Sybers, Matter of

• Decision Date: 29 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-1032,97-1032
• Parties: In re the Matter of Kay Marie SYBERS, William A. Sybers, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 890

583 N.W.2d 890

In re the Matter of Kay Marie SYBERS, William A. Sybers, Appellant.

No. 97-1032.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

July 29, 1998

As Revised on Denial of Rehearing Oct. 5, 1998.

Jerry Crawford and J.D. Hartung of the Crawford Law Firm, Des Moines, and Harry L. Harper, Panama City, Florida, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Ann E. Brenden and Harold A. Young, Assistant Attorneys General, and Harry Shorstein, Florida State Attorney, for appellees State of Iowa and State of Florida.

Considered by McGIVERIN, C.J., and HARRIS, LAVORATO, NEUMAN, and TERNUS, JJ.

NEUMAN, Justice.

This appeal concerns a petition for disinterment brought by the State of Florida to search for evidence supporting its theory that Dr. William Sybers murdered his wife, Kay Sybers, by injecting potassium into her veins. Adamantly opposing disinterment is Kay's family, insistent that their loved one--having already been once autopsied--should now be permitted to rest in peace. The district court, in a carefully written opinion, observed that the case was "exceedingly close." It nevertheless granted Florida's petition over the family's resistance.

On our de novo review, we firmly believe the slender thread upon which Florida rests its case is insufficient to overcome the family's equitable plea. We, therefore, reverse the judgment of the district court.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

Kay Sybers--formerly of Fort Dodge, Iowa--died on May 30, 1991, at age fifty-two, in Panama City, Florida. Her body is buried alongside family members in a Fort Dodge cemetery. Her husband, William Sybers, was a pathologist and Florida medical examiner. By all accounts they were a devoted couple. Suspicions surrounding Kay's death, however, led Florida authorities in 1997 to indict William Sybers for her murder. This followed a petition filed April 26, 1994, by the Webster County Attorney on behalf of the State of Florida, seeking to disinter Kay's body in accordance with Iowa Code section 144.34 (1993).

Because Kay's immediate family--as well as William Sybers--unanimously opposed exhumation, the matter came on for trial before the Iowa district court. Petitions for disinterment are tried in equity. Life Investors Ins. Co. of Am. v. Heline, 285 N.W.2d 31, 36 (Iowa 1979). On our de novo review, see id., we find the following facts established by the record.

At dawn on the day of Kay's death, William left the family townhouse for the pathology clinic where he worked. Two of the Sybers' children were at home on summer break from college. During a 7 a.m. meeting with colleagues, William expressed concern over his wife's fitful night's sleep, her complaint of chest and left arm pains, her chronic reluctance to seek medical attention, and his inability to obtain a blood sample for testing despite two attempts at inserting a needle in her arm. ¹

Sybers asked Dan Harris, a staff paramedic and family acquaintance, to drop by the townhouse to check on Kay, get a blood sample, and perhaps convince her to go to a hospital for examination. Harris asked William Johnson, another clinic employee, to accompany him. They arrived at the Sybers' home at about 10 a.m., and found Kay in her bed, unresponsive. With some difficulty, Harris and Johnson moved her to the floor to perform CPR. Their efforts proved futile. Meanwhile, the Sybers children had summoned emergency medical services. They, too, were unsuccessful in reviving her. Police soon arrived. Harris, the most experienced paramedic on the scene, estimated that Kay had been dead from thirty minutes to an hour before they arrived; later estimations by others ranged from thirty minutes to three hours.

It is the practice in Florida, following an unattended death, for the body to be transported to the closest medical examiner for autopsy. In this case, of course, that would have been William's duty. When William arrived on the scene, however, he was visibly distraught. Thus no one questioned his decision to have the body transported directly to a funeral home recommended by Johnson. Kay--a medical technologist by training--had on many occasions expressed her desire not to be autopsied. William believed he was carrying out her wishes.

On further reflection later in the day, William's colleagues counseled that an autopsy was required under the circumstances. William readily agreed, dismissing his earlier decision as influenced by grief. By that time, however, the body had already been embalmed in preparation for transport to Iowa for burial.

Arrangements were made for Dr. Gary Cumberland--a forensic pathologist from another part of Florida who had no personal association with William Sybers--to perform the autopsy on June 1, 1991. Meanwhile, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) received an anonymous phone call reporting that William Sybers had murdered his wife. Dr. Cumberland was notified that the FDLE had developed an interest in Kay's death. Three of its investigators attended the autopsy.

Giving due regard to the law enforcement investigation and the fact the deceased was the spouse of a fellow medical examiner, Dr. Cumberland undertook the autopsy with special care and thoroughness. Substantial toxicological evidence--blood, fluid, hair, fingernail, and tissue samples--was taken from the body and surrendered to the FDLE. In Dr. Cumberland's words, the autopsy investigation "fail[ed] to reveal a convincing anatomic cause for death." His report to the FDLE also indicated that "no toxicological substances of note were recovered" from materials submitted to the Dade County Medical Examiners Office. Dr. Cumberland ruled the cause of death as "sudden unexpected death due to undetermined natural causes." Under pressure from Florida authorities still investigating a charge of murder, Dr. Cumberland later amended his report to omit the word "natural" from his conclusion.

Factors keeping the pending murder investigation alive included the anonymous phone call, allegations of an extramarital affair and gambling debts, numerous bruises on Kay's body, needle marks, and no documented medical history of disease that would account for her unexpected death at age fifty-two. No facts supported the allegations of personal wrongdoing, however, and the physical evidence could all be countered by plausible explanations. Paramedics on the scene accounted for the bruising--inflicted during CPR and while sliding the body, wrapped in a sheet, down the townhouse's narrow staircase. William Sybers explained the origin of the two needle marks. It was well known that Kay Sybers was severely overweight and suspected borderline diabetes but resisted medical diagnosis and treatment because of her obesity and personal acquaintance with all the local physicians. She had recently complained of chest pains and extreme tiredness to friends and domestic help. One close friend, a nurse, reported that Kay was so troubled by chest pains that she carried a cellular phone to a bridge game so she could contact William in an emergency. Finally, Kay's family provided a history of heart disease, diabetes and premature, unexplained deaths on her paternal side.

The State of Florida's murder investigation of William Sybers nevertheless gained certain notoriety in the local press. After two state attorneys who reviewed the case determined the evidence warranted no criminal prosecution, the governor of Florida appointed a third prosecutor in 1993, giving the case a "high priority." Medical and legal experts probing the death theorized that Kay may have been killed by a "perfect poison" such as potassium. Potassium, an element indigenous to the human system, can cause immediate death when administered in a lethal dose. Yet it is virtually undetectable after death. This meant none of the Florida experts, in Dr. Cumberland's words, could perform a "meaningful postmortem potassium evaluation."

The case was eventually referred to Dr. Fredric Rieders, a forensic toxicologist whose laboratory in Pennsylvania is known for pioneering new methods of detecting and measuring toxic substances. As the district court noted, however, Dr. Rieders "labored under the [mistaken] belief that Dr. Hearn of the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office had earlier found evidence of possible potassium poisoning." The potassium-poison theory had, in fact, merely come out of the investigatory discussions; it had no scientific basis when proposed.

Florida authorities sent Dr. Rieders fluid extracted from the lower chamber of Kay's heart. The fluid to be analyzed contained a mixture of blood and embalming fluid. To determine the percentage of blood in the sample, Dr. Rieders began by testing for iron--theorizing that blood contains iron and embalming fluid does not. The record reveals that normal iron levels would have been 450-520 mg/L, with 485 being the midpoint. The iron level of the fluid tested was 171 mg/L, indicating that the specimen was one-third blood and two-thirds embalming fluid. With this 1:3 ratio in mind, potassium in the specimen was measured, with results of 38 mmol/L. Dr. Rieders tripled this figure to account for the dilution factor of the embalming fluid, resulting in a calculation showing the potassium level in Kay Sybers' blood was 114 mmol/L. The expectable range of potassium in a normal individual's blood is 42-52 mmol/L. From these calculations Dr. Rieders concluded that a lethal dose of potassium had been administered to Kay Sybers, causing her death. His report hastened to add, however, that "[t]he final issuance of saying this is the cause of death is up to a pathologist."

Pathologists testifying on behalf of the State of Florida relied on Dr. Rieders' consultive report to support their opinion that Kay Sybers' body must be exhumed for further forensic testing. Dr. Joan Wood, medical examiner for Florida's Sixth Judicial Circuit, called Rieders' testing approach "novel but very logical." Accordingly, she...