Live-In Aide Says Doctor Killed Elderly Redondo Man

A live-in assistant who helped care for an ailing Redondo Beach man went to the police the day the aged invalid died and reported that a doctor had given the man a lethal injection, court documents released Wednesday say.

According to the documents, the live-in caretaker told detectives that Melvin Seifert, 79, died about 15 minutes after the injection. Then, the caretaker told police, the doctor who had administered the injection contacted a mortuary and told it “to cremate the body right away, without preparation.”

After taking a statement from caretaker Louis Walters Jr.--who gave investigators an empty ampul of a sedative he said the doctor had used--police searched the home where Seifert died Oct. 27 and then searched the home and office of Seifert’s doctor, Richard C. Schaeffer.

Schaeffer, 69, and Seifert’s widow, Mary, were arrested Oct. 28 on suspicion of murder. They were released within two days after prosecutors concluded that it might take three weeks to decide whether to charge them, saying toxicological studies are continuing. Seifert’s body was not cremated.

On Wednesday, Schaeffer’s attorney, Michael R. Magasin, called Walters’ comments “fiction.”

Mary Seifert refused to comment, saying her attorney had told her not to discuss the case.

Police would not discuss what led to the arrests, and on Wednesday would not elaborate on the statements made by Walters.

But a summary that police gave to a judge to obtain a search warrant says Walters told them he witnessed the alleged mercy killing of Seifert, who had Alzheimer’s disease and emphysema and had been partially paralyzed after a stroke seven months ago.

In his comments to police, Walters said he did not know Schaeffer intended to kill Seifert until after the lethal injection had been administered.

According to the summary written by detectives, Walters said Mary Seifert told him the shot was “to put (Melvin Seifert) to sleep or help him sleep.”

After the shot was administered, “Mary Seifert said goodby to Melvin Seifert,” according to the summary. “For the next 15 minutes, Mary Seifert and Dr. Schaeffer discussed how long it would take for Melvin Seifert to die. Dr. Schaeffer said between 10 and 15 minutes.”

The conversation apparently alerted Walters to what was happening, according to the detectives’ summary.

“When (Walters) realized what Dr. Schaeffer had done, he became emotional and started crying. Dr. Schaeffer tried to calm him down, telling him this was the best thing . . . that Mary Seifert called him and said that Melvin Seifert was in a lot of pain,” according to the summary.

“Dr. Schaeffer said he knew it was Mary Seifert who was in pain, not Melvin Seifert,” according to the summary.

In a telephone interview, Magasin said Schaeffer had done nothing wrong.

“It sounds like fiction because that’s just not correct. That’s just not what happened,” Magasin said. “If this had happened, why would you do it in front of a witness? That’s just remarkable. I’m just astounded.”

During their searches, investigators confiscated Schaeffer’s medical bag, which contained over a hundred containers of medicine, including several that had expired in the 1970s.

At Seifert’s house, police confiscated a syringe needle and a paper container for Amytal sodium, the barbiturate that had been in the ampul given to them by Walters.

If charged with criminal wrongdoing, Schaeffer would be the ninth doctor in the nation to be prosecuted for helping to kill a patient, according to Derek Humphry, president of the National Hemlock Society, which advocates legalizing euthanasia.

None of the previous eight physicians were sent to prison, although two were placed on probation, Humphry said.

“This is an everyday occurrence. Doctors are helping patients to die frequently,” Humphry said. “If this is what happened in this case, it’s a tragedy that they were found out.”