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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 appeared—on May 30, 1991. She was 52 years old and in generally good health, though she had suffered from allergies for which she took medication. An autopsy was performed but no cause of death could be determined. One of the investigators did, however, think she saw a needle mark. The original death certificate read: “sudden unexpected death due to undetermined natural causes.”

Rumors immediately began to circulate that Dr. Sybers was having an affair with a lab technician, and an investigation was begun. An investigator was dispatched to the Sybers home and the grieving husband was asked to describe his wife’s last night. Dr. Sybers told the investigator that at about 4AM his wife awoke with chest pains. She had taken some medication, so Dr. Sybers decided to draw some blood to give to her doctor the next day. He did not succeed in drawing the blood and he threw the syringe into the garbage. The syringe could not be found because the trash had already been collected. This all seemed very suspicious and so the investigation continued. After more than a year-long investigation, the State Attorney reported that he had found “no prosecutable case,” and that there was no physical evidence that Dr. Sybers had killed his wife. The case was closed—or so it seemed.

But nearly two years after Kay’s death, and a year after the case against Bill was closed, their 27 year old son Tim killed himself on his mother’s birthday. Shortly before he shot himself, Tim was

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