Doctor Gets Life in Wife's Murder

P A N A M A  C I T Y, Fla., April 17, 2001 -- A former medical examiner was sentencedtoday to life in prison without parole for at least 25 years forkilling his first wife with a lethal injection almost 10 years ago.

The jury that last month convicted Dr. William Sybers, 68, offirst-degree murder recommended the sentence, which the judgesaid he had little choice but to follow. The only other sentencepossible was death by lethal injection.

Sybers declined to make a statement before sentencing and showedno emotion when it was announced. His present wife, Judy, criedsoftly in the second row of the audience.

Circuit Judge Don T. Sirmons said by law a life recommendationmust be followed unless no reasonable person could agree with it.

After pronouncing the sentence, Sirmons told Sybers, "Good luckto you."

Sirmons denied a request by new defense lawyers, who also willhandle Sybers' appeal, to delay the sentencing. His prior defenseteam had announced plans for an appeal immediately after Sybers wasfound guilty.

'Well-Financed' Defense … And Appeal

A jury in Pensacola, where the trial was moved because ofextensive publicity in Bay County, convicted Sybers of killing hisfirst wife, Kay, 52, with a paralyzing drug on May 30, 1991, attheir home in nearby Panama City Beach.

Sybers, then the district medical examiner, ordered no autopsy,saying he was carrying out his wife's wishes. He reversed himselfthe next day when a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agentquestioned him, but the body had been embalmed and the autopsy wasinconclusive.

State Attorney Harry Shorstein, a governor-appointed specialprosecutor from Jacksonville, considers the decade-longinvestigation and prosecution to be perhaps the most difficult inFlorida's history.

"This case had every possible obstacle between the murder andconviction," Shorstein said when the jury made its sentencingrecommendation. "This was an unbelievably well-financed defense."

Sybers' family has acknowledged spending more than $2 million onthe case. Five new attorneys, including Harvard law professor AlanDershowitz, who was part of O.J. Simpson's legal team, have beenhired for the appeal.

The new legal team is headed by Dershowitz's brother, NathanDershowitz, who argued for a delay in sentencing partly so he andhis colleagues, hired last week, could familiarize themselves withthe case.

The Nearly Perfect Murder

Although Sirmons denied that request he allowed Sybers to remainin the Bay County Jail at least 30 more days until a hearing can beheld on requests by the state and county that Sybers be required topay about $500,000 for the 10-year investigation and prosecution.

The judge also ordered that a $300,000 bond Sybers posted toobtain bail prior to his conviction be held pending a decision onthe costs.

The now-retired pathologist was "only a phone call away from aperfect murder," Shorstein said.

A former colleague, Dr. Terrence Steiner, had called the FDLEafter learning about the no-autopsy order, setting off aninvestigation that bogged down for years.

Authorities were unable to identify a poison and family membersof Kay Sybers, who supported her husband, helped get a court rulingthat blocked exhumation of her body from a Fort Dodge, Iowa,cemetery for more testing.

Technological and Legal Break

A breakthrough came in late 1999 when National Medical Services,a Willow Grove, Pa., laboratory used a new technique to findevidence of the drug, succinylcholine, in organs retained from theautopsy.

Scientists said the embalming had preserved a chemical formedduring the drug's rapid breakdown in the body.

Sybers admitted to investigators he caused two needle marks onhis wife's arm but said she was having chest pains so he tried totake a blood sample. Sybers told them he botched the job and threwthe syringe away. It was never found.

Shorstein told the jury Sybers killed his wife so he could bewith his mistress, Judy Ray, and avoid a divorce that would havecost him half of joint assets worth about $6 million. Sybers andRay wed in 1994 and lived in Canada.

In 1993, one of Sybers' two sons, Timothy, 27, fatally shothimself at the family's vacation home in Sister Bay, Wis., while onthe telephone with his girlfriend. He told her he could not go onliving knowing his father had killed his mother, police said. Heand his younger sister had found their mother's body on the day shedied.