Lisa McPherson Files - Statement of David Minkoff
This is the statement
of David Minkoff.
1
2
IN RE: INVESTIGATION, Lisa Mcpherson
3
4
5 STATEMENT OF: DAVID MINKOFF.
6 DATE: April 20, 1997, 9:15 a.m.
7 BEFORE: Donna M. Kanabay, RPRJ RMR
Notary Public, Court Reporter.
8
PLACE: State Attorneys Office
9 Criminal Justice Center
Clearwater, Florida
10
11 APPEARANCES: MR. MARK McGARRy, JR.
Assistant State Attorney
12
Attorney for State of Florida.
13 Agent Lee Strope
FDLE.
14
Sergeant Wayne Andrews
15 Clearwater PD.
16 MR. JAMES E. FELMAN
KYNES, MARKMAN & FELMAN
17 P. 0. Box 3396
Tampa, FL 33601-3396
18 Attorney for Dr. Minkoff.
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21
22
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS
23 TAMPA AIRPORT MARRIOTT, (813) 224-9500
ST. PETERSBURG, CLEARWATER, (813) 821-3320
24
25
1 _________________________
INDEX TO PROCEEDINGS
2 PAGE LINE
EXAMINATION - Sgt. Andrews 79 8
3 EXAMINATION - Agent Strope 102 23
Reporters Certificate 120
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1 MR. McGARRY: Jim, do you want to put
2 anything on the record in reference to your client being
3 here pursuant to subpoena, and then we'll get started? If
4 not --
5 MR. FELMAN: Yeah.
6 Basically, my understanding is that we are here
7 pursuant to a subpoena, and that that, therefore, confers
8 use and derivative use and immunity upon Dr. Minkoff for
9 what may be covered today.
10 MR. McGARRY: Fine.
11 ___________________________________
12 DAVID MINKOFF,
13 the witness herein, being first duly sworn was examined
14 and testified as follows:
15 BY MR. McGARRY:
16 Q. My name's Mark McGarry. I'm a prosecutor. And
17 we'll be asking you some questions in reference to the
18 death of Lisa McPherson and what you have -- what
19 knowledge you have about that.
20 Before we start into that, maybe I should get
21 some background as to what you do at the hospital. And if
22 you would, give us your credentials and where you went to
23 medical school and training. Can do you that for me,
24 please?
25 (Whereupon a discussion was held off the record).
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1 BY MR. McGARRY:
2 Q. Let's put your name on the record. Please state
3 your name and occupation for the record.
4 A. David Minkoff, M I N K 0 F F. I'm a medical
5 doctor. I went to college and medical school at the
6 University of Wisconsin, graduated 1974. I did an
7 internship and residency at the University of California
8 in San Diego in Pediatrics. I was chief resident of the
9 teaching program there for a year, and then I did two
10 years of an infectious disease fellowship, which was both
11 adult and pediatric infectious disease. And then I
12 remained as an adjunct faculty member for three or four
13 years, teaching infectious disease. I did research at the
14 university in new drugs to treat viral disease.
15 I went into private practice in 1980, doing
16 pediatrics and infectious disease. I worked in Escondito,
17 California, which is a little town outside San Diego, for
18 ten years. I did emergency room medicine at the same
19 time, and worked as co-director of a neonatal intensive
20 care unit during that time.
21 I moved here in February of 1990, began working
22 in a walk-in clinic, part of Doctors Walk-in Clinic. He
23 had seven clinics around the county, and I worked at most
24 of them for about a year and a half.
25 And then, in August of 91, I started working at
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1 the emergency room at Columbia in New Port Richey, and
2 I've worked there, since, as emergency room staff.
3 Q. All right. What brought you to Clearwater in
4 1990?
5 A. I took a sabbatical from my medical practice.
6 There was a Hubbard school here that I wanted my children
7 to be at, and we were coming for six months, and the
8 school was going very well, and we liked the area, and we
9 decided to stay.
10 MR. McGARRY: Jim, could I get you to back
11 up a little bit? Cause I can't see him when we talk.
12 MR. FELMAN: Sure. I'm sorry.
13 BY MR. McGARRY:
14 Q. So you were involved with the Church in
15 California?
16 A. Yes. Since 19, probably, 81.
17 Q. All right. So pretty much the sole reason for
18 moving to Clearwater was because of the Church?
19 A. Yeah.
20 Q. How long was your sabbatical?
21 A. Six months.
22 Q. And what did you do during that six months?
23 A. I worked part time in the walk-in clinic, and
24 then I took courses at the Church.
25 Q. Okay. Did your family move with you at the same
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1 time?
2 A. Yeah.
3 Q. In 90?
4 Where did you-all first move to when you moved
5 here to Clearwater?
6 A. They had public housing at Hacienda Gardens, so
7 I rented an apartment there. I was there for about a year
8 and a half. And then we moved out to a rented house on
9 McKinly Street. And then, a year after that, we built a
10 house, which is where we live now.
11 Q. Your wife's with the Church also, right; and
12 your children?
13 A. Mm-hmm.
14 Q. Okay. Are you still with the Church right now?
15 A. Meaning --
16 Q. Are you still a member of the Church?
17 A. Yeah.
18 Q. Okay. You've never been -- you've never been a
19 staff member for the Church. You've just been affiliated
20 with the Church as a --
21 A. Parishioner.
22 Q. -- parishioner.
23 How about your wife? Is she a staff member?
24 A. No.
25 Q. If I could, can you tell me how far you are
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1 along in your courses? Have you received -- received a
2 certain level?
3 A. I've done courses in all the areas in the
4 administrative area; I've done courses in the counseling
5 area; I'm a classified auditor; and received counseling up
6 to what's called 0T8.
7 Q. Okay. That's what I was looking for.
8 So you -- you would say that, in the general
9 populace of church members, you're pretty knowledgeable,
10 as to the Church teachings?
11 A. Oh, yeah.
12 Q. So I take it, somewhere along in 1992, you
13 started spending most of your time over there at the
14 emergency room? That is how that worked? After your
15 sabbatical, that's when you went full time there?
16 A. Well, I actually was at the walk-in clinic,
17 probably, fifty hours a week, and then the emergency room
18 job came up, and I transferred to that, so I was -- the
19 sabbatical -- I probably took three months off, and then I
20 started working. I had a family, and we just needed more
21 money. And so it was sort of combined, study at night and
22 work during the day, or study in the morning and work at
23 night. Just depended on the schedule.
24 We got here in February, and I think I started
25 working at the clinic in, probably, April or May, and it
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1 was a full time job, but I just did both things.
2 Q. Okay. Through your association with the Church,
3 did you become -- what's the word I'm looking for here --
4 did you -- did you treat parishioners? Did they come to
5 you because -- because of who you were, a doctor, and you
6 were associated with the Church? Did you get -- I mean,
7 were you referred to by the Church on some occasions? You
8 know what I'm saying? They went to you because of who you
9 were?
10 A. Right.
11 Q. And that's a long trip.
12 And my question is -- is -- kind of where I'm
13 going is, did that happen often with the Church?
14 A. It didn't actually happen very often. When I
15 was in the walk-in clinic, it happened more frequently,
16 because it was in Clearwater. I was accessible. It was
17 not an emergency-room setting. Somebody without a doctor
18 could walk in there, and, for forty bucks, get an exam and
19 do that. So local Scientologists and some of the staff
20 members would come up there. It wasn't super heavy, but
21 maybe a half dozen a week would come up, and I'd do my
22 regular doctor thing on them.
23 Once I moved up to New Port Richey, it was
24 pretty rare for somebody to come all that way, pay an
25 emergency room fee. And I just wasn't that accessible.
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1 Q. Because of the distance and --
2 A. Distance.
3 Q. - and your position there?
4 A. Yeah.
5 And it wasn't really a practice I was trying to
6 cultivate.
7 Q. Just happened.
8 A. Just would happen.
9 Q. Right.
10 Does the Church -- I know the Church has a
11 dentist in the Flag Building.
12 That is what you call that building, Flag
13 Building?
14 A. Yeah. Ft. Harrison. Yeah.
15 Q. Do they have a doctor --
16 A. No.
17 Q. -- up there?
18 They don't have a doctor that's, "I'm the doctor
19 for you people. I'm in the building for any needs you
20 have?"
21 A. No.
22 Q. Okay. So if they were to have a staff member or
23 parishioner or somebody that needed medical help, they're
24 on their own, just go out and get a doctor, like anybody
25 else, right, unless --
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1 A. They have a person there called a Medical
2 Liaison Officer, and that person's job is to see sick
3 people; decide, you know, like, if they need a doctor, to
4 send them to a doctor. If they need advice on nutrition
5 or something like that, give them the advice. It's not --
6 the job's not really sort of advising medical care, it's
7 just so someone there has someone that can interface with
8 medical care and get them there. And for a staff member,
9 that's the person that would do it.
10 Q. Mm-hmm.
11 A. Because the money lines go through, if you're a
12 staff member and you work at the Church and you want to go
13 to the doctor, if you go -- if you go through the MLO, she
14 will then take you to the doctor. Then the Church will
15 pay for the medical care.
16 Q. If you're staff?
17 A. If you're a staff member.
18 Q. That's a pretty big benefit, isn't it? Is that
19 a benefit that everybody knows about?
20 A. A staff member benefit?
21 Q. Yeah.
22 A. I mean, its not a benefit of a public person.
23 Q. I understand.
24 A. But, I mean, their employees.
25 Q. Staff gets free medical services.
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1 A. Right.
2 Q. It's almost like a medical plan, but it's really
3 not. They just pick up the tab.
4 A. They pick up the tab.
5 Q. Hmm.
6 Is that the same way with doctor -- do you know
7 Dr. Houghton?
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. David Houghton?
10 Same thing?
11 A. No. He's a staff member.
12 Q. Right. He's their dentist.
13 A. So now they have an in-house dentist.
14 Q. I assume he's a salaried guy at the place.
15 A. Yeah.
16 So as a staff member, he gets food, lodging,
17 salary. And his job there is to be the dentist, so people
18 who have teeth trouble, they just go to him and get their
19 teeth fixed.
20 Q. And that's free, too?
21 A. Yeah.
22 Q. Wow.
23 Staff.
24 A. Staff. Yeah.
25
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1 Q. Hmm.
2 MR. FELMAN: You getting ready to join,
3 Mark?
4 MR. McGARRY: No.
5 BY MR. McGARRY:
6 Q. All right. So the MLO, at the time of Lisa --
7 December -- this is going back to December 5th of 95 --
8 A. Okay.
9 Q. -- the MLO, then, was who, to the best of your
10 knowledge?
11 A. Janice.
12 Q. That would have been Janice Johnson?
13 A. Yeah.
14 Q. She's not MLO any more, right?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Do you know who it is now?
17 A. I think that her name is Louisa something.
18 Q. Well, here. Let me -- you can straighten me
19 out, here. I've got some names you can fill me in on.
20 A. All right.
21 Q. Susan Green, married name
22 A. No. She was, I think, a receptionist or the
23 office manager for the MLO office.
24 Q. Okay. So she was in that office, but she wasn't
25 the head --
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1 A. No.
2 Q. -- manager?
3 Judy Colesberry Webber.
4 A. She was working as an MLO in that office. They
5 had a couple of them at one time.
6 Q. Okay. All right. So you're not sure who
7 replaced Janice Johnson?
8 A. No. Because since then, there's been a couple
9 of them. And the one who's been there the longest is --
10 You got any more names there? Blanking on the
11 lady's name.
12 MR. McGARRY: Detectives, you guys --
13 SGT. ANDREWS: A. J. Strecker. She's in an
14 office --
15 THE WITNESS: She's the senior above that
16 office, and a bunch of other ones. She didn't actually
17 work in that office.
18 SGT. ANDREWS: Judy Colesberry Webber, Emma
19 Schamehorn.
20 THE WITNESS: Emma. Emma's been there the
21 longest. She's probably been there three or four years.
22 BY MR. McGARRY:
23 Q. She's --
24 A. And she's been an MLO for a long time.
25 Q. Okay.
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1 A. And Emma's still doing it, as far as I know.
2 Judy, I don't think, is doing it any more.
3 Q. Okay. So during the course of your practice in
4 New Port Richey, did -- did you ever receive, like, phone
5 calls from an MLO saying, "Hey, Doc, you know, I've got a
6 situation here. Can you give me a -- maybe what she
7 should do here, adds up --
8 A. Maybe once a month, twice a month, sure.
9 Q. So it wouldn't be uncommon for an MLO to call
10 you, because they know you're with the Church, and you're
11 willing and able to assist in whatever problems they might
12 have.
13 A. Right.
14 Q. Just out of curiosity, do you have -- I believe
15 its called a senior or --
16 Who is your spiritual advisor or the person
18 look to for -- as your senior?
19 A. My senior?
20 MR. McGARRY: Help me out here, Detective.
21 SGT. ANDREWS: He wouldn't have one,
22 because he's not staff. He's public. He wouldn't have a
23 senior, since he doesn't work at the Church.
24 MR. McGARRY: I got you.
25 A. In that sense, a senior in the Church is someone
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1 who's in the organization board.
2 BY MR. McGARRY:
3 Q. Right.
4 A. Is, you know, like their boss.
5 Q. I got you.
6 A. But no, I don't have any bosses there.
7 Q. Okay. Well go to, more specifically, the --
8 November and December of 95.
9 Can you tell me when -- when the first time you
10 ever --
11 Have you ever met Lisa McPherson prior to
12 December 5th, personally, face-to-face?
13 A. No.
14 Q. Had you ever heard about her? Did you know who
15 she was, through the organization or through meetings or
16 any Church functions?
17 A. Prior to her being ill?
18 Q. Yes, sir.
19 A. No.
20 Q. Okay. When is the first time that you -- you
21 ever heard her name?
22 A. I probably heard her name -- I may not have even
23 heard her name, but the first issue of her coming up was a
24 call I got from the -- I'm not sure if it was Janice or if
25 it was Alain Karduzinski, that there was a girl that had
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1 become psychotic.
2 Q. Going back just for a second to Mr. Karduzinski,
3 how is he set up in this organization? How is he
4 affiliated?
5 A. He's what's called a case supervisor.
6 Q. Okay. Obviously, he's somehow connected up with
7 this MLO office, or not?
8 A. Well, he was in charge of, sort of, the
9 spiritual program that a person would be on --
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. -- who was -- whether -- so -- she was a public
12 person, so for a public person.
13 Q. So she (sic) would have been Lisa's senior --
14 or, not senior -- she (sic) would have been --
15 A. No. He -- the way it works is that, if you're a
16 public parishioner, and you buy auditing hours at the
17 Church --
18 Q. Mm-hmm.
19 A. -- okay, there's a person who's, like, the --
20 like, the auditor, who's the person who actually does the
21 interviews, communication, and writes the information
22 down, asks the questions and does the counseling.
23 Above that auditor is a person called a case
24 supervisor, who looks at the information, and then, based
25 on policy that he's got, writes what the steps that should
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1 be -- the processes and things that should be used on that
2 person. And then somebody else actually delivers it.
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. So he got -- he must have gotten involved with
5 her, because here was a person who was a parishioner and
6 now she was ill, and he needed - - he had questions and he
7 needed help.
8 Q. So you're not sure who the call came from? It
9 was either him or Johnson, in reference to her situation?
10 A. Right.
11 Q. Can you recall approximately when that was?
12 I've got a calendar here from 90 -- these guys
13 might have a blank one.
14 SGT. ANDREWS: No, I didn't bring it today.
15 BY MR. McGARRY:
16 Q. I'll just give you, for reference points, and
17 this'll help us for point of reference, if it's okay --
18 A. Mm-hmm.
19 Q. She checked into Flag on --
20 MR. McGARRY: Is that the 19th, fellows?
21 SGT. ANDREWS: 18th. Evening of November
22 18th.
23 BY MR. McGARRY:
24 Q. -- November 18th. And of course, you know she
25 ended up at New Port Richey on December 5th.
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1 A. Right.
2 Q. So that's the time frame that we're dealing
3 with.
4 A. So it was probably within a couple days of that.
5 And the complaint was that she wasn't sleeping,
6 and she felt that she needed to get some rest, but she was
7 so wound up that she just wasn't sleeping.
8 Q. Had you been briefed, at that period of time, or
9 had you known that she had that little episode with her
10 car wreck and --
11 A. No.
12 Q. -- running around naked and all that business?
13 A. No.
14 Q. Okay. So you --
15 A. A lot of this was sort of off-the-cuff. It's,
16 "I've got a problem. What do you think", or, "Can you
17 help out?" It wasn't really -- they weren't really asking
18 me for medical care or medical intervention at that point,
19 so -- I mean, I had had calls from him before, and it's,
20 you know, like, "What would you do," or, "She's not
21 sleeping." I might say, "Well, go to the pharmacy and get
22 some Benadryl over the counter, and it might help her
23 sleep," or something like that, and that would be the end
24 of the conversation.
25 Q. Okay. Specifically, this conversation, do you
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1 recall what it is that he said that was the problem there?
2 A. Well--
3 Q. Sleep?
4 A. What I recall about it was sleep.
5 Q. Okay.
6 A. She could not sleep.
7 And they wanted to do some -- you know, have
8 some communication with her, and she was -- she just
9 hadn't slept in a couple of days. And that's what the
10 concern was.
11 Q. Okay. Your advice was what?
12 A. I can't remember what I prescribed, but it was
13 either chloral hydrate or Valium, as a mild sedative, to
14 maybe help her sleep. And I maybe even suggested Benadryl
15 first.
16 Q. Okay. So if there was a prescription, that was
17 obviously something you had to call in --
18 A. Right.
19 Q. -- or do something?
20 Do you recall doing that?
21 A. Yeah. What, exactly -- which one, I'm not sure,
22 and I haven't -- I don't have records on it.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. But it was maybe a couple doses -- it was not
25 a -- it was not a big amount. It was not for a long time.
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1 Q. Okay. And do you recall --
2 So you're not even sure, at that phone
3 conversation -- Lisa McPherson had never really meant
4 anything for you. I mean --
5 A. No.
6 And I'm not even -- I probably got her name
7 cause I called it in, but I'm not -- it didn't ring a
8 bell. I didn't know who she was, and I didn't know what
9 the story was.
10 Q. All right. And -- well, I've got that record,
11 and I'll let you look at it. I just received it today, as
12 a matter of fact.
13 And it is chloral hydrate.
14 So I'll let you look at this. This is from
15 Eckerds. That's a pretty simple slip, there. I guess
16 they just write down -- your name's on there, and it's for
17 the --
18 A. For the chloral hydrate. Okay.
19 Q. And I think the date -- is there a date on that?
20 MR. FELMAN: Looks like 11-29. Yeah.
21 That may be when they picked it up. I don't
22 know. Looks like that's the date of the receipt, or maybe
23 that's the date.
24 SGT. ANDREWS: That's the day it was called
25 in, 11-29. If you flip the page, maybe that'll have a
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1 date when it was picked up.
2 MR. FELMAN: Same date. So --
3 MR. McGARRY: That looks like
4 Schnurrenburger or --
5 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Emma. That was the
6 Emma --
7 No, no. That's Susan what's-her-name. That was
8 the office manager.
9 SGT. ANDREWS: Susan Schnurrenburger.
10 That's what it looks like.
11 BY MR. McGARRY:
12 Q. All right. So is this what were talking about
13 right here, right?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Is that what you're referring to?
16 A. (Nods head).
17 Q. Okay.
18 MR. FELMAN: Let me just take a look.
19 Do you have a quantity on there?
20 THE WITNESS: I think it says thirty.
21 MR. FELMAN: Where do you see that?
22 THE WITNESS: There.
23 MR. FELMAN: Thirty. Okay.
24 BY MR. McGARRY:
25 Q. What is that, thirty tablets?
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1 What kind of form -- what does that pill look
2 like? Is that a -- is that a regular pill or is it a
3 gelcap or --
4 A. I don't even know.
5 Q. Well, you didn't see it, so --
6 A. It's the sort of thing that you give two to
7 four, and if, in an hour, you don't get any sleep, you
8 take two to four more. It's a pretty innocuous sedative.
9 Q. Chloral hydrate?
10 A. Yeah.
11 Q. Is that what that is? It's a sedative?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. You mentioned Valium. Is it similar to Valium?
14 A. No, it's more like a barbiturate. It's more
15 like phenobarbital. It's used a lot in children. It's
16 just about impossible to overdose on, and causes sleep,
17 but it's not -- doesn't cause any kind of heavy drug
18 delirium or anything like that.
19 Q. All right. So if that was November 29th, that
20 was after she'd already been there a week and a half. Is
21 that possible?
22 A. That's possible, yeah.
23 Q. Okay. And that phone conversation was either
24 Johnson or Karduzinski.
25 Do you recall having any other phone
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1 conversation with either of those two or anybody else from
2 the MLO office?
3 A. I think there's one more. I think I called in
4 one more. It may have been Valium the second time. That
5 she wouldn't swallow this, or she wouldn't take it, or
6 there was a problem with a pill because she just wouldn't
7 take a pill.
8 And this also comes as a liquid, but apparently,
9 the liquid wasn't available, so I think I called in one
10 more. And it may have been a few days later.
11 But again, you may have those records, and I --
12 Q. I don't, to be honest with you, but they may
13 exist, so we'll go looking around for them.
14 A. Okay. Now, I know we had one more conversation.
15 Now, whether - -
16 Q. Who is we?
17 A. Either me and Alain or me and Janice.
18 Q. Mm-hmm.
19 A. And I thought I called something else in, but it
20 may just have been a discussion of, maybe, "Grind it up in
21 a liquid and try and do it that way," or something like
22 that.
23 I'm sorry, but I'm not --
24 Q. That's okay. Were just asking you to use your
25 best recall here.
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1 A. Yeah.
2 Q. So you could smash that up and stick it in
3 something else and administer --
4 A. Mm-hmm. Jell-o, jelly, peanut butter or
5 something like that.
6 Q. Okay. Now, back to some -- the substance of
7 these conversations, did they indicate to you the -- the
8 nature of her -- her stay at the hotel, there?
9 A. Well, what I got from it is that she was what
10 they called Type 3, which means the person's psychotic.
11 And Hubbard's prescriptions for the psychotic person are
12 to put them in a destimulating environment. So keep it
13 quiet, and let them rest, and give them adequate nutrition
14 and let them just cool off.
15 So my understanding was that's what was going
16 on.
17 Now, as an outsider, you know, as a nonstaff
18 member, the details of what, actually -- the processes or
19 that -- what was going on -- they don't tell me, and I
20 don't ask. You know, I sort of just do my medical thing.
21 Q. Mm-hmm.
22 A. And I didn't get the -- usually, when somebody's
23 sick and they want medical things, they would say, "We
24 need a doctor," or, "Will you see the person," or whatever
25 it is, and then I just -- whatever it is. But I didn't --
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1 that didn't come up on this one, so I wasn't really -- it
2 was like a five-minute conversation: Not sleeping,
3 still. Any suggestions? Well, try this.
4 Q. Okay. I mean, the general feelings of a member
5 of the Church of Scientologists (sic), as far as the
6 psychiatric profession, is well-documented, and I've read
7 about it. It's not well-taken to them, in that respect.
8 Would you agree with that statement?
9 A. Well, that's true, yeah.
10 Q. So I assume, then, you would agree that their
11 remedy for those situations is Hubbard's teachings or
12 their own procedures, as opposed to going out for outside
13 psychiatric problem-solving.
14 A. Right.
15 There has also been a paranoia about medical
16 doctors, too, because a lot prescribed
17 psychiatric-oriented drugs.
18 Q. In general --
19 A. I'm the first medical doctor Scientologist
20 that's ever been in this town, so there's sort of a trust
21 factor with me.
22 Q. That's kind of what I was getting at earlier. I
23 didn't know that there was a general mistrust, but there
24 is a general -- I guess apprehension is the word --
25 towards the medical profession, in total, from --
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1 A. Not as a Church doctrine, but there's enough
2 people that are Church members that have that sort of --
3 Q. Perception?
4 A. That perception. That -- it's -- it's true.
5 Q. So that's why you -- I mean, that's why your
6 name is probably even more -- comes up more, because of
7 the trust factor.
8 A. Yeah. Because I'm a regular medical doctor. I
9 do regular stuff. And I'm a Scientologist. And it's, you
10 know, it's -- the Scientology teachings aren't in any way
11 opposed to regular medical doctoring. I do it all the
12 time. But the understanding --
13 I can usually bridge that with somebody.
14 Q. I got you.
15 Were there any -- was there any descriptive --
16 was there any description used of what Lisa was going
17 through? You said Type 3. Other than saying, "Hey, she's
18 Type 3. We're going to use a little isolation and some
19 bedrest and some proper nutrition, and handle it," but
20 were there any other communications between you and any of
21 the other staff members or caretakers that might have been
22 looking after Lisa that gave you some further insight as
23 to what she was going through? Do you recall anything
24 like that?
25 A. The only thing -- sort of the negative thing
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1 that I recall is that I never -- I never got sort of an
2 indication that, "Oh, this girl is sick," or, "Maybe she
3 needs to be seen," or, "A light sedative isn't the
4 answer."
5 And I'm pretty sensitive on that. But I never
6 got that feeling.
7 In fact --
8 Q. It was all up here for her, mental.
9 A. That's what I got.
10 And just -- by the way, the isolation is not by
11 yourself. It's always -- I mean, there's always people
12 with her. But the idea is that she's not walking down,
13 you know, Broadway, or the TV set on or, you know -- it's
14 quiet. But not alone.
15 Q. Well, we've heard, from the caretakers, that
16 there's a no-talk policy.
17 A. Yeah.
18 Q. Is that your understanding --
19 A. Yeah.
20 Q. -- also?
21 A. Yeah.
22 Q. No communication?
23 A. Or minimum.
24 Q. Minimum.
25 A. If the person would ask them a question, they
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1 would answer the question, but it's -- don't originate
2 conversation. You know, they wouldn't be asking, like,
3 "How's the weather today?" If the person says, "I need
4 this," or, "What do you think about that," then the person
5 who was there would talk to them, but they wouldn't be,
6 like, trying to make conversation.
7 Q. I got you.
8 The procedure that was to follow, I've been
9 told, was something called an "intraspective rundown."
10 Are you familiar with that term?
11 A. The details of it, no. I -- I know -- you --
12 probably told you the basic purpose of it is to get the
13 person back to where they're actually in communication
14 with their environment.
15 Q. It's more of a Type 3 procedure?
16 A. Exactly. So here's a psychotic person. If you
17 just give them rest, quiet environment, whatever it is in
18 the environment that got them going in the first place
19 will settle down to the point where someone can talk to
20 that person. And then, through whatever the process is --
21 and I'm not up on what the particular details of the
22 process are -- that she would then be able to actually be
23 in communication again and not -- Type 3 means that she's
24 not really in communication. So then she could function
25 on her own.
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 Q. So other than, possibly, two phone calls up
2 until December 5th, that was just about it, for the
3 communication you had for --
4 A. As far as I remember, yeah.
5 Because when the call came on December 5th, they
6 had to remind me who she was. That was sort of how
7 out-of-mind it was, that, "Oh, remember the girl, you
8 called in the prescription for?" It was sort of like,
9 "Oh, yeah."
10 Q. So who -- let's go to December 5th, now.
11 Who made that -- that call?
12 A. Janice.
13 Q. Okay. And do you recall approximately what time
14 that was, on December 5th?
15 A. It was probably right around seven. May have
16 been a little earlier than that.
17 Q. p.m.?
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. And what was the substance of her conversation
20 with you?
21 A. She said that she had a girl that she had seen
22 about six-thirty, who was sick; that she thought she had
23 strep throat; she had a lot of diarrhea during the day --
24 in my earlier one, I said twelve-pound weight loss, and
25 I think that's what she told me -- and that what she
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1 actually requested was, would I write a prescription or
2 call in a prescription so that this girl could get an
3 injection of penicillin because she thought the girl had a
4 strep throat.
5 And what I said to her was, I wouldn't do that.
6 If she's sick, to the point where she needs to get an
7 injection, she needs to be seen. And I wouldn't do that.
8 So I said, "If she's really sick, you better
9 take her to Morton Plant. If she's --"
10 She said, "No, she's not that sick. She can
11 be -- can I bring her up to you?"
12 And I said, "That's fine. I'll see her."
13 But I emphasized to her, "If she's really ill,
14 don't bring her up to me. It's too far."
15 And I -- the other concern -- I was off-shift at
16 ten. Sometimes I've gotten a call and it's taken four
17 hours to get there. And I said, "I've got to leave at
18 ten. And if you're coming, come right away, because I
19 don't want to see you at nine-thirty and then have to do
20 blood tests and X-rays and be sitting with this person in
21 the emergency room for three more hours, because my
22 partner's not going to want to deal with it."
23 So she said, "Fine. We'll come right up."
24 Now, it was -- I don't have the record here, but
25 whatever time they got there, nine-thirty --
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1 MR. McGARRY: You guys know?
2 SGT. ANDREWS: Yeah. I have medical
3 records that say about twenty-one-thirty hours.
4 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
5 MR. FELMAN: That is the time of death
6 or --
7 THE WITNESS: No, because I think we coded
8 her for twenty minutes. I think ten to ten was the time
9 of death.
10 SGT. ANDREWS: It's a little vague. I'm
11 not sure.
12 I have them here if you want him to look at
13 them.
14 MR. McGARRY: Sure. That would probably be
15 real helpful.
16 A. I saw her at about nine-thirty, so it must have
17 been a couple hours. You know, maybe it was seven or --
18 the guy I was with says he remembers the call, so it must
19 have been after seven.
20 So somewhere after seven, she calls. And by
21 nine-thirty I was sort of trying to pack up and get ready
22 to move out of there, and then, "boom", they come walking
23 through the door. And I'd actually forgotten they were
24 coming. I figured maybe something else happened, they
25 went someplace else. Sort of out of mind at the time.
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 BY MR. McGARRY:
2 Q. Mm-hmm.
3 A. I think you have the scenario of what -- you
4 know, there was a call to the nurse's station that they
5 needed help at the intake area. And one of the orderlies
6 went out there. And I -- as soon as he opened up -- They
7 need help getting somebody out of the car. He went out
8 there. And then as soon as he got to the doors -- he went
9 out there with a wheelchair.
10 When they wheeled her through the doors, he
11 started yelling, and then I got up from the nurse's
12 station and I walked over and saw her coming through the
13 thing.
14 Q. Who was that guy, do you remember?
15 A. Yeah. That was Willy Burdette.
16 Q. He's a--
17 They call him PCT, patient care technician.
18 Q. And can you describe Lisa when -- when --
19 Was she carried in or was she wheeled in with a
20 wheelchair?
21 A. She was draped over a wheelchair. You know,
22 instead of sitting in the wheelchair like this, she was
23 draped over the wheelchair like this.
24 And he was pushing the wheelchair into our
25 trauma room, and that's when I saw her the first time.
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1 And it didn't even dawn on me, then, who she
2 was.
3 Then we got her in the room, we started the CPR
4 procedures, and then they said -- somebody said -- you
5 know, "Where did she come from?" "She was in a car." And
6 then, "Her name is Lisa McPherson." And then I thought,
7 "Oh, God, that's her."
8 Q. So chronologically going here, for -- now we're
9 trying some CPR procedures at that point?
10 A. Yeah.
11 Q. What exactly did that entail?
12 A. We put a tube in their throat to breath them,
13 put an IV line in to give them medicines. Somebody starts
14 the actual CPR. And so all that stuff was done.
15 Q. When you first saw her, did you find any signs
16 of life in her, or was she dead when she got there?
17 A. She had no vital signs when we saw her.
18 Q. All these things here I got, I'm -- excuse me.
19 I'm no doctor, certainly, but these things here, these
20 EKG deals here --
21 A. Once someone gets -- once CPR is called, they
22 get hooked up to an EKG monitor - -
23 Q. And that's what, all these?
24 A. -- and that records it if somebody's doing CPR.
25 Q. Those blips --
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 A. -- show up there --
2 Q. -- when they're doing CPR?
3 A. Yeah.
4 Q. I was wondering about that.
5 A. All those squiggly lines, that's during CPR.
6 They leave it connected.
7 Q. So these things here would indicate somebody's
8 giving a compression to the chest?
9 A. Exactly.
10 This first hook-up here that you see at
12. twenty-one-thirty-two, which was start, that was the
12 underlying rhythm, and that's a rhythm that's pretty much
13 ventricular fibrillation. So the heart was wiggling. It
14 wasn't beating. Which, in most people, is a terminal
15 event. Sometimes you can bring them around.
16 But that's what we got when she got there. So
17 her heart wasn't -- not beating, but it was fibrillating.
18 Q. During -- during your observations, does that --
19 I assume that there's no lung workage here, there's no
20 breathing going on. It's all -- the heart -- you
21 described there, the heart situation?
22 A. I mean, most people with ventricular
23 fibrillation will lose consciousness within a few minutes.
24 Q. Okay. There wasn't any gasping of air or any
25 kind of breathing at all that you could tell.
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1 A. No.
2 Q. And I assume the eyes are all fixed and --
3 A. Yeah. I've got pupils unreactive here.
4 Q. Is that -- what you're reading --
5 A. Yeah.
6 Q. -- that's your handwriting?
7 A. Yeah, that's me.
8 Q. You've got something else written on here, too.
9 What does this mean: Septic, something, return,
10 extreme, something?
11 A. "Septic
12 Q. Right.
13 A. "Petechiae, P E T C H, extremities," which were
14 her arms and legs.
15 Q. Can you explain that? What does that mean?
16 A. They look like superficial bruises, but they
17 also look like if the person has a bacteria that's
18 circulating around their blood, and the bacterias -- and
19 if there's a lot of them, they form clumps. And when they
20 go to the real small little -- little capillaries that are
21 in the skin, they block the capillary, `cause there's a
22 glob of them. If it was one bacteria, they would go
23 through the little capillary, but if its a glob of them,
24 they get stuck and they block it. And since the area
25 behind the capillary is not getting any blood, now, it
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 will begin to leak the blood that's already there, and it
2 leaks it into the skin, and it looks like a superficial
3 bruise.
4 And that's what it looked like.
5 Q. So you've had conversations about some of these
6 things with our medical examiner, Dr. Wood, right? I
7 mean --
8 A. I never talked to Dr. Wood.
9 Q. You haven't?
10 A. No. Never met the lady.
11 Q. You have a correspondence here, but that was
12 probably just a letter, I guess, right?
13 A. Yes. I talked to the guy who did the autopsy.
14 Q. Oh, I see.
15 A. It wasn't --
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. But I wasn't aware even, at that time, that
18 Dr. Wood had anything to do with it.
19 Q. Well, she took over, I guess, because that
20 fellow left.
21 A. Yeah. It was, like, some months later, I think.
22 Q. Yeah.
23 You talked to him?
24 A. Yeah. I talked to him the next day. I think I
25 talked to him twice, actually.
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1 Q. What was the substance of that conversation?
2 A. Well, the first time I talked to him was the
3 next day, and I said -- I just wanted to let him know that
4 this girl looked to me like she was what we call septic;
5 that she had an overwhelming infection; and that he make
6 sure, when he do (sic) the autopsy, to look for that.
7 And his comment at the time -- cause I -- I
8 practiced infectious disease for ten years. This looked
9 like a septic shock.
10 Q. He said that?
11 A. No. I -- I -- that's what it looked like to me.
12 I've seen this before.
13 So --
14 Q. You followed this up with this letter, right?
15 A. Yeah. That letter's way later.
16 Q. Oh. 16th. Youre correct.
17 A. So I said, "Just be sure, when you do the
18 autopsy, that you take the appropriate tissues, so if
19 that's what happened, we can make the right diagnosis."
20 Q. This is a year later, this letter.
21 A. Right. Because -- I wrote this letter because
22 of what came out in the newspaper. I was quoted in the
23 newspaper. And at the time I talked to him, the next day,
24 I said, "Be sure you do the pathology for this, because I
25 don't know -- we may have a diagnosis here."
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1 And he was not interested at all. He said, "I
2 got a diagnosis. This doesn't have anything to do with
3 it."
4 "Okay."
5 So then, that evening, which was --
6 Q. Did he tell you what his diagnosis was?
7 A. Yeah. He said she had pulmonary emboli and a
8 thrombophlebitis in her -- whichever leg.
9 So then that evening, I think, around six
10 o'clock, which was the next day, the 6th, the lab called
11 me and said they had a positive blood culture.
12 Q. And that's this next page, on -- I think you've
13 got that here, too -- I think --
14 Yeah. There it is.
15 A. Yeah.
16 But there was a prelim -- here is the
17 preliminary report.
18 Q. Right.
19 A. So they called me -- yeah. "Phone to
20 Dr. Minkoff at eighteen-fifteen on 12-6."
21 So the blood culture had been done around ten
22 o'clock the night before --
23 Q. That was done December --
24 A. -- 5th.
25 Q. That night?
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1 A. And I did that blood culture.
2 Q. You're the one that drew the blood?
3 A. I drew the blood culture.
4 Because when we finished this thing, and here
5 she was, dead; she looked septic; we'd had four or five
6 people in very close contact with her --
7 The thing that usually causes this disease is
8 called meningococcus, and it can cause epidemics of death,
9 and I was worried that -- I had had, you know, two inches
10 from her mouth, trying to put a tube in her throat. The
11 other doctor had done the same thing. I couldn't get the
12 tube in, so he did it. And --
13 Q. Why is that?
14 A. Cause my --
15 0. Why wouldn't the tube go in?
16 A. Well, sometimes you can't get it in.
17 Q. All right. I thought she had some specific
18 problem that --
19 A. Oh, no. No.
20 Q. Okay.
21 A. No, no. I think I was in shock myself, after
22 realizing what this was going on. I just said, "Oh, my
23 God." And he was there with me, so I just said, "You do
24 it."
25 Q. Okay.
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 A. So I was concerned that the staff might --
2 cause if this is one of these bacteria that's
3 communicable, you know, that you can get -- you can get
4 the infection from the person who's dying, then we put
5 everybody on antibiotics for a couple days to prevent them
6 getting sick. That's what I was thinking. I might have
7 to take antibiotics. The nurses -- we maybe should go on
8 antibiotics.
9 Q. Because you were that close with her.
10 A. Because we were that close with her.
11 So that's why I drew the blood culture.
12 And so then, the next day, on the 7th, I was
13 back at the hospital. They -- I got the report that it
14 wasn't this meningococcus; it was a staph.
15 And I called the pathologist back and said,
16 Look, I've got a positive blood culture.
17 Now, blood cultures sometimes take three to
18 seven days to grow out. If there aren't many germs in the
19 blood, it takes a long time. If there's lots of germs in
20 the blood, it usually grows pretty quick. And this is
21 pretty quick, to put it in at ten or twelve at night and
22 then, twelve hours later, have a positive. It means there
23 was a lot of them in there.
24 So I called him and said," There's a lot of
25 germs in this blood. I mean, this girl's got a positive
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 blood culture in twelve hours. Its a staph. You ought
2 to know about it."
3 But -- okay -- five months later, when the
4 autopsy report came out, he didn't mention anything of
5 that in the autopsy report or the pathology findings. And
6 I remember thinking, at the time, "I'm not going to bother
7 him with it now." I thought the thing was all over and
8 resolved, and I hadn't heard anything in five months.
9 But then, in December, when he talked to the
10 newspaper and everybody else started talking to the
11 newspaper, and they were throwing my name around, that --
12 and this wasn't even mentioned as a possibility of what
13 had gone on. That's why I wrote him the letter and I
14 said, "Hey, this is -- "
15 Q. Well, how does that work -- how does dehydration
16 fit into this staph infection situation --
17 A. Well, if --
18 Q. -- as far as you can tell? I mean --
19 A. I don't know what the -- I actually don't know
20 what the -- what the twelve- or twenty-four-hour events
21 preceding her coming to me were. I haven't talked to
22 Dr. Johnson about it, other than the superficial thing on
23 the phone. And then I had conversation with her after
24 the -- after we pronounced her dead. But most of that
25 conversation was me yelling. It wasn't -- you know, it
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 was just like --
2 Q. You had a conversation with Dr. Johnson --
3 A. Yeah.
4 Q. -- that night?
5 A. That night.
6 Q. After Lisa had been pronounced?
7 A. Yeah.
8 Q. What was that conversation about?
9 A. It was like, "What did you do? How" -- you
10 know, "What is this?" I was flabbergasted. I was --
11 So she said that she had seen her at six-thirty,
12 and there had been diarrhea and weight loss, and da, da,
13 da.
14 And I -- I was just -- I was distraught.
15 And I don't know what her -- what her contact --
16 you know, I don't really know what her contact with Lisa
17 was, preceding, or who was there. I don't know that
18 stuff. I haven't actually asked the Church about it, and
19 I haven't seen any of the records about it, so I don't
20 know.
21 Q. Well, then, this investigation got started, and
22 you understand why this is all going on here, is because
23 there's a concern that something -- that she showed signs
24 of being very medically ill and it wasn't disposed of or
25 she wasn't taken care of properly or in a timely fashion.
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1 That's why these questions are being asked.
2 A. Totally understandable.
3 Q. How does one of these staph infections get
4 started?
5 A. Sometimes -- this first got recognized in the
6 in the late 70s, when women who had tampons that were
7 left in too long -- the tampons would get colonized, which
8 means they would get the staph growing on them, and then
9 this staph would put out a poison in the system, which was
10 a certain kind of protein it would put out, which would
11 cause, in a very quick manner -- it might be in, like,
12 maybe, four to eight hours, ten hours -- the toxin would
13 actually make the blood vessels leak, give the person
14 diarrhea, and they would go from maybe having what looked
15 like the flu to being unconscious and in shock, which is
16 no blood pressure.
17 And so the particular staph was identified, and
18 then there were papers that came out on it.
19 Since that time - -
20 And that was called "toxic shock syndrome."
21 Q. Right.
22 A. That entity has been seen in people without
23 tampons. Sometimes -- sometimes it's a wound; sometimes
24 the staph can be in a person's -- just -- just colonized
25 in a person's nose. And if it's got that particular
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 protein that it's making, it can make them sick.
2 In this case, she had this -- this clot in her
3 leg.
4 I was not -- I was not aware of that when I saw
5 her, because I -- sometimes you can -- you can tell when
6 someone's got a clot in their leg, and they come to the
7 emergency room and complain about pain, and the leg hurts
8 and all that stuff. But women can get clots in their leg
9 and not have symptoms. And presumably, that could be
10 colonized with the staph -- if she had the staph in her
11 blood, it would grow on that clot and you could get it
12 from that.
13 Q. How quickly does that clot form, or do you know?
14 Is there a timetable on that?
15 A. It really depends on how it was caused. We see
16 some people who don't have a prior history of having a
17 clot, and they just get a clot. And then sometimes, if
18 the clot is making symptoms in their leg, theyll come in,
19 and then we'll do something with it.
20 Sometimes you'll see people who don't have
21 symptoms of it. They'll come in, in breathing distress,
22 because they've already thrown an embolus, a piece of that
23 clot, into their lung, and it's blocking off part of their
24 lung, and then they're sick. It happens in normal,
25 healthy girls. It's not common. It's more common in
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1 people with cancer and people on birth control pills, you
2 know, all that sort of stuff.
3 But it was -- it was a -- it was sort of the way
4 I thought about this thing, without having no prior,
5 advance -- but trying to hook this blood culture into the
6 series of events, as part of the terminal event, for my
7 own understanding. I mean, that's the way I -- when I
8 tried to put this thing together.
9 Q. Okay. How about from a nutritional aspect of
10 all this? Did you see how that may have played a role in
11 any of this series of events that occurred within her
12 body? I mean, is that -- how does that factor in, or does
13 it?
14 A. Well, in terms of a person's immune system, if
15 their nutrition's not adequate, then their response to an
16 infection wouldn't be adequate either, or certainly would
17 be delayed.
18 Whatever this dehydration factor was, whether it
19 was long-term or whether it was acute, just based on,
20 like, an acute illness --
21 Let's say she was marginally dehydrated, and
22 then, the last day, it was like "whoosh", that she got
23 this staph, and the toxin, and blah, blah, blah, and then
24 she got, you know, overwhelming dehydration, then that
25 could have occurred fast.
KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320
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1 Q. Could have played a role in it?
2 A. Yeah.
3 Q. Did this chloral hydrate stuff -- is that what
4 used to be called a Mickey Finn? Remember that
5 expression, slip somebody a Mickey Fin? Remember that?
6 A. I remember it, but I don't know if it's that.
7 Q. I --
8 A. It's not a very good --
9 Q. That's what a Mickey Finn used to be, is a
10 chloral hydrate. Do you remember that?
11 A. Is it?
12 Q. I think so. Just thought I'd throw that out.
13 AGENT STROPE: Mixed with alcohol.
14 A. It's like a real old drug, probably, from the
15 `40's.
16 BY MR. McGARRY:
17 Q. Right. People would drop it in your shot glass
18 or your drink glass.
19 A. And you'd go to sleep.
20 Q. Yeah. Well --
21 A. I don't know.
22 Q. What -- this other drug that's come up through
23 our interviews, magnesium chloride -- that's different
24 from chloral hydrate, right? That's something --
25 A. Yes. That's just magnesium. That's just a
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1 mineral.
2 Q. That's not a prescription --
3 A. No.
4 Q. -- anything?
5 What does that do to the body?
6 A. In high doses, it would be a muscle relaxant.
7 Q. So there is a medical need for that?
8 A. Yeah. I mean, it's -- also could -- I mean,
9 sometimes it's used for real high blood pressure, like the
10 most frequent time it's used in medicine is in pregnant
11 women that have what's called toxemia, where the blood
12 pressure is super high, and they give it intravenous.
13 Q. How is that administered?
14 A. In general, it could be in intravenous, could be
15 IV, as a shot, by mouth, intermuscular.
16 But you can't get the intermuscular form without
17 a prescription.
18 Q. That takes a prescription?
19 A. Yeah.
20 Q. Did you prescribe that?
21 A. No.
22 Q. But it's not a prescription drug?
23 A. No. You can go to Eckerd's or Nature's Food
24 Patch and buy magnesium chloride tablets over the counter.
25 Q. But to get it in the IM fashion, that's
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1 different?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. It's the same -- it's the same drug --
4 A. Same drug.
5 Q. Needs a prescription to come in that fashion,
6 though.
7 A. (Nods head).
8 Q. Now, you saw her and made observations of her,
9 obviously, when she was in the emergency room that day.
10 Did- -
11 You described these patches -- I've seen these
12 pictures of the patches, the red patches on her arms, and
13 you've also heard Dr. Wood describe them as being the
14 result of bug bites.
15 Do you disagree with that assessment or do have
16 you an opinion?
17 A. There were really two kinds of markings.
18 And I don't know if you have pictures here, but
19 the petechiae, the purpura, the bruising, is probably
20 distinguished from whatever -- if there was some insect
21 bites --
22 And I don't -- I don't recall them. I have
23 never heard -- where Dr. Wood got this from, I have no
24 idea. I mean, I've never heard this, ever. I've been
25 doing medicine for a long time. I have never heard
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1 anybody look at a skin lesion and say, "This is a roach
2 bite, a cockroach bite."
3 Q. I'm -- I knew you'd heard that, and I was going
4 to ask your opinion --
5 A. I thought -- I don't know where she's getting
6 this.
7 Q. That wasn't your observation at the time?
8 A. No.
9 Q. There's a -- if you'll look at that blood
10 culture sheet, there, there's something I picked up on.
11 Do you see her birth date up there -- you
12 probably don't know what her birth date is, but they've
13 got, up here, a birth date of --
14 A. 7-20-50.
15 Q. Yeah. Forty-five-year-old female.
16 A. Yeah.
17 Q. That's wrong. Do you know why that could have
18 been fouled up?
19 A. No.
20 Q. Her birth date is, in fact --
21 MR. McGARRY: Guys, you know what her birth
22 date is?
23 SGT. ANDREWS: She was only thirty-six when
24 she died, so it's ten years off.
25 Does she look forty-five? That would be my
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1 question.
2 MR. McGARRY: Well --
3 SGT. ANDREWS: I mean, the doctor verifying
4 that she was forty-five or -- yeah. That's correct --
5 forty-five.
6 My question would be, he's treating this
7 patient. Does she look forty-five?
8 MR. McGARRY: Let's see if there's another
9 birthday in here.
10 THE WITNESS: I think I was told she was
11 thirty-two, because I wrote "thirty-two" on my actual --
12 SGT. ANDREWS: Okay.
13 THE WITNESS: -- written report, and the --
14 MR. McGARRY: Yeah.
15 THE WITNESS: -- people who do this stuff,
16 I don't have anything to do with them, you know. Sort of
17 the administrative hospital intake people. I don't know
18 where they got that.
19 BY MR. McGARRY:
20 Q. So that's just a clerical screw-up? You've got
21 "thirty-two year old white female" on your admitting sheet
22 here.
23 A. Yeah.
24 Q. So we don't know --
25 My question is, there's no --
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1 A. Could there be another Lisa McPherson?
2 Q. Or they get this record screwed up with somebody
3 else?
4 That concerns me. If that's inaccurate, does
5 that mean everything's screwed up, or what?
6 A. I think it's just a clerical screw-up.
7 Q. Okay. Or yeah, another Lisa McPherson --
8 A. Not the same day, with the -- no, I don't think
9 so. I think it's just a clerical screw-up.
10 Q. Who does that? Do you happen to know who types
11 that in there? Who's responsible for that?
12 A. There's people in the front of the emergency
13 room, not in the treatment area, who do all the paperwork
14 and type the stuff in the computer.
is So where they got it or who they talked to or --
16 I don't know. I mean, it may have been -- there was a
17 couple people that came up with her. It may have been one
18 of those people that gave her birthday or --
19 I don't -- I don't know.
20 Q. So the purpose for you, in drawing this blood,
21 was what? What?
22 A. Personal safety.
23 Q. Why did you draw this blood?
24 A. Personal safety. Me and the group, there.
25 Q. Right. `Cause you thought, "Wow, this could
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1 be --"
2 A. I thought she had meningococcemia. It was an
3 acute event, her death, caused by this. And I wanted to
4 make sure that, if that's what it was, that I didn't die,
5 and those other people in there didn't die of it, too.
6 Q. When you say -- can we -- if we could, let's
7 narrow down "acute."
8 How much time are you saying, when you say
9 "acute"? How much time do you think transpired for that
10 death?
11 A. I -- I could suppose a lot of things, but I
12 can't tell you.
13 Q. Okay. Well, when you say "acute" --
14 A. There are forms of meningococcemia which go on
15 for a couple days and then, all of the sudden, overwhelms
16 the person, and they die. Then there's forms of
17 meningococcemia which occur -- I have seen a child in the
18 office, when I was in office practice, where the child
19 would come in the office at four o'clock, and have a high
20 fever, and look sick, and I maybe saw one little petechiae
21 on the knee or something, and I said, "Yes, sir, we better
22 get this kid to the hospital," and I would give him a dose
23 of antibiotics in the office, and they would go to the
24 hospital, which was two blocks away. And by the time I
25 got to the hospital two hours later, the kid might be just
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1 about unconscious, with, now, showers of these things, all
2 over. And that can happen in a matter of hours.
3 So it's -- there's -- sort of reaches a critical
4 mass. And then, once the critical mass is reached, where
5 the person may not look all that ill, then it's over,
6 because the mortality of it's high.
7 Now, the -- there is a form of meningococcemia
8 where the people tend to live, and that form is, they get
9 meningitis first, so the person has survived the germ long
10 enough, with it in their blood, for it to get in their
11 brain, and they come in with meningitis. Stiff neck,
12 terrible headache. Those guys have a better chance of
13 living because they've survived this first phase of where
14 all the bacteria go in their blood.
15 But there was no evidence of meningitis in here.
16 Which, if this is the scenario, this makes it seem like,
17 you know, it wasn't in there that long.
18 This is not meningococcus. This is staph. It's
19 a different germ.
20 But the literature has reports like this.
21 Q. And, in fact, I think that's what I read that
22 you sent to the medical examiner.
23 A. Yeah. I just went on the Internet and did
24 "staph, sepsis, pulmonary embolism." It showed three or
2S four things. I just Xeroxed them off, and I said, "Be
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1 aware of this thing" because --
2 Q. Right.
3 A. -- I -- I really wanted to ensure that the
4 pathology was done so that a diagnosis could be made --
5 that was my intention -- so that if this was actually
6 true, and the reason, it would be clear.
7 Q. I don't have the -- I -- I have it in my office,
8 but I don't have the autopsy --
9 MR. McGARRY: Do you have a copy of that?
10 SGT. ANDREWS: Not here.
11 AGENT STROPE: Not here, no.
12 MR. FELMAN: I've got one.
13 MR. McGARRY: Well, pull that out, if you
14 would.
15 Maybe I should get some photos, too. I've got
16 the photos.
17 MR. FELMAN: That's fine.
18 MR. McGARRY: Yeah. Why don't -- I'd like
19 to get the photos. I should have brought those in here.
20 You mind taking a break, and get a cup of
21 coffee?
22 (Whereupon a recess was taken).
23 BY MR. McGARRY:
24 Q. I've got some pictures here, and you can use
25 them to give a description of what you observed, if
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1 they're consistent with your observations on December 5th,
2 `95.
3 MR. FELMAN: Do you have these numbered or
4 labeled somehow, Mark, or --
5 MR. McGARRY: Actually, I don't.
6 MR. FELMAN: Might be good, just for
7 purposes of our record, if we can put a letter on them or
8 number the back of each one, so it'll be clear what he's
9 talking about, or --
10 MR. McGARRY: Yeah.
11 Here, I'll number these up for you.
12 MR. FELMAN: Doctor, if you're going to
13 testify about any particular picture, make sure you
14 identify what the number is on the back of it.
15 A. You know, what strikes me about these, is
16 that -- I don't know what the time frame was between when
17 we saw her and these were taken, but the amount of this
18 blue blush of -- you see, here -- I do not recall -- I
19 mean, this -- first this --
20 MR. FELMAN: That's what I was saying, if
21 you're going to make a reference --
22 A. Number 2. When I said that there were -- there
23 was purpura on the extremities, that would be a good
24 example of it.
25 This would also be a good example, number 8.
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1 BY MR. McGARRY:
2 Q. Mm-hmm.
3 A. This, I think, is post-mortem change. That's
4 what it looks to me like. Because when she came in, she
5 was very pale. But this amount of bruising around the
6 face and around the flank, I do not recall at all. And I
7 think that this is post-mortem change.
8 I think this process, whatever was going on, or
9 what could have been going on -- and again, this -- I'm --
10 I'm -- what I'm giving you is sort of my conjecture on the
11 thing. But this doesn't look like what I saw. It looks,
12 if anything, worse. If you looked at this and you hadn't
13 seen her -- she was very pale, but this --
14 And on Number -- I don't know what that is -- 7?
15 Q. Yeah.
16 A. And number M (sic)
17 Q. 3--
18 A. -- 3, it didn't look like that. My recollection
19 is it didn't look like that.
20 Q. So did you -- these observations you made,
21 though, observations of the hand, it looks like some type
22 of raised lesion, almost, but is that what you described
23 earlier as --
24 A. Yes. Septic petechiae.
25 Again, this -- the -- on Figure 1, what looks
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1 like bruising on the legs, and especially that right knee,
2 I did not -- I do not recall. I -- I think it's --
3 Q. How about the abrasion on the nose and chin?
4 A. Don't recall.
5 Now, this was -- I don't recall. I don't know
6 whether this is actually cut, or it's blood.
7 Because the intubation was traumatic. I mean,
8 it was -- it was -- it's a metal instrument, it's jammed
9 into the mouth -- I mean, it was -- this is not a -- this
10 is a --
11 Q. You're saying -- so this could have occurred --
12 A. We might have done this during the code.
13 A mask is put on them right away. There's --
14 you know, while - -
15 Q. This looks like a scab-over, so that wouldn't
16 be -- of course, I'm no doctor, but - -
17 A. Yeah, I'm not sure if this is a scab or it's
18 blood. It could be either one, you know, like just fresh
19 blood wiped on there, or whether it's actually cut. Don't
20 recall.
21 But I can tell you that the codes are not --
22 are -- this is a -- this is a-- it's not sort of a gentle
23 operating room type, make-sure-you-don't-break-any-teeth
24 thing. It's sort of a -- tends to be kind of chaotic.
25 I remember superficial bruising on one of the
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1 anterior hips, but if you looked at this, I would have the
2 same concerns you guys got. But I don't -- I don't recall
3 that at all.
4 Q. So those pictures don't accurately portray what
5 you were observing on --
6 A. When I observed her when she came in, no, they
7 don't.
8 This does, on the -- again, the same things I
9 said before.
10 See, on this one, too, Number 4, the part of the
11 body that you see here -- I think that's post-mortem
12 change. You know, whatever was causing these blood
13 vessels to leak -- and again, I don't know if my
14 conjecture on this thing is right, or there could be a
15 totally different explanation for it -- but if you go with
16 that, this process may continue even after a person died.
17 Bacteria are still there, and it still leaks and so on.
18 Q. What is your conjecture on this? What is your
19 theory on this? You have a better grip on it than,
20 obviously, anybody but, maybe, the medical examiner, as
21 far as being a doctor and having observed her in her last
22 stages of life. What -- what is your opinion?
23 A. The opinion I could give you is only a scenario
24 from seven or seven-thirty that night on, `cause I really
25 don't have any knowledge of what exactly occurred before,
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1 except the week before, with the no-sleep and all that
2 stuff.
3 Q. Mm-hmm.
4 A. I think that you've -- that there's been -- I
5 don't know how she got the -- the -- I don't know what the
6 ideology of the leg clot was, whether her nutrition was
7 borderline and her hydration was borderline but not
8 critical, and she got a leg clot, she got the infection.
9 And between the two -- and I'm not sure, and
10 maybe the pathologist has got the tissues, because I don't
11 know what happened there, either -- but that, between the
12 two of them, she had a rapid terminal event which caused
13 her to die.
14 Now, whether that was going on all day or
15 whether it was in a few hours before, I can't tell you,
16 because I think either one is compatible with this.
17 Q. You've probably -- you're probably aware of
18 Dr. Wood's statements that she made publicly to the media,
19 that, based on some numbers that she has in reference to
20 some tests that were performed, that the numbers were so
21 high that she was so severely dehydrated; it's her opinion
22 she wasn't conscious for twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
23 Have you heard that statement?
24 A. Yeah.
25 Q. Do you have any opinion as to that statement, as
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1 far as your observations on December 5th?
2 A. Based on her appearance, I can't give you an
3 opinion. I don't know -- I mean, the -- the things that
4 she used -- the laboratory data that she used to test, I
5 don't know if that's actually true, if a person has an
6 acute dehydration -- you know, who's borderline
7 dehydration, and then has an acute dehydration over one
8 day -- what that does to the numbers. I don't know. I
9 don't know.
10 The fact that she was unconscious for two days
11 before, just based on my dealings with the people at the
12 Church that I've had contact with, it would seem
13 impossible that that occurred.
14 Q. Is that --
15 A. That's just personal knowledge of the -- like
16 the people we spoke of here, you know, having had contact
17 with them before, that they would be --
18 Q. They would --
19 A. -- so out of it, or so -- that they wouldn't
20 have called somebody, they wouldn't have taken her in, or
21 they wouldn't have maybe called me back or something, if
22 she had been unconscious for two days. I just -- it
23 doesn't seem possible.
24 Again, that's only my opinion. And I don't
25 know, and I didn't talk to them.
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1 Q. Um-hmm.
2 A. But my contact with these people has been that
3 they are pretty -- you know, they're not -- they're fairly
4 aware, and they're -- care about their job and care about
5 their parishioners and -- you know, I mean, my own
6 experience with anybody there has been nothing which would
7 make me think that anything like this would ever happen.
8 That's my personal experience, you know, my family's
9 experiences.
10 I don't consider myself, you know, sort of an
11 offbeat or a kook or anything like that. I'm a regular
12 guy; regular job; married twenty-eight years; three
13 children. You know, just regular. And you know, this --
14 so -- and it just doesn't -- doesn't add up for me,
15 that -- Dr. Wood's statements.
16 Q. Right.
17 Going back to her last few days, would any of
18 these -- you have a heightened medical knowledge in
19 infectious diseases -- would any of these things that
20 she'd been given accelerate or cause a problem or
21 complicate her medical problem, with reference to chloral
22 hydrate and magnesium and Cal Mag that's been brought up
23 many times -- as well as --
24 SGT. ANDREWS: Valerian root.
25
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1 BY MR. McGARRY:
2 Q. -- Valerian root -- a lot of these minerals and
3 chemicals were provided for her, nutrition supplements,
4 almost exclusively, toward the end, because she wouldn't
5 eat. She refused to eat.
6 Do you have any input as far as -- do you
7 have --
8 A. In terms of immune suppression or anything like
9 that?
10 Q. Well, anything. Is (sic) any of these things
11 incompatible with whatever infection you think was
12 stirring around in her body?
13 A. That they contributed some way to it?
14 Q. Sure.
15 A. I don't think so. These were over-the-counter
16 things. I don't --
17 In my experience, no.
18 Q. When was it you first had the opinion or thought
19 that this was a staph infection? That is what your
20 finding was; it was a staph infection in her body?
21 A. Based on the blood culture report, yeah.
22 Q. Was that your first inkling of that, when you
23 got that report back?
24 A. The first inkling I had -- that I thought she
25 had infection was the first look. Then, when the positive
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1 blood culture was called, and they didn't know what it
2 was, I thought, "Okay." And they said they'd have it
3 identified by the next day. And then, when he told me it
4 was staph, then I had the diagnosis of what it was.
5 When I saw her, I wasn't thinking "staph,"
6 because that isn't -- she didn't look like the other
7 thing.
8 Q. And that was the --
9 A. Meningococcus.
10 Q. -- meningococcus.
11 Going back to your conversation with Janice
12 Johnson about this, did you -- did you -- did you quiz her
13 about her last couple days, as -- you know, obviously,
14 that must have been an area that you were concerned with,
15 because here they brought in, basically, a dead person.
16 Would you agree with that?
17 A. Mm-hmm.
18 Q. I mean, she was "out" by the time she got to the
19 hospital.
20 Did you quiz her about any of that?
21 A. I really wasn't in the mode of finding out what
22 happened. I was more in the mode of, "How could you bring
23 this person up to me like this?" I mean, that was really
24 what was --
25 Q. Well, my follow-up question is -- when you say
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1 that, that strikes me as an observation made by an
2 emergency room doctor that's appalled with the condition
3 that somebody's brought in at. It makes me think that
4 somebody neglected to -- to handle a medical situation
5 timely. That's what -- that's the impression you give me
6 by that statement.
7 A. Mm-hmm.
8 Q. Would you agree with that?
9 A. Yeah.
10 Q. Okay. So my follow-up question from that is,
11 when you talked to Dr. Johnson -- I mean, wasn't that the
12 an area of inquiry you would have: "Hey, what's going on
13 here?"
14 A. If I had been rational at the time, and sat down
15 with her and said, "What happened today? How did this go
16 on?"
17 And what I recall, she said she saw her at
18 six-thirty. You know, same thing. Diarrhea all day,
19 complained about her throat in the morning, I think she
20 said; and then, when she saw her, that she felt she needed
21 medicine and medical care.
22 Q. Okay. Did she say they had seen her anytime
23 before that, or what her schedule was for looking after
24 her?
25 A. No, not that I recall.
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1 Q. Could the fact that -- I mean, it sounds to me
2 like that -- the sole mission of -- we've interviewed a
3 lot of people. I don't know if you know this or not.
4 We've interviewed ten or more women that had been by her
5 bedside for the period of two weeks that she was there.
6 A. Mm-hmm.
7 Q. And does it --
8 My question is, does the fact that they -- their
9 sole mission was to get her to sleep and calm down and
10 be -- and be still -- and apparently they did a lot of
11 things to facilitate that; chloral hydrate, Benadryl, bed,
12 quiet, no talking -- everything -- everything was designed
13 to put her in the bed and to make her quiet and to make
14 her sleep --
15 A. Mm-hmm.
16 Q. -- and some of it may have been successful, to
17 some degree, or not.
18 Could that have -- could that have played a role
19 in some of this situation that was going on, medically,
20 within her body?
21 A. In terms of the hydration status
22 Q. Yeah. Hydration and staph infection.
23 A. Well, the staff, I'm -- I mean, the staph is
24 either -- seems like it's because just her -- her immune
2S system just wasn't up to par. Now, whether that was
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1 because of dehydration or nutritional status, those
2 certainly could have contributed to it.
3 Q. Okay. Because Dr. -- Dr. Davis' report -- I
4 guess it was later signed off on by Dr. Wood -- but their
5 immediate cause of death is thromboembolism, left
6 pulmonary artery.
7 Now, what does that mean?
8 A. Well, thromboembolism is a blood clot, and it's
9 a blood clot that came from someplace else. "Embolus"
10 means it was like, you know, like, sent from someplace
11 else. Thrombus is a clot.
12 The presumed thing is that the clot in her leg
13 broke a piece off. You know, the vein in the leg was
14 damaged somehow, or a clot formed in the leg, and a piece
15 of that clot broke off went up through her body, into the
16 right side of her heart and then into her lung, and
17 blocked off a big chunk of her -- of the pulmonary artery,
18 of the blood vessel that's going to her lung.
19 Q. So that would have been the final kicker, right
20 there, when that occurred?
21 A. Yeah. Eighty percent fatal, with the size of
22 the ones she had.
23 So that the heart can not pump blood to the
24 lung, so the lung can't get oxygen to the blood, and then
25 that is it.
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1 Q. She has, "due to bedrest and severe
2 dehydration."
3 A. Right.
4 Q. You would add to that, "staph infection"?
5 A. I would have put -- I'd definitely put on the
6 thing -- on there to what degree, `cause I don't know --
7 and I think the pathologist could have and maybe did, but
8 there's no report in the autopsy -- to what extent the
9 staph infection contributed to the thrombus formation or
10 to the -- or to the thing in her leg.
11 But I certainly would have put it down as a
12 secondary diagnosis, staph septicemia or staph sepsis. I
13 mean, I don't think you can look at this case and try to
14 say "cause of death," and have a finding like this, and
15 completely ignore it.
16 Like, if somebody sent me this case to analyze,
17 sort of outside, you know, a consultant --
18 Q. Mm-hmm.
19 A. -- if you just pretend that the staph wasn't
20 there, you're not -- you're not looking at the case. So I
21 think somebody has to take into consideration that this
22 lady had that, as well as overwhelming infection.
23 And it's conjecture as to the --
24 Q. Well, you equated it, to some degree, of, like,
25 toxic shock syndrome. You're not saying that's what the
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1 cause of death was?
2 A. No, `cause I don't know.
3 I mean, she did have a pulmonary embolus. That
4 definitely can cause death. Was a pulmonary embolus
5 involved with the staph infection? Did she have two
6 things going on at the same time? I don't know.
7 I think that a -- a very interested pathologist,
8 at the time, could have gone a long way to find out to
9 what extent this staph infection was involved in this
10 whole thing, if at all.
11 And actually, my purpose in contacting them, the
12 two days after, was that he do that. I was -- I taught at
13 university. At university, this stuff goes on. The
14 pathologists are interested in what happened. "Why did
15 this guy die?" They look at these tissues, do special
16 stains to see, was there bacteria in there?
17 And that was my purpose in calling the guy.
18 And he couldn't have been less interested it in.
19 He just --
20 Q. Dr. Davis?
21 A. The impression I got was, he was busy. It was
22 Christmas. He just wasn't interested.
23 So I was uncomfortable with that.
24 Q. Have you had any conversation with Janice
25 Johnson since all this occurred?
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1 A. None.
2 Q. How about any of these other people we've
3 mentioned, in reference to the MLO office?
4 A. On this case?
5 Q. Yeah.
6 A. Susan -- I don't know if she's even here. I
7 haven't seen her.
8 Emma, I probably talked to her maybe once every
9 two to four weeks, about something else. And I've never
10 discussed it with her.
11 Q. Are you aware of any changes that have been made
12 in the Church's procedures because of this disastrous
13 result?
14 A. Well, definitely, there's been changes with
15 regard to my procedure.
16 Q. Dealing with the Church?
17 A. Yeah.
18 And I told them that.
19 Q. What's that?
20 A. That anybody that they contact me on gets a
21 complete medical work-up.
22 Q. This is to protect yourself?
23 A. Well, and protect the people, too.
24 Q. Right.
25 So if you're going to give advice on somebody,
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1 you're not going to do it over the phone any more?
2 A. No. They're going to come to the office.
3 They're going to get a full physical exam. If nursing
4 care is needed, part of the treatment will be nursing
5 care, if that's what's needed. You know, if it's -- you
6 know, whatever the thing is.
7 Q. Who was that communicated to, if you remember?
8 A. Actually, I think it was communicated to
9 Mr. Weinberg. On an interview I had with them, he asked
10 me the same question you did.
11 Q. Sandy Weinberg?
12 A. So this was sort of personal policy.
13 I don't think the Church had to be -- had to be
14 talked into anything like that, either, from their end. I
15 mean, I --
16 Q. Well, I'm sure -- well, they are looking at
17 civil liability and a lawsuit --
18 A. Yeah. It's a disaster for everybody. This is
19 the last thing they want, too. I'm talking for them but,
20 you know, it's obvious.
21 Q. Where, in all this, did the Weinberg
22 conversation take place? Would that have been Lee Fugate
23 and Sandy Weinberg?
24 A. Yeah.
25 Q. Do you know when --
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1 A. Oh, when?
2 Q. Yeah.
3 A. probably -- probably January.
4 Q. Of --
5 A. Of this year.
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. Yeah.
8 Q. When all this --
9 A. When all the newspaper things started up.
10 Q. Right.
11 A. Allegations going back and forth.
12 Q. Is it unusual that you were the one that drew
13 the blood? Wouldn't that normally be a technician? Or is
14 that something that you decided to do because of the grave
15 situation that you encountered?
16 A. No. I mean the code was done. Everybody was
17 just sort of packing up. And then I thought, "Oh, I
18 better do that," so --
19 Q. What -- how does that work? How do you do that?
20 I know --
21 A. Take a syringe and needle. And there's big
22 vein where the big artery comes down the middle of the
23 body. Then there's a big branch that goes to each leg.
24 Q. So which vein was that that you used?
25 A. Femoral vein. Could have been the femoral
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1 artery or vein. But there's two big blood vessels in the
2 groin. And with no pulse, it's pretty to easy to hit.
3 You just wipe off the skin, stick the thing in, pull the
4 blood out, and then inject it into a bottle, which is to
5 grow stuff from blood, and send it in.
6 Q. So there's some type of substance that is mixed
7 with the blood that causes the cultures to multiply?
8 A. It's like a broth, and it grows in the broth.
9 Q. And I assume, from your training, you've got a
10 little more expertise than most in that particular area,
11 with infectious diseases?
12 A. Oh, yeah. I mean, it -- I mean, a technician
13 could have done it. I was there. And rather than calling
14 somebody from the laboratory to come draw blood on this
15 thing, I just did it.
16 Q. Now, do you mark that with what you suspect the
17 situation -- the problem is? Would that -- how do you
18 write that up and send it up, "test this for," what? How
19 do you do that?
20 A. Just "routine blood culture."
21 Q. Okay. Not -- you don't look for specific
22 thing? You just write down "routine blood culture" and
23 they test it for all of those things on this list, here?
24 A. Right.
25 Actually, that list is a list of antibiotics
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1 that the thing is sensitive to. So once they get a germ
2 growing in the blood, they take some of that and put it on
3 another plate, with antibiotic in the plate, to see which
4 antibiotic would kill it, so that you know what to treat
5 the person with once the diagnosis is made. Some of these
6 things would be resistant to one antibiotic or another,
7 and this gives you some guideline as to which to use.
8 Q. Going back to this chart here, this thing you
9 filled out, which is the -- I guess, probably, the first
10 thing you wrote down, "thirty-two year old white
11 female --" can you decipher some of that?
12 A. Yeah.
13 "To ER," to emergency room. "By PC," private
14 vehicle. "Absent VS," which is vital signs. "Noted had
15 sore throat, today and tonight. Lethargy. To ER for
16 evaluation. In car on way, stopped breathing, just as
17 they arrived to ER."
18 I remember Janice Johnson told me that she was
19 still breathing when they were in Palm Harbor, which is
20 about halfway; that she knows that she was breathing then.
21 Q. So she said that to you?
22 A. Mm-hmm.
23 Q. And all this information, --
24 A. So then, "Unresponsive. Pupils unreactive.
25 Neck is supple." That means her neck wasn't stiff --
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1 Q. What does that --
2 A. A person with meningitis, their neck gets stiff,
3 and they tend to cock their head back. And if you try to
4 move their neck forward, it won't go, `cause it's held in
5 extension.
6 Q. The information above there, that top paragraph,
7 that is obtained from -- I gather, from Dr. -- Janice
8 Johnson and/or --
9 A. Right.
10 Q. -- whoever she was with?
11 A. Right.
12 That person that she was with, I didn't see.
13 Q. So the only contact --
14 My investigation reveals there's three people
15 that carried her up there. Did you have any contact
16 with --
17 A. No. Just Janice.
18 Q. Just Janice? And this information came from
19 her?
20 A. Right.
21 Q. The diagnosis ordered, BCXI-2, what is that?
22 A. "BC" is blood culture, and it -- "X" is times,
23 and then there's a Roman numeral "1," which means there
24 was one blood culture done. And then that initial is the
25 person -- the laboratory secretary signs it off when the
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1 order is put down, to show that it was done.
2 Q. All right. And then, up here at the top, you've
3 got, under Lisa's name, "to" something -- "full"
4 something --
5 A. That was written by the nurse.
6 Q. Is that her name, "Gardner" or something~?
7 A. Barbara Schmidt.
8 Q. Barbara Schmidt. Okay.
9 A. And it says, "To ER, full code. See CPR
10 records."
11 And then there's -- that other sheet is -- this
12 sheet is the CPR report, so it shows what medicines were
13 given and what was done.
14 Q. Mm-hmm.
15 So this is all the stuff that she was --
16 A. Yeah. She got epinephrine three times, atropine
17 twice, bicarbonate twice.
18 Q. That's all emergency heart-starting stuff,
19 right?
20 A. Right.
21 Q. She signs that, and you sign that?
22 A. Yeah. Because I order all the medicines, so you
23 sign off on all those things.
24 Q. This other sheet looks like it's also filled out
25 by the same woman.
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1 A. Yeah. That's a nurse's note sheet.
2 So she says, "Medical examiner office notified.
3 Spoke with Debbie. Body not released
4 Q. How do they know to do that? I mean, what is
5 the --
6 A. Well, the procedure on every dead person is to
7 call the medical examiner if --
8 Q. Every dead person?
9 A. If the family doctor is called and says that
10 he'll sign the death certificate, if it isn't funny
11 circumstances -- you know, if it's an eighty-year-old who
12 comes in. If it's a young person, gunshot, something
13 weird, the medical examiner's always called.
14 In this case, the medical examiner would be
15 called.
16 If it's something where it's -- any baby --
17 anything suspicious, then they're called.
18 Now, if the body's not released, then nothing's
19 done. It's left that way. So when the medical examiner
20 comes, they can see the tubes and all that stuff.
21 Q. Well, the main area that seems to be generating
22 so much concern is the test that Dr. Wood performed or got
23 back later from the lab that indicates such high numbers.
24 Do you know what test that was? Were you
25 informed of that which test it was, that came up with such
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1 high numbers, which is indicative of such high
2 dehydration?
3 A. No. It came from reading the newspaper.
4 Q. That's fine. Whatever knowledge you gained.
5 What test is that?
6 A. Well, they take the fluid that's in the eye and
7 measure the concentration of sodium -- some other things
8 in there -- and they have, I presume, controls that are
9 normal, different values under certain circumstances, and
10 these are high.
11 Q. Are you familiar with that particular test?
12 A. No.
13 Q. Is that something you ever did during your
14 infectious disease period?
15 A. No. It's a forensic tool. I have no
16 familiarity with it.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. So I don't know if -- I don't know --
19 Q. So the values and the numbers don't really mean
20 a whole lot to you?
21 A. No.
22 Q. How about -- well, just given the basic premise
23 of severe dehydration -- I mean, if that is, in fact,
24 true, that those numbers mean severe, severe dehydration,
25 is there anything else -- other than somebody that hasn't
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1 been given any fluids or food for a long period of time,
2 is there any other medical situation that you can think
3 of, based on your experience and education, that would
4 lend itself to accelerate to such a high level?
5 A. Well, if she had high body losses, whether it
6 was vomiting or diarrhea -- if you go to Africa or even
7 here where people get cholera, where they have massive
8 amounts of diarrhea, they can turn into prunes in a number
9 of hours. I mean, you know, become severely dehydrated.
10 Now, what the eye numbers do in that sort of
11 circumstances, where a person might lose, you know, ten,
12 twenty pounds of body weight, over a couple of hours, I
13 don't know.
14 Q. Looking at the pictures that we showed you
15 earlier -- I think there were ten of them -- is there
16 any -- is there anything you observed from those pictures
17 that would give you that kind of indication of those
18 numbers?
19 A. No.
20 I mean, she was definitely dehydrated. I mean,
21 I think the pictures, to some extent, show that. She was
22 dehydrated.
23 Q. All right, Doctor. I always neglect to ask
24 questions that the detectives always want to follow up on.
25 So if you can bear with us -- I think you know these guys,
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1 Detective Strope -- Agent Strope and Detective Anderson.
2 And they'd like to follow up with some questions, if it's
3 not too much trouble.
4 Unless you want another break --
5 A. No, let's do it.
6 MR. FELMAN: Are you with FDLE?
7 AGENT STROPE: Yeah.
8 EXAMINATION
9 BY SGT. ANDREWS:
10 Q. Dr. Minkoff, could you explain your relationship
11 with Janice Johnson? I know -- I don't want you to go
12 over what you wrote in the previous statement.
13 I know you met her for lunch at the Ft.
14 Harrison. Could you please just quickly explain to us how
15 that relationship comes about, and your understanding of
16 her medical expertise?
17 A. Okay. I had that lunch encounter with her. I'd
18 had some people had needed physical examinations, which I
19 did. The Church had a medical area. And prior to this
20 Lisa McPherson thing, I had done examinations on some
21 public people and some staff people, just physical exams,
22 routine physical exams. And she worked in that office,
23 and so I had -- you know, I had bumped into her in that
24 office. And basically, the contact was casual.
25 What I understood -- most of her background, I
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1 actually learned of in the time that we had lunch
2 together. I did not know -- I knew that she had not been
3 practicing medicine, and that she was not licensed in
4 Florida. But other than that, I learned more about her
6 than I did -- about her license being taken away and the
7 allegations of drugs and all that stuff. I didn't know
8 any of that stuff before that.
9 Q. Okay. So basically, it would be safe to say
10 that you knew she had background as an anesthesiologist
11 MD, and that was your understanding, but not licensed to
12 practice here?
13 A. Right.
14 Actually, I thought her background was pain
15 management.
16 Q. Okay. Okay. Now, back to the Church --
17 A. She had physical deformity, she'd been in a
18 parachute accident.
19 Q. Okay. I had gotten some of --
20 A. I mean, she walked funny, so I didn't -- she had
21 told me about that.
22 Q. Okay. Now, the Church's policy on dealing with
23 a Type 3 person, the psychotic break, you understand it --
24 and being on the other side of this thing, as the medical
25 doctor -- do you agree with that, Hubbard's policy of what
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1 he does?
2 A. I have to couch it in saying that, if proper
3 conditions are there for the person's safety -- nutrition,
4 physical safety, the rest of it -- that I have no
5 first-hand knowledge, but second-hand knowledge that it's
6 effective.
7 We do a lot of psychiatric work at the hospital
8 I'm at, and I can tell you -- and I don't think most
9 emergency room doctors will even disagree with this --
10 that the handling of psychotic people by the psychiatric
11 system is very poor, in terms of the outcomes of these
12 people, how they do. Do they ever get back on their feet?
13 Our basic experience is that all of the suicides
14 and overdoses that we see -- and at the particular
15 hospital I'm at, we see a lot. We have a psych unit
16 there. So I mean, we see a lot, every day, probably --
17 four or five people wouldn't be an exaggeration -- the
18 drugs that they commit suicide with are always drugs that
19 are prescribed by psychiatrists. So that my --
20 I mean, when I'm in the emergency room and I see
21 a psychotic person, I do the normal thing, which is, I
22 write up Baker Act, he gets thrown in the psych ward
23 and they get the usual treatment.
24 But I can tell you it's not a good -- it doesn't
25 work. For most people, it doesn't work.
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1 I haven't worked closely with the Church on Type
2 3 people, ideal setting, nursing care and all this stuff,
3 where they're not given drugs and they're around to do
4 this thing. I haven't got first-hand experience with
5 this. But most of the stuff that I have first-hand
6 experience with that's -- that Hubbard researched, turned
7 out to work. So that's all I can tell you about it.
8 Q. Okay. Magnesium chlorlde. Have you ever used
9 it?
10 A. Yeah.
11 Q. Okay. How -- and -- how -- I don't want a
12 lengthy one, but how did you use it? What was -- can you
13 explain that?
14 A. Actually, what I'm using it for lately is for
15 migraine headaches. It tends to work. And we do it in
16 the emergency room. Also, for heart arrhythmias.
17 Q. So you have magnesium chloride up at HCA?
18 A. Mm-hmm.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. It's usually magnesium sulfate, actually, but
21 magnesium chloride's available.
22 Q. Now, I did do some research and found that
23 magnesium sulfate is available in most emergency room
24 hospitals, but the ones I talked to, like Bayfront, said
25 magnesium chloride's not there.
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1 My specific question to you is, do you have
2 magnesium chloride, IM, okay, liquid, at HCA hospital?
3 A. Can't tell you.
4 Q. Have you used it there?
5 A. Used it IM?
6 Never.
7 Q. Okay.
8 A. No.
9 Q. All right. With your knowledge of using it IM,
10 do you know what the side effects of it may be?
11 A. In real high -- in a normal dose, couple-gram
12 dose, some people feel kind of a tingling all over, a body
13 warmth. It's potential -- you could cause them a heart
14 arhythmia. Maybe a little bit of sleepiness. It may
15 lower blood pressure.
16 Q. Okay. I kind of did some research on it, and I
17 saw a warning for possible kidney failure. Are you aware
18 of that? I mean, does that sound not-way-out-of-whack,
19 that a side effect could be kidney failure?
20 A. If you gave too much. No experience with that.
21 SGT. ANDREWS: Mark, could I see that
22 report -- not that one. The one from Dr. Johnson.
23 Did you bring that with you?
24 MR. McGARRY: Oh, yeah. I stuck it up
25 here.
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C> 1 BY SGT. ANDERSON:
2 Q. I want to show you a copy of a report we
3 received. And I don't know if you've already seen it --
4 Have you seen this MLO report, a copy?
5 A. No.
6 Q. Okay. We received this under our subpoenas.
7 A. Okay.
8 Q. And I wanted to direct your attention to that
9 first statement, "Given two grams MGCL 2 IM."
10 Could you explain that, if you read it as a
11 doctor?
12 A. Yeah. Give a shot of two grams of magnesium
13 chloride in the muscle.
14 Q. Okay. Now, on the first of December of `95,
15 which would be two days after you wrote the prescription
16 for chloral hydrate --
17 A. Okay.
18 Q. -- to Lisa McPherson, Janice Johnson writes a
19 report that she gave this shot.
20 A. Okay.
21 Q. Now, do you remember any conversations with
22 Janice Johnson authorizing this shot, or providing this
23 medication to her?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Okay.
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1 A. Didn't -- definitely didn't provide it and
2 didn't authorize it.
3 Q. Okay. Now, if you wanted to get this --
4 It's been described in our interviews as being a
5 blue liquid -- would that be consistent?
6 A. The magnesium chloride?
7 Q. Yeah.
8 A. Don't know.
9 Q. Okay. If you wanted to get that IM, you'd need
10 a prescription for that.
11 A. As far as I know, yeah.
12 Q. All right. Thank you.
13 Just quickly, on the medical care, my
14 understanding of research on the Church is that, as a
15 staff member, they do attempt to provide the medical care.
16 Do you know who gives the okay for that? My understanding
17 is that it's not really like a medical insurance program,
18 someone -- the Church is paying for it, to send you to get
19 medical treatment.
20 A. Right.
21 Q. Are you -- are you aware -- you may not be, but
22 are you aware, if I go in there and I'm staff and I've
23 busted my toe up pretty good, who gives me the okay that
24 the Church is going to pay for me to go to Morton Plant or
25 to a doctor to get fixed up?
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1 A. MLO, probably.
2 Q. That would be your understanding? MLO?
3 A. Yeah.
4 Q. Now, Alain Karduzinski was referred to in a
5 bunch of these reports not only as this case supervisor
6 but a senior case supervisor.
7 A. Right.
8 Q. Can you explain the difference between the two?
9 A. He's the case super -- there's a -- so --
10 Let's say there's a hundred people getting
11 auditing --
12 Q. Okay.
13 A. -- and there might be twenty-five auditors that
14 are doing that. And above each of those auditors -- let's
15 say each five or ten auditors would have one case
16 supervisor, so that there's a hundred people, twenty
17 auditors, twenty-five five case supervisors, and then
18 there's a senior case supervisor who's above all of those
19 guys. And so final okay for programs and things would --
20 would go to him.
21 Q. Okay. Would it be unusual for the senior case
22 supervisor of Flag Land Base to also be Lisa McPherson's
23 auditor?
24 A. Can't tell you that.
25 Q. Not enough knowledge on the inner workings?
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1 A. No.
2 Q. Okay. Earlier, you talked about Karduziriski
3 possibly calling and asking to get some of this chloral
4 hydrate, which I understood was a mild sedative to make
5 them sleep, so that the people who are PT3, in a psychotic
6 break, could be, say, softened up a little bit, to be able
7 to recommunicate.
8 Now, that recommunicating -- is that really just
9 auditing?
10 A. Mm-hmm.
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. As far as I know.
13 Q. Now, would that be a reason that they would give
14 this mild wear-off drug, other than something very strong
15 in a drug?
16 My understanding -- what I'm trying to get at
17 is, your knowledge is, a mild sedative, like chloral
18 hydrate, would be given, so that that person wouldn't have
19 the drug defect, so that auditing could possibly work, or
20 they could be audited?
21 A. I think the main intention is give them
22 something mild so they could sleep, and then you wouldn't
23 have a lingering drug effect. They would be more
24 conscious, more alert, to have auditing, if they could.
25 Q. Okay.
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1 A. Yeah.
2 Q. Your conversations with Janice Johnson about
3 Lisa McPherson, as far as, like, writing the prescriptions
4 and stuff, was it your understanding Janice Johnson was
5 taking care of her?
6 A. At the times I talked to her, yeah. Or she was,
7 at least, in contact, or consulted about it.
8 Q. Okay. The reason I -- I find it strange -- and
9 I don't mean this as condemning -- but if I called you up
10 and said, you know, "I want to -- I want a prescription of
11 chloral hydrate for Lee Strode," okay, would you have
12 written a prescription?
13 A. If you called me? No.
14 Q. Yeah.
15 Now, what I'm getting at is, there must have
16 been some understanding between you and Janice Johnson or
17 Alain Karduzinski in order to write a prescription for a
18 patient you've never seen and knew nothing about
19 history --
20 A. Right.
21 Q. -- for a drug, you know --
22 What would that relationship be?
23 A. Well, I knew she was a medical doctor. She
24 was -- she had been in practice. I mean, she was a
25 professional. She, I thought, could examine a patient and
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1 had an understanding of the process that was going on, so
2 that I thought that it would be safe to do that with her
3 there.
4 Q. Okay. Would it be fair to ask you -- and I know
5 this is a tough question, but would it be fair to ask you
6 that you felt, by writing this prescription and sending it
7 to Dr. Johnson, that she was actually taking care of this
8 patient, and you were only helping her out because she
9 couldn't get prescriptions in this state?
10 A. Would that be fair?
11 Yeah, that would be fair.
12 Q. Okay. Now, you're not sure -- you said there
13 might be another prescription.
14 If you wrote that prescription, would it still
15 be under your DEA number, you know --
16 A. If I wrote it, yeah.
17 Q. And it would have been for Lisa McPherson? It
18 wouldn't have been to, like, Janice Johnson or to Alain
19 Karduzinski? You would have wrote it specifically for
20 Lisa Mcpherson?
21 A. No. It may have been -- it may have been in the
22 name of the person who picked it up.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. So if you're checking, you should check that.
25 Q. Okay. So probably I'll have to pull all of the
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1 prescriptions you wrote for -- under the DEA things, to
2 look at the names.
3 Would it be somebody at the Church you would
4 remember, that --
5 A. Well, it might have been -- it probably is one
6 of the people you talked to.
7 Q. Schnurrenburger or --
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. How about -- you wouldn't have wrote it for
10 Debbie Cook.
11 A. Debbie Cook, no.
12 Q. Okay. As far as Lisa arriving at the
13 hospital -- and again this is an opinion, but I'm going to
14 ask you to give it as an MD -- Janice Johnson says she
15 stopped breathing about halfway up, which would have been,
16 maybe, about twenty minutes ago. Everybody we interviewed
17 from the hospital says they looked at this person and she
18 looked dead.
19 There comes a point when -- I've been to
20 emergency rooms with -- at Morton Plant and other places,
21 where the doctor or the paramedics don't do the CPR, and
22 they don't do all of these things.
23 In your opinion, was it viable to do all of
24 these things, even though she hadn't been breathing for
25 twenty minutes?
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1 A. If she'd have been eighty, no. But pretty much
2 as a rule for children, young people, we give it a go.
3 Q. Okay. What would be the prognosis of somebody
4 thirty-six, a female like this, not breathing for at least
5 twenty minutes, with no life support -- if she did come
6 around, what would be the prognosis for survival?
7 A. Terrible.
8 Q. We're talking vegetable or severe brain damage
9 or --
10 A. Yeah.
11 Actually, when the CPR was done, I didn't know
12 she hadn't been breathing for twenty minutes.
13 Q. Okay.
14 A. That was after.
15 Q. Okay. Now --
16 A. Because I didn't see Janice before I saw Lisa.
17 Q. Okay. They rolled her in --
18 A. They rolled her in, we did it. Then afterwards,
19 I talked to her.
20 So we didn't actually know, at the time --
21 Q. All right.
22 A. -- what -- how long she'd been down, what
23 happened and all that stuff.
24 Q. Okay. I did some research, and I found not
25 specific records, but in interviews, that the majority, on
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1 almost all of the people at Flag Land Base, have gone to
2 Morton Plant for treatment. We're talking heart attacks
3 and broken arms and broken legs. I've talked to
4 Dr. Lovette, who's been there since 1974, and he's treated
5 thousands of patients from Scientology.
6 My concern, over that investigative twenty-five
7 years of being a cop, okay, upsets me about the time
8 frame -- and let me run the time frame for you because I
9 know you probably aren't familiar with it -- but our time
10 frame so far is that someone finally, on the 5th of
11 December, at eighteen hundred hours, kind of blows the
12 whistle and says; "Hey, something's wrong with this girl."
13 About an hour later, another person -- I don't know if
14 you're familiar with her -- Laura Arrunnada -- are you
15 familiar with Laura?
16 A. She worked in this office also.
17 Q. Laura Arrunnada goes and physically finds Janice
18 Johnson at nineteen hundred hours, and says, "I think
19 there's something wrong with Lisa."
20 Janice Johnson arrives someplace between
21 nineteen hundred and twenty hundred hours and examines
22 Lisa, and says, "Yeah, there's something wrong."
23 Paul Greenwood is called to help transport this
24 person, at twenty hundred hours.
25 And lo and behold, at twenty-one thirty hours,
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1 okay, you're looking at this person in the emergency room.
2 My concerns here are nat only from your
3 testimony previously about this acute -- very acute
4 critical incident, my concerns are that here we have a
5 person who someone says is very, very sick, okay, we mess
6 around -- and I'll say that -- we fool around for three
7 and a half hours, maybe even a little longer, five
8 o'clock, almost four and a half hours before we seek this
9 medical attention that you can provide in the trauma
10 center --
11 A. Laura saw her at what time?
12 Q. Laura said that she told -- no, Heather Petzold
13 tells Laura Arrunnada, at eighteen hundred hours, that,
14 "There's something wrong with Lisa McPherson --"
15 A. Six o'clock?
16 Q. Six o'clock. Yeah.
17 So then, at seven p.m. Laura Arrunnada finally
18 goes and finds Janice Johnson and tells her, "Something's
19 wrong with Lisa."
20 And then, about eight o'clock, they're saddling
21 up and getting Paul Greenwood involved to help load her
22 into Johnson's van to drive up to you, and finally arrive,
23 and you're examining and doing CPR at twenty-one thirty
24 hours, which is four and a half hours -- three and a half
25 hours later.
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1 A. Yeah.
2 Q. This acute -- I forget what you called it --
3 acute event -- this -- can this acute event occur between
4 six p.m. and nine-thirty or had it already occurred and
5 the people were just reacting to that event?
6 A. Can't tell you.
7 Q. Okay. Don't know.
8 A. Don't know.
9 Q. Okay. Does it seem like a long time for you to
10 get emergency medical care?
11 A. Well, if she looked at five -- six o'clock, like
12 she did, at maybe nine o'clock --
13 Q. Okay. When you saw her?
14 A. I saw her nine-thirty, but let's say half an
15 hour before -- let's say quarter after nine, she was alive
16 yet; if she looked like that at six o'clock, and it took
17 till nine-fifteen to get her up there, that's not okay.
18 Q. All right. The blood clot in the leg -- I know
19 we've done a lot of similar investigations to this in
20 nursing homes -- it appears to me some of the people in
21 the nursing homes, who are elderly and don't get moved
22 around a lot, end up with similar symptoms of having a
23 blood clot somewhere in the extremity and shooting that
24 into their heart or their lung and dying.
25 A. Right.
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1 Q. We have the paramedics, and everybody who
2 testified that there was no injury, and Dr. Layette, that
3 there was no injury from the minor accident that she had.
4 A. Right.
5 Q. I'm a little confused on the blood clot versus
6 the staph and your opinion on what may have affected the
7 two.
8 Can you explain --
9 You know, I'm looking at it, like Dr. Wood says,
10 you know, that this girl may be laying around for a couple
11 of days, which contributes to this blood clot, and we
12 finally move her and it moves --
13 A. Right.
14 Q. -- maybe, at seventeen hundred hours.
15 A. Right.
16 Q. I'm confused about the staph effect on that
17 blood clot in that leg that you were testifying to.
18 A. Don't know.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. We don't know.
21 Q. We don't know what kind of effect?
22 A. I don't know if the blood clot was -- whether
23 there was staph inside the blood clot, whether the blood
24 clot was cultured. Don't know. So what the cause of
25 events, sequence here, these various things, blood clot,
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1 embolus, staph, don't know.
2 Q. Okay. Now, the petechia that we see on her in
3 the pictures here, by looking at that picture of the
4 petechia that we showed -- hang on. I'll get to a
5 number -- the petechia that is shown here in Number 8 --
6 A. Yeah.
7 Q. -- now, could that petechiae -- does that have
8 to be signs of a severe blood infection or a staph
9 infection, or could that be a minor staph infection, like
10 a surface infection?
11 A. No, like that, it wouldn't be minor.
12 Q. Wouldn't be minor.
13 A. Huh-uh. If you -- you could put this in a
14 textbook of infectious disease for an overwhelming
15 infection, as an example of septic emboli in an
16 overwhelming infection.
17 Q. Okay. Now, in any of these pictures you looked
18 at that we had, is there any indications in these pictures
19 of toxic shock syndrome? Is there similarities?
20 A. People with toxic shock don't -- there's two --
21 there's two diseases that could have occurred, either
22 together, or only one. With classic toxic shock, you may
23 not get any skin hemorrhages. It may be just the toxin,
24 diarrhea and shock, without having the hemorrhages.
25 Q. Okay.
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1 A. But with staph sepsis and toxic shock, you could
2 get both.
3 Q. But it could look like this?
4 A. Sure. Could look like that.
5 Q. Now, is it possible or -- I read this
6 someplace -- that everyone has some type of staph
7 infection or the staph germs in their system or on their
8 skin, at one time or another? Is that consistent?
9 A. That people can commonly be colonized with
10 staph --
11 Q. Yeah.
12 A. Yeah.
13 Q. Now, is it possible to take a blood sample from
14 that -- in her leg, where you did the vein -- femoral vein
15 or the femoral artery, and pick up that staph from the
16 outside of the skin?
17 A. It's -- it would be unusual. The skin staph is
18 usually different kind of -- it's a staph epidermidis.
19 It's not a staph aureus.
20 Q. So it would not be normal to take that blood
21 sample and then develop the culture of a staph infection
22 in her blood, picking it off of her skin.
23 A. No.
24 Q. Okay. In some of our descriptions of our
25 interviews, I found it unusual -- and I want to ask a
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1 medical person -- but I've had some of the people testify
2 to us that, since she wasn't eating or drinking, in order
3 to get fluids into her, that they would attempt to take
4 what's been described as a turkey baster -- do you know
5 what I'm talking about? I know they have them in the
6 medical field that looks similar to a turkey baster --
7 A. Mm-hmm.
8 Q. Basically, they were taking this stuff and
9 squirting protein shakes into Lisa's mouth, attempting her
10 to get fluids.
11 A. Okay.
12 Q. Would that be something that we would do in the
13 hospital at HCA, or we'd do an IV?
14 A. We'd do an IV.
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. Or we'd put a tube in the stomach and put the
17 stuff through the tube.
18 Q. You don't recommend any care of that type --
19 No.
20 Q. -- turkey baster protein shakes?
21 A. No.
22 Q. Okay. Sorry.
23 Did you write any reports to the Church at all
24 on your involvement with Lisa McPherson?
25 A. I wrote up -- actually --
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1 MR. FELMAN: There is a report, but it is
2 the subject of a work product claim that's been made by
3 the Church, as I understand it.
4 SGT. ANDREWS: Okay. I'm not going to ask
5 any questions about the report.
6 MR. FELMAN: We didn't assert the
7 privilege. I think we're obligated to. I --
8 SGT. ANDREWS: I won't ask the content of
9 the report, which would be the claim to the privilege,
10 right?
11 MR. McGARRY: Well, I don't think they're
12 claiming it. I think he can probably discuss it. I think
13 that privilege is going to be as to obtaining the report.
14 So feel free to ask him.
15 SGT. ANDREWS: Okay. I just wanted to
16 know --
17 MR. FELMAN: Well, I --
18 MR. McGARRY: Well, the content -- he
19 can -- pursuant to our investigation, just the
20 conversation that he had with anybody wouldn't have been
21 privileged. Just the report, itself, they're claiming,
22 was a privilege.
23 MR. FELMAN: Let me hear the question and
24 I'll try to sort it through.
25
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1 BY SGT. ANDREWS:
2 Q. Who asked you to write a report about your
3 incident with Lisa McPherson?
4 A. The actual incident with Lisa McPherson, I
5 didn't write a direct report on.
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. The report I wrote was basically just my -- the
8 interview I had with you guys, in April, of just what
9 happened.
10 Q. Okay. Okay. So --
11 A. Just a --
12 Q. After we interviewed you in April, then you
13 wrote a report to the Church?
14 Who asked you to write that report?
15 A. Probably Brian Anderson.
16 Q. And who did you turn that in to?
17 A. Him.
18 Q. Okay. Staph infection -- would it be
19 contagious, in Lisa's -- if you knew, when Lisa came in,
20 and everybody that took care of her, that she had a staph
21 infection, would you be concerned about it being
22 contagious?
23 A. Under normal circumstances, no.
24 Q. Okay. And it would have to be transferred like
25 blood or fluids in order for it to be --
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1 A. Usually.
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. There's some kinds of staph infections that we
4 see in the hospital which are resistant to almost every
5 antibiotic, and so -- and people who come into the
6 hospital or who are in the hospital who have that
7 particular infection, we take extra precautions with those
8 people; wear gowns and masks and gloves.
9 Q. Okay. Back in January, there, when this thing
10 went into the paper and all the accusations were flying
11 and I was a bad guy and you were a bad guy -- and I'm
12 still a bad guy, I guess -- there appear to be a time when
13 the Church made a statement that they were told by you
14 that she had a staph infection.
15 Now, I know that I had to get subpoenas, and I
16 know I had to go through a lot of rigamarole to release
17 her records to anybody.
18 How did the Church -- what I'm actually asking
19 you is, did you give the Church the results of the staph
20 infection of Lisa Mcpherson?
21 A. Yeah. Back in, probably, December, when they
22 wanted to know what happened, I told -- I'm sure I told
23 them then.
24 Q. Okay.
25 MR. FELMAN: You're talking about an oral
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1 report to them, as opposed to giving them medical records?
2 A. I didn't give them the medical records. I've
3 never given them the medical records.
4 BY SGT. ANDERSON:
5 Q. Okay. Would you assert now, thinking back on
6 that, that that probably was a privilege of Lisa
7 McPherson, and really, as her doctor at the emergency
8 room, should not have been released?
9 A. Yeah.
10 Q. I thought so, too, and I was wondering why it
11 was done. I can understand --
12 A. I was so naive, at the time, that -- I didn't
13 have an attorney or anything, and I just was -- I went and
14 talked to you guys with no attorney. I basically have
15 just been totally open on the thing.
16 Q. And I tell you, we appreciate that.
17 When you took the blood sample, are you positive
18 that you wiped the skin with, like, your alcohol preps and
19 stuff?
20 A. Mm-hmm.
21 Q. Okay.
22 SGT. ANDREWS: I don't have any more.
23 EXAMINATION
24 BY AGENT STROPE:
25 Q. I just have a couple of questions. I usually
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1 agree to go last, so if I kind of skip around, it's
2 because I take notes, and I don't really have any plan of
3 asking questions in a particular order.
4 A. Okay.
5 Q. This report that you wrote concerning the
6 general incident -- not necessarily concerning Lisa in
7 particular -- hear my question, and then -- did you make
8 recommendations concerning cases in the future, similar to
9 Lisa's, what should be done and what shouldn't have been
10 done?
11 A. In that report?
12 MR. FELMAN: Um -- I guess I'm a little
13 uncomfortable having him testify about the contents of the
14 report.
15 AGENT STROPE: I'll rephrase the question,
16 then.
17 MR. FELMAN: Okay.
18 BY AGENT STROPE:
19 Q. What could have been done differently and what
20 should be done in the future to keep this thing from
21 happening?
22 A. Actually, it's Church policy that is already
23 there. The policy says that any medically ill person,
24 that -- first of all, the policy says that most -- this is
25 a rough paraphrase, but here's the basic idea -- that
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1 Hubbard's policy is written -- is that anybody with a
2 mental disease needs a thorough physical examination to
3 rule out any possible medical cause -- because just about
4 all mental disease is due to some underlying physical
5 disease -- and that a medical doctor needs to examine the
6 patient and make sure that there isn't anything going on
7 that would be the cause of the problem.
8 Q. So what you're saying to me is that Lisa, at
9 some time, should have had a medical examination?
10 A. Absolutely.
11 Q. Was it your understanding that Dr. Johnson was
12 capable of delivering that medical examination?
13 A. In my conversations with her, initially, yes, I
14 determined that she was.
15 Q. Was it your understanding that she had?
16 A. I guess an assumed understanding that she had.
17 Q. Did she tell you, at any time, about vital
18 statistics, blood pressure, temperature --
19 A. No.
20 Q. -- look --
21 A. No.
22 Q. If -- and this is just an opinion certainly, not
23 a fact -- is it your opinion that if -- if Lisa might have
24 been taken, say, to Morton Plant at five or six o'clock
25 that evening, would there have been a chance for survival,
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1 then, while she was still alive and still pumping and --
2 I guess my question is, these embolisms -- when
3 you get somebody that comes in the hospital has an
4 embolism in their leg or has moved to their heart and has
5 just happened, do you save these people?
6 A. Usually not.
7 Q. Usually not? So I guess it depends?
8 A. A big one like that, usually not.
9 Q. And this was a big one?
10 Did the autopsy people tell you -- Dr. Davis
11 tell you that?
12 A. No. But from the report -- I mean, it says
13 blocking, I think, the whole right pulmonary artery
14 outflow.
15 Q. So even if she had gone at five o'clock, you
16 don't think it would have made a different?
17 A. I don't know what she looked like at five
18 o'clock. It's very hard to tell.
19 Q. So you don't know.
20 A. I don't know.
21 Q. Okay. You had mentioned earlier that you wrote
22 a prescription other than Valium. Do you know what that
23 could have been? You said chloral hydrate, Valium and
24 maybe some other prescription? Do you remember what that
25 was?
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1 A. If I did, it was -- I think it was Valium.
2 Q. Think it was Valium?
3 A. The drugs that I would have used would be either
4 chloral hydrate, which I did do -- it's possible that
5 there was Valium. The other one that I usually do for --
6 if somebody asks me, is Benadryl, which they can get over
7 the counter.
8 Q. Valium is what, a tranquilizer?
9 A. Sedative, again.
10 Q. That is a drug psychiatrists use, or used to
11 use?
12 A. Yeah. They still do, sometimes.
13 Q. Do you know a Dr. Houghton?
14 A. Yeah.
15 Q. HOUGHTON?
16 Do you know that he was involved in any way with
17 Lisa?
18 A. As a doctor, I don't know.
19 He's a dentist, actually.
20 Q. Yeah. Have you ever talked to him about Lisa?
21 A. No.
22 Q. Were you aware that --
23 Who was in charge of the watch of Lisa?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Are you familiar with Alain Karduzinski?
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1 A. Yeah.
2 Q. Have you talked to him about Lisa?
3 A. Not since.
4 Q. Not since this happened?
5 A. No.
6 Q. Do you see him regularly?
7 A. No. I don't think I've seen him since then,
8 either.
9 Q. Haven't talked to Janice about this, either,
10 since then?
11 A. No. Haven't seen Janice.
12 Q. Is your wife a doctor?
13 A. Nurse.
14 Q. Nurse? I happened to see her picture in
15 the "What is Scientology" book. She's identified there as
16 a doctor.
17 A. I know there's a mistake.
18 Q. Okay. We have people who testified in the last
19 day -- December 5th, early that morning, eight or nine
20 o'clock, they gave Lisa a bath, and at that time, Lisa was
21 out of it. She wasn't -- she was limp, not able to walk.
22 They had to carry her to the bathtub. She was breathing
23 laboredly, heavy breathing, eyes fixed, not blinking.
24 Is that something that is consistent with staph
25 infection? Is that something that is consistent with her
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1 condition that night?
2 A. Yeah.
3 Or the embolus.
4 Q. Okay. So that could have been going on that
5 early in the morning?
6 A. Yeah. Or the dehydration. Or even the
7 dehydration, by itself.
8 Q. And we also have people that say, the day before
9 that, she was also like that.
10 Wouldn't that -- shouldn't that be cause for
11 alarm?
12 A. Absolutely.
13 Q. I mean, it's -- it's -- it's hard to believe
14 that this -- and the decline in her medical condition, as
15 described to us by her caregivers, wasn't one of rapid
16 declination; it was something that happened over a period
17 of, probably, a week or more.
18 Wouldn't that be not consistent with a sudden
19 onslaught of staph infection?
20 A. Yeah. If -- if the staph infection was sudden,
21 yeah.
22 Q. I guess what I'm asking is -- is knowing what
23 the caretakers told us, and knowing that this wasn't a
24 one-day affair that had happened over a period of a week
25 or more, where she wasn't eating --
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1 A. Mm-hmm.
2 Q. -- wasn't drinking --
3 A. Mm-hmm.
4 Q. -- and got steadily more weak, to the point
5 where she couldn't walk and couldn't talk, other than just
6 sounds --
7 A. Mm-hmm.
8 Q. -- as a physician, how would you react to that?
9 Would you have --
10 A. Put her in the hospital right away.
11 Q. Okay. Have you talked to anybody, other than
12 your attorney, about your testimony here today?
13 A. Huh-uh.
14 Q. You haven't talked to anybody at the
15 organization, since you talked to us the last time, other
16 than your attorney?
17 A. About details of what's going on?
18 Q. Yeah.
19 A. About the testimony here today?
20 No.
21 MR. FELMAN: I think he testified he
22 cleated it with Sandy Weinberg and Lee Fugate in January.
23 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
24 BY AGENT STROPE:
25 Q. Have you talked to anybody since then other than
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1 your attorney? I don't want to get into that.
2 A. No.
3 Q. Okay. In -- your first conversation concerning
4 Alain -- correct me if I'm wrong -- was some two days
5 after she was taken to Flag. Have you talked to Alain
6 Karduzinski since?
7 A. Actually, it was probably the day I wrote that
8 prescription. That was wrong. It was probably the --
9 SGT. ANDREWS: 29th.
10 A. -- 29TH.
11 BY AGENT STROPE:
12 Q. Was that Janice or Alain you talked to at that
13 time?
14 A. I think they were both on the phone.
15 Q. Conference call?
16 What did Alain have to say about this? What was
17 his conversation, do you remember?
18 A. "She's Type 3. She hasn't slept. We need to
19 get her something to help her sleep. What can you
20 suggest, or what would you do?"
21 Q. And you wrote that prescription for chloral
22 hydrate?
23 A. Right.
24 Q. So Lisa--
25 A. Right.
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1 Q. And the prescription for Valium, you wrote --
2 A. You're going to have to check that, `cause I --
3 I don't know if it ever got -- I -- sorry. I'm -- we may
4 have had a conversation about it and I didn't do it, and
5 we may have had a conversation and didn't do it.
6 Q. Would that have been at Eckerd's, same place?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. And that would have been in your name, your DEA
9 number?
10 A. Would have been mine, yeah.
11 Q. Now, that prescription Valium, was that a liquid
12 or was that tablets?
13 A. It was probably tablets. I don't think it comes
14 as liquid.
15 Q. I thought it came --
16 A. Oh, as an injectable?
17 Q. Yeah.
18 A. I don't think they have injectable Valium there,
19 but I can't remember, so--
20 Q. And you don't usually, in cases, prescribe any
21 medication without seeing patients? That's not a usual
22 procedure for you?
23 A. (Shakes head).
24 Q. And the exception was made this time because --
25 A. I knew these people. And it was -- I thought I
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1 was talking to a doctor.
2 Q. You thought you knew these people.
3 A. I thought I knew these people.
4 Q. And I get the impression, from talking to you
5 today, that it probably wouldn't happen again?
6 A. No, it won't happen again. No, it won't happen
7 again.
8 Q. And you've stated that, on the night that Janice
9 and others brought Lisa to your hospital, that she wanted
10 a prescription for penicillin?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And --
13 A. She wanted to know if she could get a
14 prescription for an injectable penicillin, `cause she
15 thought she had a strep throat, I think is what she said.
16 Q. Did she describe her throat?
17 A. She told me that she had a sore throat in the
18 morning, diarrhea during the day. Nothing about her
19 condition, in terms of -- I mean, we went through the
20 thing, "If she's too sick, don't take her up here. Take
21 her to Morton Plant." We had the conversation.
22 Q. That would have been the logical thing to do.
23 A. Yeah. Because --
24 Did you talk to David Niles? I think he was
25 sitting at the desk. And he may have even heard that part
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1 of it, because he looked at me and he said -- he didn't
2 want this person to come up there. And I think he may
3 have heard me say, "If she's too ill or she's really sick,
4 don't bring her up here. Take her the Morton Plant."
5 Q. Is it out of the ordinary for members of the
6 organization to come all the way up to New Port Richey to
7 see you?
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. So this case, from the beginning, is just not
10 the ordinary case?
11 A. No. It's not the ordinary case.
12 Q. Did that -- did that arouse some type of
13 suspicion with you after the fact?
14 A. Yeah. Sure it did.
15 Q. I mean, given all the conditions, given the fact
16 that it's not the everyday event, given the condition of
17 Lisa Mcpherson, you had to have some suspicions --
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. -- of mishandling of this case.
20 A. Yeah.
21 Q. Certainly, you wouldn't have carried on the way
22 this case was carried on.
23 A. No.
24 Q. Bear with me. I'm almost through my notes,
25 here.
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1 A. Okay.
2 Q. You stated that you were in shock when you
3 realized what was going on. Could you elaborate on that a
4 little bit?
5 A. Well, it's a horrifying experience to see a
6 young person in that condition, and then to know that that
7 person -- I mean, I -- we probably see two, three dead
8 people a day in the emergency room, but to know that this
9 person is someone that I had been called on, you know, an
10 hour before, and thinking one thing and then seeing
11 another, and then, "Oh, my God" -- I was horrified, for
12 sure.
13 Q. You never visited Lisa at the Ft. Harrison?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Were you ever asked to visit Lisa at the Ft.
16 Harrison?
17 A. No.
18 Q. You said that you had -- I believe you said one
19 time that you had lunch with Janice Johnson, two weeks
20 before you saw Lisa at the hospital. That would have been
21 around the time that Lisa was still at the Ft. Harrison.
22 Did Janice discuss Lisa with you that day?
23 A. No.
24 Q. Did Janice ever discuss other patients with you
25 that were -- that she was caring for at the Ft. Harrison?
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1 A. No.
2 Q. So that, too, was out of the ordinary? Even her
3 conversation about Lisa would have been out of the
4 ordinary.
5 A. Mm-hmm.
6 `Cause actually, it may be more that these sorts
7 of things hardly ever happen, too. Or to my knowledge.
8 Q. You're familiar with Watches, right, in
9 run-down? And apparently this is a practice of the
10 organization.
11 A. Mm-hmm.
12 Q. Is this still going on, do you know?
13 A. Not to my knowledge. I mean, I don't really
14 have any knowledge of it right now.
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. I'm not involved in any.
17 Q. I just want to touch on this one picture for a
18 minute.
19 This -- and it looks to me like scabbing. I
20 mean, it doesn't look like, as you explained earlier, just
21 blood that came off the procedure of the intubation or
22 anything. This actually looks like it's already been
23 scabbed over.
24 Did you -- did you notice that at the time? Did
25 you have any questions about that?
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There's a better picture here. Here it is.
Now, if you look at this really closely, you can
see that that's an old wound. That's not something that
happened that day. We've all been around deceased people
enough to tell that's a wound scabbed over, if you can see
the striations.
A. If it's not a piece of dried blood.
Q. I think, if you look really close, you can
actually see the opening in this skin, where it's scabbed
out over. You can actually see a cut or an abrasion.
I guess my question is, did -- that had to be
part of your overall curiosity about this whole thing and
your being upset with Janice. Bad enough she's thirty-six
years old, but she's got all these unidentifiable marks,
and these are scabbed over, and this --
If you look -- if you blew this up, you would
see that there is a break in the skin there.
A. Didn't hit me.
Q. Didn't hit you.
I mean, had to be a little fresher when you saw
it than, obviously -- there are some post-mortem changes
here.
A. Before this tube is put in, a mask is put on the
face.
Q. So you may not even seen it --
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1 A. May not have even seen it, or it may have
2 abraded her when --
3 Q. Well, my point is, this is obviously -- looks to
4 me, anyway, to be an older wound.
5 A. Yeah. I can't tell you from this, and I don't
6 recall --
7 I don't have a -- haven't even thought about it.
8 Q. Is it a usual procedure for you to draw blood
9 from patients who are coded?
10 A. In times when the nurses can't get it, yeah.
11 Q. So you've done that before and you do it all the
12 time?
13 A. (Nods head).
14 Not all the time, because usually they can get
15 it.
16 Q. Okay. I don't know if you're aware or not, but
17 apparently, you know, the people that we've talked to and
18 the caregivers who started taking care of her -- and I'm
19 not sure I know what my question is here, so bear with
20 me --
21 MR. FELMAN: Guy apologizes a lot for
22 asking pretty good questions.
23 BY AGENT STROPE:
24 Q. -- that it was a period of a long time. It
25 wasn't like she didn't eat the 5th or 4th. She wasn't
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1 eating or drinking for a long period of time. And when
2 they did try to give her something, she spit it out. I
3 don't know if she spit it out because she didn't want it
4 or she couldn't swallow.
5 I guess my question is, how far back, from the
6 time that -- say there was -- there was no drastic
7 infection. How far back, from the time of the 5th back,
8 would someone not have to eat or drink to get in that
9 condition? I guess that's my question. Is that something
10 that -- I mean, if you don't drink, you don't eat for a
11 matter of a week --
12 How long can you go without drink before you're
13 severely dehydrated?
14 A. Probably a couple days.
15 Q. Just a couple of days?
16 A. No drink?
17 Q. No drink.
18 I understand, food, you can go weeks.
19 A. Right.
20 Q. But water, it's just a few days isn't, it?
21 A. Yeah. Probably a couple days. Maybe three,
22 four days.
23 Q. Wasn't so tough --
24 A. That's off the top of my head.
25 Q. It's just a personal curiosity with me, because
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1 I hear people telling us she wouldn't drink anything and
2 didn't eat anything. And I've also -- I've always
3 believed that two or three days without drinking, and
4 you're in big trouble, is that true?
5 A. Well, you would have symptoms, anyway. I mean,
6 you would -- you would --
7 Q. What would those symptoms be?
8 A. Well, I mean, you would -- you would be weak and
9 lethargic and your mouth would be dry.
10 Q. And just consistently weak till you're
11 dehydrated, till your kidneys shut down?
12 A. Sure. If you don't have any --
13 AGENT STROPE: I don't have anything else.
14 (Whereupon a discussion was held off the record).
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1 CERTIFICATE OF OATH
2 STATE OF FLORIDA
3 COUNTY OF PINELLAS
4 I, the undersigned authority, certify that DAVID
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WITNESS my hand and official seal this 29th day
6 of April, 1997.
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9 DONNA M KANABAY , RMR,
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1 REPORTER'S DEPOSITION CERTIFICATE
2 STATE OF FLORIDA
3 COUNTY OF PINELLAS
4 I, DONNA M. KANABAY, Registered Professional
5 stenographically report the statement of DAVID MINKOFF,
6 my stenographic notes.
7 I further certify that I am not a relative,
8 am I a relative or employee of any of the parties'
9 financially interested in the action.
10 DATED this 29th day of April, 1997.
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12 DONNA M. KANABAY
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KANABAY COURT REPORTERS - (813)821-3320