Behind the Murder Curtain by Bruce Sackman

Author:Bruce Sackman [Schmetterer, Bruce Sackman;Michael Wecchione;Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2018-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Icing on the Cake

“The corpse is a silent witness who never lies.”

—ANONYMOUS

Up to now, the Gilbert team had all the elements of a successful operation. Every member was a team player and gave 100 percent of themselves to the effort. My office, the US Attorney’s Office, the Massachusetts State Police, the Northampton Police, and the police at Northampton VA Medical Center worked hand in hand in pursuit of Kristen Gilbert, and she was in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution as a result. But we all knew that was not why we originally joined forces. And now we needed to expand our team.

It was time for the brainiacs, my good friends Drs. Michael Baden and Fredric Rieders, and a brilliant cardiologist they knew at VA Medical Center in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Doctor Thomas Rocco, to come aboard. They would complement Bruce’s Angels, who had proven their worth on Swango.

The task at hand was to go through the Northampton records of the deceased patients identified as dying under questionable circumstances by the three nurses. They risked friendships and careers by coming forward to the VA with their suspicions about their colleague.

We would need to count those missing bottles of epinephrine, prove that Gilbert had access to them, prove they were administered to the patients in question, and finally, prove that they died from those injections. We had to be able to paint the picture for a jury that, given the opportunity and resources, Kristen Gilbert would draw the curtain around her patient, and for thrill and glory, administer a dose of fatal poison.

Doctor Rieders once told me that forensic science is just the icing on the cake. The cake itself is comprised of the actual investigation, the people, the witnesses, and the work of the street investigators. One should never rely on toxicology alone to make a case, as too many things can go wrong. Well, we were strong in that department. Plante and Murphy had seen to that and the more they dug, the more circumstantial evidence they turned up. But I knew we needed the scientists to bring it home to the jury even though it could be very complicated.

For instance, I had to picture Rieders on the witness stand. With his thick European accent and scientist-like appearance, he appeared to be a character right out of a science-fiction novel. Being on the cutting edge of forensic science, he was no stranger to controversy.

When you introduce new science never before utilized in a court of law, you better be prepared for the most grueling of challenges, both scientific and personal. Rieders was convinced he could find a byproduct of epinephrine, known as metanephrine, in embalmed, buried, and exhumed tissue. Normetanephrine is a metabolite of metanephrine that helps transmit nerve impulses. The ratio of metanephrine to normetanephrine in the tissue samples would be crucial because there would be more metanephrine only if the patients were injected with the drug. Rieders was convinced that his lab would find just such a ratio.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.