A 44-year-old doctor has been indicted in connection to the death of a 23-year-old Ohio woman and her unborn child. The man is accused of injecting the woman with a fatal dose of heroin before abandoning her body. The doctor's attorney said his client plans to plead not guilty to the nine-count indictment currently facing him, which includes charges of murder and rape.
Police discovered the woman's body in the back seat of her car, which had been abandoned in a rural area the day after she left her two children in her mother's care to clean a home - a job she said she had found on Craigslist. Subsequent tests found that the woman and her unborn daughter had both died of a heroin overdose. The victim was nine months pregnant at the time of her death.
Police targeted the doctor after linking him to the Craigslist ad, quickly locating his home and confiscating his computer and other unspecified possessions. While it is unclear whether investigators found any clear connection between the online listing and the victim's death, other women who had responded to the man's advertisements told police that they were "unnerved" when they visited the doctor's home.
The doctor was detained in a county jail on a number of criminal charges, including rape, kidnapping, felonious assault, abuse of a corpse, corrupting another with drugs, two counts of tampering with evidence and two counts of murder.
A representative with the local sheriff's office said he hopes the case is resolved soon for the sake of the victim's family and called the killing a "horrific crime." Officials do not expect to make any additional arrests in connection to the killing.
The doctor's arrest comes just weeks after one of the victim's family members was killed. In that case, a 23-year-old man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after a gun he was holding allegedly went off and fatally shot the victim's 19-year-old brother.
Source: Columbus Dispatch, "Doctor accused in murder, rape of pregnant woman," Randy Ludlow, Feb. 21, 2013