Related: Bobbing For Apples
Down he goes:
"Jury says Pittsburgh researcher poisoned his wife" Associated Press November 08, 2014
PITTSBURGH — A University of Pittsburgh researcher charged in the cyanide poisoning death of his wife last year was convicted Friday of first-degree murder.
Dr. Robert Ferrante faces a mandatory life sentence in the April 2013 death of Dr. Autumn Klein, a 41-year-old neurologist.
The jury agreed with Allegheny County prosecutors who accused Ferrante of lacing his wife’s creatine energy drink with cyanide that he bought through his lab using a university-issued credit card two days before she fell ill.
The 66-year-old Ferrante denied poisoning his wife. His lawyers tried to make the case that she might not have been poisoned at all, citing three defense experts who said that couldn’t be conclusively proved.
Ferrante said the cyanide he bought was for stem cell experiments he was conducting on Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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UPDATE:
"Ex-medical researcher gets life term in wife’s cyanide death" Associated Press February 05, 2015
PITTSBURGH — A former medical researcher was sentenced Wednesday to a mandatory life prison sentence without possibility of parole in the cyanide poisoning death of his neurologist wife.
Robert Ferrante, 66, was convicted in November of first-degree murder when a jury agreed with prosecutors that he laced Dr. Autumn Klein’s energy drink with cyanide in April 2013. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty....
Prosecutors showed the jury text messages in which Ferrante told Klein the drink might help her ovulate and conceive a second child, which witnesses said Klein was obsessed with having. Prosecutors said Ferrante was outwardly supportive of having another child but actually disliked the idea and feared Klein might divorce him.
Defense attorney William Difenderfer plans to appeal, saying there was no direct proof that Ferrante gave his wife cyanide and saying medical experts disagreed as to whether she was poisoned or died from a sudden heart dysrhythmia.
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