New Michigan Victims in New Charges

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Jennie Barth, an avid gardener who enjoyed an occasional trip to play the slots at area casinos, was 88 when she died on Jan. 13, 2013.
The Michigan resident was one of 19 state residents to die in the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak and last week her death was added to the charges against two Massachusetts pharmacists charged with second degree murder.
In charges filed in Livingston County Circuit Court by outgoing Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, Barry J. Cadden and Glenn Chin were charged with 11 counts of second degree murder.
Cadden was the president and part owner and Chin a supervising pharmacist at the New England Compounding Center, the company blamed for the outbreak that caused over 100 deaths among 793 who were sickened.
Nine of the 11 victims named in the state complaint were also listed as second degree murder victims in the federal indictment of Cadden and Chin. Records of the Cadden trial show that eight of the 12 jurors voted to convict him under Michigan's criminal statutes. A unanimous verdict was required for conviction,
Barth, Patricia Malafouris and Ruth Madouse had not been previously named as Michigan victims.
Malafouris died Nov. 18, 2012, some two months before Barth, who died at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.
Ruth Madhouse, the third new victim died Dec. 30, records show.
The other victims named in the charges filed last week are Donna Kruzich, Paula Brent, Lyn Laperriere, Sally Roe, Mary Plettl, Gayle Gibson, Emma Todd and Karine Baxter. All were named as victims in the federal case.
Under Michigan law a second degree murder is one caused by a reckless disregard for human life. The law does not require that prosecutors show the death was premeditated.
Penny LaPerriere, the widow of Lyn, was one of those to testify for the prosecution in the federal case against Cadden. She said Cadden ruined her family.
“Who gave him the right to play God?” she asked.
At the Chin trial Michigan Medical Examiner, Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, provided details on the autopsies performed on 11 victims who were injected at a local pain clinic. He described how the fungus, exserohelium rostratum, penetrated a protective layer of the spine and then traveled to the brains of victims.
Once in the brain, he said the fungus, attacked blood vessels, rupturing some and blocking others. The results were strokes and other brain damage. In some cases the spinal chord itself was damaged.
Jentzen walked jurors through the cases his office handled including Kruzich, Baxter and Lyn LaPerriere.
Similar testimony is likely when the new case comes to trial.
Contact: wallyroche@hotmail.com