Cyanide homicide trial gets under way
PITTSBURGH — Jurors heard from prosecution and defense attorneys — and then from the dying woman herself — as the homicide trial began Thursday for a University of Pittsburgh medical researcher charged with poisoning his neurologist wife.
Assistant District Attorney Lisa Pellegrini told the jury that 41-year-old Dr. Autumn Klein can be heard “gasping and groaning and moaning and dying” on the 911 call placed by her husband, Dr. Robert Ferrante, on April 17.
During the call, Klein’s tortured breaths and moans were sometimes louder than Ferrante’s pleas to the emergency dispatcher.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart, I love you very much,” Ferrante is heard saying to Klein while waiting for an ambulance. “Please don’t do it, please.”
The 66-year-old researcher’s attorney, William Difenderfer, told the jury that Ferrante didn’t poison his wife and that the prosecution’s medical experts “are not going to even prove that she died of cyanide poisoning.”
He suggested her death was unexplained, but may have been related to a fainting disorder the defense claims Klein had, which the prosecution disputes.
