Liable for $15M in Girlfriend's Death, Doc Now Charged in Perjury Scheme
When his legal defense didn’t succeed, a Massachusetts physician who was found civilly liable for $15 million in his girlfriend’s strangling death allegedly turned to illegal tactics to try to overturn the jury verdict.
Prosecutors contend that Dr. Timothy Stryker offered his handyman and longtime patient $100,000 plus a steady supply of the OxyContin painkiller to tell a fictitious story that he had seen the victim, Dr. Linda Goudey, with another man shortly before her death in 1993, reports the Boston Globe. Through the perjury scheme, the Stoneham endocrinologist hoped to reopen the 2006 verdict and avoid having to pay the $15 million, prosecutors contend.
The claimed scheme reportedly unraveled after authorities obtained medical, phone and bank records linking Stryker, his handyman, Richard Chambers, and another man, Craig Pizzano, an acquaintance of Chambers. When contacted by authorities, Pizzano–who had already testified in court about his claimed sighting of Goudey with another man–then recanted his story and said Stryker planned the perjury scheme, according to the newspaper.
“Stryker stood impassively as he pleaded not guilty to one count of willfully misleading a police officer, three counts of conveying something of value to a witness, one count of conspiracy to commit perjury, and seven counts of subornation of, or orchestrating, perjury,” the Globe writes. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. Chambers has also been charged in the perjury scheme and pleaded not guilty; Pizzano, who is cooperating with authorities, has not been charged.
Although Stryker has never been criminally charged in the strangling case, he remains a suspect, District Attorney Gerard Leone Jr. said yesterday in Middlesex Superior Court. He dated Goudrey, 42, for four years before she was found dead under a blanket in her parked car in 1993, outside the hospital at which she had worked as an obstetrician, the Globe article says.
Goudey’s mother, Marguerite Rafuse, sued in 1996 over her death, winning the $15 million civil judgment against Stryker in 2006.