June 29, 2017

"My Dentist’s Murder Trial/Adultery, false identities, and a lethal sedation: a baroque courtroom drama unfolds in upstate New York."

I highly recommend this New Yorker article by James Lasdun. Sample:
To the extent that I knew Dr. Nunez, I thought of him as reserved but friendly. I knew that he did free dentistry for a women’s shelter, and for the Boys and Girls Club. My wife—also a patient—had heard that he picked up elderly patients at home and drove them back after their appointments. From such details, I’d constructed an image of impeccable chivalrousness, with a touch of the immigrant’s stoic melancholy. Clearly, I’d missed something. Even if he was not the cold-blooded murderer that the indictment purported him to be, he had done very peculiar things.

There was one significant detail in his account that I hadn’t heard before: Thomas’s body was found reclined far back in his seat, with his belt and pants undone and his zipper down. “They will try to say I was having a gay affair with him,” Nunez predicted. “But we have a different explanation. You will see.”...

13 comments:

gadfly said...

Thanks for the most interesting read of the evening. Number two turns out to be the Ted Cruz solution to the Senate's Healthcare fiasco.

https://twitter.com/FoxReports/status/877962763493978112/photo/1

glenn said...

Operative: "I'd missed something" Evertbody thinks they can "spot the creep". Often you can't

mockturtle said...

I remember seeing this case on one of those true crime programs and came away agreeing with Ms. Kolman that Nunez is a 'lying sack of shit'.

sane_voter said...

48 Hours aired an episode in April on this case. Get some odd people together and weird stuff happens. But usually not death.

Bill R said...

This man is innocent. He's been framed by anti-dentites

W.B. Picklesworth said...

Very interesting story. It reminds me how often one just doesn't know. We exhibit so much dreadful certainty these days. Where's the mystery? Where's the modesty? I don't know if he killed the husband. I don't know if Trump is poison or medicine. Maybe time will tell. Or maybe it won't.

Birches said...

Wow.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The notion of a modest dose of Midaz as "lethal sedation" is patently ridiculous. Given how messed up the husband's marriage was, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he was using it to self-medicate for depression. Five beers will make you loopier than the standard dose of Midaz. Unintended consequences are the constant companion of the foolish and the emotionally incontinent. Which describes all three of these knuckleheads.

Gabriel said...

Whether or not Nunez is guilty, it is extremely troubling that the police and prosecutors never considered any other possible suspect and chose not to examine a great deal of obviously relevant evidence. Such as the husband's underwear. They asked the lab to send it back unexamined. If there was someone else's DNA on there, they didn't want to know.

I think that people interested in knowing who the murderer might have been would wanted to have known. If it was Nunez's DNA, great, the case is tighter. If it's not, let's find out who it is and see if that person might have been the murderer. But if the people doing the investigation were only interested in Nunez, and wish to avoid having to present anything that might make him look less guilty, that's the only explanation I can think of for not wanting that evidence tested.

Sydney said...

I'm disturbed by the fact that the prosecutor was able to come back and charge him with lesser crimes. Even though the judge told the prosecutor he thought her requests for penalties for these crimes were over the top, he granted the severe punishment. It seems the "justice" community in that town were out to get the dentist for some reason.

TML said...

HOLY EFFING CRAP!!! I had to put this in "Reader View" because of an absolutely maddening habit of their site to jump up and down the page as the 6000 ads open, run, close and scroll. Just unbearable user experience. Anyone else experience this while reading it?

mockturtle said...

HOLY EFFING CRAP!!! I had to put this in "Reader View" because of an absolutely maddening habit of their site to jump up and down the page as the 6000 ads open, run, close and scroll. Just unbearable user experience. Anyone else experience this while reading it?

Yes, if I try to read it on my phone. But I have Firefox Ad-Block Plus on my laptop and read the articles there with no problem.

Titus said...

I read it and found it fascinating.