The
Doctors as Angels of Death: PART IV -
(A 4 Part Mini-Series)
Family
Doctor & Sexual Predator Josephakis Charalambous
It's hard to imagine a family doctor who is more interested
in the family's pretty teenaged girls rather than the health of his patients,
but Josephakis Charalambous was just that. This was not an isolated incident,
but a way of life for this most decadent of physicians. A Canadian citizen, he
had been born in 1952 of Greek parentage on the island of Cyprus, but had
immigrated to Canada at the age of eight with his parents and siblings and
settled in Vancouver, British Columbia. According to John Griffiths in “Fatal Prescription,” his father was a
harsh man who was hated and disrespected by his family and who was eventually
estranged from his wife and children. Charalambous was indulged by his mother,
who did everything she could to help him complete his medical education.
Despite what appears to be a reasonably good relationship with his mother and
sister, Charalambous had a very negative view of women. They were trash from
his point of view: objects to be seduced and then discarded. His desire to
dominate and control women began early in his life and characterized his
behavior in high school and university. Intimately tied into his desire to
become a physician was his need to be able to attract desirable women with his
professional status. However, his medical degree, once attained, was not the
automatic magnet that he had hoped for. Women were not flocking to him and he
often used prostitutes to satisfy his sexual requirements.
Things started to go seriously off track at age 33 when in
1985 he became obsessed with a 15-year-old girl, Shelley Joel, who was a
patient of his, as were the other members of her family. Very much against the
wishes of her parents, Charalambous pushed himself on the young woman and
alienated her from her family. Griffiths suggests that Charalambous married
Shelley a couple of years later to avoid censure from the College of Physicians
and Surgeons in Canada. All the time, the brainwashed Shelley was physically
and mentally abused by him. And if that was not bad enough, he cheated on her with
prostitutes. But that was nothing compared to his next move. He had set out to conquer two young female
patients – Sian (pronounced Shawn) and Katie Simmonds. The girls complained to
their father that the doctor had crossed the boundary of professionalism with
his attentions. In 1991, their father went right to the College of Physicians
and Surgeons with his concerns and the girls' formal complaints were lodged.
The subsequent trial transcripts stated: "It wasn't
until November of 1992, that Charalambous was told that hearings into the
girls' complaints would be held in March of 1993. On the morning of January 27,
1993, between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon, Sian Simmonds was killed in her
basement suite in Surrey, B.C. She was shot twice and then beaten on the head
numerous times with a blunt object. David Walter Schlender confessed to the
killing in exchange for police protection for his family. He entered a plea of
guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment without
eligibility for parole for twenty years. The theory of the Canadian prosecutors
was that Charalambous hired Brian West to arrange the murder of Sian Simmonds
in order to prevent her from testifying against him at the College hearing, and
that West had then hired Schlender to carry out the murder. "David
Schlender was a drug user and owed money to Brian West. West told Schlender
that Simmonds and her sister had to be killed to prevent them from testifying
against a karate instructor friend. Charalambous was a karate instructor. West
threatened Schlender and his family several times. Schlender agreed to kill
Simmonds and her sister. West provided Schlender with a handgun, silencer, and
bullets. West then narrowed his instructions to include only the blonde girl
that drove the red jeep and lived at the Simmonds' house.
"On 27 January 1993, after drinking beer and smoking
cocaine with a friend named Brian Cann, Schlender drove alone in Cann's car to
Simmonds' house. He then returned home and smoked cocaine with his wife. Finally
Schlender went back to Simmonds' house armed with a gun. Once at the house, he
scratched the door of her jeep with a key. Schlender went to the front door of
the house and spoke to the upstairs resident who directed Schlender to the
basement. He spoke to Sian Simmonds, telling her that he had accidentally
scratched her jeep. She went outside with Schlender to examine the jeep and
then the two returned to the residence. Schlender gave Simmonds Cann's
insurance documents and went into the bathroom. Schlender emerged from the
bathroom with the gun. He approached Simmonds who was sitting at the table and
held the gun to the back of her head. Simmonds saw the gun and panicked.
Schlender shot her and then beat her to death with the gun." Clearly, the
testimony of Schlender was very damaging to the doctor, but his wife Shelley
did quite a bit on her own. Charalambous had told her too many details about
the murder that she could not have known otherwise. When she testified about
these details that her husband had admitted to her, it carried tremendous
weight with the jury.
Charalambous was found guilty of first-degree murder and
sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole until 25 years of
the sentence had been served.
On May 13, 1997 Josephakis Charalambous' appeal was
dismissed by the British
Columbia Court of Appeal. [http://www.iijcan.org/bc/cas/bcca/1997/1997bcca292.html]
Dr. Bierenbaumand his missing wife:
Gail Katz Bierenbaum was an attractive young woman from a
solidly middle-class Long Island Jewish family. But she was a troubled girl
suffering from low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. A bright girl, she
nevertheless dropped out of college, popped Quaaludes and other pills, and
drank more than she should. At one point, all of her neuroses, chemical
dependencies and too much alcohol ganged up on her and she tried to commit
suicide after breaking up with a boyfriend. Unlike her sister, who was studying
to be a lawyer, Gail was drifting without a clear goal in life. She flitted
from relationship to relationship, none of them permanent. Then in 1979, at the
age of 23 she met Bob Bierenbaum, a young doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New
York City. He had a very high IQ, played the guitar, flew small planes and
wasn't bad looking. Better yet, he came from a good family and his father was
an accomplished physician. Bob pressed the relationship and soon they were
engaged. Gail's parents were ecstatic: not only was he Jewish, but he was a
doctor as well. Gail's practical side finally surfaced and she decided that,
even though she did not really love Bob and didn't find him sexually
attractive, he was too good a matrimonial catch to ignore.
Before they were married, she told her girlfriends of some
unusual incidents that would come up many times in the future. Gail told people
that Bob had admitted to inadvertently killing his former fiancée's cat. Then,
when a stray cat that Gail picked up annoyed Bob, she claimed that he tried to
kill the animal. To protect it, she took it to an animal shelter. She also
mentioned scenes that suggested that Bob was irrational and prone to fits of
rage over things like finding her smoking. Every one to whom she confided these
incidents urged her to break off the engagement, particularly since she had
serious doubts about her feelings about Bob. To keep her parents happy and not
lose a potentially huge meal ticket, Gail went ahead with the marriage. Things
seemed to deteriorate almost immediately. They fought loudly and frequently.
Once, she called the police and charged that he tried to choke her.
On the positive side, she went back to finish her college
degree, but looked for extramarital relationships to satisfy the gaps in her
relationship with Bob. Bob seemed to immerse himself in his career and was
making himself into a first-class Manhattan surgeon.
Sunday morning, July 7, 1985, everything came to a head.
According to Kieran Crowley, author of the very detailed book on the case, The Surgeon's Wife. "Gail, her
pretty face contorted with rage, screeched a final ultimatum at Bob. She told
him he was pathetic. She revealed her affairs, including her claimed liaison
with an Arab. She declared that she loved another man and that she never loved
Bob." Mae Eisenhower in the apartment below heard the fight and said that
it was followed by a loud slamming of a door, suggesting that one of the two
combatants upstairs had stormed out of the apartment. Shortly afterwards, one
of Gail's friends called and Bob told her that Gail had gone out. At 3 p.m., a
retired textile executive, Joel Davis, saw a woman in a bagel shop that he was
convinced was Gail. At 3:30 p.m., Bob rented a Cessna at Caldwell Airport for a
2-hour flight. Afterwards, he attended his nephew's birthday party. Then he
went to his friend's home and during the evening there called his house a
couple of times to see if Gail had returned. Bob went home late that evening to
an empty apartment. The next day, Bob called around to several of Gail's
friends, colleagues and relatives to see if they knew her whereabouts. He
explained that they had argued and Gail had walked out. Nobody had seen her and
nobody had heard from her. She had simply vanished.
It seemed like all of Gail's friends and relatives knew without a doubt that Bob had
killed her. Eventually, the police became persuaded as well. However, there was
absolutely no evidence to tie him to Gail's disappearance. And there was Mae
Eisenhower who heard the door slam after the argument. Maybe Gail walked out to
link up with one of her boyfriends or someone who supplied her with the pills
she took. The police were happy to keep this drama as a missing person's case.
Without a body, they were loathing to accuse a doctor from a good family with
second-degree murder. And so the case
remained on a shelf for many years to come.
Bob had relocated to Las Vegas and became a very successful
plastic surgeon. He was known for his acts of charity and his patients thought
highly of him. After a number of brief relationships, he finally met another
doctor, Janet Chollet, and they were married. In November of 1998, Janet bore
him a daughter. It looked as though things were finally going well in Dr.
Bierenbaum's life. That is, until Andy Rosenzweig, an investigator in the
Manhattan D.A.'s office was getting ready to retire. He wanted to close some
old cases before he left the job.
New resources were put onto the case and people, especially
Bob's old girlfriends and Gail's friends, were interviewed extensively. There
were a few titillating discoveries but it was not clear that they were not the
result of either bitter broken off relationships between Bob and former
girlfriends and exaggerations by Gail in conversations with her friends and
psychiatrists. But, there was no body
and no real evidence to tie Bob to a crime. However, it did not stop a grand
jury from indicting him and a jury from convicting him of second-degree murder.
The woman judge, who was very hard on crimes against women, gave Bob 20 years to
life. It's not a pretty case: both Gail and Bob had serious personality flaws
and never should have married. Bob's bad temper was reasonably well documented,
but so was Gail's propensity to use drugs and alcohol to excess. She added a
number of extramarital flings to her risky lifestyle. When she apparently
stormed out of the apartment that morning in 1985, did she go looking for drugs
or companionship with someone that was ultimately responsible for her
disappearance? Also, it was well documented that Gail suffered from depression
and suicidal tendencies which could have also led to her final disappearance. It
is not beyond reasonable doubt that someone other than Bob was responsible for
Gail's disappearance. Furthermore, despite Bob's guilt or innocence, it is
disturbing to see a man convicted on such circumstantial evidence. He was,
after all, a man of accomplishment who was leading a perfectly respectable life
as a member of his community, a charitable surgeon, a good husband and father.
The
Most Evil - Demon Doctors:
During the turn of the nineteenth century and into the early
years of the twentieth, spas for the wealthy that purported to "cure"
people of contemporary ills were all the rage. Sometimes they offered genuine
service but often they were full of quackery, poised simply to siphon off money
from trusting clients.
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard set up her operation in 1907 in
Seattle, Washington, and offered several versions of a published manual of her
special method. One of the few female doctors in the country (trained as an
osteopath), she presented herself as the only licensed fasting therapist in the
country, and her final domain was a sanitarium, Wilderness heights, in the
small town of Olalla, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. It was an isolated
place, with no way to communicate with the outside world. Exuding
self-confidence, Dr. Hazzard assured people that her method was a panacea for
all manner of ills, because she was able to rid the body of toxins that caused
imbalances in the body. As strange as it may seem, she managed to persuade
people to go without food, aside from some water and a thin tomato and
asparagus soup, for long periods of time. As their bodies shed
"toxins," she required enemas (a fashionable purgative in many such
places) and provided vigorous massages meant to accelerate the process.
As patients weakened, Hazzard found ways to encourage them
to turn over to her their accounts and power of attorney. Not surprisingly,
several died under her "care" and she grew richer. Her bigamous
husband, Sam, helped get the patients, once they were very weak, to change
their wills to make Dr. Hazzard their beneficiary. Yet when attacked for her
methods as patients died, she insisted that they had been near death when they
came, and she could not be expected to work miracles. Even with these dire
stories, she still drew both disciples and patients from around the world.
Local residents dubbed the place Starvation Heights, and it caught the
attention of authorities when two wealthy British sisters came to "take
the cure."
Claire and Dora Williamson had received a copy of: “Fasting for the Cure of Disease” Hazzard's
publication. It purported to have resulted in remarkable recoveries for people
who had found little help elsewhere. Hazzard was a natural salesperson who had
spread her ideas to an international audience. She had published testimonials
from success stories, and the sisters were impressed. A fan of natural cures,
they checked in for the treatment on February 27, 1911.
They did not realize that, once there, they would not be
able to just leave. In fact, they would be too weak to do so. They agreed to
undergo the rigorous fasting, shedding weight to the point where they were
nearly mere skeletons. As they grew weaker, Olson points out, they became more
committed to the therapy. Suffering was a sign, they were told, that the treatment
was working. Even when they became bedridden after two months, the doctor would
not allow them to eat. At the same time, she secured their jewelry and land
deeds, to "prevent others" from coming into their apartment to rob
them. Then she moved them to her newly completed sanitarium, where they could
communicate with no one. At that time, they weighed around 75 pounds each and
were often delirious. Claire managed to secretly find someone to send a
telegram, but she eventually died, even as Margaret Convey, a faithful nanny,
rushed there from Australia. Convey rescued Dora, now said to be insane, before
she met the same fate. Dora had been on the treatment for four months, but with
Convey's help, she regained her health and proved to be an effective witness—especially
photos of her during the latter stage of the fasting cure--when the case came
to trial in 1912—as murder. Hazzard was found guilty of manslaughter. The
medical establishment removed her license during the legal proceedings, and she
claimed that the verdict was just part of the persecution she had suffered all
along. The “Town Crier” wrote
that her gender had saved her from the verdict of murder. During her appeal,
two women and two babies died at her center. She spent only two years in
prison, and in exchange for her leaving the country, the governor granted a
pardon. She went to New Zealand, but eventually returned to Olalla, writes
Iserson, and resumed her treatments.
Arrested again when another man died, she
was fined for violating medical practice. Since she kept no records, the number
of people who died (or were intentionally starved to death) under her
"care" cannot be estimated. Oddly enough, Dr. Hazzard's book is
available today on several Webs sites that tout her treatment as scientific and
effective, but the Skeptical Inquirer http://www.csicop.org/
assures people that the claims Hazzard made for its health benefits are both
vacuous and bogus.
Be careful what you wish for - Bird
