Robert Ferrante

PITTSBURGH — A University of Pittsburgh medical researcher accused of poisoning his neurologist wife with a supplement she apparently thought would help them have a baby was arrested on Thursday in West Virginia, authorities said.

Dr. Robert Ferrante laced an energy supplement with cyanide and gave it to Dr. Autumn Klein, a neurologist at the university’s medical school, hours after they exchanged text messages about how the supplement could help them conceive, according to a police complaint.

“Will it stimulate egg production too?” Klein, 41, asked about nine hours before she fell ill.

Ferrante, 64, responded with a smiling emoticon.

Police had traveled to St. Augustine, Fla., to look for Ferrante, a leading researcher on Lou Gehrig’s disease. But Allegheny County district attorney’s office spokesman Mike Manko and police said Ferrante was arrested near Beckley, W.Va., by state police.

Police said troopers activated a license plate reader system, which identified Ferrante’s vehicle along a highway, and then set up a road block for him.

Defense attorney William Difenderfer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night on his client’s arrest and an allegation by authorities Ferrante had been advised to leave Florida.

Difenderfer previously said Ferrante denies involvement in his wife’s death, but he declined to comment further Thursday except to confirm speaking with Ferrante while arranging his arrest.

Klein, chief of women’s neurology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, died April 20 after suddenly falling ill at home three days earlier. Blood drawn from Klein had high levels of acid so doctors had it tested for cyanide as a precaution, even noting it was unlikely, the police complaint said. Those tests revealed a lethal level of cyanide, but only after Klein had died and been cremated at her husband’s insistence, police said.

Two days before Ferrante’s wife became ill, he used a university credit card to buy more than a half-pound of cyanide, which police determined was the only substance he purchased not related to his work, authorities said.