4.2.12 WC: 191694 “My father didn’t kill my mother”: the case of Dr. William Sybers The call came from a young woman pleading with me to take her father’s appeal. Her father had been convicted of killing her mother by injecting her with a drug that stops the heart from working. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. “It’s just like the Von Bulow case,” the daughter insisted. “My father didn’t kill my mother. He didn’t inject anything into her. She died of natural causes.” (No one seeking my help ever tells me their case is “just like” O.J. Simpson’s! ) When the daughter of an alleged murder victim is so certain the defendant is innocent, even when the defendant is her father, the case is certainly worthy of a hard second look. I agreed to provide that look and to argue the appeal—and a possible new trial motion—if I concluded there had been a possible injustice. My initial review of the evidence was not encouraging. There were needle marks on the victim’s arm that were consistent with an injection. Moreover, a subsequent lab test had revealed traces of the metabolite of a drug called succinylcholine—a paralytic agent capable of stopping the heart. Finally, the defendant was having an affair, and he was a medical doctor—indeed the medical examiner of his Florida county—and thus had the motive and knowledge necessary to stop his wife’s heart. All the classic components for homicide—motive, opportunity, means and scientific evidence—were present, and they pointed in the direction of guilt. I could easily understand why a jury could convict. In these respects, it was like the Von Bulow and Simpson cases, but in the Von Bulow case, the evidence, upon reexamination, pointed to innocence, and in the Simpson case, a major item of evidence—the bloody sock—had been planted by the police. There seemed to be no such elements of doubt here. At least not yet. The Sybers case had begun more than a decade before I was called. Kay Sybers had died suddenly in her sleep—or so it appe