Bound by Friendship, Murder and Mental Illness
May 2 -- Charlotte Corash and Kathleen Hagen became instant friends in 1982, when Corash was a high school teacher and single mom, and Hagen was a divorced physician.
They met through a mutual friend, and realized they had a lot in common, including a love for skiing, boating, snorkeling, traveling, and having a good time.
In a friendship spanning more than two decades, their extraordinary bond survived — and flourished — despite dark secrets and unspeakable horrors. Not even a murder charge could break the friends apart.
On the Fast Track
Hagen was an only child who grew up in Chatham, N.J. Her parents doted on her, but demanded excellence. She went to Harvard Medical School, and from there, she was the first female urology resident at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"She was smart and she was a very meticulous surgeon," said Dr. George Prout, then the chief of the department. But he also said there were moments he saw another side to her. "There's no question that Kathy did have sometimes what we call a short fuse."
After a short stint at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Hagen was appointed as the first female to chair the department of urology at Rutgers University Medical School in 1982.
The following year, Hagen met Bill Tyrrell, an engineer, at the Jersey shore. They married eight months later.
"I was ecstatic for Kathy," said Corash, who was divorced at the time. "I felt he was a good partner for her … Both extremely bright, intelligent, driven, focused people."
But the happiness Kathy was finding at home came at a time when her career was starting to slip.
"She liked fixing people, making people better, and I think she found that the paperwork was getting in the way," said Corash. "She wasn't smiling anymore. It was as if it started to become a chore."
Tyrrell, too, watched her professional life prove to be a struggle. "She complained about not being able to get things to go the way she wanted them," he said.
