When James Lincoln Warren launched CriminalBrief.com , he assigned nicknames to our fellow bloggers. Mine was ADD Detective, a riff on Monk’s OCD Detective. During a workday or when wanting to sleep, I imbibed litres of caffeine, self-medicating without realizing it.
A common trait of ADD/ADHD is inventiveness thinking outside cubicle enclosures. Gradually I came to view ADD as a superpower, a garden of creative seeds, yet this isn’t about me, but a stranger than fiction experience. Literally.
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| Dr Ronald Malavé © CBS 48 Hours |
Until then, I found most doctors almost as clueless as I was and occasionally dangerous. During a discussion among colleagues at Disney, a few friends suggested I visit their doctor, a Dr Ronald Malavé, who numbered some of Disney management among his patients. He wasn’t known for useless blathering, but for digging into chemical problems in the brain.
He resembled David Suchet, not a handsome man, definitely more Hercule Poirot than Richard Castle. Fastidious, conservatively dressed, short with thinning hair, he was no one’s idea of a love icon.
His main office differed from others in his field. It was awkwardly placed next to a busy corridor in a business building where conversations and footsteps echoed up and down the hall. His secretary chatted up patients more than he did. When she stepped away, lost people opened the door interrupting discussions.
No soothing hues and bland prints covered the walls. No artsy rugs, no couch, no pot of tea. File cabinets and a laptop dominated the décor. Fine with me. I wanted a diagnostician, not a fuzzy wuzzy chatty chemist.
But things turned weird.
Barely did I get two visits under my belt when I arrived and found the office in chaos. Dr Malavé had been arrested.
I listened as the staff gathered at the secretary’s desk. Hereafter, I’ll refer to the complainant as CD. She was a highly intelligent, highly troubled patient diagnosed with multiple personalities, referred to Malavé because of his talent and track record of success with hard cases, and this was a very difficult case.
“How could someone accuse him?” the receptionist said. “He’s such a good man.”
His secretary burst into tears. “He cared so much. Never would he do that with a patient. Plus she’s… I’m not supposed to say it, but she’s off the deep end.”
As they commiserated, I listened quietly. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I couldn't turn away from this train wreck. As if the situation wasn't peculiar enough, the story grew even stranger. I don’t recall exactly when, but a little nugget dropped into my ear.
"So weird. She keeps using that nasty email ID.”
“What's that?”
“Coffin Dancer.”
What?
Now they really had my attention. Eventually someone realized I wasn’t supposed to be there. The staff headed for a bar and I headed home.
During the next several weeks, I chatted with the secretary. She was loquacious, unprofessionally voluble, but she was deeply wounded.
The accuser had provided a calendar when she claimed to have had sex with the doctor in that severe but servicable office, and the secretary had been the one to comb their records, discovering some dates didn’t match. Investigators attributed this to confusion of a mentally disturbed person.
The secretary confided the accuser had stalked Dr Malavé for months. CD had trailed him home, learning where he lived. She began a habit of going through trash set out on the curb, learning what she could about the residents.
At least three major investigations ensued. The secretary had to wind down both offices, effecting layoffs, and idling operations until the State of Florida permitted him to see patients again. She warned clients police would interview us. In my case, they did not, but good news arrived. The criminal investigation and jury trial ended with Dr Malavé declared not guilty.
In the Sunshine State, licensing of physicians and critical healthcare workers is controlled by two entities, the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Board of Medicine. They stalled, refusing to return his licence to practice as they reinvestigated. Some physicians published open letters asking Board and Department to restore his licence. The secretary suggested the obstinate Board was caught up in ‘Believe the Woman’ fever.
I wasn’t so sure, but my interviewer could not have been more disinterested. I felt someone wanted to bury Dr Malavé. My impatient interviewer gave me the feeling they didn’t want evidence vindicating him but sought evidence to kill his career. I had something to say.
“I’m told the accuser used the handle Coffin Dancer.”
“I don’t know anything about that and it doesn’t matter.”
“I disagree. Author Jeffrey Deaver writes a series featuring Lincoln Rhyme. He’s a forensics and crime scene expert.”
“That sounds like a made-up name.”
“It is a made up name. One of the novels is titled The Coffin Dancer.”
“So…?”
I grow tense and frustrated when I’m not heard.
“Don’t you agree using a title about DNA harvesting and violent murder is a bit odd?”
“Dancing on someone’s grave is a common expression. People can use any handle they want.”
I realized I was making no headway at all. It turned out another major inquiry was under way, the season premier of CBS News 48 Hours Investigates. It’s still featured on the CBS web site.
They focused on DNA. CD provided police with a number of panties containing secretions from both parties. However, local news reported at least some (plural) had not been available for retail sale until after the date in question. An unsatisfactory suggestion of a mixup surfaced. At least one reporter indicated CD had taken condoms from Malavé’s garbage bins, but if true, that report passed into obscurity.
CD was described as having a brilliant mind, but suffered from borderline personality dissociative identity disorder (DID), once referred to as multiple personalities and Sybil’s Syndrome. CBS experts dismissed multiple personalities out of hand, but Malavé’s attorneys believed at least three of CD’s internal characters conspired to accuse Malavé of having sex with CD.
Following professional medical training, she worked for a urologist, harvesting and working with semen. She had the knowledge, she had the experience of working with and manipulating seminal and vaginal DNA.
☛ Curiously suggestive, a central plot point in the novel The Coffin Dancer is collecting DNA from semen by going through trash bins.
Nonetheless, 48 Hours hired their own expert who concluded the ratio of male secretions indicated intercourse, not transfer. 48 Hours Investigates season premiere ended with a gleeful assertion the show had vindicated Coffin Dancer.
The Florida Board of Medicine leaped upon the 48 Hours conclusion rather than police reports and a jury’s conclusion, and denied reinstatement of his licence to practice.
Maybe CBS got it right, but I wonder if Board members read Deavers novels. They might have reached a different conclusion. I wonder if Coffin Dancer, the accuser, outsmarted them all.
References
Links in the CBS News articles are broken. Use the following to navigate the three segments.
