Doctor Kills Wife, Self and 2 Children With Injections : His Suicide Note Refers to Financial and Health Problems

In an elegant house in Chestnut Hill, the best section of the city, a doctor from a prestigious hospital connected his wife, two children and himself to intravenous tubes hung from picture hooks on the wall and killed them all.

A suicide note left by Dr. Anthony Paul, 49, at his office and at the house referred to financial difficulty and to the medical problems of his wife, Malanie, 47, and daughter, Medhina, 17, police said.

Malanie Paul had severe arthritis and Medhina severe brain damage, according to the note, which was several pages long.

A copy of the note was discovered Tuesday morning at Fox Chase Cancer Center, where Paul had worked for 15 years, spokesman Eric Rosenthal said. Officials there called police, who broke into the three-story house.

The bodies were found in a second-floor master bedroom. IV solution bags were hung from picture hooks and IV tubes were in the arms of each victim, police said.

The bodies of the daughter and the son, Rajiva, 12, were on mattresses on the floor. Malanie Paul’s body was on a bed and Paul’s body was slumped on the floor, Detective Lt. Thomas Quinn said. All four were in bedclothes, he said.

The IV bags were not labeled and their contents were not immediately known, Quinn said. Autopsies are being conducted today.

Police said the deaths occurred sometime after 7 p.m. Monday. Paul, a native of Sri Lanka, had been at work Monday. There was no sign of a struggle, Quinn said.

“This was one of those issues of human existence that those of us who are left don’t really understand,” said Dr. Robert Comis, vice president for medical science at the cancer center.

“He was a gentle man, someone who was respected by his colleagues.”

The suicide note spoke of the doctor’s despair, police said.

“He decided to take the family with him,” Quinn said. “He indicated he didn’t want to leave his son as a ward of the state.”

Comis said Paul’s wife, a non-practicing psychiatrist, was often sick and his daughter was “non-functional for her whole life.”

The white stucco and stone house with an ivy-covered lawn is on a corner lot, surrounded by high hedges and mature trees. The home, bought for $267,000 in 1985, has about 10 bedrooms, police said.