In the summer of 1990, he completed his residency and secured a highly paid job with a biotech company as a cancer researcher. He also taught part-time at medical school and studied to become a dermatologist, soon setting up a successful dermatology practice. He was often aloof with his patients and relied on Karen, now working part-time as his receptionist, to smooth over any ill feeling. She made increasing allowances for his short temper – after all, he was working eighty hours a week.
Mental health problems
Eventually, something had to give and Richard was so overworked and stressed that he fell into a near-stupor. His GP suggested he needed therapy, and he went to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed him as having clinical depression and a personality disorder. She prescribed Xanax, and he briefly felt better, then began to have stomach pains, for which he used larger and larger doses of painkillers. He also drank to give himself false energy. One weekday in April 1991, he felt so ill that he came home during the day, only to find Karen in bed with another man. Karen’s lover left, after which the couple had a fight which continued into the next morning, when he stabbed her several times in the forehead with a fork and she kneed him in the groin and bit his hand.
She and Shannon fled the house and Karen told his psychiatrist that she feared for her life. The psychiatrist phoned Richard and his speech was so slurred that she suspected he’d taken an overdose. She phoned for an ambulance and they took the by-now-unconscious doctor to hospital, where he was revived, evaluated and committed involuntarily to a psychiatric facility. When Karen visited, he threatened her, saying that he would kill her relatives unless she revised her statement, and she did just that, stating that he had never been violent. He was soon released.
Richard continued to self-medicate, abusing alcohol and using samples of several prescription tranquillisers. His mood remained volatile and, on a bad day, he’d keep patients waiting for hours, but on good days he wrote erudite scientific papers which were published in medical journals and earned him an international reputation as a skin specialist.
He continued to cross-dress and had all of his body hair removed. He also had plastic surgery to make his features even more feminine and liposuction to remove excess fat from his body. Karen took photos of him dressed as a woman and was tolerant of his increasing links to the transgender community. Dressing in female attire was supposed to make him feel more relaxed, but he was still so stressed that he worked out obsessively for six nights each week at the gym.
Further victims
Karen helped Richard out at the office whenever she had time, but he’d repay her by calling her names in front of his patients and partners. Chillingly, the Sharpes chose to bring two further children into this violent atmosphere: a son in 1992 (by then, Shannon had left home and gone to college) and a daughter in 1995. By the time their son went to school, he was exhibiting deep concern for his mother and didn’t want to leave her alone with his father for fear of what the man would do.
In 1997, the unstable but extremely hard-working doctor became a millionaire. The following year, he moved into the business of laser hair removal, setting up over a dozen successful franchises. But, by 2000, he was being threatened with a lawsuit from a rival company. Rather than risk losing everything, he transferred his house and almost three million dollars into Karen’s name; in the same time frame, she began another affair. He continued to call her names and belittle her in front of friends and family, telling her that she was ugly, fat and dumb.
The final straw came when Richard returned from an all-night party, still in female attire and make-up. Shocked that he would show this side of himself to his seven-year-old son, Karen said that she wanted a divorce. In February, she left with her two children and moved into a family suite at a hotel. Shortly afterwards, she met up with Richard at a lawyer’s office to discuss his access rights to their younger children. Both youngsters burst into tears when told that they still had to see their dad.
Like most wife-beaters, Richard fell apart when his punchbag finally left him, crying hysterically and begging Karen to reconsider. When she refused to reconcile, he sacked her from his company but failed to get his house transferred back into his name. He continued to self-medicate, and was so dazed the following month that he fell downstairs and broke his pelvis. He was hospitalised and patched up before being sent home with strong painkillers, which he added to his already sizeable daily dose of antidepressants and alcohol.
A brief reunion
Within weeks of Richard’s accident, Karen’s affair began to break down and she phoned her husband and foolishly took him back. He was ecstatic. But after four days of his strange mood swings and angry outbursts, she ordered him to leave and continued with the divorce. Richard now began to stalk her, and, in mid-May 2000, she took a restraining order out against him. Enraged, he began to plan her death and set about procuring a gun.
The murder
On 14th July 2000, 45-year-old Richard spent the evening drinking. Meanwhile, Karen, 44, was enjoying a rare night of freedom, having hired a babysitter and gone out to dinner with friends, her brother and his girlfriend. Richard phoned her mobile repeatedly throughout the evening but she refused to answer. Shortly after 11 p.m., she made her way home with her relatives.
In the same time frame, Richard took his rifle and drove to her house. He asked the babysitter if Karen was home but, before the girl could answer, Karen herself appeared in the kitchen doorway. She told him that he shouldn’t be there, and, in response, he raised his rifle and aimed it at her chest. She turned to flee and the .22 bullet ripped through her back, tearing into her lungs and severing her spinal cord. She collapsed and Richard walked calmly back to his car and drove away.
The children had been woken by the noise and their son, now aged seven, started asking if his father had hurt his mother. Karen’s brother, who had returned home with Karen aft
er the meal, acted quickly to stem the blood and phone the emergency services, but she was beyond help.
Meanwhile, Richard drove throughout the night, eventually stopping to buy beer and a clothes line with which, he’d later say, he planned to hang himself. He booked into a hotel that was a hundred miles from the murder scene, lay down on the bed and fell asleep.
As he slept, his photograph was broadcast on television and someone phoned the police and gave them his current location. They surrounded his room, prepared for a shoot-out, but he surrendered quietly. He was arrested and returned to Massachusetts, where, to everyone’s surprise, he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder despite the fact that there were witnesses.
Shannon now went public about the abuse that she, her siblings and her mother had endured at her father’s hands. She did so to thwart Richard Sharpe, who was demanding that he have visits from his youngest children, despite the fact that they were terrified of him.
A suicide attempt
Richard now attempted suicide by swallowing a phial of medicine whilst being treated in hospital, but the medication was merely a vaccine, which didn’t put his well-being at risk. He swallowed the liquid in full view of a nurse and a prison officer, suggesting that he was posturing rather than seriously trying to take his own life. He repeatedly made threatening phone calls to his daughter Shannon’s answering machine (calls which she never returned) until the prison put him into an isolation unit as a punishment.
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