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4.2.12 WC: 191694 apparently talking on the phone with a friend about his mother’s death and the suspicions that his father may have killed her. Tim’s suicide resulted in a reopening of the investigation. The case was now on “the front burner.” It was also on the front pages of local newspapers. Investigators began to focus on the drug potassium, which in large enough doses can kill and which is difficult to detect in the dead body. It was a perfect murder weapon, especially for a sophisticated medical examiner with extensive experience in causes of death. Boning to pressure from the media, the Governor of Florida appointed a lawyer named Harry Shorstein—who was then the State Attorney in Jacksonville—to be a special prosecutor. He had only one job: to prove that Dr. William Sybers had murdered his wife. With the single-minded determination of an inspector Javert, Shorstein set out to get Dr. Sybers. On February 18, 1997, Shorstein had Sybers indicted for capital murder. The indictment alleged that he had murdered her with an “unknown substance.” There was no hard evidence of any such substance, but Shorstein was confident he could find it. It was an example of “indict first—and then search for the evidence.” Shorstein was convinced that Dr. Sybers had injected his wife with potassium and that a thorough analysis of her tissues, preserved from the autopsy, would prove that theory. The problem was Shorstein’s theory was based on “junk” science, not real evidence. A “test” that purported to show high concentrations of potassium in the tissues preserved from Kay’s autopsy was not scientifically valid. It could not be replicated by other scientists and the methodology had never been peer-approved. Accordingly, one court denied Shorstein’s petition for exhumation of Kay’s body, and another court ruled that the potassium evidence could not be presented to the jury. The theory that Dr. Sybers had used potassium as the murder weapon was now dead. Shorstein was left with a capital indictment, but no theory, no evidence and no weapon. So he set out to find a new murder weapon. He turned his attention to the drug “succinylcholine.” The paralytic drug itself quickly disappears from the human body, but a scientist assured him that a by- product of the drug—succinylmonocholine; or “SMC,” could be detected in tissues even years later by a sophisticated test. That test purportedly found traces of SMC. This time the test results could be replicated by the famous FBI lab, although with slight variations. Shorstein had his smoking gun—his murder weapon. And it had been certified by no less an authority than the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The same judge who had excluded the potassium theory as “junk science,” now concluded, after an extensive hearing, that the succinylcholine theory was based on real science and could be presented to the jury. Shorstein not only now had science on his side, he also had a sex motive that would surely grab the jury’s attention, even if it were to become bored by the highly technical scientific evidence. The state’s scientific case gave rise to the usual clash of experts. The two primary witnesses for the prosecution were Dr. Kevin Ballard, the scientist who had conducted the test, and Dr. Marc LeBeau, the FBI chemist who had replicated the test. The defense introduced experts who 185 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017272